Inspiring a child to learn

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DEAR DR. FOURNIER: My son is a struggling learner who is experiencing difficulties in school. I am a teacher who has raised two other very bright children, but my youngest son has proved to be my greatest challenge. He is completely unmotivated to learn, rarely ever talking in school. To make the situation even more confounding, he is a "big talker" at home with a vocabulary beyond his years. My son says that the students don't talk about anything that interests him. His teachers say, and he confirms, that he would rather daydream. I think my son lacks motivation -- how can I inspire him to learn?ASSESSMENT: As a parent dealing with an "unmotivated" child, you must believe there are many causes for this attitude. Motivation is not a switch that is magically turned on. Motivation comes from inspiration in a vision of tomorrow and a belief that the journey is possible and full of opportunity. With this unconditional hope, the heart invests in work and passion, jumping seemingly impossible hurdles.The good news is that your son's lackluster performance thus far may have nothing to do with his abilities. If he is a "big talker" at home and a daydreamer, he may be highly intelligent and searching for ways to express himself. Your son may have the ability for success, but he could be behind in school.Without a firm foundation in the skills and concepts taught in past grades, he cannot build on these fundamentals to learn more complex material. When this situation is combined with the fact that his mother is a teacher and his older siblings are successful students, your son could feel inadequate and guilty for his difficulties in school.I encountered this same situation while working with a young man whose siblings were fantastic students. The older siblings excelled at school and worked hard to maintain their scholarships. But this young man didn't have a very good academic foundation, and school soon became torture. He quickly felt that it was easier to be labeled "unmotivated" and "lazy" than for his teachers and family to think that he was not intelligent enough to succeed.WHAT TO DO: An educational assessment found the gaps in this child's learning. Were those gaps insurmountable? Absolutely not. Once this student realized he could catch up to fill in the gaps where he didn't have a strong background, he was able to establish a vision of his own. After teaching this student how to learn, his fear turned to desire, motivating him to reach for his dreams. The next letter from his Mom read:"My son has started at his new school ... to our surprise, he took to the program like a duck to water. He has created his own homework schedule and sticks to it. He even reminds me he has to read. All he needed were the strategies to know how to read so that he came away thinking without worrying about remembering. His confidence is up and he has even contemplated running for class president.""Lack of motivation" is such an easy label when we see children saying no to the development of their future. Yet the label is not a diagnosis -- it is denigration. If we see a child who lacks motivation, we must dig deeper to uncover the true problem. We will often find a scarred child -- neglected, confused or left behind in school -- who is searching for a way out. If we find the cause of this pain, the solution is never too far away, but questionable labels can keep us from discovering the remedy.(Write Dr. Yvonne Fournier, Fournier Learning Strategies Inc., 5900 Poplar, Memphis, Tenn. 38119. E-mail her at drfournier(at)hfhw.net.)