An old habit of generations of parents and teachers was the negative motivation of children and adolescents. The method which, sometimes jokingly, sometimes seriously, I call “Just watch me motivating you,” has been adopted and perpetuated. To my bewilderment, this perpetuation comes precisely from those who usually complain, in one form or another, about this type of education they received in childhood. Is it good or bad to rely on negativity?
I tear you down, so I motivate you
In the sequence:
3×1=3
3×2=6
3×3=8
3×4=12
3×5=15
are there four correct exercises or one incorrect? Both answers are accurate; what matters is which one we are inclined to choose first.
If this sequence of simple multiplications were to appear in your child’s assignment, what would you say first?
See, you’ve made a mistake,
or
You have four correct exercises, well done, double-check it once more.
I’m not trying to establish the universally valid answer and say that only one of the options is always healthy. There are at least two factors to consider:
- What is your goal? To tear them down for the mistake? To accustom them to hardship because they will always encounter obstacles in life? To show them how great you are (just watch me), the adult, because you already know, you’ve been through all this? To help them find what’s wrong, understand, and correct it themselves? To show them that they can do better?
- How does your child/adolescent function better? What have you observed, what do you know about them?
Observing and then understanding which is the best way to motivate your child is one of the keys that will later open the doors to self-awareness.
Exercise
I meet adolescents almost daily. There are several categories:
- Those who come of their own volition and despite their parents’ opinion (but with their consent): What can you tell a stranger that you can’t tell me? Why do you need a psychologist, what serious problems do you have?
- Those who come of their own volition, with their parents’ consent and agreement.
- Those who come pushed by their parents, so they test my good faith.
With any, from whichever category they may belong, I work with the same passion.
What I most often notice when talking about types of motivation is that almost all the adolescents I work with know what they have to correct. Regarding their behavior, for example. They are told at home and at school. They have long lists of “Do not do this” that they can recite by heart just like the essays dictated in Romanian class for the baccalaureate.
They know what is expected of them. However, what they don’t know is how and with what to do things better. No one gives them the tools, or no one teaches how to use them. You’re at point A, you’re asked to get to point B, but you don’t know how or with what you’ll move.
The exercise I most often do in such cases is the identification of individual qualities. You might say: “So what? What’s the big deal?”
It is a big deal. And it’s big for at least three reasons:
Our adolescents are not accustomed to observing their qualities, the good things they manifest or have deep in their structure. They are not shown that these exist. They are not encouraged to talk about these. Neither at home nor at school.
Our educational system emphasizes mistakes, whether it’s about grading knowledge or behavior.
Adolescents don’t know the words that name their qualities. It’s not a joke or a figure of speech for the sake of the article.
(Self-)Awareness
Based on the observation above, I organized a workshop for high school students. Theme: (Self-)Awareness.
Before embarking on the endless journey of self-awareness, you need to recognize yourself in the words of your native language. To know how to say it.
I started with a list of 60 words that name positive character and temperament traits and which will be found, in the years of maturity, in the fully constituted structure of personality.
I had an audience of about 100 high school students, and things went like this:
When asked, “Are there words on the list whose meaning you don’t understand?” 80 of them answered “Yes, at least two.”
When asked, “Is there at least one trait you thought of for the first time?” 92 answered “Yes.”
We continued the exercise by asking them to think of a situation they experienced and which, looking back now, they would prefer to handle differently. Just self-reflection, nothing to embarrass them in front of others.
The next step was to find those traits they have that would have helped them change the given situation.
Case study
Some of the high school students chose to talk about:
“I failed my math tutoring sessions because I was always late, and the teacher refused to accept me anymore. My parents exploded: You’re not punctual, you’re irresponsible, we can’t rely on you, etc. I felt really bad, too. As punishment, my parents made me a very strict self-study program. I didn’t go out anymore. I am an ambitious and persevering guy (I noted it here on the list, too) and I managed to recover quite a bit of material. My parents only said: Until someone cracks the whip on you, you won’t do anything.”
I invite you to think about a rephrasing of this event. My amendments are as follows:
The upset of a parent in a similar situation is understandable. I would tweak the fine agreement of consequence or punishment and make the difference between these and the encouragement to learn on their own because they are ambitious and persevering. I punish tardiness, but I maintain the child’s motivation for learning. That’s what I, the parent, want, for my children, right? To learn with pleasure. As much as possible. Learning on your own is not a punishment. It’s an offer: “You are ambitious enough to succeed on your own.” In translation and in line with the theme of the article, I emphasize a trait of the child to encourage them to act in the desired direction, to correct a behavior.
One of my conclusions is that if we always show them what’s wrong, what’s not correct, what’s not done, let’s help them find in their warehouse of goodness the right tools to use to correct, repair, fix, adjust.
