Wendy S. Grolnick, Ph.D. [00:00:03]: We need to take people's perspectives and understand what is getting in the way of their feeling motivated to do something and setting up those conditions that sort of work those barriers. And if we don't do that, you know, we get short term fixes but not long term motivation.

Penny Williams [00:00:24]: Welcome to the Beautifully Complex podcast where I share insights and strategies on parenting neurodivergent kids straight from the trenches. I'm your host, Penny Williams. I'm a parenting coach, author, and mindset mama, honored to guide you on the journey of raising your atypical kid. Let's get started.

Penny Williams [00:00:47]: Welcome back to Beautifully Complex, everyone. I'm excited to have with me for this episode in this conversation, doctor Wendy Grolnick, and we're gonna talk about motivation, and specifically, a lot of the myths that we have and believe about motivation that society, I think, has perpetuated for a long time. And doctor Grolnick here is here to bust some of those myths for us and help us to really tap into what actually helps our kids with motivation. I'm so excited. Doctor Grolnick, will you start though by just letting everybody know who you are and what you do?

Wendy S. Grolnick, Ph.D. [00:01:27]: Sure. Thank you so much for having me today for this interesting conversation. I'm a professor of psychology at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts. I've been studying motivation for, oh my gosh, almost 40 years. I teach courses in motivation, and I do research on parenting and children's motivation. So really happy to be here.

Penny Williams [00:01:50]: Yeah. Do you wanna start by kind of defining what motivation is? I think that we have assumptions and we have these stereotypes, but I wanna really drill down to what is at the core of motivation.

Wendy S. Grolnick, Ph.D. [00:02:05]: Yeah. Absolutely. So motivation is kind of the energy that we bring to things. It's the energy and where we direct it. And it's experienced as kind of this, like, wanting or urge or something like that.

Penny Williams [00:02:20]: Right. Right.

Wendy S. Grolnick, Ph.D. [00:02:20]: But really importantly, motivation and motives are internal experiences. And so when we think about, you know, motivating people, motivating kids, we really can't motivate people. We can get people to do things. We can persuade and coerce. We can we can pay people, get them to do things, but motivation is an internal experience. And so we can't really motivate people. We can set the conditions under which they're most likely to be motivated, but we can actually get in there and and make that happen. People make that happen for themselves.

Penny Williams [00:02:58]: Right. Right. Yeah. And teaching that, I think, is something we don't do very often. We don't teach, you know, when something is important, here are some strategies that you might use to help you get it done. Right? And what you're talking about too reminds me of creating opportunities for motivation. We talk a lot here on Beautifully Complex about creating opportunities for success, and I think creating opportunities for motivation falls into that as well. Would you agree?

Wendy S. Grolnick, Ph.D. [00:03:28]: Oh, I love that. Absolutely. And, you know, just to expand upon that, what opportunities we wanna create need to match what people are doing when they're motivated or what they're what what's underlying that. And we actually talk about 3 needs that underlie motivation, A need to feel autonomous or, like, we're kinda behind what we do. We just don't do well when we feel pushed or coerced or feel like we're doing something because we have to.

Penny Williams [00:03:55]: Yeah.

Wendy S. Grolnick, Ph.D. [00:03:55]: A need to feel competent, like, we're effective, and I need to feel connected or related to other people and valued and loved. And when we set these conditions or or I love your word, these opportunities, they're opportunities for people to feel this way and experience this. I love that.

Penny Williams [00:04:13]: Yeah. And I love that connection is part of this because we know from a biological standpoint that connection helps our nervous system to feel settled. It gets our thinking brain fully online and working, and so, again, it's like setting up that ideal opportunity, that ideal environment for success in different modalities. Right? In environment, in biology, in, you know, even, like, self esteem and self confidence emotionally as well. Yes. Absolutely. Yep. Amazing.

Penny Williams [00:04:48]: What would you say is the number one most common misconception or myth about motivation?

