Your Child Can Find Confidence to Use Mistakes as Opportunities to Grow

Motivation: why doesn’t my kid have it, and what can we do? For starters, connected kids do well.

Have you read my friend Amy Weber’s article on motivation yet?

Here’s quick tip from it that you can try right away:

Regulated and connected kids do well:

”Before giving a direction, sit next to your kid and chat for 10 minutes.
Show genuine interest in whatever they’re doing. It can make the transition from fun activity to a hard/boring activity a little easier.”

-Amy Weber

Amy is a licensed clinical social worker in Brooklyn, New York, and co-founder of Speak, Learn, and Play. She and I are co-leading a workshop on March 3, 2023 at lunchtime, all about motivation: Unstuck and Understood: How to use connection to motivate your neurodivergent kid. Will you join us? The workshop is on May 3:

Earlier this month I shared a video where Amy and I answered parent questions. So many of the questions submitted were about motivation that we decided to get together with you and share a framework you can use right away with your neurodivergent kids to help them feel more motivated and get on the same page with you.

”Before you can begin any task, you need to have a foundation of impulse control, emotional regulation, and flexibility. Without those skills, accomplishing homework or chores is going to be an uphill battle. And even if you’ve chosen a moment when your child is regulated and flexible, they also need to be able to plan and prioritize, self-monitor, initiate, organize, and have a good working memory.”

-Amy Weber, LCSW

The best way to support those skills is through play!

Amy and Kate talk about supporting executive function skills through play:

“I know that a lot of people have planners and organizers and, and all kinds of tools. And those are all great, when the kid understands what they're for and how they're supposed to use them, and they're motivated to use them, and they make sense to the child.

“But also, kids learn through play and there are lots of games that involve impulse control. Red light, green light. Simon says, all, all of those kind of old school playground games all teach us impulse control and just playing with your kid is amazing for many, many, many reasons. There are a million board games if your child is interested in playing board games, and I can put together a list for you.”

Here’s something I shared in the video that I think is important to remember:

We can get into this downward spiral of “I'm not doing enough. I've done it wrong, that means there's something bad about me.”

And by committing to making a change, having guilt or shame that “I've done something wrong” can really block us from a willingness to try something new. If I'm telling myself, “I need to try something new,” it must mean there's something wrong with me.

I really wanna invite you to drop that and be open to mistakes. Because mistakes in parenting are universal, absolutely universal. There is not one single parent ever who has lived on this planet, who has made zero mistakes.

Embrace the mistakes. Practice mindfulness to ground yourself in the present moment, in your body, in your breath. Use what helps you to to feel less overwhelmed, even though the situation is a lot. And build your own emotional regulation. Your own frustration tolerance.

And then remember to celebrate those little wins.

So every little win, instead of: "I can't possibly do all of this and stay calm all the time." Was there one time this week when you handled something pretty well and you stayed calm? Talk that up. Celebrate that!

This training is for you if...

You have a kid struggling with motivation, whether they are a toddler, a teen, or somewhere in between. These strategies will be relevant to you if you are fed up with behavior-based parenting approaches, but you don't know what to do instead.

Join live on Zoom Friday, March 3, at 12 noon EST to connect and get your questions answered! The replay will be sent to everyone who signs up, but it will be more fun to join us live! See you there!