How Do I Motivate Kids?

Part 1: Internal motivation

What do you do when a child won't do their work?

Saturday is a job day in the Day Household. Everyone has a job description, which helps the kids envision what work to do: 

• Five-year-old Lucy is the Zookeeper. She takes care of the cat and stuffed animals.

• Seven-year-old Robbie is the Gardener.

• Nine-year-old Calvin’s job is Hospitality and Front-of-House. He tidies the front rooms and offers visitors a cold drink.

• 11-year-old Daisy’s job is Communications Officer. She maintains the electronics and cleans the TV room.

• And the 40-somethings are Kitchen Worker and Landscaper, respectively. As I said in the last post, the adults should have chores to do at the same time as the kids.

We began the day as we do most Saturdays: with “morning meeting” in which we discuss the plans for the day. We also discuss our mini-economy. Perhaps they want to switch jobs, they think a certain job needs to be done, they wish our home mini-economy store sold so-and-so item, or they want to go on a particular outing. Then we pray, sing the family song (“This is the Day”), and huddle up and cheer “Go Team Day!” (There are a lot of Day family puns, now that I think about it.) Deliberation, goal-setting, family traditions, giving the kids a voice, and work planning set structure and expectations. As I showed in my last post, these are often missing when parents try to get kids to do chores.

Little sister helping with the gardening

Our seven-year-old gardener was not feeling his job last Saturday. Reasons included:

• “I have the hardest job”

• “I just don't like pulling weeds”

• “I already did it” [editorial comment: inaccurate]

• “I have the hardest job”

• “I have the hardest job”

In economics, the fundamental lens through which we view the world is “people respond predictably to incentives,” and in fairness, as Gardener, he does have to pull weeds, which might be the worst job. It’s no fun. Hot, time-consuming, strenuous work brings plenty of disincentives with it. (I gave him the option of switching to a different job, which he refused.)

“Great work, Adam Smith,” a sarcastic imaginary parent might say, “you’ve discovered that kids don’t want to work. Thank you, economics.” What incentive does a seven-year-old have for doing his job at all?

Well, Sarcastic Imaginary Parent, people are motivated in two ways: internally and externally. Decades of psychological and economic studies have worried that too many external rewards and punishments can crowd out more wholesome internal motivation. This problem even has a name: Motivation Crowding Theory. I’m thinking about the best way to motivate my children here. We do pay them for their chores, but Motivation Crowding Theory makes me hesitant to emphasize payment too much, or to use withholding payment as a threat. This is the day that I tried the route of internal motivation.

“You still didn’t answer the question,” jeers Sarcastic Imaginary Parent, who has now taken up permanent residence in my head, “how are you going to make someone be internally motivated?”

You can’t. If someone doesn't actually enjoy the task at hand, you only have so much to work with. But you can support people in whatever internal motivation they have, like cupping a flickering match with your hand in a high wind. One way to understand what fosters internal motivation is the “RBG Framework,” which economists have drawn from educational psychology research. Here’s what RBG stands for: 

• Relevance. People want to know why a task is important.

• Belonging. People want to feel like their work supports a community, and the community supports them.

• Growth, or a “growth mindset.” When people think they’re immutably good or bad at something, they’re less likely to put effort into working on it. But they will work if they think their work helps them get better.

I helped Robbie finish his job. (Was that a failure? We’ll see next week when he does or doesn’t complete the task himself.) While we worked, I tried to reinforce the points above. I reminded him how the job maintains the hard work we did making a flower bed. I told him the family needs him, and he needs the family. And I talked about how all this work makes the house better. Did this talk help? It seemed to help a little. He did his job. I didn’t love this kind of speech when I was a kid. I don’t think a talk like this always works immediately in the moment. Cultivating RBG isn’t an intervention that turns a situation on its head. It’s something you work at over time. It's a part of creating the structure and expectations that kids need and even crave.

What did work? My wife came outside, and noticing Robbie slumping, asked “Stephen, could he try to mow?” (I had started to mow. I am the Landscaper after all.) He immediately perked up. It was the first time he had been allowed to cut the grass. By the time he was done mowing, he was striding around the yard like he had personally conquered it, and I was digging in the dirt. We had switched jobs, but they got done. Whether this was a parenting victory or not is unclear.

How to explain this transformation? If it was due to internal motivation, then you could say he felt like he was growing (the G in RBG). Perhaps mowing made him feel more competent, which is another important aspect of motivation. But there may have been an aspect of external motivation here: mowing felt like a reward. And it was something new. I am quite certain that he won’t be stoked about mowing if he does it every week.

Here’s a good way to think about motivation with kids: you should try to tend to their internal motivation over time, mostly by not snuffing it out. You can do this by using the RBG framework as a tool. Economists and psychologists have long understood that people respond to all kinds of incentives, and those incentives are often not money. But there is a place for external rewards. Sometimes we need rewards or punishments if we’re going to do things that we don't like. Next week we’ll switch our focus from internal motivation to external motivation. We’ll look at when rewards do and don’t help motivate people.

Let me know your experiences in the comments.

• How have you built internal motivation for a task? Was it an internal or external incentive?

• How have you helped build children's motivation? (Looking at you, teachers and coaches.)

• Kids, what motivates you? What de-motivates you? When is a time that you felt you’ve grown?

• What builds relevance? Belonging? A growth mindset?