How to Foster Drive in Children

As parents and caregivers, we all want to see our children succeed, and often that success is measured by external achievements such as grades and awards. However, true success and fulfilment come from within and fostering intrinsic motivation, or drive, is key to helping our children achieve this.

Intrinsic motivation underpins behaviour driven by internal rather than external rewards. It’s the drive to do something because it’s interesting, challenging, and absorbing. A child who has drive doesn’t practice playing the guitar because it’s homework before their next lesson; they practice because they want to master it, finding joy in the process.

Having drive leads to taking initiative - to taking action where they feel their actions can have an impact. It’s the foundation of strong leadership. When paired with curiosity and focus, you get a child who can solve progressively more complex problems, changing the world around them one solution at a time.

We were all born with drive but it’s fragile. It can be encouraged or suppressed by the experiences we provide to our children. So how can we foster drive in our children?

In the play space

• Encourage autonomy. Let your child choose how, what and where they work, enabling independence by making it easy for your child to action their intentions.

• Let them play. Play is an inherently motivating activity, allowing your child to explore and learn about the world around them. Providing hands-on play that is engaging, novel, and encourages mastery develops children's love for learning. It’s important to provide time for our children to play and resist the urge to overschedule their time with structured activities.
• Praise the process rather than the outcome. Praising outcomes can create pressure and anxiety and discourage children from taking on new challenges. Instead, we should focus on praising their effort and reinforcing their identity as someone who can achieve what they put their mind to.
• Follow the child: Every child is unique and has their own interests and strengths. Observe your child to see what activities, concepts and items they gravitate towards and give them opportunities to explore in depth to satisfy their curiosity.

In a toy/activity

• Offer toys that build their confidence, letting them build mastery over  skills through repetition. 
• Isolating one skill in a tray or basket activity makes it easy to observe your child's interests. By allowing children to follow their interests, and providing them with opportunities to extend themselves in those areas, you will help them develop a love of learning.

• The Goldilocks effect. Giving children tasks and activities just above their current ability level can help them develop a sense of competence and mastery. Think of how video games work, where the level of challenge increases gradually as the player progresses. Children can become bored and lose interest if a task is too easy. On the other hand, if a task is too difficult, they become frustrated and give up. Placing activities in trays and baskets makes it easy to control the level of difficulty in a task by adding or taking away elements. Providing challenging but achievable tasks that provide immediate feedback will help our children develop a growth mindset and a love of learning.

External incentives, such as rewards and punishments, can actually undermine a child’s drive to mastery. Children who only complete tasks for external rewards may quickly lose interest, dampening their love of learning.

Unfortunately, this is how much of the world currently operates. There’s a huge gap between what science knows about how people are motivated and how the world currently operates. This makes it all the more important for us to nurture it in our children because tomorrow’s changemakers are going to be the ones who lead from within.