Motivation Activities for Children at Home

Motivation is the best method of teaching the child in the way you want her to do a particular act or behave in a particular manner. Parents are the first teachers of any child. As the child grows up and starts to understand, he looks towards the mother for instructions. At a very young age the chances are that the child will follow your instructions, but as he or she grows up, and even below the age where she can understand what she is doing, there are chances of development of rebellion in her mind and she may not follow your instructions as you would like her to do. This is the time when the parents need to adopt a balanced approach and motivation of the child comes in play.

Motivation of the child is not easy and there could be no ready answer or magic trick as to how to motivate the child to follow your instructions and act in a well behaved manner.

Motivation is a process of issuing instructions to the child to achieve the desired results. To make the child to do something which you want her to do, you will have to manipulate the child in a particular manner. To motivate your kid to do a particular thing in a desired manner, you need to know what the child wants to do or thinks about what you want from her. A clear communication in this regard will be of great help. The process of motivation should start at the age the child just starts to understand things. This will be the time when she will follow instructions without much argument. Once the habit is developed, things will be easier at a later date.

There is a general tendency in small kids to throw their toys here and there. They generally do not like to collect them and put them away in a tidy manner. It is here the first motivation process starts. You need to be firm and tell the child to collect all toys in a box so that the room is clean. To begin the motivation process you may need to participate with the child in collecting the toys. You may collect them near the box and ask the child to put them inside it. There after you could ask her to collect the remaining toys which are spread around.

The motivation process will be accelerated to a great extent by following the reward process. It is not necessary that the reward should be in the form of some physical gift. The child can be rewarded by a gesture of affection by the parents.

Though motivation is a taxing process and will involve lot of time and energy when the child is small but it will be better than yelling at the child to clean the room. In such a case the child may obey you once but ultimately there will be sort of retaliation in her mind and she may refuse to follow your instructions at some point of time.

In case of older children, the motivation process could be both difficult and easy depending upon you and the nature of your child. You can ask the child to make a list in his own handwriting about the things she is expected to do and by what time that needs to be done. Once the child has written the list in her own hand she may be motivated to complete the task in time but the chances are also that the grown up child may just refuse to do something. This is the point of time you need to be careful. Be firm and balanced and be ready to give her a verbal lesson of the benefits of what you wanted her to do etc. Here your real motivation skill test will be done.

Different parents adopt different methods of motivation of children. Some use motivation behavior charts and stickers. Each time the child does something desired from her she receives a sticker which she can paste on the chart. Anyway these are reward methods which can be used by parents. Remember to be firm in issuing instructions to the children so that they understand that you mean what you say and may not take your instructions lightly.