Wendy S. Grolnick, Ph.D. [00:04:54]: Yeah. So as we, talked about before, we just wrote a book about 10 myths about motivation that a lot of people have, and the one I feel like is the most important or my favorite in terms of, the importance of busting is this idea that only some people are motivated, that we have people that are motivated people and then we have people that are unmotivated people, and that's just not consistent with science. There's no evidence that that's a trait that people come into the world with or just have. Motivation is very dependent on people's interests, on what domain it is. People are motivated in some domains and not other domains, you know, for school, for sports, for connecting with other people, whatever it is, and very specific to the task that you're doing and very specific to the environment you're in. We can be really motivated in some environments and really unmotivated in other environments. So we really need to bust that myth. When we see people that look like they're not motivated, they're actually not doing the thing we we hope they're doing.

Wendy S. Grolnick, Ph.D. [00:05:56]: They're actually they could be doing something else and be doing it very persistently. Yes. It's video game. Whatever it is that interests them, we make this attribution that it's a quality of a person. And then when we say, oh, this is an unmotivated person, then we treat them like an unmotivated person. We start sort of pushing and pressuring them and putting contingencies and threats on them and then they pull back because we have a need to feel like we're autonomous. We have a need to feel like we're behind our actions and nobody feels good when they feel coerced. So and then we sort of create a self fulfilling prophecy there.

Wendy S. Grolnick, Ph.D. [00:06:31]: So busting that myth and saying instead of looking at someone saying, oh, well, that's not a motivated person. What can I do to light fire onto them? We wanna say, okay. This is a motivated person. They have needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness. What is getting in the way? What need is being forwarded at that moment? And how can I set up an environment to tap into those wonderful motivations that that exist that just aren't manifesting in this situation?

Penny Williams [00:06:58]: Yeah. I wanna unpack the idea of pressure a little bit more because this is something that we talk about a lot in parenting neurodivergent kids. Because what I have found is that pressure is a motivation killer. It will turn off motivation completely. It neutralizes it. And, culturally, we have decided that pressure is how we get people to do things, and it's actually the opposite. Right?

Wendy S. Grolnick, Ph.D. [00:07:29]: Yes. I I just love the way you said that. Absolutely. So right. If we have this need to feel autonomous or to feel choiceful behind what we do, as soon as we get pressured or pushed to do something, we're doing it for that reason and and we have this sense that we're doing it because we have to, because to meet this reward or to meet this contingency or to not lose our privilege or whatever it is. And that pressure can undermine any enjoyment we have of the activity because part of enjoying things is feeling like we're doing because we want to. And then it also keeps people from moving toward a value for whatever it is you're trying to help them do. They will be stuck in that place of doing it for the reward.

Wendy S. Grolnick, Ph.D. [00:08:13]: And and, right, it it it doesn't feel good. And as soon as that pressure goes away, as soon as that deadline or push or contingency goes, well, you're not gonna do that anymore. So I totally agree. And there are better ways to, to help people to be motivated or to set those conditions, we should say, rather than, putting on the pressure.

Penny Williams [00:08:33]: Yeah. We'll talk about setting those conditions in a minute, but I wanna touch on a couple more myths before we do that because I think there are a couple more really that stand out for our parents and families, and one of those is rewards. And so often, especially in the autistic community, with therapies like ABA and the true sense of how they were structured, it was you do this thing, you get this reward, and there's no autonomy. There's no looking at the underlying reasons why that behavior is hard for that individual to be more helpful and make it that individual choice or to even build the skills or whatever is going on there. Can you talk about whether rewards are motivating or not and what we might do differently?

