Are you worried about your child’s lack of motivation or their constant struggle to keep up? This week I’m diving into the complexities of child motivation with Dr. Ellen Braaten.

Join us for this enlightening and practical episode as we uncover the keys to unlocking motivation and supporting the well-being of our children!

Dr. Ellen (00:00):

Both of these things oftentimes go hand in hand, like kids have too much pressure and not enough responsibility. So what they tend to think of as responsible, well, they should be responsible. They’re in all these activities, they should be responsible for that. That’s not responsibility, that’s pressure. So kind of getting them to see those two things is very distinct.

Dr. Sarah (00:26):

Do you worry about your child’s lack of motivation or a struggle to keep up to be best able to help a kid who’s having challenges around finding motivation or staying kind of engaged with the tasks at hand or of their life? It’s really important to understand some key underlying factors behind your child’s behavior. Joining me today is the founding director of the Learning and Emotional Assessment Program at Massachusetts General Hospital and an associate professor of Psychology at Harvard Medical School, Dr. Ellen Braaten. Dr. Braaten is widely recognized as an expert in the field of pediatric neuropsychological and psychological assessment, particularly in the areas of assessing learning disabilities and attentional disorders. She’s the co-author of many books and articles for parents and professionals, including the bestselling book, Bright Kids Who Can’t Keep Up, and her newest book is Bright Kids Who Couldn’t Care Less: How to Rekindle Your Child’s Motivation. In our conversation, Dr. Braaten shares unique framework for understanding motivation, using a Venn diagram of aptitude practice and pleasure. Plus, we discuss practical strategies for fostering a sense of responsibility and self-efficacy in children, balancing external rewards with intrinsic motivation and finding joy and pleasure in everyday tasks.

(01:51):

Hi, I’m Dr. Sarah Bren, a clinical psychologist and mom of two. In this podcast, I’ve taken all of my clinical experience, current research on brain science and child psychology and the insights I’ve gained on my own parenting journey and distilled everything down into easy to understand and actionable parenting insights so you can tune out the noise and tune into your own authentic parenting voice with confidence and calm. This is Securely Attached.

(02:21):

Hello. Today we have Dr. Ellen Braaten with us and I’m really excited to dive into this conversation. It’s very near and dear to my heart as a mom of two. Welcome and thank you so much for being here.

Dr. Ellen (02:41):

Oh, thanks for having me.

Dr. Sarah (02:43):

Yeah, this is not your first book, this Bright Kids Who Can’t Keep Up was your first one and this new book, bright Kids Who Couldn’t Care Less, it sounds like it is an interesting offshoot of the first. So maybe you could talk a little bit about the evolution of your work with families and how this ended up becoming so central of a focal point for you.

Dr. Ellen (03:12):

Sure. So the book, right? Kids Who Can’t Keep Up was really about kids with slower processing speed. They’re the sort of kids who take a long time to get things done. They take a long time to get their homework finished. And so that really actually came out of my original research, which was on ADHD. And so it used to be thought of that kids who took a long time were just inattentive. They just weren’t paying attention enough, concentrating enough. And we’ve found in the last couple of decades if that’s not true, there are kids who just take longer to do things. And in our fast-paced world, that minor issue has become a bigger issue. So I started researching that. Those kids, I saw a lot of them in my practice as a clinical psychologist and as they were growing up, they seemed to have less motivation.

(04:00):

And I thought, well, I guess I’m studying these kids. Some of ’em have ADHD, some of them are slow processors, these are the kids who are having trouble with motivation. And then I started to look at the kids who actually were coming in because they were unmotivated, not at performing at their potential according to their parents. And I found out that it was a wider group of kids than I would’ve expected that this lack of motivation is something that’s hitting kids across the spectrum. Some of them have no issues at all other than like, eh, I’m just not into this right now. I’m just not into the path that everyone thinks I should be on. And then the pandemic happened. So I was thinking about this book in 2019 into the beginning of 2020, and then the pandemic happened and pretty much all the kids I was seeing had some level of unmotivated behavior because most of us were sort of feeling that way. So the book became a little bit more.

Dr. Sarah (04:59):

And it’s interesting. So I also am a clinical psychologist and I see kids and parents and I feel like there is this really pervasive concern among parents, and I think a lot of it has to do with, or at least on the surface, is conflated with screen time and video games. And it’s not lost on me that what also happened when covid happened was everybody was using screens a million times more than they were before. And that probably put a lot of pressure on an already fragile system of getting in tune to our intrinsic motivation, having things be difficult, having there be gravity. We actually have friction and challenge and with the screen use, everything is a little bit smoother and easier and faster, and our perseverance muscles don’t get exercised as much. And so I feel like that kind of can really challenge motivation. I don’t think it’s the core source of the lack motivation. I think it’s put butter on the slide and it’s made it so much easier to move through life that when we actually have to do stuff that causes us to work hard and fall down and have to get back up and struggle that we’re not as competent and confident in that space. But I’m curious what your thoughts are about where the role of screens and tech play in a lot of these motivation challenges.

