Tips to Motivate Your Lazy Kid
Sometimes kids get lazy, especially if we allow a lot of screen time during the day and forget to encourage them to help us out around the home.
Pulling kids out of the lazy zone can feel like pulling teeth or talking to a brick wall, but don’t let this disrespectful behavior stop you from trying to get those kids off the couch and focused on their studies, chores, or other healthier activities.
Just put a few of these things into practice and you’ll have happy helpers in time.
🟡 Don’t Argue or Fight with Your Child About Motivation
When your child is having trouble completing a task such as cleaning their room, fighting, and arguing about it is just going to make things worse. If you can finally get your kid out of bed in the morning and you were fighting about it, then you’re probably going to fight about getting dressed, brushing teeth, and eating breakfast too.
Arguing with your child about motivation is a breeding ground for power struggles.
Avoid the power struggle and do this instead: stay calm and be clear with expectations, and allow natural consequences to occur if needed.
🟡 Staying Calm and Being Clear
Whenever you are trying to handle a lazy kid, it is important that you are clam and clear about your expectations. For example, if you need your child to get off the couch and put their laundry into the washing machine, then you need to say something like this.
“I need you to put your laundry into the washer so that it can be washed and dried in time for school tomorrow morning.”
If your child does not put the laundry into the washer, then the natural consequence will be the lack of clean clothes for school in the morning.
Sometimes your child will say “I don’t care” to the consequence, and that will get you super frustrated. But this is behavior that needs to be ignored, not engaged with.
🟡 Give Effective Consequences
Providing consequences that are thought out and not “reactive” will help motivate your child to follow through with the task you are presenting.
Using negative punishment when setting consequences will work against you instead of for you in your parenting journey.
You must understand how to set consequences that work and use them in your parenting.
🟡 Patience
Parenting and patience go hand in hand like peanut butter and jelly.
In order for your children to stop being lazy and become motivated, you will need to have patience and remain calm when speaking to your children.
This is one of the hardest things we face as parents, but it can be done!
© 2024 Benjamin Mizrahi. All rights reserved.
