46 - Unintended Consequences of Pushing for Good Grades

In this episode I interview Liz Bayardelle author of Clean Your Plate! 13 Things that Good Parents Say that Ruin Kids’ Lives.   This book covers all sorts of unintended consequences that good parents say regularly like Get Straight As, Don’t Hit, Sit Still, Don’t Be a Quitter and many more.   She goes into detail in all these areas and has wonderful ideas about how to combat our natural tendencies to push our kids in ways that might backfire.   

We talk specifically about the impact of parents choosing to say GET STRAIGHT A'S often sends our kids looking for extrinsic motivators like money, extra computer time or other external rewards.  These rewards often work in the short run but can put a damper on intrinsic motivators that allow our children to own their own success.  

In order for our kids to have their own internal motivations there are four key factors:

1. Autonomy - this is where they "own" the ideas, doing things because they're invested in them and not doing them for other people
2. Competence - that kids believe they are capable of a skill
3. Relatedness - kids are social and if they can see how what they are doing relates to other people they want to be with or emulate they can motivate themselves to push past the work at hand
4. Purpose - the task at hand relates to some other passion or goal they are trying to achieve

By encouraging a GROWTH MINDSET we can move away from nurturing kids who aren't fulfilling their potential to growing kids who WANT to achieve goals and move forward. 

Get a copy of Liz's book here!
CLEAN YOUR PLATE! 13 Things Good Parents Say That Ruin Kids' Lives

As always, email Mary at mary@parentingdecoded.com or join her Facebook Group: Parenting Decoded 2021 to hear from Mary more.