How to Grow Your Child’s Intrinsic Motivation

Most parents know that intrinsic motivation is better than extrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation inspires greater long-term effort,¹ leads to higher-quality work,² and is better for mental health.³ So parents often ask a very well-meaning question: “How do I create intrinsic motivation in my kid?”

The short answer is, you don’t. Intrinsic motivation, by definition, comes from within, so you can’t give it to them. Intrinsic motivation is something that will grow naturally in any person, given the right conditions. So the parent’s role is akin to that of a gardener: create an environment where it can grow and avoid doing things that inhibit its growth.

Let’s start with some don’ts.

How to Kill Your Child’s Intrinsic Motivation

Now, if you’re doing any of the following things, please don’t feel ashamed. These are all very common, and parents do them for very understandable reasons. In fact, most of the following practices are perfectly aligned with our culture.

We live in a society that constantly flaunts extrinsic rewards like fame and fortune as the reasons for hard work and good behavior. So the quest to grow your child’s intrinsic motivation is an uphill battle. At times, it can feel like trying to grow flowers in hard, impoverished soil. But while the soil may not be fertile, the seeds are true, so if we provide the right care, those little flowers can grow.

But first, we have to stop pouring salt all over the ground.

Actually, a more apt metaphor would be that we need to stop overwatering. As any gardener knows, giving your plants too much water is just as bad as not giving them enough. And the most common mistake parents make is overparenting:

• Constantly checking their grades
• Micromanaging their schoolwork
• Nagging, reminding, and cajoling to get them to do their homework and chores
• Rescuing them from failure
• Choosing their extracurricular activities, where they’ll apply to college, and what career to pursue rather than letting them choose for themselves

These well-meaning behaviors all prevent intrinsic motivation from developing because they take the kid out of the driver’s seat. When parents take on a too-active role, kids become passive.

“Well-meant protectiveness gradually undermines any autonomy, and more coercive interference … defeats any shred of initiative.” –Ellen Langer⁴

The other way to kill your child’s intrinsic motivation is to use rewards and punishments to get them to do things. These extrinsic motivators do work in the sense that they produce the desired behavior, but they fail in the long run because the behavior doesn’t have any inner drive behind it.⁵

Getting paid for good grades teaches you to do the minimum required to earn the cash, undermining curiosity and the desire to pursue mastery. A kid might get good grades because they want the money, but the moment that incentive is taken away, their motivation will evaporate.

The threat of punishment is even less effective because fear doesn’t motivate us to take action – it actually motivates inaction⁶ (like a deer in the headlights) or active avoidance (like an antelope running away from a cheetah).

How to Grow Your Child’s Intrinsic Motivation

So you can’t force the creation of intrinsic motivation, but you can create the circumstances in which it might arise. A child may or may not discover some passion or inner drive that moves them to work hard. That’s not within your control. What you can control, at least in part, is the environment the child lives in. Your job as a parent is to tend a garden in which intrinsic motivation has the opportunity to grow.

The alternative to micromanaging isn’t complete disengagement; that would be the equivalent of never watering your garden. So I’m not suggesting that you adopt a completely permissive, laissez-faire parenting style. As always, the authoritative parenting style is preferred. This refers to a very particular type of engagement with your child, one in which they understand what the expectations are, why they are so, and that they are an active agent in charge of their own success.

Gardening is all about environmental design and management. You can’t do much to the plants directly, but you can set things up where there’s enough sunlight, plant seeds, and soil nutrients. Likewise, cultivating intrinsic motivation is largely about crafting a home environment that facilitates its growth.

Pay attention to what interests your child and provide opportunities to explore those interests. Giving them opportunities to try new things (sports, instruments, hobbies, etc.) is akin to planting seeds. A home that has art supplies, games, puzzles, and books encourages exploration.

Providing a well-stocked home study space, exercise equipment, and healthy food is like water and fertilizer for your garden. Encouragement is like sunlight.

Allowing tech-addiction to run rampant is like letting weeds take over your garden. Weeds are bad because they take resources away from the plants you’re trying to grow. Similarly, our digital devices draw precious resources – time and attention – away from more meaningful pursuits.

Lastly, stepping away from our garden metaphor, as a parent, you can lead by example by modeling passionate interest in the things that you love, and make it clear that you’re pursuing them for intrinsic reasons.

It’s Okay to Have Both

It’s normal to have a mix of intrinsic and extrinsic motivations for a particular task.⁷ For example, a student who likes science might work hard in their biology class both out of a desire to earn a good grade and for the enjoyment of learning. I enjoy my job, and I also like that I earn a good living doing it.

If you incorporate this kind of nuance into your modeling, it takes on a new power. It makes you seem human, making whatever you choose seem more realistic. And it normalizes the fact that life is complicated. We often have more than one desire. Sometimes those desires overlap, and sometimes they’re in conflict.

No one does everything for purely intrinsic reasons, and that’s fine. Your goal shouldn’t be to shun or eliminate extrinsic motivation entirely, but to shift along the spectrum toward greater intrinsic motivation.

Any shift of this kind takes time, so like a good gardener, be patient. Not every seed will sprout. Not every plant will thrive. But if you keep tending the soil, some will eventually produce fruit. And it will be worth the wait.

¹ Segar, Michelle, Ph.D. No Sweat: How the Simple Science of Motivation Can Bring You a Lifetime of Fitness. Amacom, 2015. Video Summary.

² Cherry, Kendra, MS Ed. “Intrinsic Motivation vs. Extrinsic Motivation: What’s the Difference?” Very Well Mind. December 13, 2023.

³ Deci, Edward L. Why We Do What We Do: Understanding Self-Motivation. Penguin, 1995. Video Summary.

⁴ Langer, Ellen. Mindfulness: 25th Anniversary Edition. DA Capo, 2014. Video Summary.

⁵ Warneken F, Tomasello M. Extrinsic rewards undermine altruistic tendencies in 20-month-olds. Dev Psychol. 2008;44(6):1785-8. doi:10.1037/a0013860.

⁶ Sharot, Tali. The Influential Mind: What the Brain Reveals About Our Power to Change Others. Picador, 2018.

⁷ Indeed Editorial Team. “Intrinsic vs. Extrinsic Motivation.” February 11, 2021.

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The post How to Grow Your Child’s Intrinsic Motivation appeared first on Northwest Educational Services.