15 Ways to Help Your Sons Develop a Motivation to Learn

Overview: Do you have a child who seems UNMOTIVATED? It might have something to do with how you’re teaching him. Check out these 15 easy ways to motivate boys!

Got a son who lacks motivation? It’s much more likely for our kids to be motivated to learn if they are treated well, are respected, and are encouraged throughout the day. Our kids also appreciate it when their schoolwork has meaning to them.

Homeschool moms who understand how to motivate a student can greatly enhance the educational experience and performance of their children.

15 Ways to Help Your Sons Develop a Motivation to Learn

Most young kids are inquisitive and have a high motivation to learn but all children go through phases when they are uninterested or lazy. Sometimes our kids aren’t interested in learning because of the way we’re trying to teach them!

If you find your child in one of these stages, do not despair. There are many things you can do to try to regain your child’s excitement for learning.

15 Ways to Help Your Sons Develop a Motivation to Learn:

1 – Achievable Goals

Encourage your boys to focus on their continued improvement, not just on their grade for one test or assignment. Help them evaluate their progress by encouraging them to critique their own work, analyze their strengths, and work on their weaknesses.

2 – Difficulty Level

Ensure opportunities for your son’s success by assigning tasks that are neither too easy nor too difficult.

→ Related Content: 11 Ways to Motivate Your Teenage Son

3 – Enthusiasm

An instructor’s enthusiasm is a crucial factor in a student’s motivation to learn. If you act bored or apathetic, your children will too. Challenge yourself to think of the most exciting way to present the material to your children.

4 – Fast Feedback

Give your boys feedback as quickly as possible. Return tests and papers promptly, and reward success publicly and immediately. Give students some indication of how well they have done and how to improve.

Rewards can be as simple as saying a child’s response was good, with an indication of why it was good. Giving frequent, early, positive feedback will support a student’s belief that they can do well.

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5 – Fun

Boys love sports because they are fun, exciting, sometimes thrilling, and highly emotional. Learning experiences for boys can and should provide just as much enjoyment and satisfaction as do sports. We sometimes think that some learning tasks are by necessity boring (like memorization of definitions, grammar, vocabulary or spelling), but this might just reflect a lack of creativity on our part.

If we put Bible verses or spelling words to music, it can be a lot of fun to learn them. Use your imagination and you can make learning fun for your sons.

6 – High Expectations

Hold high but realistic expectations for your students. Research has shown that a teacher’s expectations have a powerful effect on a student’s performance.

If you act as though you expect your students to be motivated, hardworking, and interested in the material, they are more likely to be so. Just be sure not to have expectations which are too high for your child to attain because that will have the opposite effect.

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7 – Increase Difficulty Progressively

Ensure that the task is of an appropriate level of challenge for your child’s age and ability level. If it is too easy the student will be bored and unmotivated. A level of difficulty above the student’s ability could lead to frustration and giving up.

Give your boys opportunities to succeed at the beginning of the year. Once your kids feel they can succeed, you can gradually increase the difficulty level. If assignments and exams include easy and hard questions, your child will have a chance to experience success as well as a challenge.

8 – Outside the Classroom

It has been said that most learning takes place outside the classroom. This is good news for homeschoolers!

We still need to remember to prime our children to continue learning after they’re done with their formal schoolwork, to prepare them to be aware, and to ask them to apply concepts in their lives as they go about their day.

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9 – Positive Atmosphere

Create an atmosphere that is open and positive. Look for the good things that your child is doing rather than constantly pointing out ways that he can improve.

10 – Reward Success

Praise builds your children’s’ self-confidence, competence, and self-esteem. Recognize sincere efforts from your sons even if the product is less than stellar.

Use praise liberally. Reward for effort and improvement and not just for the outcome.

When boys play sports, the game provides a constant flow of accomplishments and the enjoyment of those accomplishments. Even the sports team that ultimately loses enjoys an occasional strikeout, a base hit, or a well-caught fly ball.