Dr. Ellen (06:49):

I do think everything, I agree with everything you said, and I don’t think it’s the root cause of the unmotivated child. I think that there’s a lot of different things happening and that have happened. Sometimes I think screen time is more of an outcome as opposed to a cause, meaning that when we’re feeling unmotivated, we pick up our phones and start scrolling through TikTok or pick up the video game. It’s not always the other way around. So it’s sort of like I’m stressed, so I’m going to look at Instagram for a long time. Or if you’re a young child, you’re sort of overwhelmed by everything or overstimulated, you might pick up the screen because even though there’s a lot going on the screen itself, at least you’re sort of focused in that. And by overstimulating you mean not enough sleep. And that’s in terms of the causes.

(07:49):

I don’t want to jump ahead to anything, but I would say that’s a huge cause of the unmotivated child is we just don’t get enough sleep. And when we don’t get enough sleep, we aren’t that motivated to do the things that need to be done or even that we want to do. So we don’t think that screens are the cause. That being said, they’re not great. None of us love spending a lot of time on screens. We all struggle with this ourselves as adults, and I think that when I talk to kids and I’m sure you have this experience, most of ’em aren’t like, yeah, I just love playing video games for four hours a day. Most of them are thinking, I just don’t really know what to do with myself in other times.

Dr. Sarah (08:36):

So I would love to hear what you kind of uncovered in working on this book and in your work in general about what are the kids saying when you’re talking with a child who’s come to see you because I’m going to go ahead and wager the parents have decided they’re not motivated. Is the saying they’re right? I don’t know, I’m not motivated to do anything. Do they see it as a source of their own distress? What are they saying in your sessions?

Dr. Ellen (09:06):

Oh, that’s such a great question. I should say too that before this sort of cohort of kids, almost all of my referrals were for kids who parents really thought they had ADHD or a learning disability or were anxious or depressed or maybe even autism spectrum. And so there was usually something we could put our finger on. And for some of these kids, it is I think what’s really shifted over the last 10 years or so. So I have a lot of people coming in and just saying, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with my child other than he’s lazy. And so that’s a big difference what the kids are saying. So some of them really are anxious or depressed, some of them are feeling overwhelmed. A lot of them, even younger kids are feeling like the future looks completely hopeless. For instance, they might be in fourth grade and thinking, I have another 10 to 15, 20 years of this kind of work where none of it is really about finding pleasure or purpose.

(10:08):

It’s really more about doing the work and the things that are expected of me at a super high level, whether I like it or not. And so there’s part of that. I hear a lot of kids saying to me, I’m fine. And in fact, I mean even just a few days ago, I remember there was a child who said, I am I, I’m fine. Parents don’t understand that I am. And there’s a lot of that happening with parents who are afraid that their kids aren’t doing well when they actually are just developing. And so there’s a lot of reasons for this. In a lot of cases kids will say to me, my parent just doesn’t understand who I am. I don’t like what they like. I am somebody who’s different. And sometimes by adolescence, kids are doing that. They’re trying to explain that in really extreme ways. In younger kids, it’s more like, but I don’t really like playing soccer and my dad really wants me to play soccer because he played soccer. So it’s oftentimes either, I guess I would boil it down to either there’s nothing going on and there’s just poor understanding of what is developmentally appropriate. I think there is sometimes something is going on anxiety or depression, it’s been misconstrued as motivation. And then in other cases it’s a mismatch between expectations and what a child can and wants to deliver.

Dr. Sarah (11:37):

Yeah, and I bet you there’s probably a mixture, especially with that last variable, if you have a child who’s really anxious and you are perceiving their resistance to doing something as they’re being lazy or they’re avoiding stuff, whereas maybe perhaps it’s actually really overwhelming for the child to engage in that or it causes too much worry or stress and obviously understanding really pulling back that veil and helping a parent really see the inner workings of that child’s experience is so important. But that other layer of matching our expectations or I guess really noticing our expectations of our children and separating that out to some degree with some conscious awareness from, because we are allowed to have expectations of our kids. It’s just are we expecting our child to always meet those expectations? Are we curious about what their expectations are and can we separate out our stuff from their stuff and follow their interests? Because no matter what, if we’re dealing with anxiety or we’re dealing with totally no challenges whatsoever in terms of psychological or neuropsychological health, we have to, everyone’s got interests and including the parent, including the child, and being able to say, Hey, I’m curious about what your interests are, is probably ever, ever present.

