School Age Children and Motivation

When children become school aged motivation becomes a more self-centered activity and is more individually tailored. Achievement motivation in a school aged child is more related to actually achieving a task. School aged children's motivation may only be seen in one aspect of their life such as achieving their baseball goals but not performing well at school.

Parenting practices influence achievement motivation. If a parent's expectations are unreasonable (too high or low) it affects children's motivation. For example, if a parent expects a child to do the dishes by themselves at age five without an older sibling  or parent helping them, this is an unreasonable expectation. It will affect a child's motivation because it will cause them to think they can't do anything much less right. Low motivation can be caused by expectations that are too easy or too high. Both cause a child to take a why try attitude. Parents whose expectations are developmentally appropriate tend to have high motivation to accomplish a task. Children who show high achievement usually come from homes that include developmentally appropriate timing of achieving expectations. They also come from homes where parents have high confidence in their children's abilities, a supportive family environment and high motivated role models. School aged children who have high expectations of themselves tend to stay with a task longer and end up performing better on tasks than children who have low expectations.

Children who are school aged link self-efficacy to the choice of tasks, effort and persistence and achievement in their choice of task. Children's interpretation of their abilities tends to predict their achievement rather than their interpretation of what others believe their abilities are. School aged children's conceptions about their capabilities are based on whether the ability is considered stable over time. School aged children with high self-efficacy set and embrace challenging goals, use appropriate strategies to achieve them, try hard, persist with difficult tasks and seek help when necessary.Children with low self-efficacy tend to be frustrated and depressed which makes the idea of success more intangible. When a child has low self-efficacy parents, siblings, friends, teachers etc need to help.

These are some of the ways and reasons it is important to encourage children, build a healthy self-esteem and be supportive of and to children.