How do you motivate your child?

[El Cid]

Hi

 

My daughter is doing well at school, above average, but she gets behaviour negatives.

I do reward her gold and silver awards, and then deduct £1 per negative. She is 13 yrs old. I think sometimes I allow her too much freedom.

[cgksheff]

Are you her Mother or her Father?

[El Cid]

Father, she moved in with me a few months ago, after falling out with her mother.

But she has learnt too many bad ways from her mother, altho lots of posatives

[willman]

The starting point (for me) would be to identify the negatives and try to assess the reality of changing them.

If its something that i class as trivial - dyed hair for instance,then i'd be in school defending her individuality.If it was more serious - then it would obviously require more discussion to assess where he feelings really are.Some intelligent people get bored easily and need more stimulation.

[medusa]

We work with earning daily credits that can be used to buy small rewards (choosing what to have for tea or what film we watch) with a few days of meeting targets or working towards bigger reward choices with multiples put together and they can spend their credits as they want. They also have a 3 strikes system before they lose the day's credit, so they can measure whether they're going to get the credit at the end of the day. This is my niece and nephew BTW, and the whole extended family joins in with the scheme.

 

However, nothing is going to work for every child. Whatever works for you and your daughter can be very individual. I'd be careful about attaching money to it though.

[El Cid]

The starting point (for me) would be to identify the negatives and try to assess the reality of changing them.

If its something that i class as trivial - dyed hair for instance,then i'd be in school defending her individuality.If it was more serious - then it would obviously require more discussion to assess where he feelings really are.Some intelligent people get bored easily and need more stimulation.

 

Some are for being rude, or just not following instructions, some are for nail varnish and uniform.

On a bad week she can get 10 negatives, but the average is about 3

 

I am working when she is getting ready for school, but that should change when I decrease my hours in a few months.

[cgksheff]

Does the school have any consequences of their own attached to these "negatives"?

 

You would seem to be having to develop a new level of relationship with your daughter.

Sadly, it seems we are talking about a child with separated parents.

 

I would suggest avoiding to much concentration on these outside judgements. (don't dismiss them them, but they could be providing conflict on a regular basis).

 

Try and work more on developing levels of trust and respect between you.

Give her the opportunity to recognise the benefits of choosing to behave in different ways.

 

As hard as it may be, you have already seen that helping her to be in the correct dress/uniform is to be there when she goes to school.

[Stranza]

My son is one the colourful pierced types so we had our work cut out sometimes.

Personally I agree with strict uniform policy (there is no good reason my son should wear nipple bars or dermal posts to learn) so I was happy to spend ten minutes of a Sunday helping to replace his bits and bobs with flesh coloured plugs etc.

If his hair was dyed something outrageous we would dye it back.

We had the extreme but even for nail polish I wouldn't want to undermine the schools authority.

When ours complained (he did lots) we didn't punish straight away we soldiered on checking he was jewellery free and told him that his epic awesomeness had to be kept for the weekends.

It's not easy with some teachers looking distinctly individual and some having rude, dismissive attitudes themselves.

Despite that my opinion would be to support the school even on the trivial things.

We all know parents who rage about little susies hindividualiteh but we send our kids to be educated not express themselves.

Good luck

[Halibut]

I don't need to, beyond encouraging them when they do well and occasionally reminding them that they need to work to achieve results.

 

I don't really hold with the notion of paying children to behave properly.

[jfish1936]

By example!

Our family -- great grandparents down -- studied and qualified and worked. The children grow up in an environment where study and conventionl manners are the norm. so is discussion of a wide range of issues, with mutual respect. I think we are generous of our time, attention and money, without bribery.

It's hard to put into words, but it seems to be working so far. May that continue!