Keys for Motivation

Maureen asked me to go into more detail about my Habit #5 about fostering motivation by balancing freedom and discipline. I got the "balancing freedom and discipline" bit from a book I've recently read called Small is Beautiful. It's a book about human economics but the section on education is stellar.

Anyway, pondering all this along with Maureen's Seven Habits themes made me think that several of Covey's original Seven Habits have influenced me deeply in thinking about REAL learning and true education. Also, I was just reading a book by Dr Phil called Seven Keys for Successful Weight Loss. So here goes -- none of this is at all new, most of it is derived from various mentors in my life, but here's a bit of what I think :

First, the preliminary: Changing the Paradigm.

There is a primary and secondary kind of success. The primary kind is what comes from within -- character traits, development of natural talents, managing weaknesses. The secondary type is what society and other people recognize as success. They may well interrelate. Good work ethic may well lead to worldly success and admiration. However, it is important not to mistake one for the other.

What's that to do with motivation? Well, not much directly -- but it is something to keep in mind, and stops a homeschool from going on all sorts of false trails --- excelling for prideful reasons, out of fear, or comparing one's homeschool to others. Trying to make a kid into what you wanted to be, or what his dad wants him to be, or into something you can point to and say "See what I did!"

Second, a vision and plan -- Intentionality.

You can't invent a child from scratch, God already did that, and you can't mold him like Pygmalion did, but you can have a deep influence on him. It's important to think through what you can control, what you can influence, and what would be excessive management.

All this being said, it is within your area of control and influence to have a vision for your homeschool. Hopefully this is broad enough to encompass a variety of different outcomes, but within a general framework. This vision is implemented by sorting through priorities and working actively to implement them.

That's a lot of jargon. But what it comes down to is -- what will you do day to day, and why? This is very important in motivation for kids, I think -- both the day to day AND the why part. In my experience kids want to know how the big picture and the nitty-gritty relate to each other, and the lessons learned from that are among the most important things to learn in life.

So I think it's good to continually reflect on this kind of thing. It would be impossible to always do so. We operate a lot of the time from habits and assumptions; they save time and effort. But when something seems "wrong" -- the child isn't acting as expected, or he IS doing what's expected but for some reason you don't feel right about it.... those may be the times to check whether your ideals and your daily practice are matching up. This seems to be an ongoing process of living.

Third, think Win/Win

I've found this one to be extremely important in homeschooling and in parenting. When we talk about motivating kids, what we usually mean is motivating kids to do what we think they ought to do. So "un-motivated" really means that the kid is motivated to, say, lie around; play video games; harass his little brother. We want him to be reading/excelling in his schoolwork/being a light and inspiration to his little siblings.

The win/win helps me steer through these seeming locks. A win/win is NOT the same as a compromise. Here I'll depart from Covey's format somewhat because his "seek first to understand, then to be understood" helps me implement this principle.

Since this is getting long, I'll finish some other time!