Homeschooling parents should try to replicate this stream of small but constant ego rewards in their son’s lessons. Breaking learning into small pieces that can be mastered and that will produce a feeling of accomplishment and success will help motivate students to go forward, even with difficult material.

11 – Strengths and Interests

The task should be meaningful and relevant to the learner. Students often comment, “Why do I have to learn about?” and “I’ll never use this when I grow up!?

Find out what your children are interested in and how they feel about the subject matter. Be sure to tailor their lessons so that your boys will be able to fully explore the subjects that interest them most.

Also, take the time to explain how the content of their schoolwork will help them to achieve their educational, professional, or personal goals.

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12 – Student Choices

Students will be more motivated to engage in a task if they have some say in what the task is, how it is to be carried out and presented. The less controlling the teacher, the more motivation to learn the student will have.

When possible, let students have some say in choosing what will be studied. Give students options for term papers topics or other assignments. Let your kids decide between two locations for the field trip, or have them select which topics to explore in greater depth.

13 – Teamwork

People are generally sociable and like being around each other – at least to some extent. Kids usually enjoy working as a team; yet, often the learning activities we assign call for individual effort.

By working on some team projects with our children, we can take advantage of the benefits of teamwork, where the younger students will learn by having the older ones help. And, of course, since teaching someone something is the best way to learn, the students who teach each other will learn better than if they were learning alone.

14 – Valued

Help students feel that they are valued members of a learning community. Again, this is very easy to do while homeschooling as you are teaching your own children, whom you highly value.

15 Ways to Help Your Sons Develop a Motivation to Learn

15 – Vary Activities – Variety reawakens students’ involvement in the material and their motivation. Break up the routine by incorporating a variety of teaching activities and methods in your course: role-playing, brainstorming, discussion, demonstrations, case studies, or small group work.

Teachers should strive to make learning always at least mentally active and often physically active as well. The students should be responsible for producing something, rather than just sitting passively, soaking up the presentation.

We definitely have the ability to increase the motivation to learn in our kids. Many of the above behaviors come naturally for homeschooling parents; however, if you find your sons lacking motivation, be sure to give some of these suggestions a try!

Question:  Are your sons motivated to learn or do you feel like they are always digging in their heels? What methods have you been able to use to successfully motivate your sons? Please leave a comment below.

15 Ways to Help Your Sons Develop a Motivation to Learn

6 thoughts on “15 Ways to Help Your Sons Develop a Motivation to Learn”

  1. One thing I’ll add to your ideas… I’ve started is using a spreadsheet to keep a running average of quiz and test scores. We enter a grade, and my son can immediately see how a score affects his average. That has really motivated him! He looks forward to seeing how each score will affect his average.

  2. My son resists All.The.Time. We do year-round school, so I don’t have to stress over the days that just don’t work. He’s so far behind, if we get successful he can use the extra days to catch up. I try to suggest topics he can choose from (original thinking is difficult, does better with multiple choice). Each subject has at least four different ways it can be done. When all else fails, I attempt game-schooling. We still don’t have many successful days for 2022. I am frustrated, and chronically depressed.

    1. It sounds like you’ve figured out some things that are working for your son, so that’s good. I know one of the hardest things about parenting in general is that just when you think you have a child figured out, they change. I don’t know how old your son is but one concept that can be helpful is to let go of the phrase “being behind.” Kids are all unique and they catch on to things at different rates. That being said, it can be extremely frustrating when things aren’t going the way we think they should be. And you are certainly not the only one who is depressed during this specific time in history. I think the whole world is feeling extra overwhelmed and frustrated right now.

      Sometimes we need to get dad involved and have him lay down the law. Sometimes we have to adjust our own expectations. Sometimes we need to make sure we’re doing a good job with self care so that we don’t completely run out of steam.

      If you want to give me some more details about your son’s age and which subjects seem to be giving you the most grief, I can try to help you brainstorm a bit more. My other advice is to pray, pray, pray. God promises He will give us wisdom if we ask for it (James 1:5) and He knows the tweaks that need to be made to best reach your son and help him develop his full potential. Big hugs!!!

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