Dr. Ellen (13:17):

Completely. And I also think that we expect sometimes our kids to do the things we didn’t do as well. So we expect them to kind of fill in the blanks that we didn’t get to do or we want to give them the opportunities we didn’t have. So much of this is well intentioned. It’s not like we as parents have this list that we want our child to be or become, but it’s our own sort of drives and motivations that oftentimes get ignored when we become parents. And so part of our job is also remembering what gives us motivation, what gives us pleasure, the sort of things that we might’ve put aside because we had children thinking that now it’s all about them. And in some ways it is, but in other ways it’s still about us. And I think that taking care of our own motivation and our own desires helps kids develop theirs because we’re giving a good foundation. We’re giving them a good example.

Dr. Sarah (14:20):

Yeah, we’re modeling it instead of asking them to do it without us showing them how we do it. And what you were describing really highlighted something that I think is so important. This podcast is called Securely Attached. We talk a lot about attachment and healthy attachment relationships. And I think one common misperception I think that exists around attachment is that a securely attached relationship is that we’re meeting our child’s needs and that are really able to be super attuned to them and focused on them and supporting them and helping them feel safe. And that’s important, but that is the duality of the attachment relationship is actually a huge predictor of how safe and secure it feels. It is two separate people in relationship to one another. And what you’re describing to me feels so overlooked in the importance of making a point about the parent is a separate whole being with their own interests, their own motivators, their own hopes and drives and wishes and fantasies about their child, but about themselves. And we get to be whole. And actually the more whole we are as a parent, the healthier the potential for that attachment relationship to be with our child because we’re not projecting all of our stuff on, we’re not merging them with us. We’re sort of saying, I am me.

(15:50):

I can separate out the things that make me thrilled about the future. And they don’t necessarily have to be the things that you get excited about.

Dr. Ellen (16:02):

Exactly.

Dr. Sarah (16:03):

Yeah.

Dr. Ellen (16:05):

Yeah, exactly. And it can be really hard as a parent to remember that because we do, I’m a parent myself and now a grandparent. I have a nine month old grandchild, so I’m getting to see this again through different eyes and observe it. And it is so wonderful to watch them develop into who they are, but almost from the beginning we start to say things to them that are reflective of the things we think are important. And I mean, it’s wonderful. That’s who we are as human beings, but even to say, oh my gosh, she’s so active, or she’s so alert or so happy, or these sorts of things start so early, and if we’re reflecting accurately what’s happening in the relationship, it’s wonderful. But if it’s the sort of thing where it’s more about our wishes or fears, it becomes cloudier. And you’re right, we have to know who we are as a person in order to be able to be clear about that.

Dr. Sarah (17:09):

Yeah, yeah. So in your book you talk about, I mean, it’s a really well-written book, and I like the way you break it out in terms of writing about the sort of science about what is motivation, what do we know about what motivation is? Because I think it gets conflated, like we were saying, people can mistake lack of motivation for a lot of things like mood disorders, anxiety disorders, learning disabilities, neurological stuff. A lot of things can look like, oh, there’s no motivation here. Those things can interfere with a child’s ability to move through an intention to get that, like I say, hit the brakes and hit the gas. You have to hit the brakes on the desired activity, pivot and hit the gas on a less desired activity. That’s really hard to do as a young kid. It’s hard for grownups to do, but that’s kind of the core idea behind to find that motivation gives us the capacity to hit the brakes and hit the gas in sort of the right amounts at the right time. So you lay out kind of the science of the development of motivation. Could you talk a little bit about that?

Dr. Ellen (18:25):

Sure. I think it would be good because we kind of think of motivation as one thing, and the science of motivation is that it’s not just one thing. We are motivated by a lot of different things. So one of the things that we’re motivated by our own instincts and instincts are those things that are present at the very beginning of life. We are instinctively, if our cheek is rubbed by something, we turn towards the food source and those instincts still happen as we grow. So if we’re really hungry or thirsty, we may be more apt to get up and get a drink of water because our thirst is an instinct that needs to be soothed. We’re instinctively driven to put on a sweater when we’re cold. So those sorts of very basic things are part of motivation, and we have to think about that when we think about a child.

(19:18):

Are there basic needs being met? And basic needs can also be social, they can also be emotional sorts of needs. That’s one, but it doesn’t explain everything. Then the other type of motivation is an incentive. Oftentimes when parents are thinking about motivation, they’re thinking about the right incentive. If I just limit the screen time or if I give them one out hour of extra screen time each week because they did something and incentives are great for the right sort of thing, they’re great for the kinds of tasks that we don’t really want to do. So for instance, we have to clean our room. We’re going to go out for ice cream when it’s done. Or for an adult they might clean the garage and have a beer at the end of the day or something like that. That’s great, but it’s not very good actually in the long term or in the long run.

(20:07):

What we really want is not to be motivated by incentives, but to be motivated by intrinsic sense of wanting to do something. So there are a couple of other types of motivation too. Sometimes we’re driven to be motivated because we want equilibrium, so we’re really anxious. So we’re driven to get the homework done because we want to not be anxious about not having our homework done. Or for some kids, they need be driven to not do the homework because they don’t know how to do it. So there are different ways of thinking about this depending on your child. And then another reason that we might be motivated or demotivated is to maintain arousal. So if we’re super anxious, for example, one way to maintain arousal might be to get on our phones and just sort of look through Instagram again, or we might be aroused in a way that I’m so aroused, I want to just hit the ground running and win that race. So it depends. Each one of these areas of motivation can be a blessing or a curse depending how it’s used.

