Motivating Your Struggling Learner
Homeschooling your gifted kiddo was supposed to be a breeze, right? After all, they’re super smart, driven, and independent… right?
Well, maybe not.
Gifted kiddos are just as different from each other as they are from neurotypical kids, and they’re often 2e, or twice-exceptional, too. 2e kiddos are hard to tease out because their struggles can mask their strengths, and their strengths can mask their struggles.
Getting to Know Your Individual Learners
One way to help struggling learners is to help them understand and explore their own personal strengths and weaknesses. Kids who struggle are often very aware of where they fall behind and feel like failures. Helping them harness their own strengths and putting them to use in learning can provide a lot of positive reinforcement.
When we encourage our children to have a growth mindset and set goals, they can take ownership of what they want to accomplish and begin to learn practical strategies that support their own specific needs. As our kids begin to meet their own personal goals, not only do they build intrinsic motivation, but it provides them with automatic positive feedback about the different strategies they’ve chosen to utilize.
Customizing the Learning Environment
Sometimes struggling kids are overwhelmed by distractions and need a good place to work that isn’t noisy or cluttered. Other times being right in the hub of activity or right next to you as they work can help students stay focused and motivated.
There are so many different external factors that can impact motivation or distractibility, so often, the best way to find the right fit for your student is to try different options until you find one that is a really good fit.
An even better approach is to involve your kids in the process of experimentation, trial, and error so that they learn how to test different practical strategies for themselves to find the methods that are most helpful for them.
The Raising Lifelong Learners Podcast Episode #194 – Motivating Your Struggling Learner
In today’s podcast episode, I’ll walk you through several factors that might contribute to your child’s lack of motivation (or apparent lack of motivation), what you can do to identify the obstacles, and how you can build a supportive environment that utilizes your student’s strengths and interests to build internal motivation!
Links And Resources From Today’s Show:
- SPONSOR: CTC Math
- The Learner’s Lab
- The Unique Challenges of Homeschooling Gifted Kids
- Motivating Your High Schooler: My Best Homeschool Tips
- Tips for Motivating Gifted Kids
- Learning Strategies for Reluctant Gifted Children
- Strategies for Teaching Gifted Children at Home
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