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Motivated to Learn

By Cheri Fuller

“A good mother is somebody who doesn’t yell at you for getting a bad grade. She understands, because maybe she got a bad one sometime too.”
—Roberta, age 8

A friend’s daughter had been told repeatedly at school has smart she was as part of the gifted & talented program at school, but her parents were seeing her efforts diminish. If projects and assignments didn’t come easy, she was easily discouraged and tended to give up. After all, if she was so smart, things shouldn’t be hard! But for every child, there’s going to be some aspect of school or some class or project that is challenging. How can we help them to persevere and grow in their abilities at school and home?

In my book The Mom You’re Meant to Be: Loving Your Kids While Leaning on God I share that we all know that encouraging our kids and telling them what a good job they are doing on schoolwork or sports is important, but there’s very interesting research that shows that often we praise our kids in a way that backfires. Let me explain.

A Columbia University research project studied over 400 fifth graders to discover what worked best with a series of math tests: praising kids for intelligence (Wow, that’s a high score. You are really smart at this!) or effort (You got ten right. You must have worked really hard to get that high score!).

Guess which kids were boosted in their motivation? Which kind of praise worked better?

“Too often parents get extremely caught up in the grades, and then they say to their child, ‘Why doesn’t this motivate you?’ What is motivating is the whole process of learning and the excitement and challenge of it.”
—Dr. David Elkind

(Use only with permission of author.)

© Cheri Fuller, 2003-
Cheri Fuller is an international speaker and award-winning author of forty two books including her newest, Mother-Daughter Duet: Getting to the Relationship You Want With Your Adult Daughter, The One Year Women’s Friendship Devotional. She has also authored a number of books for moms like: The Mom You’re Meant to Be, The One Year Women’s Friendship Devotional, the bestselling When Mothers Pray, A Busy Woman’s Guide to Prayer, Connect With Your Grandkids, as well as The One Year Book of Praying Through the Bible. Her books have been translated into many languages and her magazine articles and speaking ministry provide encouragement to moms throughout the U.S. and overseas.

A former Oklahoma Mother of the Year, Cheri has been a frequent guest on “Focus on the Family” and other national radio and TV programs. Her articles on prayer, family, marriage, and children have appeared in Focus on the Family, Family Circle, ParentLife, Guideposts, Today’s Christian Woman, Better Homes & Gardens, and other publications.

Cheri’s passion is encouraging women, mentoring moms, building families, and inspiring and equipping people to connect with God in their busy life so they can impact their kids and their world through prayer. Her ministry and course called “Parenting From Behind Bars” and gives hope and purpose to mothers in prison. She and her husband Holmes have three grown children, six lively grandchildren and live in Edmond, Oklahoma.
Her website, www.cherifuller.com includes a blog, articles, free Bible studies, encouragement, and more.
Search Amazon.com for more books by Cheri Fuller

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Motivated to Learn