Wendy S. Grolnick, Ph.D. [00:09:22]: Sure. Yeah. Rewards are it's it's it's kind of a nuanced thing in terms of rewards because, I mean, the thing is you can get people to do things with rewards, and so they kinda work in a certain sense. But as we were talking about, they can really zap any kind of intrinsic motivation you have and also keep people from moving toward a value for things so that they regulate their own behavior. And I really agree with you that there's been this idea that for certain neurodiverse populations and the one that we've worked with the most is is kids with ADHD that it's okay for them to not have autonomous motivation to kind of reward them and reward them and and set up these contingencies and that's how we manage we manage. But in our research, we've actually found that having this sense of importance of doing things of of being behind what you do is actually more important for the kids with ADHD because they do get a lot more of this control. So, I think that we all need to feel that we are behind what we do, and we all need reasons for doing it. And we as as you said, we need to take people's perspectives and understand what is getting in the way of their feeling motivated to do something and setting up those conditions that sort of thwart those barriers.

Wendy S. Grolnick, Ph.D. [00:10:46]: And if we don't do that, you know, we get short term fixes, but not long term motivation.

Penny Williams [00:10:53]: Yeah. Yeah. Let's touch on the difference between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation real quick before we move on. To me, it's internal versus external. Do you wanna maybe define them a little bit more for everyone?

Wendy S. Grolnick, Ph.D. [00:11:06]: Sure. Sure. Yeah. There's a lot of, confusion about those terms. So for us, intrinsic motivation is things that we do for the fun and love of doing them themselves. There's no thing we're trying to do. We're just rock climbing and enjoying the moment or in our gardens, you know, just having a sense of pleasure of watching things grow. So the the intrinsic motivation is things we do for the fun and pleasure of the activity itself.

Wendy S. Grolnick, Ph.D. [00:11:35]: And extrinsic motivation is kinda everything else, doing things for some reason outside of the pleasure of the activity itself. And so there's a full range of extrinsic motivations and and extrinsic motivation is not bad in any way. So it can range from, though, doing things because we have to, because of a reward or a contingency or a punishment or a threat, and that feels really control. 2, on the other end, doing things because we want to. We're behind them. We may not think they're fun, but they're valuable to us. We can see that learning how to do that math problem can help us to know whether we can how we can save for our new bike, or we can see that doing this homework is going to help us to understand the things that we do in class. So, extrinsic motivations that are based on a a sense of value or importance are really important because not everything we do, or certainly not everything we ask people to do, is gonna be fun.

Penny Williams [00:12:40]: Right.

Wendy S. Grolnick, Ph.D. [00:12:41]: So we wanna help people move from doing things because they have to, to doing things because they want to, because they see the value or importance even though they may never be fun. And that that's sort of our challenge.

Penny Williams [00:12:52]: Yeah. And I think helping our kids see that value sometimes. Sometimes they need a conversation or a little bit of information, right, to help them make those connections, and so that it's more of a choice for them and less of us making a command.

Wendy S. Grolnick, Ph.D. [00:13:10]: Exactly. They may not automatically know that.

Wendy S. Grolnick, Ph.D. [00:13:13]: And it really starts with taking their perspective and understanding where they're coming from. You know, even if we don't agree with them, if they believe or their experiences that math is useless, then we wanna understand, okay. I get it. You you see math as useless. You think it's a complete waste of time for you to do it. Let's start there. You know? So so, and then moving on to, like you said, a conversation.

Penny Williams [00:13:37]: Yeah. I've had that math conversation with my own kid a 1000000 times. We made it through. He graduated. He did the math enough, but, man, he did not get why he needed to calculate things by hand that we have computers and calculators that will do it for us really quickly. Like, why do I have to do this? And, you know, sometimes I think those connections just don't make sense to some of our kids, and that's okay. Like, we also have to take into account the individual kid that we're working with. Right? They're gonna have different things that make sense to them that create either extrinsic or intrinsic motivation.

Penny Williams [00:14:15]: I think that's really important too. Right? That individualization.

