How to Help Your Child Stay Motivated in School

Parenting a school-age child can be scary and overwhelming. How do you keep your child motivated and teach them the value of their education? Every parent wants their child to succeed and it can be hard to know what to do. As a middle school teacher, I am frequently asked by parents how they can support their children’s learning. No two students are identical in terms of their motivation, interests, and attitudes towards their education, but I can offer three simple suggestions that will keep your child engaged in their studies long term.

Stay Curious

Kids pick up on the behaviours and habits of the adults in their lives. If you want your child to be invested in their learning, the first step is demonstrating the same level of curiosity about the world that you hope to see from them.

Parents who model an inquisitive attitude towards the world encourage and lead their children by example. If you come across a word you don’t know the meaning to, say so! Show your child that learning is a lifelong process that requires an attitude of openness and excitement about new information and experiences.

It’s important that you don’t just go through the motions. Get excited about learning new things and share this joy with your child. Kids can tell when adults are faking their interest. Think back to your own childhood and pick an outing or activity that would have fascinated you. Bring home new science experiment kits from a local bookstore. Plan a family visit to a local museum, or ask your child to help you understand a new concept. By learning alongside your child, you create a meaningful memory and reinforce the idea that learning can be both gratifying and fun.

Model Reading for Pleasure

So many parents ask me what they can do to encourage their child’s reading. Many kids today don’t regularly read books; screen time is a huge culprit, with kids getting sucked into video games and social media the minute they get home from school. The students I have taught who are the most voracious, eager readers are the ones who have grown up with parents who read.

Many parents complain to me that their children don’t enjoy reading. Yet, when I ask these same parents to recall the last novel they read, they often draw blanks. This is not surprising. If kids don’t see their parents reading, they grow up viewing reading as a form of labour or punishment. The more a child reads, the larger their vocabulary grows.

If you want to build a family reading habit, schedule one evening a week where your whole family simply cozies up on the couch with books. Make reading an activity you share. Talk to your kids about the books they are reading and ask them meaningful questions. Kids who read grow their imaginations and their vocabularies. Give your kids the gift of literature by first giving that same gift to yourself.

Adopt a Growth Mindset

One of the biggest determinations of whether children feel motivated and enthusiastic about school is their mindset. Many of us grew up in a time when schools promoted fixed mindsets: the belief that intelligence is fixed. This mindset makes people less resilient. Instead of seeing difficulty as a gift, people with fixed mindsets feel discouraged when they don’t understand a new concept.

In order to keep your children positive and motivated in their education, model a growth mindset. This is the belief that we are all capable of pushing through challenges in order to make new connections and grow. Learners with a growth mindset welcome challenges as opportunities for personal growth.

One way you can model this mindset for your child is by rewarding them for their effort rather than their grades. If your child does well on a test, tell them you are proud of how much they studied. If they get an A+ on an essay, praise them for all the hard work they did leading up to the final draft. By rewarding the process rather than the final product, you can help your child develop a deep respect for hard work and to have a more positive self-image.

Students with a growth mindset know that, even when they can’t solve that math problem now, they will be able to in the future if they keep up their effort.