Dr. Sarah (21:13):

That’s really interesting. I like this idea of, as you’re describing it, I’m looking at almost as a visual, a web or something. There’s spokes on a wheel. There’s multiple ways in which our motivations are being activated, and they don’t all kind of come from the same source.

Dr. Ellen (21:35):

Exactly. And that’s why when I started to think about this, so I defined this problem that I was seeing, but then I had this problem myself, which is like, what do we do about it? Because it’s not a simple thing. I have parents who will come in and say, if you could just talk to him, he’ll be motivated. Absolutely not true. I wish I had that sort of power. None of us as psychologists have that power at all. And so what I really devised was this idea when you made, we’re talking about a web. The way I visualized the solution was as a ven diagram and that we need to look at these three areas of, and I call it the parenting app, aptitude practice and pleasure. And that we have to look at a child’s aptitude. What they’re sort of naturally good at practice means.

(22:26):

What are the sorts of things they would do and the ways they would spend their time if they had the opportunity to do it, what are the sorts of things they like doing just because, and then pleasure, what gives them pleasure? And these things all sort of seem like they should be one and the same, but they’re really not. And so sometimes we’re good at doing some things, but we don’t get pleasure from them. The childhood who’s gifted academic or gifted, I was going to say athletically, but doesn’t really like to participate in sports. They’d rather be doing the play at school. And so we have to, that’s a point of contention a lot of times where parents are saying, but you’re so good at hockey and we’ve invested all this money and time in this. And they’re like, yeah, but I want to be in the chorus. And so it’s those sorts of things that we have to think about all of those at any one time.

Dr. Sarah (23:18):

And I would imagine for most parents, if you were to draw out this Venn diagram and put aptitude, pleasure and practice in little circles, I bet you could probably map out some very, very, you could probably map this out a little bit of things that resonate for you when you’re thinking about your kid in these areas. But I’m curious, do you do this with kids? I feel like even very young kids could fill this in.

Dr. Ellen (23:47):

Absolutely. That is definitely the goal and it’s the sort of thing that I’d like parents to think about from a young age. And it’s not static. This is not something that you fill it in for this year. And especially if you’ve got a 6-year-old, what we are just learning their aptitudes, that is an evolving sort of thing. They are just learning at what they love. And so the key with motivation is filling this sort of thing at an early age and constantly revising it, constantly looking at this because that is a motivation sapper, when you sort of think, I knew my child at age seven and they were just the star reader, so therefore they must be on this high academic track that might not give them pleasure. I mean, I’m sort of simplifying this, but you know what I mean? We have to continue to continually think about this.

(24:38):

But you bring up a very interesting point. I have had many parents say to me, I don’t want to ask him what gives him pleasure, I’m afraid of the answer. So on the surface, this looks like sort of like, oh, this should be easy for most parents, a lot of parents, especially parents of kids, as they move on into later childhood middle school, they’re so afraid that their child is going to say, nothing gives me pleasure anymore. Or the sorts of things that give them pleasure, they don’t want to hear. So we’ve got to be open to that as a parent. And I think setting the stage as a younger parent is so, I mean, you’ve got the opportunity to kind of think about this as your child is growing, but it is not a one. You fill this out and this is your life plan. It’s more like this is who we are now and what’s giving us pleasure, what gives us pleasure in the summer is different than what gives us pleasure. In the winter, for example, we have to sort of think about this as a dynamic process.

Dr. Sarah (25:38):

Exactly. It’s more like a thermometer than a carving something in stone.

Dr. Ellen (25:45):

And even as adults, our lives change. And I also tell parents to think about this for themselves because a lot of them can’t anymore. Well, I don’t remember. I used to to do blah, blah, blah, but I don’t do that anymore because now I am doing carpool all the time or I am. So we have lost this. And I think during the years of covid, which I still refer to it in the past tense, which I hope it stays that way, but I think we lost that kind of ability to sense our own pleasure and lost that ability to figure out what it is that we like to practice. We had our lives were somewhat restricted.

Dr. Sarah (26:23):

Yeah, yeah. I mean certainly because of Covid, I think a lot of this sort of got flattened. And I do think it’s kind of coming back into full relief now fortunately. But I do think a lot of us have forgotten how to do that. Three years of a pandemic is a lot of time to practice not engaging in play and pleasure and practicing things that we used to practice regularly. And so I think some of our muscles are atrophied as grownups. And I think certainly there are kids whose muscles got atrophied too. My guess is that the more the grownups in a child’s life kind of got their playfulness, their hobbies, their fun things they used to do for pleasure, as those got flattened, my guess is that the kids in their lives would see a similar impact. Just a guess. I don’t know. I don’t have the data.

