The Self-Driven Child: The Science and Sense of Giving Your Kids More Control Over Their Lives

by William Stixrud

This short-term external motivation isn’t the type we’ll be talking about in this chapter. Our aim is to focus on the self-motivation necessary for the long game—the inner drive that we want our kids to have so that they commit to something and persevere, develop their potential, and take steps toward living the lives they want to live. Research over the last four decades has repeatedly demonstrated that incentives like sticker charts, consequences, and other forms of parental monitoring that are “laid on” children actually undermine this type of motivation. What we’re trying to do is to help kids to motivate themselves and to realize that they have something important to offer the world. We want to help them learn to run their own lives and seek to make them meaningful.