When kids work hard at something they love and find challenging, they enter a state of what’s come to be called “flow,” where time passes quickly and their attention is completely engaged, but they’re not stressed. When you’re in flow, levels of certain neurochemicals in your brain—including dopamine—spike.6 These neurochemicals are like performance-enhancing drugs for the brain. You think better in flow, and you process information faster. To be fully engaged this way, the activity has to be challenging enough not to be boring, but not so difficult that it’s overly stressful. Think of playing tennis against a partner who is not nearly at your level. Completely boring. If you’re playing against someone who is vastly more skilled, it’s so punishing it’s not enjoyable. A partner with whom you’re well matched? That’s where you find your flow.
So when you see an eight-year-old highly focused on building a Lego castle, lips pressed in concentration, what she is actually doing is getting her brain used to being motivated. She is conditioning her brain to associate intense enjoyment with highly focused attention, practice, and hard work. Just as frequent exposure to high levels of stress can sculpt a young brain in ways that are unhealthy, frequent exposure to states of flow can sculpt a young brain to be motivated and focused.
Researcher Reed Larson has studied the development of motivation in children and teens, and he’s found flow to be the secret sauce.7 In interpreting the results of Larson’s results, the great neuroscientist Marian Diamond concluded that, “while ‘wrapped up’ in a favorite pastime, children report feeling excited and forgetting their problems. The high internal motivation accompanying those feelings is a form of reinforcement for directed effort, learning, and accomplishment that can’t be achieved in any other way as successfully.”8 Think of it like cross-training. Maybe what you ultimately want is a kid who has the mental and leg strength to run a marathon, but playing jump rope or hopscotch is a great way to get those legs primed and ready.
Just as in sports, the training of the mind works on a progression. That eight-year-old building the Lego castle was once a four-year-old playing dress-up. Playing dress-up involves high intrinsic motivation—the kid really wants to do it—but low attention, because they can move on at a moment’s notice to playing with Barbies. As the child gets older and participates in more challenging or structured activities that she has chosen, she’ll reach the state of both high intrinsic motivation and high attention. In other words, that’s when she’ll experience flow.9
This process is true for the eight-year-old, and it’s also true for a fifteen-year-old who may struggle in school but is passionate about skiing, or drawing, or playing an instrument. The best way to motivate him for the things you think he should focus on is to let him spend time on the things he wants to focus on.
Bill knows this from a scientific perspective, and from one that’s more personal. He was a 2.8 student in high school with little interest in being a top student. As we mentioned in Chapter Two, he became passionate about rock and roll in junior high, and in high school his band was the most important thing in his world. He spent long hours almost every night learning songs, teaching himself chord structure, practicing his instruments, and singing—all fueled by his own love for music and being in a band. He often went into his “music room” at 7:00 P.M., telling himself that he’d quit at 8:15 so he could get at least a little homework done. Most commonly, what felt like 8:15 to him was actually 9:45, because he was in flow. What he later realized is that, as a teenager, he was sculpting a brain that was very familiar with a flow state and that would eventually be able to put “the pedal to the metal” when he found an academic discipline—and later a career—that turned him on.
“I Don’t Have the Brain of a Middle-aged Man”
One of our favorite lines ever came from a thirteen-year-old whose father pushed her hard for good grades. She said, “My dad is the smartest person I know. But his methods don’t work for me. I don’t have the brain of a middle-aged man.”
This girl was wise beyond her years. We see this disconnect all the time, where parents are driven crazy by the way their kids work and don’t grasp that they are wired differently, that what works for a thirteen-year-old isn’t what would work for them. Ned had a student, Grant, whose mom drove him to school every day. His school was nearly an hour away from his home. Grant had a great mind—he was curious, clever, a top debater. He was also a remarkably skilled procrastinator. He did everything at the last minute, including typing his papers in the car. On the way to school. On his phone. It made his mom nuts. But the daily rush (both of the hurrying and chemical type) compelled him to get it done. He had all As, but didn’t achieve them the way his mom would have liked.
“It would be so much easier if he would simply start his papers in advance and do a little bit each day,” she lamented, and she was right. It would have been easier—for her. Which Ned (gently) suggested.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“Well,” Ned said, “this is a teenage boy you’re describing, right? Chances are it’s been a very long time since you’ve been a teenage boy. His brain works differently. He’s a kid trying to get the work done, and he knows he works best under pressure—or can only work under pressure.”
“But it drives me crazy to watch him waste hours and then have to rush to get things done,” said his mom.
To which Ned suggested with a smile, “Maybe you shouldn’t watch.”
The tension between Grant and his mother is one of the most common we see, in part because men and women on average process dopamine differently. Girls are generally more interested by—and more consistently motivated to achieve in—school. They tend to have higher standards and to evaluate their performance more critically. They are more concerned about pleasing their parents and teachers.10 Girls generally have more empathy, which leads them to develop a greater fear of disappointing their teachers. Their dopamine levels tend to kick in earlier and to stay with them longer, so that some will go so far as to finish a paper two days early. They’re less likely than boys to need the stress of performing under a tight deadline to get them started. In fact, they are more likely to panic under the stress of a too-tight deadline, activating their amygdalas so that they’re no longer working effectively.