Dr. Ellen (27:35):

I think so. And I don’t know what you’re seeing in your practice, but I do see certain ages that really had a tough time. The young ones, the kids who are now around six, I find that they are having a little bit more difficulty with social relationships than you’d normally see. Not all kids, but some kids are just more vulnerable than others again, and that’s normal and that’s okay. There are some kids who are just more anxiety driven, you know what I mean? Who are just more cautious. And so I think that that age is very vulnerable. I think that the kids who are in middle school during the pandemic are a little entering high school or early adulthood or college are more vulnerable. So I think that we have to, we need a little bit more practice. I think we need a little bit more practice at figuring out what we love doing. And I think we need to be to ourselves. We’ve not taken enough time to mourn all the things we lost really. We just all got back up and just started going again…

Dr. Sarah (28:42):

Full stream ahead again.

Dr. Ellen (28:43):

Yeah. And we haven’t explored that or grieved that or acknowledged it. And that is when we’re, even if it’s grief might be too strong of a word for some and too not strong of a word for other families who went through major disruptions and losses. And so when we look back at motivation, it starts much earlier. You look back to that, well, a year ago I wasn’t feeling very well, or a year ago my child lost their best friend and that’s when it all started. So an awareness of all of these sorts of things are important either in hindsight or knowing in advance when a child is having a loss.

Dr. Sarah (29:30):

You bring up a really important point, which is that sometimes when we see a change in our child’s motivation, sometimes we can sort of say, I dunno, they’ve always struggled with this. But more often than not, I think usually parents will come to a therapist if they’ve noticed a drop in their child’s motivation or a change in their personality or their interests, which obviously if your kid has a significant change in interest levels or motivation levels, we want to screen for depression or anxiety to rule that out. But a lot of times when we do work with kids who have this sort of change in motivation or loss of motivation, when we try to uncover what might have the trigger for that, sometimes it’s a very recent thing, but very often it is something that happened maybe quite a bit of time ago and has been slowly building into a stressor that is hitting a particular threshold that now we’re sort of seeing it show up in their day-to-day life and their behaviors and their motivations and their mood, their relationships or their lack of withdrawing or avoiding all that stuff. And so sometimes it’s actually a slow build till you see it, which means it can be something that takes a little bit of time to help reverse.

Dr. Ellen (30:59):

Absolutely. You hit the nail on the head. It’s going to take a long time to reverse that because you’re right. What I generally see in my own research about motivation is there are triggers that happen. Of course the major ones like a divorce in the family, a loss of somebody important to them. But honestly, that’s not the biggest things. It’s like the loss of a friend. You didn’t make the team for baseball and that was your whole life, or you broke your arm at the beginning of baseball season and your whole peer group moved on and you did not. And then all of a sudden, the parent is coming to me in the middle of January, but they look back on last April or May realizing that that’s what happened. So look for those sorts of things in your own as you’re parenting. What are the sorts of changes that oftentimes we’re like, oh, you’re fine.

(31:56):

You’ll get more friends. You’ll do. And really when a child has had what we might say is an insignificant loss is oftentimes that very seed of poor motivation or a future kind of depression or anxiety. And I’m not saying we should overanalyze that either. I’m saying that we should be aware that when a child has a change either in something they love that they can’t participate in or a friend or they’re not doing well in school, for example, or a tough teacher too, all of those things can be huge sources of planting the seed for poor motivation and to acknowledge and to talk about it a lot, that helps. What I find is when there’s been a loss like that six months, eight months before, and you realize that what they tried to do was sort of paste it over or you’ll make new friends or do you know what I mean? What can be really tough?

Dr. Sarah (33:03):

And I think obviously if we can figure it out, if we can uncover the source, we can help a child go back and understand the narrative, understand, make sense of what happened to them, help them make sense of their feelings about it, how it’s impacted their sense of self, all these things. These are things that we do in therapy all the time. I also think there’s sort of a prophylactic thing that we could talk about because everybody is going to experience these sort of aversive moments, challenging moments in life, whether or not something that’s really tough impacts our motivation to keep going is usually not determined by that one thing. It’s like all of these stories that we are told and that we tell ourselves throughout our lives about what we can handle, what we can’t handle goes back to what we were talking about at the beginning too. How used to butter on the slide. Are we used to, to things being made very easy for us? Are we used to being able to, when we feel something uncomfortable, we can just pick up a device and turn that feeling off? How much distress, tolerance and sort of capacity to persevere are we, is being facilitated? For us it’s a muscle resilience or grit or perseverance. Lots of different ways of describing this.

