srmom asks:
My 10 year old son has a very hard time staying motivated with whatever task he is asked to do and tends to find numerous distractions in his path that require his immediate attention. I can’t figure out how to motivate him to stay focused and do things quickly.
Charles Murray @ TheBlissfulParent.com says:
I’ve had the same problem with motivating my son from time to time. If there is anything more interesting than what he has been asked to do, he will be drawn to it, and completely tune me out. What we worked on with him is to do our best to eliminate distractions to help motivate him to pay attention and stay focused when he has a job to do. The television and his video games are the 2 biggest distractions that we are constantly competing with. If we let him watch T.V. while he eats his breakfast before school, it will take him more than 30 minutes to eat it, often making him late for school. If we turn the T.V. off while he eats his breakfast, he is more motivated and it only takes him 5 minutes to eat it.
I believe that we, as parents, can take responsibility for setting up an environment where we can limit the distractions when we want our children to focus on a task. If the child is expected to choose between something fun and the household chores, the fun things like video games and T.V. are likely to win every time. Limiting the distractions can help motivate kids to focus and get things done much faster.
Try asking him to turn off the T.V., video game, or whatever else he is distracted with, before giving him instructions. If he puts up a fight you simply explain that he can go back to whatever he was doing once the task has been done.
About The Author:
Charles Murray is a certified parent support group facilitator as well as the chief instructor for the Blissful Parenting System, an online parenting course that helps parents improve relationships with their kids and deal with disrespectful behavior in children.