Two years ago Ned was tutoring several kids at the same school who all had history term papers due the same week. The Friday before it was due, he saw three girls from the school. “How’s the paper going?” he asked the first. “Oh, pretty well,” she said. “I just have to finish my footnotes.” The next girl had a similar story. “I’ve written it,” she said, “but need to edit it a couple more times.” The same exchange happened with the third girl. The next day, the boys rolled in. “Hey, Oscar, so how’s the paper going?” Ned asked the first. “Oh, yeah,” he said. “Right! I’ve been working on it . . . I mean, I’ve got some ideas. . . .” The next boy said, “I still have to get it all written, but, I mean, yeah!” and the third reported essentially the same progress. These boys weren’t stressed, keep in mind. They just hadn’t gotten to it yet. Girls are not boys. Boys are not girls. And while there are notable exceptions and not everyone fits the gender mold, girls tend to like to be on top of things and to feel stressed when they fall behind or have too many things on their to-do list.
Then, of course, these girls grow up and many of them become moms. It’s moms who most frequently oversee their sons’ homework. The result? What we’ve come to think of as the Dopamine Wars.
Gender can be a factor, but motivation also functions quite differently for kids with ADHD, anxiety, or depression. Kids with ADHD simply don’t have the dopamine levels of other children, so they need some help jump-starting their motivation, in whatever form that may be.11 For parents who have a child with ADHD, rest assured that we’ll address things like medication, incentives, and exercise, which can help kids focus and get their work done, in more detail in Chapter Eleven.
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sp; Finally, it can be helpful to remember that what motivates one child will not necessarily motivate another. Some kids are motivated largely by a desire to have close personal relationships or to help people, while others are energized by the desire to achieve at a high level or by a love of learning new things and gaining new skills. Kids can even want the same things for very different reasons. Many kids love video games or sports not for the stimulation of the game or the thrill of winning but for the enjoyment of playing with their friends. Some students strive for good grades for personal satisfaction, while others drive themselves academically because of their long-term goals. Similarly, kids may run for high school student council for a variety of differing reasons: because they want to learn about government; to help solve problems that affect their friends; to build their college resume; to experience a feeling of prestige; or to satisfy their desire to “be in charge.”
When parents pay attention to these differences, they can help their kids understand what motivates them—and what’s truly important to them. This knowledge can also help parents understand why their kids will sometimes make decisions that seem to be ill-advised—like deciding to go to the local public school with all his friends when he has the option of attending an elite, more academically challenging high school.12 One student we know chose not to continue on with her academically intense high school when administrators told her she’d have to give up some extracurricular activities she loved in order to make more time for homework. “I’m only fifteen,” she thought. “Why would I give up things I love to do now?” She switched schools, graduated with distinction, and is now thriving in college. It’s not the most academically prestigious college, but it was her first choice. She was never motivated by rigorous academics, and was smart enough to know it early on.
Common Motivation Problems and How to Approach Them
We see kids at extreme ends of the motivation spectrum. Some are such perfectionists, so driven to grab the brass ring, that they make themselves sick with stress. At the opposite end, some don’t seem to care about anything, or appear to act against what they know to be in their own best interest.
We have found that kids at both ends of the spectrum suffer from a low sense of control. How best to approach them varies quite considerably. Here are the four most common motivation problems we see, and our suggestions for helping kids to solve them.
The Saboteur: “My kid just can’t seem to motivate himself to do what he knows he needs to do. It’s like he’s deliberately sabotaging himself.”
We see a lot of kids who might be described this way. They may want to do well at school, or in the school band, but they can’t seem to put in the hours necessary to get the job done.
If this is your child, you can help your kid to see how things that don’t seem so important now may be important to their long-term goals. Most parents have tried to connect the dots for their kids by the time they come to us, and we know that it isn’t easy. If a kid’s primary interest is in socializing with friends, encourage that interest and help him see how it will serve him professionally one day—he might have a fulfilling career as a teacher, psychologist, negotiator, lawyer, or sales director. But also tell him that most careers that place a strong emphasis on interpersonal skills require at least a bachelor’s degree, and in many cases a graduate degree. So if he wants to interact with others for a living in a meaningful way, he’ll have to learn to work hard to develop his academic capabilities.
You can also help him find his own reasons for working hard at the things that are important to him. We often try to help kids see the distinction between things they feel like doing and things they want to do. To illustrate this, Bill will ask them to think about new parents. He tells kids that when his daughter was a baby and it was his responsibility when she cried in the middle of the night to bring her to her mother to be fed, he never once felt like getting out of bed. But he wanted to do it because it was important that his daughter not suffer (and that he and his wife eventually get back to sleep). Using this logic, we encourage kids to tell themselves, “Even if I don’t feel like doing my work, I want to do it because it’s important for me and for my future.” Not surprisingly, kids often find that telling themselves “I want to do it” is more motivating than telling themselves otherwise.