Dr. Ellen (34:42):

Yeah, I think you’re right. And so perseverance and grit and all of those things are really important. Being able to tolerate negative emotions, we are so averse to that as parents these days and as a society, I think in terms of a prophylactic, the best thing that I can tell parents of any age of a child from practically six months to 16 years and beyond is we don’t give our kids enough responsibility. So kids love to be responsible and by responsible, I mean they love to at a very young age, feed themselves, be in charge of their world, their lunchbox, their room, and as they get older, having a part-time job is actually one way to increase motivation. So you think that that would just be like, why would working at Dunkin Donuts be a motivator for a child who’s struggling? Well, it’s because they’re actually feeling productive and they have a lot of responsibility and kids love responsibility.

(35:52):

We had a lot of, when I was a kid, we were responsible. Their families were bigger. You were an older child, you were responsible for your younger siblings. It was just like you couldn’t really mess up that much because it would be a bad example to set. And typically it came from a big family who would mess up the most as the youngest child because they didn’t have as much responsibility. And I mean, I’m joking a little bit, but it’s sort of true. And I think we have to make sure that our kids from a very young age, we teach them to be responsible but not pressured. So we put a lot of pressure on them to do a lot of stuff and to do it well. But that’s not responsibility. Responsibility is taking care of myself, doing things for others, being grateful for the opportunities that I have. And all of that is very different than the sort of things that we think, well, they’ll be motivated if we just sign them up for the right class or find the right thing instead of taking stock of what we have and then being responsible for those sorts of things that you can control.

Dr. Sarah (36:57):

I love that. What are some of the ways that you have helped families notice and foster responsibilities in their families for their kids?

Dr. Ellen (37:06):

So I think one of the things I’d like them to do is to look at how much pressure. I think both of these things oftentimes go hand in hand. Kids have too much pressure and not enough responsibility. So what they tend to think of as responsible, well, they should be responsible. They’re in all these activities, they should be responsible for that. That’s not responsibility, that’s pressure. So getting them to see those two things is very distinct. And then talking with them about where does your child have self-efficacy? Where is it that they have some amount of ability to do something that is not so hard, but that is very responsible? And I find that oftentimes it’s not always, I’m trying to think of how to describe this, but parents think, well, okay, then I’m going to put a chart on my wall that gets them to do all of these things.

(38:00):

That’s not also what I’m talking about. Not that I think that’s a bad idea, but talking to them about how can we make them feel more powerful in their world and have more independence and more responsibility. So looking in their world about who can they be taking care of, who can they be, whether it’s a sibling, an animal, helping out a neighbor, being in more communication with an elderly family member. All of those sorts of things actually help. And I also think that having a wider support network helps in that motivation as well, and also in fostering a sense of being dependable and responsible.

Dr. Sarah (38:48):

Yeah, I love that idea. I think it’s funny. I have a six-year-old and a five-year-old, and my son, my six-year-old has been asking for an allowance. He wants to earn money. He’s into Pokemon cards right now. He wants to buy Pokemon cards, and he’s been asking for jobs to do around the house to make money. And I have ambivalence about giving him attaching chores to allowance because I’ve heard, and I’ve experienced mixed things around if you attach an extrinsic motivator money to a task that I want it to feel more about being part of our family and being part of the family team. So certain tasks that I might consider, things that I want him to just naturally be willing to do without the reward of money, without the expectation he’s paid for that. At the same time, I love the idea of him wanting to earn money. So I’m trying to find that balance of what are the things that I can give him that feel a little bit outside of our day-to-day life to earn money about, and what do I protect as? I don’t want these things to be attached to a reward system other than just the feeling we feel is when we finish our work together as a family.

Dr. Ellen (40:09):

This is a perfect example of something to think through because first of all, you’re right, the data is so clear that if we externally reward something that should be intrinsically motivating, for instance, reading, like paying a child to read books teaches them that reading in and of itself is not a worthwhile pursuit. And so in this case, what I would do is think about the sorts of things that are non-negotiable. And so we keep our house clean because it helps us feel good. We feel better. It handles our anxiety when we are in a chaotic situation, doesn’t matter, even if somebody says they’re a pack rat or whatever, they don’t necessarily or typically feel very good about that. So we keep a clean home and a clean room because it helps us manage our anxiety about, and it helps make our lives more run more smoothly.

(41:02):

So those sorts of things, whether it’s you make your bed every day, you put your clothes in the hamper, all of those are chores that are just expected and actually bring us some sense of pleasure because it’s a job well done. I think what I would do in this case, if a child is really asking you think about the sorts of things that you would need to be intrinsically motivated to do, so things, I mean, you can’t really off the hand think about what’s perfect for a 6-year-old, but it could be something like cleaning out the refrigerator, wiping down the shelves in the refrigerator, things that are like, I don’t want to do this on a daily basis. It really doesn’t even have to get done all the time. We could live with sort of what Yeah, exactly. We refrigerator that’s not totally clean or the stove top or something like that. That is an extra thing that you don’t expect him to do that we would want to be extrinsically motivated for. So if I’m going to clean my oven, I want a reward at the end of that, but it’s like putting my clothes in the hamper. No, that’s just, do you know what I mean? Keeping Yes.

