Motivating You Kids for Life.

First, a little tiny bit of back-story

I think of myself as a pretty motivated person. I have some lazy attributes, but I try and put my best foot forward consistently. I am someone in the middle of a ten-kid family, and was raised in a home with three of my siblings. most of us have a good work ethic, all of us are pretty creative, but motivation hits a wall at some point for all of us. I’m not saying it because I think I’m better than anyone else, but I would say I’m more motivated than the rest of my siblings that I was raised with. I’m upper middle placement for the entire pool of kids as motivation goes.

My mother was a single mother with four kids. She went to school, she worked full time and she had four kids. There wasn’t time for everything to be done in a given day. She could have delegated responsibility, but she didn’t have the energy for that either. Our place wasn’t filthy but it was always messy. We had to get to the bus and make it to school and then get on the bus and come home. There were not responsibilities.

My mother herself did plenty of laundry and dishes, but that was it. What I knew of my mother as a child was that she worked hard, despised my father and was ever on the verge of total nervous apocalypse. She was a good person then, but she just had too much on her plate.

She kept us alive and held up to her responsibilities, but at the end of the day, she had four kids that aren’t terribly motivated. I wanted more for my kids as far as motivation went. I want them to finish what they start. I want them to be proactive. I evaluated my own childhood and came up with a game-plan to help my own children.

1.I give my three-year old, and to a degree my one-year-old responsibility. I ask for help cleaning up, I have my three-year-old start the dishwasher and I pick him up to have him throw stuff in the wash. I have both boys help me clean up toys. Their responsibilities are minimal, because of their age, but as they grow, their responsibilities will too. They will earn things they want outside of holidays and the occasional special treat.

2. I myself have become more proactive. I model the positive, proactive behavior I want to see in my kids. Sure, there are things I do to clean when they nap, but I make a point of doing tasks in front of them every single day. I tell my three-year-old I’ll play with him once I’m DONE doing dishes. I want them to know we do what we need to do when it presents itself and before we do fun activities. This has been a work-in-progress for me. The kids are awesome but they wear me down and I don’t always want to be proactive. I still sit and relax sometimes, but mostly, during the day, I’m up and doing something necessary.

3. I remember as a kid I always wanted to cook. I made my mother something one time and she didn’t want it because it was “weird”, which was no doubt accurate, but it wasn’t encouraging. at 36, I make weird stuff again, and am a better cook than my mother was because I continued to be adventurous, but there was a long time after that that I just didn’t cook and she still says I make weird stuff, even though I haven’t prepared anything weird for her since I was ten or so. She wasn’t saying it to be malicious, but no one lifted her up for trying. I wish someone had, I really do. I will lift my children up, because I know that its necessary, but I may not have known that if I’d raised my kids 30+ years ago, there just weren’t as many resources available.

4. I let my kids try stuff. I let them f@#k up and then give them a list of what I would call “opportunities to improve”.

EXAMPLE: I see you colored on the walls, I like your color choices and its really beautiful, but I really need you to keep your art on PAPER so I can save it”.

If you have any things that you do to motivate your younger (or older) kids, feel free to leave a comment, I would love to hear from you.