I'm torn. My past is littered with memories of battles over my right to piss years of my life away doing any damned thing I chose. Or, more pertinently, nothing of consequence. A baseline requirement of sitting any exam was to avoid pain, leading to months of procrastination until the whites of the examiner's eyes finally provoked blind panic.

So, in short, I can't motivate myself. So how on EARTH can I motivate my son? (I think I mean by that, 'help him overcome the barriers that inhibit motivation'). And doesn't he have the same rights I fought so hard to protect?

zero thread.

Cold hard cash.

How old is he?

Was your dad motivated? When we've had kids is when we really start turning into our parents. I think more about following my dad's example now I'm a parent than I ever did previously. Part of the answer is of course exhibiting some motivation yourself and setting that example for your son. But it's very possible it won't sink in until later in his life.

Alternately, you could let yourself really go, and then your son might use you as an example of what not to become. That seems to have motivated some people through the ages.

What hobbes said.

Cash certainly doesn't work with children of YMG's age (10). The trouble with money for kids that age is that it really is a burden, not a liberation. Money only really starts acquiring value from about age 13-14 in my experience.

As for how to motivate kids, fuck knows. YMG generally can't even be motivated to do the things he likes, let alone onerous duties such as putting on shoes and socks in the morning.

It's doing my head in.

Have you tried taking him to school without shoes and socks?

Believe ot or not I have tried it. I assumed that after about 10 paces he'd realise the merits of footwear. His stubbornness lasted up to the point where we were about to start meeting other parents, with all the calls to social services that entails. So I just told him there and then that if he didn't put on socks & shoes immediately then I'd give the playstation to the charity shop.

Sorry, I know that it must be incredibly frustrating, but I can't help but admire the lad for that.

Does anyone really know a surefire way to keep kids motivated? M'lovely daughter's 9 and the things she's desperate to do one week are the things wild horses couldn't drag her to the next, which makes long-term commitments a nightmare, especially ones like her drama group where it'll be a massive inconvenience for the rest of them if she gives it up on a whim. At least with stuff like karate she can have a few weeks away and practically carry right on where she left off.

I'm sure a big part of the problem is that when it comes to accomplishing things and adding strings to your bow, I'm not much of an example. I have cultivated very few talents over the last 30 years, especially ones I would like my kids to emulate.

An odd one, this.

There have been murmerings of Bored Jr falling behind in his literacy. There are a couple of extenuating circumstances in this but I am constantly surprised by the literacy homework that he comes home with.

Firstly, he has homework at 10. I didn't have homework (or uniform) until I was in the comp. Secondly, the homework seems to have a lot of research projects. Thirdly, he is coming back with spellings that include, for example, "kitchenette". For start, it is way beyond what I was spelling at 10 and, also, there hasn't been a kitchenette anywhere since the 50s.

Broadly, I think that even the average kid is way more advanced than certainly I was at their age. Along with the more difficult spellings, they are all computer-literate, have the smatterings of a second language and are proficient in learning skills rather than the repetition of information that we were forced to.

I realise that I am at Uni but the 20 year olds that I am in class with are astonishingly bright and I am sure that they are far more intelligent that the 20 year olds of my vintage.

I suppose what I am saying is that, although you don't want to encourage complacency, your child is probably far more motivated than earlier generations with the way education is going.

If you are talking about motivation at home, it is a combination of the carrot of pocket money and the stick of access to games consoles being revoked.

I realise that I am at Uni but the 20 year olds that I am in class with are astonishingly bright and I am sure that they are far more intelligent that the 20 year olds of my vintage.

Hmm. I would think that this would depend heavily on which school it was? I run into some awfully dumb 20 year olds, proudly ignorant and slow of wit...I tend to think the 'smart kids' are significantly less ignorant/more knowledgeable than before, but also more cynical and morally confused; while the less smart kids are more addled than, or as addled as, ever. But the kind of intelligence that only age can bring is still very operative for all types smart and dumb.

What Bruno just said Re: Bored's point. When I was at uni I couldn't believe how (sometimes seemingly wilfully) stupid some of my colleagues there were. Halfway through the first year some of them were still complaining that teacher didn't tell them enough and they were having to find out too much stuff for themselves, as if that weren't the entire fucking point of university as opposed to sixth form / college.

As for the question posed by the thread title, I haven't a clue, and it's going to be at least five years before I have to even start considering such things, if ever...

My boy is 16. He's six foot 2 with a voice that would've made Barry White let a little bit of wee out. So I have to stop myself expecting him to behave like the man he outwardly seems to be.

Money - there's a problem. His grandmother foists great wads of cash onto him when I'm not around, so his perception is that money grows on trees. His grandmother freely admits "I can't help doing it". Not good.

