Our Town: A cure for laziness in kids

Dr Tom Ferraro
Laziness is being trapped in a sand bunker and it will surely ruin your dreams if you don't have a way out

Most of my patients are elite or professional athletes whose biggest issues usually include workaholism, burnout and overuse injuries. But that doesn’t mean that most Americans share this problem. In fact, a far more common problem falls into the category of under achievement, procrastination, more commonly known as laziness.

Laziness comes in many forms. For kids it presents as video game obsessions. And it’s easy to understand why laziness is the most popular game in town. After all TV is way more fun than doing homework.

Parents are rightfully concerned when they see their child mesmerized by a video game for hours on end, thereby neglecting their homework or chores. Here is the unhappy formula that plays out. These kinds of time-killing obsessions inevitably lead to bad grades, which lead to shame, which leads to lowered self-esteem. Lowered self-esteem means low confidence, which produces social anxiety and eventually it all leads to fewer college options. The child gradually gets left in the dust by more disciplined and ambitious peers and voila they arrive into the lower classes where they will spend life enviously looking through the fence at the rich people who seem to being having way more fun.

Over the years as a psychoanalyst I have worked with many successful people. I have learned that success has little to do with special talent and far more to do with effort and hard work performed on a daily basis.

So exactly how does a worried parent address the issue of a child who is reluctant to work? Let me immediately inform you that talking is useless. The child will always have clever excuses and particularly good reasons for being lazy. They will say things like “school doesn’t matter, I have too much work, I did my homework already” or everyone’s favorite… “the dog ate my homework.”

Let me explain a simple, tried and true method to instill motivation in the child. I learned this technique way back in graduate school when I was a hardworking student at SUNY Stony Brook. It is called Response Cost and it works like this.

You first must determine what kind of leverage you have over the child. What is it that he or she loves to do and is unwilling to do without? Often it is their smart phone, computer or video game time. You then have a brief conversation with the child to instill some insight about the wisdom and usefulness of hard work. You might want to use the famous Aesop’s fable of “The Grasshopper and the Ant” showing how the ant worked all summer as the grasshopper fiddled his summer away. When winter came, the ant survived with ease, thanks to being prepared with a big storehouse of food, but the poor grasshopper starved to death, having squandered his summer without any thought of the future. However, this fable to “work hard because it’s good for you” will do little good. Kids do not really listen to the parent anyway.

Kids are practical and they do respond to bargains or deals. You provide them with a choice which they make on their own. As an example, if you want your young one to become more focused and disciplined regarding school work, the deal you present is they can choose to do an hour of homework and will have all the video game time their sweet little heart’s desire. But if they choose not to do the allotted amount of homework, then they incur a penalty of no video games, no computers and no smart phones for the remainder of the day. A simple enough bargain and relatively easy to monitor. All the child has to do is complete the hour of homework, show you the completed work and voila it’s game time.

But if they do not show you the completed work, then: “Sorry, my child, no game time today. It was all your choice, Honey. Remember?” The only real discussion takes place at the very beginning of the deal. This contract must be performed for the entire school year. And you might want to shift the task to home chores when school is out in the summer.

You need to be able to monitor the work daily and you need to have control of the smart phone stuff. Over time you will see the grades rise, pride mount and the future is insured. This is called Response Cost and it’s a technique that works well with adults who are trying to lose weight. They give up sweets for the day or else pay the spouse $20. The contract is set for one year. This technique works very well.

Response Cost is a useful strategy because it transcends problematic notions like will power. The formula is simple. For the kid it means do my homework in order to play my games. Not doing my homework means no game time for the day.

This may be the most important deal kids ever make because it’s a deal that develops discipline, pride and a better future. Who could ask for anything more?

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