Dr. Sarah (42:12):

Life skills.

Dr. Ellen (42:13):

Versus what would make

Dr. Sarah (42:16):

Life, what might you outsource? 

Dr. Ellen (42:19):

Exactly. What I might pay somebody to do or need somebody to pay me to do.

Dr. Sarah (42:24):

And then that’s a win-win for everyone, then I don’t have to outsource it. Exactly. For example, what we ended up giving him to do was to do, he did leaf pickup. He had to go through the backyard and pick up all the big sticks and leaves so that when my husband mow the lawn, it would be easier for him to mow the lawn. And that was great. That’s perfect. He had a great time doing it, and he got some money and he was happy. And I like that. I think sometimes we get a little hamstrung as parents. I certainly do sometimes where I’m like, oh wait, there’s a rule I’ve heard. I know. Don’t tie an extrinsic reward to something. We want intrinsic motivation to develop, and there’s nuance to this. There’s grace space to this. And so I think sometimes when we just avoid it or we say, nevermind, I’m going to ignore this completely and I’m going to just do it whenever. And so I like that there are kind of concrete ways to think about living within this gray space.

Dr. Ellen (43:35):

And I think it’s like what are the sorts of things we would need to be rewarded for? Even if it’s just like I said, just like a Diet Coke at the end of the task, something that we would think like, oh, and I’m done with this. I’m going to do X. So those are the sorts of things that we should expect to reward our kids for too. But the thing is, what you’ve taught your son is that you get kind of a certain pleasure from picking up the leaves and the sticks in the backyard. You feel a sense of accomplishment like I did that there’s a big pile of stuff here that I did. And so even though you rewarded him for that, he’s much more apt to do that even without reward because you do get some sense of pleasure from a job well done. And so I think it’s not an either or. I think you’ve sort of given him a push to do this, but it’s definitely a skill that he probably got some pleasure from too.

Dr. Sarah (44:35):

Right. And I think the fact that he was coming to me asking for something made me really want to give that to him. And I’m curious. That makes me think of another thing we were sort of talked about, but I think we could just touch on more briefly, is following a child’s interests. Obviously in that moment, he had an interest in buying Pokemon cards, and I didn’t want to buy him any more Pokemon cards, and so he needed to come up with a creative way to solve that problem. But I am down to follow his interests. I don’t really care that much about Pokemon, but I think that it’s cool that he’s interested in it. And so when we have, I think there’s this one is how do we follow our kids’ interests? How do we start to pay attention to and get curious about them and how do we use that to help us support motivation even for the things that have nothing to do with those interests that are maybe our agenda items, which we have for sure. Where does interest fall into this? I think it’s a key, key part.

Dr. Ellen (45:45):

It’s totally key. And I think that parents don’t always listen. I mean, I wish I had a more complicated answer to your question. It’s just listening. It’s the skill of listening. So you listen to your son in this way, it’s like, I don’t even know if I want to do this. Is this even right? But he’s asking for something and he’s telling me, first of all, he’s talking about his pleasures, he’s talking about which are interests. He’s tying that to a clear sense of when we were talking about practice. So he is like, I’ve got this pleasure here. I want these Pokemon cards and I’d like to, given the opportunity, I’d like to spend some time doing something so that I can spend more time in this pleasure realm. So that’s something that I think parents don’t often do. I can give you an example of this, even in an adolescent where this is the end game here that we’re talking about.

(46:40):

There are parents who have said to me, well, he can do anything he wants as long as he first goes to college and the child is happy working at the gap right now, but parents just don’t want to listen. He’s not motivated to do anything. I’m like, he’s a 15-year-old working at the Gap. He loves fashion and wants to do design in college or maybe not even want to go. Maybe he maybe wants to do an internship now. And parents, kids tell us what they want by their actions and by what they say to us, and we don’t always listen. So another parent might’ve said, well, I don’t want you to have any more Pokemon cards and I don’t want to pay you anything. What you did in that situation is just heard what he said, digested it, and then helped him figure out how to meet those goals, how to get his needs, his interests, his pleasures, better satisfied. So I think listening is the simplest answer to that question.

Dr. Sarah (47:43):

And something that you just said made me think. I think his parents, and again, I’m sharing an example where I feel like I did an okay job. There are a lot of examples where I don’t, but I think one of the big trip ups that I think parents have, and I think a lot of this was ingrained in us as we were growing up, is that pleasure is to the cherry on. It’s the sprinkles. It’s extra when you can do your stuff that builds your aptitude and when you can do the stuff that develops your practice, if there’s any time left over, then you can have some pleasure. But it’s really separated out from these other areas. And I think that is a grave misunderstanding of how we move through this world with delight. And that when you can put those things together, we kind of live in the more homeostatic space where we’re more balanced and we can tap into more energy to tolerate things that are hard in the aptitude and practice space because the pleasure is well balanced and well integrated.