Wendy S. Grolnick, Ph.D. [00:14:18]: Absolutely. There are some things, like you said, I I really agree with you that, you know, you can give them your sense of rationales for why they're doing this and give them the importance, and they will not agree. So what you can do, though, you can still do the best you can to understand their perspective, give them as much choice as possible in doing it, Give them as much say as you can in setting up the parameters around it. So there are things you can do to help people feel more autonomous, you know, just not resorting to, okay. Well, then just just do it. We can still tap into motivation as best we can if we understand those needs.

Penny Williams [00:15:03]: What would you say to a parent who says my kid is not intrinsically motivated? Period. Full stop. My kid does not have intrinsic motivation. Because I hear this sometimes.

Wendy S. Grolnick, Ph.D. [00:15:15]: Yeah. There's nothing that they do that's fun for them, that they do just for the fun and beauty of it. Is that what you're saying?

Penny Williams [00:15:22]: Yeah. I think, you know, when we struggle with our kids with things like homework, for instance, because Oh,

Wendy S. Grolnick, Ph.D. [00:15:27]: I see.

Penny Williams [00:15:28]: This is a battle. Right? And we talk about, okay, well, we have to make connections with strengths or interests or, you know, how do we help them to gain some motivation to do it? And sometimes parents have this belief that and I think this speaks to that first myth that you were talking about as though it's an individual characteristic and some people have it and some don't, but how do you help people understand that and to accept that everybody can have intrinsic motivation?

Wendy S. Grolnick, Ph.D. [00:15:59]: Right. Right. Yeah. I guess the the the message is that, yes, we all have it. We all have a need to feel autonomous, competent, and connected to people. And the the content of what our interests are, you know, disperse from person to person, and perhaps they just haven't found that yet. And what we wanna do is, you know, be patient and look for cues of things that that interest kids, that they talk about, that they do, and capitalize on those sorts of things and have conversations about what they might try. So I wouldn't give up on on what, what those interests are.

Wendy S. Grolnick, Ph.D. [00:16:37]: They're there, but they can be very subtle things. And and we have to just be really open to what those things might be because they're not necessarily things that we think kids should wanna do. They could be something pretty unusual. And so just tapping into that and and, following up on it and and providing those opportunities And and giving the message that, you know, there's so many things we're asking you to do that aren't fun, and, you know, we wanna make sure that you do what's fun for you and connect on that.

Penny Williams [00:17:08]: Mhmm. And find ways to make things fun. I think that's a skill that we need to teach children also, is find ways to make things as fun as possible. Or, you know, I always think about with motivation, the example of doing taxes, because I don't think there's a person on the planet who enjoys doing their taxes. I can't wrap my head around it if they do. Right? But we do things to like, I always have a giant bowl of ice cream after I do my taxes. Like, I do something to acknowledge that I need some injection of something besides just the stress of doing taxes. Right? And so it's a skill that that I think is valuable to be able to do this for yourself.

Penny Williams [00:17:54]: Yeah. To be able to find ways to get through things that maybe aren't preferred because they are important. Right. That's an important skill.

Wendy S. Grolnick, Ph.D. [00:18:02]: Exactly. And parents have a really nice role in that. Again, just starting with acknowledging people's, you know, our kids' feelings about doing certain things and even if we don't agree with it, being there with them with that. And when the kids feel understood in that way, they're just gonna be much more open to what you have to say about why things need to get done or how things need to get done and working together to figure out ways where they can feel the most autonomy as they can.

Penny Williams [00:18:36]: Mhmm. Mhmm. I love that autonomy is such a present part of this conversation about motivation because it's so important too for anxious kids for even building self esteem and confidence and fulfillment. Like, it's really a valuable part of everything that we want for our kids.

Wendy S. Grolnick, Ph.D. [00:18:58]: Exactly. And I think sometimes that word gets used in different ways. Some people use the word autonomy as well. They have to do things on their own. For us, that's independence. Mhmm. And people don't have a need for independence, and independence is a nice thing sometimes. But people have a need for autonomy, which is to feel like they are behind what they do or choiceful and not pushed and, you know so so if we think about it that way, then we're thinking about how can we not leave kids alone to do their things on their own? How can we support their autonomy? Autonomy is a very active thing.

