What Kids Know About Motivation (And We Don’t): Betsy Blackard (Transcript)

And you would never mistake backing up like that for backing away from a challenge, right? Thank you, Mina.

How Children Approach Life’s Challenges

Okay. Well, I’m here to suggest that children’s motivation works the same way, that children actually approach all of life’s challenges the way Mina approached crossing the stream. The bigger the challenge, the further they need to back up to make sure their running leap is a success.

Let me share an example. One summer, I was at the community pool, and I saw a little girl about six or seven standing at the top of a water slide, and she was frozen in place. Everything in her body language indicated fear and regret. She finally turned around and walked back down the stairs.

Now, because I know about the running leap, this is when I got really interested. And do you know what she did? She walked right over to a toddler splash pad and found a baby slide, and this thing barely came up to her waist, but she was going down it feet first and then head first and then backwards. She’s having a blast.

I want you to think for a second about what you might say to a child in a situation like this. You might feel like you need to jump in there and motivate that little girl to push through her fears so she can learn that she can do hard things. That’s definitely what her mom thought. She was over there saying things like, “Oh, you don’t want to play on this. It’s for babies. Come on. Let’s go back to the big slide. I know you can do it.” She really wanted her daughter to have that win.

Building Confidence Through Smaller Challenges

However, this baby slide business wasn’t just for fun. The little girl was mastering a smaller challenge first to build her confidence, and she knew exactly how many steps she needed to take to get that running leap toward the big slide. So she quietly ignored her mom and continued to show that baby slide who was boss. And before long, she made her way back over to the big slide and slid right into the deep end all on her own.

Now, if you didn’t know about the running leap, you might think that the only reason she ever went back to that big slide was because of her mom’s persuading. But as a caregiver, this is an exhausting belief. What a massive burden to have to constantly be the child’s motivation.

Luckily, once you know about the running leap, you can sit back and look for all the ways their motivation is already there. Like with this little girl, the whole time she was on the baby slide, she was stealing glances over at that big slide. Her inner motivation was right there in plain sight if you just knew how to look for it.

So whenever it looks like a child is backing away from a challenge, see if you can figure out how they’re actually backing up to take a running leap.

Not only will this help with your fear that they’re turning into some kind of anxiety-ridden, responsibility-dodging slacker, it will also help you trust their process so that you can let go and stay curious. And then you really can do nothing and feel great about it.

I promise, as much as it may sometimes seem like it, kids aren’t dumb. They won’t jump if they think they’re going to land right in the middle of the street. Instead, they back up by seeking experiences that bolster their confidence and their self-trust. And it’s not just that they’re afraid of failure, they’re actually programmed to succeed with inborn strategies, like the running leap. All we have to do is stay out of their way.

Wow! Moments Are Happening All the Time

Moments like this are happening all the time. Every day, kids are backing up to take running leaps, big and small. Each one is an opportunity for us to help them recognize what they’re up to, which can turn their self-doubt into self-trust and give them a tool for future challenges.

Like this one time, I was helping a second grader with her math homework. It should have been relatively simple, a dozen or so problems if she could join her friends on the playground. However, getting her to do even one problem was like hauling teeth. After trying to get her to focus for the millionth time, she turned to me with this wild look in her eyes and said, “Oh no, I’m going to pop!” She continued, “I’m going to pop, it’s going to happen, pop!” And with that, she frog leapt out of her seat, landed on the floor, and crawled under the table.

Now, I have to tell you, knowing about the running leap comes in so handy for moments like this. Clearly, this math homework was really challenging for her. Maybe struggling with each problem was making her feel dumb. And when you feel dumb, you don’t exactly feel ready to tackle math homework, right? So she instinctively knew that she needed a confidence boost, stat. Maybe this little game of hers was helping her feel like a creative, spontaneous kid who was choosing not to do math, rather than a dumb kid who was trying her best and struggling. In other words, she was backing up, not backing away.

Supporting Backward Steps

So rather than trip her up by trying to force her to sit and focus, I looked for how I could support her backward steps. I said, “I have an idea, how about after each problem, you pop once, and then you can come back and we’ll do the next problem.” She liked that idea. She climbed right back into her seat, and together we did all of problem number three. And then she popped out of her seat, crawled under the tables, and stayed there.

