Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy How do you motivate the 'coaster'?

DS is 5 (turning 6 in January) and is excelling at school in pre-primary (Australia - the year before yr 1). He is very much like myself as a child - everything comes easy to him without much effort.

How do we instill the desire to do better or at least to put some effort in? I never found that as a child and even now, I struggle greatly when things don't come so easily for me as I don't really know what to do. I do not want him to grow up like me!

We changed schools for term 4 and his new teacher doesn't seem very receptive to his advanced abilities (no formal iq or ability testing as yet)- his tested reading age is 9 and his maths ability is at least on par with those kids in his class in yr 1. At the moment at school, he is able to do everything asked of him without any thought - no challenge at all. His teacher originally thought he was in yr 1 (it's a split yr1/pp class) so he was doing all yr 1 work which was great but since she realised he is in pp, she has dropped him to their grouping for everything except reading - arrghh!

For DD6, we're accomplishing by finding things that don't come naturally to anyone, and then we talk to her about the value of practice, let her know mistakes are natural, and encourage her to put in effort, and reward her for the same. Once she sees her practice paying off with improved skill, it becomes its own reward.

In her case, it's been an ongoing process, beginning about since she was 3 or so. Examples include bicycling, gymnastics, and guitar. She's also playing soccer, and the coach awards one or two "player of the game" to the kids who exhibited the most effort, regardless of whether they scored or not.

She still has a tendency to beat herself up and become excessively frustrated when she doesn't get things right the first time (hello, perfectionism!), but there's been a gradual improvement in her sticktuitiveness. I remember her first weeks in soccer, she managed to convince herself falsely that everyone else was much faster than her, but she never considered quitting.

Hope this helps.

I have to go right now, so I can't say a lot, but if you haven't yet read "Is it a cheater?" (http://www.stephanietolan.com/is_it_a_cheetah.htm ) You might want to. Your son sounds a bit like a cheater who doesn't want to run too fast to catch the rabbits

The only way to learn to tackle challenges it to overcome them. If a child isn't being challenged its very hard to learn.

Sorry the school is not being more supportive. It sounds like you might just be on the start of 'all this'. Stick around

We decided on brainwashing.

We come up with harder things for our kids to do at home, then "inform them" that it's a challenge, and that they LOVE a challenge.

Granted, DS7 has taken this to heart more than his younger sister. He does seem to enjoy a challenge.

DD5 is still getting the hang of "loving a challenge," but we help her along with the catch phrase, "I am NOT going to give up!" As Dude points out, this is sometimes more helpful for a gymnastics "challenge" than for math, but hey, she's still young.

The problem is that sometimes it's s good idea to "give up" because the attempted challenge is inappropriate or not ultimately beneficial to the challengee. So there's an underlying assumption in the "never give up" approach.

Well, since I know my child, I'm pretty capable of coming up with challenges that she is actually capable of. I'm not asking her to do calculus here.

How do you motivate a coaster? Spill coffee on it would be my guess. (Sorry - could not resist.)

Having raised a coaster I've come to the conclusion that unless the child sees the value in the end product or the experience itself, very little can motivate a coaster. My son was not motivated by good grades, challenges to do "his best" or do much more than the minimum effort in school. The only thing we found that we could use as a carrot was his climbing - where he drove himself to practice and train and watch his diet in order to earn an invite to nationals almost every year.

What I can tell you is that much of my effort to push him, make him excel, make him want to excel were only crazy-making and created friction at home. Seeing him completely excelling now in college when it is something that matters to him, I often wish I'd left some of it alone and just let him coast without all the friction between us.

While intrinsic motivation is best for complex and creative problem solving, tangible rewards might work for simple goals like, "Bring home everything you need for homework 5 nights in a row."

At least for high school motivation, my father explained to me that, in order to graduate valedictorian, I would have to work extra hard in school and avoid getting B's because grades actually counted once you got into 9th grade.

So, if you have a hypercompetitive, win at all costs child, who is currently coasting, that is one approach.

However, having gone through this experience, I recommend avoiding it since it doesn't tend to develop intrinsic motivation and does tend to develop anti-social behavior.

I think spotlight works. DD hates piano practice, though she will say she hates piano. But she likes the performance. Yesterday she had a recital and worked hard on these pieces to get them like her teacher wanted them. And after her performance, which was really good, she told me she felt proud about it. Though doing the practicing was a nightmare to get through. And she wanted to coast and just play them they way she was playing them instead of fixing little things that her piano teacher wanted so they wouldn't sound like every other kid...(I am glad she didn't ask why she had to sound different)

And this year she is doing the Nutcracker, small role, but the whole thing is getting her really excited about dance, more than I have seen her in a long time.

Which is great news since we cut gymnastics and I wanted to focus on dance to narrow the activities.

And I always use the "options" argument. I don't know and she doesn't know what she will want to do when she is 20. I want her to have options. Does she want to have options? If she doesn't always push to do her best, she won't have options. She will have some path, but what if she wants another path but she didn't do the work? So I put it in her lap. Since this is a continuous thread for years now, she gets the options thing is for her to have choice and she cannot argue with that one.

So when she procrastinates or does poorly, she is limiting her options.

Ren

I remember being 20. I didn't have the slightest idea what to go do with myself, but I was furious at life and quite depressed, so I basically decided to trash my academic life because I no longer cared about anything.

That didn't really have any positive outcomes. Unless you consider law school a positive outcome.

I like the "options" idea better than my approach.