Wendy S. Grolnick, Ph.D. [00:19:34]: Understanding where kids are coming from, giving them choices, giving them reasons and importance for things, and and so very active thing that parents do to help kids feel autonomous. So for me, yes. Competence really important too. Of course, we don't do well when we feel like we're not effective and we don't feel well. We feel like we're not connected. But helping people to feel this sense that they have some choice, it's really crucial motivationally.

Penny Williams [00:20:00]: Mhmm. It feels like the drive piece of motivation or at least part of it. I think it propels us forward. If you do feel like you have choice and you are working towards something that you chose or you want, that, to me, creates that internal drive that helps to push us forward.

Wendy S. Grolnick, Ph.D. [00:20:23]: Exactly. Right.

Penny Williams [00:20:24]: Yeah. Let's talk about some strategies. What do we do? Right? We understand a little bit better motivation now. What can parents do to really be effective when it feels like our kids aren't motivated?

Wendy S. Grolnick, Ph.D. [00:20:40]: So connected to those three needs or three aspects of the environment, three things that we can do, we've been talking about supporting autonomy, taking people's perspectives and empathizing with where they are, giving them some choices about how they do things, working together to problem solve strategies, including the kids' voices and how to go about things. The second thing that we need to do is to provide structure. Structure helps people to feel competent. If we don't know the rules of the game or how to be successful, we're, we're not going to be very motivated. So setting up clear guidelines and expectations, providing feedback on how people are doing, all those things help people to feel competent. So kids, you know, knowing what the expectations are at home about how homework gets done or, when it gets done, what all those things. And then setting up an environment where there's just a whole lot of respect and love for who kids are and what interests them and so forth. Just setting that sense of, I love you no matter what.

Wendy S. Grolnick, Ph.D. [00:21:49]: Yeah. And so these things go together, though. So we wanna set up structure. We want there to be clear expectations and guidelines for homework or chores or whatever it is. But the important thing also is putting those together. So when we do that, we want to enlist kids' opinions and input into that. So, for example, we're in this situation where I'm always bugging you about the homework and getting it started, and I'm sure that doesn't feel good to you. I'm sure it's so annoying to have me, you know, bugging you about that.

Wendy S. Grolnick, Ph.D. [00:22:19]: You know, let's kinda put our heads together to figure out what we can do to set it up so that I don't have to bug you anymore and you get the time to be on your game. And structure is really important, but it has to be conveyed in a way that also feels like it's not imposed upon you and pressure

Wendy S. Grolnick, Ph.D. [00:22:38]: That you're a part of creating that structure. You know, in our lives too as adults, when we're part of creating the structures that are around us, we all have rules and expectations and guidelines. There's a way to do your taxes. But if if we are enlisted in how that gets done, we're just much more likely to experience it as, gee, that's just the way the world is rather than, god, I'm I'm people are pushing me all the time, and I wanna push back and, you know, I'm gonna do the least I can do because it's so pressuring to me. And

Penny Williams [00:23:09]: Especially with teenagers. Because the more we tell them to do something, the less they want to do it. I remember my own son who's neurodivergent. You know, one day, he finally said to me at some point in high school, like, mom, why do you not understand that the more that you pressure me, the less I can do it and the less I want to do it.

Penny Williams [00:23:29]: Wow. I was like Yeah. Like bulb. Right? And it it made an impact because what I was doing was spewing my own stuff on my kid. I am a box checker. I would just wanna get things done and over with. That is not the kid I have. Right? And so for me, I needed him to do it. But what I was doing was actually physiologically making it less able to be done and making him not want to be around me, not want to talk to me, not want to listen.

