A child who has no motivation cannot learn. As prominent educator John Sommerville wrote, and as any teacher can tell you, “Most of the problems of education are problems of motivation. When a child is self-motivated, a teacher cannot stop him from learning.”
Lack of motivation can take many different forms, including defiance, withdrawal, and boredom. Educational studies indicate that 20% to 50% of intellectually gifted students are not motivated and underachieve at school. These students often cop an attitude of indifference. They tell you that school is boring, irrelevant, and meaningless, and so they only do the minimum amount of work to get by.
Defiance and Withdrawal
Lack of motivation can also show up as defiance. The defiant teen acts out in class, breaks rules, and is always in trouble with school authorities, partly because he has no interest in school. Withdrawal can be yet another manifestation of lack of motivation. The withdrawn teen refuses to participate in class discussions or show any interest in school subjects. Although he “plays dead” in school, he later lights up in front of video games with his friends.
Parents are often the first to recognize that their children are underachieving and performing below their potential, but they do not know what to do or how to fix it. They often try bribery, withholding privileges or other tactics. In most cases, their children refuse to engage in meaningful discussions about this problem.
If your child is an underachiever, there could be a number of reasons. The classic case is that achievement and grades drop off when a child enters high school or middle school, often because of undiagnosed Attention Deficit Disorder, problems related to organization and concentration, or learning disabilities.
The new school setting requires your child to keep track of work from more than one teacher and to negotiate new classrooms of different people every few hours. High school or middle school assignments require more complex organization, such as writing term papers or analyzing difficult novels. A child with an undiagnosed problem like ADD/ADHD or poor reading skills can no longer get by on tactics she used in elementary school. The underlying problem must be addressed before she can succeed in her new environment.
The Gifted but Bored Teen
The gifted but bored underachiever, on the other hand, has never learned to connect schoolwork with his real passions, interests, and hobbies. In these cases, the solution often lies with teachers. A talented teacher knows how to set “behavioral traps” to produce “interest-based” learning. For example, if a child is interested in baseball, he could study batting statistics in math class, read a biography of a sports hero for English, or master the physics of pitching in science class.
Some children lack motivation because they are living up to low expectations set a long time ago by their teachers and school administrators. These students may have performed poorly on aptitude tests in primary grades or received labels of average or slow learners, and now they simply live up to that label. They are never placed in honors classes or challenged to do more.
Still other children underachieve at school in order to be accepted by peers. Good grades and excelling in school are deal-breakers within their group of friends, who matter more to the teen than school.
How to Help an Underachieving Teen
The first step in helping an underachieving teen is to have professional testing done to screen for learning disabilities such as dyslexia or poor reading skills, as well as underlying psychological and behavioral problems like ADD, bipolar disorder, Oppositional Defiant Disorder, low self-esteem, depression, or substance abuse. Professional consultants often advise that the child change schools, especially to one where he can get more individual attention in smaller classes.
Some schools, particularly emotional growth boarding schools, specialize in problems of poor motivation and underachievement. The child undergoes screening for learning and psychological problems as part of the admission process. Professional psychologists work with educators to come up with an individualized treatment program for each student. They determine what the child’s learning style is and design a program around the student’s special needs. Some children learn better by reading, others by listening, and still others by a hands-on approach. Some children learn better in single-sex settings.
Which therapeutic boarding school is best for your child depends on the child’s individual needs. You can find schools for boys with ADD, teens with substance abuse problems, children with Asperger’s Syndrome, and many more. Sometimes just a semester or two of intensive work at an emotional growth boarding school can turn a child’s life around, make him believe in himself, determine a career path, and set goals for college.