Louella,
As a parent of four children I have to say that motivation is pretty subjective in my book. Each of my kids was their own person entirely and each was motivated by different things to different degrees. My youngest loves to "help" and loves to be the "good" kid so asking her to help or verbally praising her efforts or achievements works really well. DS8 likes to be right or the best so I often give a little story which highlights how well someone else did with something and he likes to compete. I try not to make him ever feel in competition with family members etc and try instead to focus his competition against himself - e.g. he remembered to make his bed on his own three times last week - does he think he can remember more often next week? Second youngest loved to follow the rules so if it was laid out that this is how we do things and these are the house rules he would follow along. Oldest loved attention of any sort so if I offered to spend time helping him clean his room or time afterward with him if he did it on his own he would respond.
Of course these were their main motivators as discovered by me and not the ONLY things that motivated them.
My ultimate goal is/was to help them become self-motivated - to learn what drives themselves and take advantage of that to achieve their goals/desires.