Penny Williams [00:24:00]: Right? So those are just such important lessons. We have to as as you said earlier, like, we have to be listening to the signals from our kids. What is gonna help them find that motivation? But that pressure piece, yeah, I mean, I talk about it so much now ever since he said that to me several years ago. I just thought, wow. That that was profound. I wish I had known that 10 years earlier. Right? I could have stopped doing that a long time ago, but it really kills motivation, especially, I think, in older kids.

Wendy S. Grolnick, Ph.D. [00:24:31]: Wow. That's really powerful that he said that to you and good for him. And I have a similar story where one of my kids said, who had read my book on pressured parents and said, mom, you're doing exactly what you said to do in your book. Oops. Yeah. But, you know, it is understandable. You know, we want the best for our kids and, you know, we see opportunities for them or we see opportunities going bright for them. And our intentions are so good to make sure that they get everything they can.

Wendy S. Grolnick, Ph.D. [00:25:00]: And there's so much pressure on us as parents, and so it's understandable. We sometimes feel like that pressure kinda it comes from above us, and then we pressure our kids. We feel pressured, and then we pressure our kids. And, it's kinda having this, I talk about it sometimes, but as, like, a kind of faith in our kids and who they are and that they will get there in their way without us pushing it and and knowing that that will backfire. But it's faith that's hard to come by sometimes when we're really worried.

Penny Williams [00:25:31]: Yeah. Yeah. So I think maybe the first step for parents who are listening is to really brainstorm ways that you can help to foster autonomy. I think that's such a permeating skill and sense and feeling for our kids that really changes everything, And there's so many ways that we can weave that into everyday life, so I love that. Before we close, I would love to just ask you, what does the phrase beautifully complex mean to you?

Wendy S. Grolnick, Ph.D. [00:26:02]: Just love that. I love that phrase. The kids are complex. They're individuals, and the diversity in their interest, in the way they do things, and who they are is something we should celebrate and is beautiful, as hard as it can be sometimes. I love your charm and and your goal in working with families.

Penny Williams [00:26:28]: Mhmm. Thank you. Yeah. I love that perspective. For me, it's it's about that it can be hard, but that it's also beautiful. It is part of the journey. You know? Difficulty is part of the journey, but we have to make room for joy. You know? If we don't, like, if we just live in that very pressurized culture, we're gonna miss all of it.

Penny Williams [00:26:52]: We're just gonna see the difficulty and and breeze right past it. So, yeah, thank you for sharing that that perspective. I wanna make sure that everybody knows how to connect with you and learn more from you. And we're gonna link everything up in the show notes at parentingadhdandautism.com/284 for episode 284. But if you just wanna share real quick where they can find you online and where they can find your book.

Wendy S. Grolnick, Ph.D. [00:27:20]: Yeah. Our new book is Motivation Mythbusters, Science Based Strategies to boost motivation in yourself and others, and we talk a lot about, alternatives to roars and and how to praise and all all kinds of things that that are relevant to our discussion today. And hopefully, it's a fun way to learn about motivation because it is these myths that it's nobody's fault. They're out there out there in the world. So, yeah, the book is available on Amazon and, on the American Psychological Association website. I'm at Clark University. My email is, [email protected]. Happy to hear from people and available that way as well.

Penny Williams [00:28:00]: Thank you so much for the work that you're doing and being here and sharing some of your wisdom and your time and your insights with us. It will change lives. Every conversation that we have, I feel like, will change somebody's life somewhere, and that's so amazing.

Wendy S. Grolnick, Ph.D. [00:28:18]: Thank Thank you so much for having me. It was such a pleasure to talk to you.

Penny Williams [00:28:21]: Thank you. You too. I'll see everybody in the next episode. Take good care.

Heather Chauvin [00:28:26]: Thanks for joining me on the Beautifully Complex podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and share, and don't forget to check out my online courses and parent coaching at parentingadhdandautism.com and at thebehaviorrevolution.com.