Many parents complain that their children simply aren't motivated to learn. I don't believe this. I feel every child is motivated to learn; we just have to find the key to that motivation.  One of the best ways to discover that key is to simply observe your children when they're having fun. What kinds of things do they like to do? These are the things that motivate them. The trick is taking the excitement and vitality you see when they're having a good time and transplanting it into academic learning. It may not be as difficult as you think.  Say, for example, your child loves doing wheelies on his bike all day. You can take his love of bicycles and help him learn to read by providing him with books about bikes, or you can awaken an interest in mathematics by taking him to the bike store the next time he needs a part and looking at the importance of metric measurements in a bike's instructions. You can take anything your child loves to do and show him how academic skills can help him learn more about it. Make sure not to impose you ideas on your child or he'll resist. Instead, allow yourself to be led by your child's own interests. Another problem is that parents are trying to impose their own ideas about learning onto their kids. Children, in turn, are very sensitive to adult intentions and react to a parent's claim that "This will be good for you" with a giant "YUCK!" So parents need to go really slowly when trying to interest a child in something new.  If the child shows a burst of enthusiasm, it's a natural reaction for a parent to want to milk it for all it's worth, yet one must be delicate in such a situation, and let the child's own enthusiasm determine the next step. Otherwise, a parent's direction can squelch a budding interest before it's even started.  For example, let's say your child comes in one evening, all excited about seeing the stars. You react the next day by buying him several astronomy books and insisting he read them. This is definitely overkill. A more appropriate next step would be to go out with him and watch the stars together. If he wants to learn more, then go to a library, find a book, and read it together.  Remember to proceed one step at a time and take your cues from your child.

Thomas Armstrong, Ph.D. is an award-winning author and speaker with twenty-eight years of teaching experience from the primary through the doctoral level, and over one million copies of his books in print on issues related to learning and human development. He is the author of nine books including Multiple Intelligences in the Classroom, In Their Own Way, Awakening Your Child’s Natural Genius, 7 Kinds of Smart, The Myth of the A.D.D. Child, ADD/ADHD Alternatives in the Classroom, and Awakening Genius in the Classroom. His books have been translated into sixteen languages, including Spanish, Chinese, Hebrew, Danish, and Russian.