What Dampens Motivation?
Much research has been done over the years on motivating children with learning disabilities (LD) or AD/HD. It tells us that the main reasons these children withdraw mentally from school is fear of failure, frustration with inconsistent performance (good one day, stumbling the next), lack of understanding the schoolwork, emotional problems, anger, or desire for attention – even negative attention. The behavior that accompanies this dampened motivation may range from quitting (“school is boring”), avoiding any attempt (“I’m stupid; why try?”), clowning (for attention), denying (“I don’t care about English”), being impulsive (“There! I’m done!”), or bullying (picking on someone smaller). We also know that of the brain’s various learning systems, if the emotional system is in turmoil, the cognitive system must expend energy on it before the brain can focus to learn. This means you must help your child talk about his feelings before you can figure out how to motivate him to do math or to w