Dr. Ellen (48:54):

Absolutely. We have a very bad relationship with pleasure in our culture. And it’s sort of funny, I thought that it was just a cultural thing, like North American kind of thing, but the first language to translate this book was Italian, which surprised me because I think about Europeans, I could even mention in the book about being much better at managing pleasure or giving into pleasure than we are, but they’re struggling with it too with their kids. I mean, it’s like we’ve become sort of divorced from pleasure as being part of life and acknowledgement of it doesn’t mean that our life is going to be filled with pleasure by any means, but it needs to be integrated in our lives. Our lives are a lot about doing things that do not always give us pleasure. That’s okay, that’s life. But we need to, like you said, really incorporate that and acknowledge it and have it not be the reward, but the actual essence of our lives itself.

Dr. Sarah (49:55):

Yeah, I think that’s such an important takeaway. If I want someone listening to take one thing away, it’s like find a way for yourself and for your kid to integrate pleasure. I think this Venn diagram thing is something I’m really going to take away from this conversation of they all have very important roles to play and there needs to be balance between the three aptitude, pleasure and practice that maybe some, if you’re looking at an individual who’s struggling with motivation, chances are there’s some disproportionate weight in those three spots. And I wonder if finding the balance between making them more balanced would actually increase motivation. And I’m going to wager that the ones that are the smallest are the pleasure spots. Or in extreme cases, that’s the only spot because it’s just the pendulum swung too far. It is just a reaction to not being able to have it.

Dr. Ellen (51:01):

And I think in those cases, one thing to add just to this idea of pleasure, there are parents who say, I don’t think anything gives him pleasure. And the thing that I tell parents to do and kids to do is what are the sorts of things you’re grateful for? And that’s something that parents can do at a very young age. From the moment kids learn to speak almost is, what are the sorts of things you’re grateful for? Because those typically are the things that give us pleasure. And so having that, it’s really one and the same. What am I’m grateful I have in my life tends to be the things that we tend to gravitate towards, practice, want to spend time more, doing more of. And also that gives us pleasure. So just something that if you want to build motivation, build a sense of gratefulness in a child’s life.

Dr. Sarah (51:52):

I think that’s so valuable. One other thought, and then we’ll stop, but my thought is I could see a scenario where like you were saying, you have parents who are like, I’m afraid to ask because I’m afraid it’s going to be nothing or video games and only video games or my phone. And the reality is it could be, and it could be that that’s what they say. And I think I’m curious if a child starts there, the only thing that gives me pleasure is being on a screen. What is a way to respond to that that can help open the conversation for creating more balance versus shutting that conversation down?

Dr. Ellen (52:35):

So I think first of all, kids rarely ever say that, surprisingly. But if they do, I think we need to be open to that, that first of all, reflect as a parent or an adult how anxious that makes you and why. And oftentimes the child knows that If you really talk about is it bringing you pleasure, they’ll know that no, it’s not the other thing that, so I would definitely reflect your concerns as to why you are not so cool with that. I would also ask them to talk more about that. What is it that brings you pleasure from screens? And then I would also kind of talk about whether or not, or talk to an expert about whether there may be an anxiety, sort of what we call dysthymia, sort of low level depression that’s sort of chronic but not severe or in some sort of social anxiety.

(53:35):

I would probe further with that and either by really asking them, are we really talking about the same thing when we’re talking about pleasure? But I’m always surprised at how little kids bring that up. Even the ones who spend a lot of time on video games like, well, no, it’s just easy for me, or I just feel less anxious. But it’s not necessarily that they feel less pleasure and in older kids, I think in younger kids it’s just that it’s the easiest thing for them to do if their parents are giving them YouTube videos to watch most of the time. But in older kids, I think it’s more of a lack of knowing who they are and knowing the other things that they could be doing that might give them pleasure.

Dr. Sarah (54:25):

Which is fodder for another episode. I feel like we could have a whole episode on helping kids find out who they are, when that sense of self has been kind of atrophied. Maybe you’ll have to come back for that.

Dr. Ellen (54:39):

I’d be happy to, but I know it’s a big topic and it’s not, the frustrating thing is it’s not just one conversation, and I wish you or I were gifted and not gifted enough, but had powers, magical powers to say like, oh, if they just come in and talk to us, we will just tell them that they, but it’s not like that. It’s not just an event, it’s a process.

Dr. Sarah (55:03):

It is, but it is a process that there is a roadmap for it. There is no one single thing or button to push that will happen, make it happen. But it’s definitely doable. It is very, very doable. It’s a bit of a process.

Dr. Ellen (55:22):

Yeah.

Dr. Sarah (55:24):

Well, thank you so much. This was really wonderful talking with you. I am taking so much away from this conversation, so thank you.

Dr. Ellen (55:31):

Thank you for having me.

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