Keep your child’s eyes on the prize. You know, if your child is doing some task and the completion of the task leads to some reward or some goodie or some pleasant thing they want to do, you know, help with their motivation by reinforcing that. You know, “All right, five more minutes so we can get this done and then you can go online or then you can go onto the computer.”; “Remember, two more minutes and then you can go play the video game.”; “Hey, five more math problems and then you can go outside.” You know, it helps them with their frustration and it helps keep them motivated and keep them task-oriented, you know. It’s important to remember that in order for someone to be goal- oriented and to learn how to complete tasks in order to achieve goals, that that’s a learned behavior. You know, kids have to learn how to do that. We teach them how to do that and if we teach them to keep their eyes on the prize, we build that connection between “You do your work and you get rewarded.” And certainly there are external rewards to that. You know, “You’ll get to play outside; you’ll get to play on your video games.” But as you go through life there’s internal rewards with that. You feel self-confident; you feel a sense of self-worth. You feel a sense of completion.
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