Was my dad motivated? He died when I was 10 (the same age my son was when he and his mother split up) so there's a certain "absent dad" pattern we've got going on.

This morning Master HORN was due to go flying with his ATC squadron. At 9am I thought "he's leaving it late" so went into his room to find that the boy who scrambles out of the house and chases the schoolbus down the road most days had already breakfasted and left.

Plainly his demotivation is linked to activities he doesn't recognise as immediately important to him. I see that as reasonable. I just wish he'd recognise some things that are important to the people around him and things that will imminently become important to him. It would make life so much easier if he looked ahead even a little bit.

Even trying to articulate this I feel I sound like a busybody parent. Perhaps I'm worrying over nothing. I just have this impulse to help him avoid the pain and failures I experienced, but perhaps that's a frustration all parents bear.

Bruno and Sam, I am not sure how old you are but I am talking about kids from 25 years ago when I am comparing so maybe you are younger and part of the smarter generation.

Bored: yes, I am of the younger, 'smarter' generation you speak of, that was why I made that post - to say that I too had to put up with thick twats at uni (I'm 25, started uni aged 19 in 2003 and graduated in 2006).

The new board's done away with the year in the date of birth field of the profile, for some reason. It's also switched all the dates to American (month/day rather than day/month), not that you'd know that to look at my own.

Possibly because all the admins are really old.

Sam, I now have you as some sort of super intelligent giant amongst mere genii and am worried what you would think about my meagre academic exploits.

I just think that kids are really smart, contrary to all this dumbing down talk that is going on. They understand Powerpoint and the Digital switch over and everything

That's true but I don't think it makes us inherently more clever. It's just the circumstances we've grown up in. My parents understand pre-decimal currency, as well as being able to comprehend more fully than me perhaps just how lucky I am to be able to be sitting here typing this to you (and a global audience of perhaps tens of others) on my laptop.

And I know that in two or three decades' time I'll be looking at teenagers and young adults who've grown up with technological stuff that hasn't even entered any of our heads yet, and wondering how they find their way around it all so easily.

You're right about my super-intelligence though, obviously.

Intelligence, smarts — whatever you want call them are quite a different issue from motivation. My kid's 26, articulate, intelligent, great communication skills, a good long-term relationship with a great girl, and so on but he hasn't had a job that's lasted more than a few months, or that required more brains cells than your average chimpanzee possesses, in his life.

Do I worry, yes I do. Not because of the things he hasn't done — I didn't have a decent career type job until I was almost 30 either. I worry because it causes him a lot of stress and occasionally full on depression, more particularly he seems totally unable to generate the desire to change this pattern. And, among men of his age, he's not alone.

I've got some of that too AdC. I can hold down jobs but I'm buggered if I could find one that had the faintest thing to do with my degree after leaving uni, and I wouldn't want to make a career out of the day job I'm in now either. Of course I'm getting round it by going to Argentina for what will probably turn out to be a few years or more, but if that doesn't go well / if it does go well but when I one day come home, I haven't the faintest idea what I'll do.

In my case it perhaps isn't so much a lack of motivation as it is a desire to find a way of living off stuff I like doing as opposed to settling into something more conventional / worthwhile / soul-destroying / well-trodden. But I completely get your son's feelings because I was terrified of both going to Argentina, and calling it off and staying in England, right up to a couple of days after I booked my tickets.

I can't get motivated to sort stuff out like a pension, even though I know I should do, which is a thought I'm occasionally plagued by because even if I could, I won't be earning anything like enough whilst I'm in Argentina to make (British) National Insurance contributions, for instance.

But going back to the difficulty in deciding what to do, it's a peculiar cycle. Drawing on my own thoughts and impressions all the way through my education (and over the last 3 1/2 years during which I've been doing two jobs for which I didn't need A-Levels, let alone a good degree), in a way the same greater 'modern world savvy', let's call it, that I've been discussing with Bored does seem to cause this to some extent. It's as if an awareness of just how many options we've got makes it harder to choose. In contrast to my mum who left college with one O-Level and went straight into nursing college, or my dad who didn't even go to college and started working for a bank aged 16 where he's been his entire life since, up to a couple of years ago when he got signed off with stress due to their treating him like shit in spite of his hard work for them over the previous four decades. My grandad (dad's dad) signed up for the Royal Navy shortly after the Second World War started, and transferred to the Merchant Navy after it. He's been all over the planet and seen all manner of things, and he didn't really see it as much of a choice at the time he was entering into it all. The only bad thing he's got from it is chronic bronchitis caused by smoking something like 120 cigarettes a day for five years of his life when he was fit and healthy. And he has an inhaler but even with his condition, he's a hell of a lot better off physically than any 90-year-old should be.

Greater choice = greater anxiety about making the right choice, I think.

None of this answers the OP. Sorry.