Motivation is crucial to a good virtual schooling experience. Every single child needs motivation in one are or another. This could be for piano lessons, cleaning a room, walking the dog… you name it!
My kids are masters at getting out of doing things. They’ve taken procrastination and made it an art. The truth is that they probably got it from me! I’ve tried taking things away from mykids for years as a way of motivating them to get something done. It always seemed to backfire though. For example, if I told them that they couldn’t watch TV if they didn’t clean their room, they would decide they would rather not watch TV than clean their room. If I offered them $20 to clean the garage, they would decide cleaning the garage wasn't worth $20!
Here’s something I've used over the years that has proven somewhat successful. I got this idea while watching the TV show Third Rock from the Sun. One of the characters walked into a restaurant explaining that he didn't like the way tipping worked. When the waitress walked up, he laid a stack of $1.00 bills on the table and explained that this was her potential tip. Every time she did something that he didn't like he would take $1.00 away. She didn’t believe him at first, but as he started deducting money from her tip she started working harder and faster. I figured if this worked on a sitcom, it would work in my home!
I created something called “smart bucks”. Before I introduced it to the kids, I planned out exactly what I wanted to do. I created a chart of what smart bucks would buy. I didn't have a lot of money, so I decided that smart bucks would buy my time. If the kids did their school work without giving me a hard time, I would have more time to spend with them doing other things that they wanted.
I made a chart of what $1, $5 and more (in smart bucks) would buy in my time. For example, $5 would buy TV time, $25 could buy an afternoon at the park. If they really saved up their bucks, they could have a sleepover or some other big event.
Think of it in terms of this, if you give a potential $5 in smart bucks a day, that would equal $25 in smart bucks a week, 100 smart bucks a month, and with 180 school days 900 smart bucks a year. Now you can break down how you would like to reward that. Set smaller goals, for instance if you know that your child could be good half the time, then set a reward that they can earn in two days, or with 10 smart bucks.
After I figured out what the reward system would be the kids and I sat down and actually created a bunch of the fake money: $1, $5, $10, $20 and $50 bills. We even created a bank to put the smart bucks in. You can print out your own monopoly money from here if you don't want to create your own smart bucks.
Some kids have a hard time thinking long-term and it's hard to set long-term goals. Think of your child's individual mindset and base your choice of motivational tools around that. Is there anything that you do that works to motivate your kids?
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