Many parents of children with reading disabilities worry about motivating their children. And rightly so. Their children often feel defeated, demoralized, and helpless; they no longer try—they’ve given up, they resist reading. This hurts them even more.
Unfortunately, many parents and schools fail to understand that motivational problems are complex. Mistakenly, they treat poor motivation as if it’s a solid, unmovable, impenetrable boulder. By doing this, they add to the problem—they blame the children, or they give up trying to motivate them, or both.
If instead, they treated motivation as a complex concept, they could begin to understand the sources of poor motivation, sources that offer clues for strengthening it. Thus, if your child is poorly motivated to learn to read, the first thing you need to do is find out why.
To find out why, study the questions below. Ask school personnel to join you. By jointly answering these questions—from your child’s perspective—you may find solutions to helping your child overcome his reading disabilities. Here are the questions:
Section 1: The activity or task.
1. Is the task enjoyable?
2. Is the content interesting?
3. Do I have the ability to succeed if I make a reasonable effort?
4. Have I had success with similar activities/tasks?
Is the subject matter important?
6. Am I likely to succeed in the near future?
7. Will my efforts produce desirable outcomes?
8. Will I get whatever support I need to achieve success?
9. Will I will be positively reinforced for my efforts?
10. Will I be positively reinforced for whatever success I have?
11. Are the reinforcers worth my effort and achievement?
12. Will reinforcement quickly follow success?
13. Are there immediately available activities/tasks I find more attractive or reinforcing?
14. Is success important to achieving any long or short range goal(s) I have?
15. Will the amount of effort I invest help me achieve my long or short range goals?
Section 2: The Student’s General Orientation
16. Are my efforts responsible for the positive things that happen to me?
17. Do my peers value school success?
18. Is it important that I please other people, like my teachers, parents, and peers?
19. Do I have important long range goals?
20. Do I have important short range goals?
You can download the full questionnaire from www.reading2008.com. You can get lots of ideas about strengthening your child’s motivation from Richard’s Selznick’s The Shut-Down Learner: Helping Your Academically Discouraged Child (Sentient Publishing, 2009).
HM © Howard Margolis
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