I know. I know. But this is what’s so great about the running leap. Instead of getting sucked into a power struggle, I just took it as a sign that she needed to back up even further between each problem. One pop wasn’t enough. So I followed her leap, and together we developed a routine where she was doing one full lap of frog leaps around the table between each problem. And sure, that took a little while, but honestly, not as long as it would have taken if I had tried to force her to sit and focus. Plus, this way, all I had to do was nothing. I knew she wanted this math homework to be over just as badly as I did. So it was easy to trust in her motivation and patiently wait for her to come back around between each problem, which she always did. No more power struggle.

Fostering Intrinsic Motivation

Some of you might worry that if you give a kid an inch, they’ll take a mile, that if you let them back up as far as they need, they may never actually take that running leap. However, this logic makes a fundamental assumption that without our intervention, children would automatically give up, experience failure, that we have to be their motivation. But what if instead we focus on fostering their intrinsic motivation? If a kid wants something, they’ll never give up, no matter how long it takes. Once they feel ready, they will always come back.

So this little girl might not have wanted to do math, but she definitely wanted to go play. And she probably had a bigger goal of doing well in school. So that means she didn’t need me to be her motivation, forcing her to stay seated. What she needed was to take some confidence-boosting backward steps. And what actually happens when you try to force a kid to take a leap they don’t feel ready for?

It backfires. At best, you get resentful obedience. But at worst, they might feel irresponsible, incompetent, lazy, all these things that really decrease their confidence. And the lower their confidence, the wider that string is going to look, the further they’re going to have to back up before they take that running leap. So you can see how the more we disrupt their backing up process, the more backward steps they’ll make it take.

Helping Kids Recognize Their Strategy

Instead, we can help them recognize when they’re using the running leap and maximize the benefits. Like with this little girl, once she was done with her homework, I made sure to acknowledge her process so she could trust herself more in the future. I said, “You found a way to get your homework done. You knew just what you needed to do. And now you can go play.” And off she skipped, a creative kid who can do math with the right strategy.

And from then on, I got a lot less resistance at homework time. She knew I would help her play to her strengths, which meant her confidence grew and she needed a lot less pausing, a virtuous cycle. Showing kids how their backing up strategy works increases their confidence and gives them a tool for future challenges.

And you can do it using pretty much the same language that I used with this little girl. Just describe what they did. Like imagine if the mom at the swimming pool had said to her daughter, “You wanted to get on the big slide and you knew just what you needed to get there. You went down the little slide first to build your confidence. And it worked.” With acknowledgments like this, you can help kids trust themselves and teach them to procrastinate purposefully in the future.

My Own Running Leap Story

My parents did this for me growing up, so I was able to use the running leap with one of the biggest challenges of my life, getting a PhD. After college, I was burnt out. I knew I wanted to do something meaningful with my one precious life. I wanted to be a contribution to the world. But after 16 years of formal education, I just did not have the energy. So I skipped off to Florida to become a beach bum.

While all my friends were starting on their careers, I was rediscovering reading for pleasure with my toes in the sand. My parents were a little anxious, but they reminded themselves of the running leap and tried to avoid applying too much pressure. And one day, after six sun-kissed months of working with children, a thought struck me out of the blue. “I want a PhD in child development.” And because I knew about the running leap, I knew I would get one, no matter how hard it was.

My dissertation defense was one of the proudest moments of my life. And I’ve got to say, it’s a good thing I knew about the running leap because, wow, is grad school full of challenges.

What You Can Do

So the next time it looks like a child is backing away from a challenge, big or small, just take a deep breath and do nothing. Just look for signs that they’re actually backing up to take that running leap. Then you can trust that they’re already doing exactly what they need to prepare themselves.

If you’d like to do more than nothing, there is something you can do. Ask yourself, “What are they doing? And how is it already working for them?” Instead of pushing or pleading, look for how you can bolster their self-trust to strengthen their confidence-building process. How can you help their backward steps be as strong as possible so their running leap is a soaring success?

Thank you.

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