Why does your child suddenly dislike going to school and refuse to go to school? This may be the problem →

It’s the start of the new semester again, and the kids are going back to school to start a new semester. There are already a lot of good content about the precautions for the start of the new semester and psychological adjustment, so this time let’s talk about something special.

That is, why do some children refuse to go to school when the school term starts?

This problem troubles some parents and is also a problem I often encounter in my consulting work. Here is the story of a girl who came to me for consultation.

Positive Xiaoxiao

Why don't you want to go to school?

If time goes back eight years, I wonder if mom and dad will still think Xiaoxiao is a positive child.

Eight years ago, Xiaoxiao just started primary school. Her mother paid close attention to her studies, helping her with homework, explaining questions to her, and making study plans for her. Like every mother who is anxious about her child's future, Xiaoxiao's mother believes that everything she does is to help her child lay a solid foundation and support her child's future. Xiaoxiao did not disappoint her mother. Her academic performance was at the top of the class, and she was very proactive in her studies. She also said that she would apply to a key university in the future. No matter how you look at her, she is a positive child.

But in the second year of junior high school, everything suddenly changed.

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Xiaoxiao often stayed at home and didn't go to school. When faced with the concern and persuasion of her parents and teachers, she was either too lazy to respond or pretended to agree but didn't take any action. Even when she went to school, she didn't listen in class, basically just slept, didn't do her homework, and stayed in bed on the day of the exam.

Xiaoxiao's change made her mother and father completely at a loss. Why would a good child suddenly become a different person?

They thought about all the possible reasons. Was it because the mother was transferred to another city for work and could not be with the child every day? Was it because of the epidemic and taking online classes at home? Was it because of puberty? Or something else? But no matter how they thought about it, they couldn't figure out why Xiaoxiao suddenly became like this. So they found the author, hoping that I could help them find the reason for these changes in their children.

To sum up, Xiaoxiao’s problem lies in “motivation”.

Where does the motivation to learn come from?

To explain human behavior, the key is to find the motivation behind the behavior. Learning certainly also requires motivation.

When it comes to motivation for learning, many parents may say: "Children nowadays don't want to study because their lives are too good. Only after experiencing hardship will they know the importance of learning (and changing their destiny)." Is this really true?

Xiaoxiao's family is well-off, and she is indeed not motivated to study in order to improve the lives of herself and her family. But why did Xiaoxiao study hard when she was young? Moreover, if only suffering can generate the motivation to study actively, does it mean that Xiaoxiao cannot live a good life? What's more, some children from poor families are still unwilling to study and indulge in games.

In fact, this view of motivation ignores the difference between humans and animals. Animals' behavior comes from instinctive needs, so trainers can use reward food to train animals. People are also motivated to act because of instinctive needs. But human motivation is not as simple as that of animals. According to modern motivational psychology, human motivation also comes from human beliefs.

Therefore, the author wanted to understand Xiaoxiao's own belief in learning. After communicating with Xiaoxiao, she said: "I have always felt that I am learning for others."

This reason can explain why she studied hard when she was young. For a child who has self-confidence in learning, as long as she thinks that her learning will affect the people she cares about, she will study hard for others. Although studying hard is not the child's goal, by studying hard, she can get recognition from others and make others happy. This is Xiaoxiao's motivation for studying hard when she was young.

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However, after entering puberty, things changed.

As Xiaoxiao grew up, her own ideas became more important than the recognition of others. As a result, she no longer cared about her parents' rewards or teachers' praise. However, because "I felt that I was learning for others since I was a child", Xiaoxiao could not find the meaning of learning for herself, so learning became worthless to her. As a result, she completely lost the motivation to study hard.

Xiaoxiao's behavior and changes are actually because she did not connect learning with her own wishes. In other words, she did not build up the self-motivation to learn.

Without self-motivation, even if children can study well for a short period of time due to other factors, they will not be able to persist. When they encounter external factors such as learning setbacks, environmental changes, and increased self-awareness during adolescence, they are easily affected by these external factors, and their motivation to study will suddenly be interrupted.

So, what caused Xiaoxiao’s lack of self-motivation in learning?

Self-motivation = attitude problem?

