One thing that I do with my children as they learn difficult things is to offer them motivational rewards as they struggle. This might be a piece of candy, a fun sticker or eraser, or just time on their favorite game.
It took me a long time to get to this place in my parenting, and I can already see some people getting ready to freak out and go on some rant about how soft parents are today and how I'm rewarding mediocrity. I get it. Stick with me and I'll explain why I started doing this.
Years ago, when I was being homeschooled, ADHD and Autism were viewed as a kind of silly diagnosis, and not worth checking out for children who seemed "normal" enough. If you could maintain eye contact during a conversation and didn't feel a need to crash your head into a wall, then there was no way you'd be "autistic", right?
If you could sit still through a class and answer basic questions about material, and didn't need to leave your seat every 93 seconds, then there's no way you could have ADHD. After all, it's just a way to medicalize perfectly normal children.
It didn't matter that the child who could make eye contact was in fact staring at the bridge of your nose, not your eyes, and that they scrunched their toes in their shoes constantly. Or that the child who could "sit still" was just aggressively chewing gum the entire class and the only reason they could answer questions is because they were in fact doodling in their notebook instead of writing notes.
These are ways of masking a disability, and they come at an emotional and energetic cost. Having undiagnosed ADHD and Dyscalculia as a child led to a lot of problems for me as an adult. Learning how to budget is hard when numbers don't want to march in the right order in your brain. Keeping house is impossible when you're struggling with ADHD burn out and everything you eat tastes like ashes and you're just convinced that if you could stop "being lazy" that all your problems would go away.
When people with ADHD need to start a difficult task we often end up procrastinating till we just can't put it off any longer, and then use the feeling of panic caused by putting it off to motivate us to action. It's not great. It's an awful way to live because we have the stress looming over us, and then the inevitable panic filling us with dread. It's a surefire way to develop high cortisol and adrenal fatigue.
This is different from laziness though. When people are being "lazy" generally it's because they're having fun doing something else. With ADHD, it is really just pure executive dysfunction. Not enough dopamine circulating to help us get things going. Give us some dopamine, and we perk right up. Usually for ADHD+ people doing the thing is easy once we can start. But starting the thing can feel like agony. So we need extra rewards (aka dopamine hits) to help get us motivated along the way.
Now, what does this have to do with rewarding my kids when they do poorly? Well, when we're struggling with something it's hard to keep going when all we see is failure in everything we do. I got that a lot as a child, and it kept me from moving forward as quickly as I could have in my studies.
So when my children are discouraged and struggling with math or spelling, or they get a low score on their test, I often tell them to take a break, grab a treat, and rest for 15 minutes.
I set a timer so I don't lose track of how long they are gone, and let them chill. After their time is up I call them over and we discuss what they were struggling with, why it was a struggle, and then I offer different support options. And while I'm always delighted when they get 100% on their math, when they get a low score I try really hard to remind myself to get excited about that too.
Because a low score in a subject only means that there is more for them to learn about something! And that, at its core, is the entire point of education anyways. To learn and master new things. Low scores are just the first step on the road to high scores!
Now, I'm not perfect at this. It doesn't come naturally to me at all, and I often find myself consciously reminding me to be positive and upbeat about their low scores. But, as I have started making this change in our homeschool I've noticed a HUGE change in how my children approach difficult topics.
They don't shy away from the hard work of learning as much as they used to. Instead of beating themselves up for being too dumb to pass a test, they come and ask me for help so they can master the subject. By offering rewards for both low AND high marks I am able to take away the pressure to perform like a monkey, and instead replace it with a desire to engage in meaningful effort to understand.
This is a kind of small change, and it's one that I struggle to maintain in my own mind, but it has been making a significant improvement in our lives and our general atmosphere. School time isn't a drag (most of the time anyways!) and we love being able to encourage each other and build each other up.
If you'd like to learn more about how I motivate my neurodivergent children to do hard things, then sign up for my email list today! You'll get updates on our latest articles, notifications when we have new products in the shop, and lots of information on how to support the people in your life who have ADHD, Autism, and Anxiety!
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