Every parent is sure their toddler is prepared to be a top litigator. It can feel near impossible to get that tiny person to comply with a range of requests: putting on pants, for example, is something you never knew you’d enter into complex negotiations over before you became a parent. Getting one’s child to listen, stop, do is usually how I can describe the wish lists of the parents I work with. As children grow, this challenge remains, and most teenagers end up getting paid to “do” to reduce family conflict. 

Why does it seem a very young child is always doing and can’t be convinced to do something else entirely, even with the promise of receiving her weight in cookies, and a teenager, meanwhile, does very little at all, unless you punish or pay? The answer is that there is a developmental shift in how children respond to intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation across childhood.

Young children are driven while older children need motivation. Drive is another word for intrinsic motivation, while we have come to think of motivation as largely extrinsic. To be moved to act intrinsically, from the inside, is a matter of your heartsong: the things you truly care about and value. To be moved to act extrinsically, from the outside, is a matter of short-term rewards or the avoidance of discomfort. Intrinsic motivation has its own well of persistence, while extrinsic motivation has to be dosed over and over and still, it burns out eventually. This is why most new year’s resolutions fail. Your heart doesn’t value thinness, but you get a little reward when you see the scale tip down or your pants loosen a touch. Soon, though, the rewards are fewer and farther between, and you can’t fight your heart anymore—it wants to enjoy sweet things and laugh over a big dinner with family and friends.

Very young children are motivated intrinsically, and they are less responsive to extrinsic motivators. Said differently—they do what they want, usually with great enthusiasm, and the price has to be very right to deter them. Meanwhile, many parents view their older kids as slackers who need rewards and punishments persistently to complete the things that matter. Older kids seem to lose their own intrinsic motivation over time, especially in school, but they respond faster than do younger kids to extrinsic factors like grades, adult approval, or threat of punishment. 

There are a lot of hypotheses and perspectives among researchers about this developmental phenomenon (see this article from Harvard University or Institute of Education Services if you’re curious to read deeper). Perhaps there’s something organic about this, and this is just how kids are. Perhaps, though, we socialize them to be this way. We spend a lot of time as parents teaching kids to ignore what drives them. We imagine they are mostly behaving primitively, and it’s our job to tell them what to do. We aren’t very curious, nor does it always seem easy to make the space to wonder about who they are. There’s so much pressure all around us to get our kids to focus on external factors as a guide for how they make choices. 

Starting in early childhood, we can help children harness and cultivate their heartsong so, one day, motivation comes from the inside. To do this, we must be curious, observant, and, most of all, speak out loud about our own values. We brush our teeth, for example, because we care about strong teeth for life. The more you weave these convos about your own heartsongs, the more you offer your children a chance to think about theirs.

This month, you will no doubt be thinking about your New Year’s resolutions. Many people make resolutions based on external values they wish to conform to, and not from a place of intrinsic motivation. Those resolutions always fail—at some point you are going to lose the will to be an arbitrary body weight without a flow of extrinsic validation to keep you going. However, make a resolution that you are truly driven to commit to, regardless of how you are rewarded, and you will find success. 

Do you know your heartsong?

Whether you have a good idea, or don’t even know where to begin, finding your own heartsong can help you better see and nurture your kids’ heartsongs in action. 

Sign up for our free 5-Day Finding Your Heartsong Challenge and receive daily emails packed with science-backed knowledge, resources, and prompts to help you define what you value the most.

Dr. Erika Bocknek, founder of Convo, is a former university professor, family therapist, and mom of 3. She has spent 20 years cultivating expertise in the science of parenting, child development, and couple and family therapy. A well-regarded expert and a superfan of the power of nurturing families for healthy development, Dr. Erika is passionate about bringing science to children and families’ everyday lives.