How do kids become driven? Or even motivated?

[Anonymous]

My husband and I – I think – are okay parents. We try to balance positive reinforcement and encouragement and setting general rules/parameters. Our kids are pretty intelligent and do pretty well in their challenging school. They don’t have the “fire in the belly’ to really kill it with grades, sports, extracurriculars, etc. Many high school students at our school are ‘tryhards’ (as the youth say) and achievers in these areas.

How do these kids become so driven? Intrinsic drive, parent pressure, parents successfully supporting their strengths? I’m sure there are all sorts of reasons – I just feel like there’s something we didn’t do/aren’t doing that would motivate them to push themselves more. I’m not suggesting they must grind themselves to the ground.

What’s the special sauce parents use? If there is any? As my kids age, I have come to realize that I have much less influence than I’d thought.

[Anonymous]

Some kids really want to do the thing that the legible metrics (grades etc) are trying to measure -- to learn the material, to create the artwork, to run the race. Some kids really want to chalk up the points on the board and would be incentivized to do whatever it was that was being measured regardless of the content. And some kids are afraid of disappointing their parents who really want them to chalk up the points. I don't think there are a lot of kids who are killing it because their parents want them to have the actual achievement (rather than the measured thing) though.

[Anonymous]

Unfortunately i think it’s mostly innate personality.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Unfortunately i think it’s mostly innate personality.

I have to agree with this.

[Anonymous]

This used to worry me as well about my teenagers until my husband and I each reflected on our peers from differing high schools. Most of the try-hards didn't fare any better or worse than those who at the time had seemingly less ambition. Here we are 30 years later and regardless if we were super ambitious or slackers or something in between, we all seem to be firmly planted in what is probably the most common and largest social and economic class- relatively content humans living meaningful and economically stable lives.

[Anonymous]

It's innate,
Trying parental cattle prods may produce some movement but it's counterproductive.

[Anonymous]

I have one son and one niece like this. My sibling and I parent entirely differently from each other and both have other kids who are not like this at all, so I gotta go with something that’s not parenting.

[Anonymous]

For us it was peer group. Once we switched schools and DC found new friends that were strivers/high achievers, he followed suit. He didn’t want to be left behind, didn’t want to be the only kid who didn’t get into a “good” college (not IVY, T10).

There was nothing we could have done to motivate him if he didn’t find this peer group. And I do consider this luck. DC could have easily found a different peer group that was less ambitious.

[Anonymous]

Read The Self-Driven Child.

Innate and peer group are both important but so is exposure and experimentation. Provide lots of exposure to different things and lots of autonomy to try things out. If they think expressing any interest in something means you'll force them into doing it long term, they won't explore things.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Unfortunately i think it’s mostly innate personality.

I have three kids and completely agree.

[Anonymous]

I have one that’s super driven and one that’s great but no one would describe them as driven. It’s just the way they came, op! (And keep in mind that there are plenty of downsides that go along with being driven in addition to the benefits!)

[Anonymous]

Either they're intrinsically driven, or their parents drive them and they wind up having a breakdown or pull away from their parents completely.

[Anonymous]

No one is motivated to do everything. Find the things they love and encourage those.

[Anonymous]

I have a 12 year old (only) and he just meets any bar, does the bare minimum.

Based on advice from my siblings that have older kids, it doesn't really matter if he's at the top of his AP Language Arts class or is barely a C in math. Big picture, who cares.

Would I like him to work harder, yes. But I am not nagging him anymore and letting him set his own pace.

When I was in college, there were kids committing suicide because they were freaking out over grades/GPA. I don't want that, either, obviously.

[Anonymous]

I have 3 kids but younger (12, 10 and 6) and I am aware that your kids are older and mine might be completely different in 3-5 years.

As of now, my eldest is uber focused on academics and specifically grades. From what she says, she is the only one with 100% in math and also close to that in the other subjects.

My middle child is very competitive in everything. Sports are her thing now.

My youngest is not motivated yes. He seems not to care about his performance.

In my opinion, because my older are both girls, they needed to find their own space. One is great at academics and the other at sports. We did not push either.

My youngest is a son so he is already the only boy and the youngest and that might be why he does not need to differentiate himself from his sisters.