Not that simple

Many parents simply regard their children's self-motivation as a matter of attitude, so if they can't convince their children with reason, they will be at a loss. In fact, we need to think further about how people's attitudes come about.

A person's attitude towards a thing depends on the impact it has on him and his sense of control over it. For example, if a person is confident in learning, and can find pleasure and value in learning, and believes that he gets more from learning than he puts in, then this person has a positive attitude towards learning and can generate self-motivation; if any of these factors is missing, this person cannot generate self-motivation, which is reflected in a negative attitude towards learning.

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Now let’s look at what Xiaoxiao lacks in building self-motivation in learning from the above perspectives, and what is a better approach:

• Xiaoxiao never really enjoyed learning since she was a child, because people around her only cared about whether she had completed her homework and whether she had achieved good grades in the exams, which made her worry about her grades all the time.

**Countermeasures: **A better approach should be to pay more attention to her learning process rather than the results of learning. These are two different goals, and goals will fundamentally affect a person's attitude and motivation towards a thing.

• Mom and Dad only talk about studying with Xiaoxiao, and only link studying with future education, making Xiaoxiao think that studying is for the purpose of getting into a good high school and university. But for Xiaoxiao who has no worries about life and has no life experience, what is the real meaning of furthering education other than making her parents happy?

**Countermeasures: **A better approach should be to help her connect her learning with her own desires. Her own desires are her needs, and needs are the basis of motivation.

• Mom and Dad did not pay attention to what Xiaoxiao expected of herself in the future, that is, what Xiaoxiao’s ideals were. For example, if Xiaoxiao wanted to become a doctor in the future, perhaps because she wanted to be a respected person, then she would understand the meaning of studying hard - it would enable her to achieve her goals.

**Countermeasures: **Parents should understand that learning is a by-product of a child's growth, not the other way around. If a child's growth is on the right track, then there will be no major problems with their learning. Ideals are a necessity for a child's growth, and children who lack ideals will inevitably have problems at some stage of their growth.

• Xiaoxiao has no experience of overcoming difficulties on her own. Her mother has always been by her side during her studies. Every time she encounters difficulties in her studies, her mother will help her solve them as soon as possible: explaining, attending extracurricular classes in advance, making study plans, etc. As a result, Xiaoxiao gradually formed a concept that she would not be able to cope with the difficulties in her studies without her mother, which means that she has no confidence in her studies.

**Countermeasures: **A better approach is to cultivate children's ability to face and overcome difficulties, rather than helping them eliminate these difficulties. Otherwise, when children have to face difficulties themselves in the future, they will panic and be powerless.

• Xiaoxiao’s time was filled with study since she was young. Her mother was always worried that she would fail in the competition if she didn’t work hard. So Xiaoxiao was either studying or on the way to study. Even when she went out to play during the holidays, it was to come back with a better attitude to study. But for a child, growth requires more than just studying. When she grew up, Xiaoxiao realized that she had sacrificed too much for study.

**Countermeasures: **A better approach is to believe that each stage of life has its own growth tasks. In addition to learning, playing, interpersonal communication, and self-development are all important growth tasks for pre-adolescent children. Otherwise, children will eventually spend time paying for these costs in their later lives. This is the law of growth and cannot be changed by human will.

Due to the various problems she encountered before, Xiaoxiao neither had a sense of control nor confidence in her studies, nor did she find pleasure and value in learning. Moreover, she felt that she had paid too much for her studies and gained much less than she lost. So, how could Xiaoxiao develop self-motivation in learning?

According to the readers' good expectations and the writing style of best-selling books, this should be a happy ending where the cause of the disease is found and the medicine is effective. However, the reality is reality. Xiaoxiao is still receiving counseling and slowly recovering. After all, a three-foot-thick ice does not form overnight. Solving psychological problems that have accumulated over the years often requires long-term efforts and there is no quick fix. So perhaps what we should do is to avoid the "pitfalls" mentioned above on the children's growth path as much as possible from the beginning.

Planning and production

Author: Wang Lin, Master of Education from the University of Tennessee, USA, majoring in Child and Family Studies

Review丨Tang Yicheng, Deputy Director of Beijing Zhongke Popular Psychological Health Promotion Center

Planning｜Ding Zong

Editor: Ding Zong