Toronto Real Estate and Morningside Heights, Markham Boxgrove Housing Updates Jas Jagpal: Motivating your Child. How ?

If you are a parent of young son or daughter, you probably have the same difficulty motivating your child to do things on his/her own. Having talked to number of the parents at my son’s soccer academy it appears this “lazy-child” syndrome or “spoiled-child” syndrome, whatever you want to call it, is quite common.

I can remember my childhood… never wanting to be inside the house but outside playing soccer, street hockey, football, baseball… getting the street kids together and just playing. We had no “extracurricular” activities our parents could afford nor did they have the time to take us. They were too busy putting food on the table.

Now how do you motivate a child who has everything and has never experienced “hardship”?

I have a bright and talented 9 year old son who won’t do anything unless he has to. At 9 I remember selling flowers at downtown Toronto street corners. I know and don’t compare my life with his… but as a parent we have a big hand in fashioning our children's personality and expectations and the worst thing we can do is set them too low and have them reach it.

My son knows to become an elite soccer player he needs to practice on his own. Yet I rarely see him do it. I have to take him to the park, or our basement and practice with him. It “seems” he could give a rat's ass practicing keep-ups, drills, etc. the coaches have taught him. I've even tried "bribing" him :). But it didn't work. $200 for doing 20 keep-ups is not good enough! Some of you might be thinking why does he need to practice on his own? If you haven’t heard about the 10,000 hour rule I highly recommend you Google it and read about it. Or I recommend the book: "Outliers: The Story of Success"

You know what I’m starting to think is as parents we might be spending too much time and energy on our kids. I’m thinking as a society we might be distracting them with all the materialism that is available today.

I’d like to see some passion in my son but I don’t want to be a parent who is “managing” my child’s life and quite frankly I don’t have the time for it. I want him to be self-motivated and “really” want to do things in his life. I would like the fire in him to burn so he would want to achieve his dreams.

I’ve decided to stop his soccer activities for the winter months to see if he really misses playing it. If other parents had success doing something different to “self-motivate” their child I’d like to hear from you. I know if my son would only put 25% more effort he can do exceptionally well in life.

What's the magic guys? :) Anybody?

Jas Jagpal, B.Sc. Sales Representative, jasjagpal@rogers.com

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