Every success coach or productivity guru will tell you that if a child can visualize himself accomplishing a goal he has chosen for himself, it tricks the brain into thinking he’s done it. The same is true of writing goals down—it’s powerful reinforcement, and if that goal is there in your child’s handwriting it’s a great reminder that it’s his goal, not yours.13 Writing goals down also helps people operate more from their prefrontal cortex instead of responding or reacting to what feels like an immediate demand or pressure. Writing down our goals reminds us to play the long game. Let’s imagine your child is an Olympian and she writes down and pins to her bulletin board the fact that she would like to win four gold medals. When she is hungry and wants a piece of pizza, she sees her goal and will be more likely to go for a healthy plate of chicken and veggies over greasy Domino’s. Not that Olympians are your average teen—most goals need to be more reachable and immediate for motivation to kick in—but you get the point. We encourage kids to put their written goals on a piece of paper in their backpack where they’ll often come across it, or to stick them on their bedroom wall. Ned had a student whose goal was to transfer to Georgetown, and so he wore Georgetown gear all the time to remind himself to work hard.
You can also help your saboteur cultivate discipline in the area he’s interested in. If a kid enjoys, say, baseball, but doesn’t work on it outside regular practices, you can say something like, “Hey, I know you love baseball and I know you’ll practice for hours if somebody’s with you. Would you like me to find a high school player to work with you a few days a week, or schedule practice with a friend?” If your kid develops his skills, he’ll develop a brain that is used to working hard to become better and better at something that’s important to him.
These are fairly simple suggestions. We recognize that for many saboteurs, they won’t be enough. Many kids who fall into the saboteur category have a dopamine deficiency problem, and helping them connect the dots or visualize goals won’t go far enough to light up their brains. If your child has an unusually strong aversion to doing homework, we recommend having them evaluated to rule out ADHD, anxiety, sleep difficulties, and learning disabilities. Some additional strategies for igniting the saboteur include:
Frequent exercise. Even short bursts of exercise can activate the brain enough to get started on something, in part by increasing dopamine in the prefrontal cortex. Physical activity is physically activating.
Social support. Finding an older kid to serve as a homework coach, or helping your child join a study group of mildly more academic peers, can help his focus. For adolescents, we’re particularly gung ho about peer-to-peer support, because teens are developmentally wired to be attuned to their cohorts. Research has also shown that kids often learn better from other kids than they do from adults, and that when a homework coach is an older kid, the one being tutored has a dopamine spike.14 Another argument for outsourcing: if you have a tendency to be controlling, or even if you aren’t but your child perceives that you are, his saboteur instincts will kick in.
Stimulation. Some saboteurs need music in the background to help them accomplish tasks that they’d otherwise avoid. Music can serve as white noise and block out distraction. It can make a boring activity less so. And it can ease anxiety. For others, quiet is better. Your saboteur may have to experiment a bit to see which suits him. There’s also recent evidence that chewing gum can improve activation, processing speed, and work production.15
A healthy, high-protein diet and enough rest. (You’ve heard this a zillion times so we won’t belabor the point. But it’s true.)
Circuit training. Saboteurs often d
o well when they work intensely for short periods marked by a timer and then take a prescribed break. If you think about it, “takeoffs” and “landings” are memorable in lectures and lessons. But in the middle, our brains meander. So twenty minutes of science, twenty minutes of Spanish, and twenty minutes of social studies, with breaks in between, repeated twice, may have better impact than forty consecutive minutes of each. Adding more starts and stops encourages the brain to be more attentive and motivated. Suggest circuit training as an option, and ask your kid if she wants to set her own timer, or if she wants you to serve as coach, setting a stopwatch and calling out, “Time!”
Incentives. Yes, we’ve told you external incentives are bad for developing intrinsic motivation. But sometimes incentives are okay, so long as the child understands that your goal is to enable his brain to activate (by increasing dopamine) so that he can accomplish what otherwise may not get done. You might say to kids as young as six, “I know your brain just can’t wake up without a little incentive. So I’m happy to offer something for your brain to wake up.” It also helps to be a little creative with the incentives. Remember Savannah, who wouldn’t do her homework until Ben & Jerry’s was held out to her? Her parents might say the next night, “Savannah, I get that it’s really hard for you to get motivated enough to study for your vocabulary test. If you want, I’d be happy to help you come up with a way to activate your dopamine so you can get going. Here’s my suggestion: What if we do a practice quiz? If you don’t get seventeen out of the twenty words right, you have to do twenty push-ups. If you do get seventeen out of twenty right, I have to do ten.”
The Self-Driven Child Page 12