I was a dirt-filled, scrawny, sometimes-shy-but-always-adventurous midwestern farm kid.  Building forts in the deep dark woods, riding my bike into town to play summer ball with friends, and braving the rapids of nearby Flood Creek as it wove through the flat farmland of northern Iowa.

Now as a parent, nearly two decades removed from that glorious and rambunctious period of my life, I have a whole new admiration for my parents. My admiration is as vast as the Iowa sky is big, but one thought in particular stuck out today. I am thoroughly impressed that my mom was ever able to get me to do anything productive around the house! Why would I have? There were battles to be won out on the straw bales and sleeping dragons to sneak past in the hog pens.

So what was my mom’s secret?  Knowingly or not (I’ll ask her this weekend and get back to you), she employed the three secrets to successfully motivating her child.  Of course I didn’t realize this at the time, but now as I teach management at Central College, I understand I have been preaching this to my students all along.

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While there are many reasons why kids don’t practice, laziness usually IS NOT one of them, although that’s what we typically assume.

What is happening is your child likely has a lack of intrinsic motivation, due to one of three reasons:

1) A low self-efficacy… not believing they are good enough.

2) Not believing that practice actually leads to higher performance.

3) No association between the eventual improvements with a reward that they value.

So what can you do about this? First of all, don’t loose your temper. That will only make reason #1 worse. Second, look for bright spots. In what activities do they excel and work to improve without external ‘encouragement’. Use this activity as a way to build their self-confidence, which will transfer to other activities.  Read more →

We’ve all grown up under the assumption (right or wrong) that sports build character. How else could so many in our society justify spending a great deal of time and money towards that pursuit?

Playing sports increases our physical wellness, some sports more than others.

During our adolescent years being involved with sports was considered a safe outlet for rampant and random teenage energy.

This past week, through a very challenging and sobering situation, I realized one aspect of sport that I’ve always taken for granted.

I cannot wait to go to bed on Thursday evenings. It’s like Christmas Eve each week of the year! Every Friday morning at 5:30 a group of about twenty guys gather at one of our local high schools to hoop it up. While getting up before 5 AM is a challenge for most anyone, this is an event where no one wants to stagger in late, else you will be the 11^th man shuffled back and forth between teams.  Our Friday morning basketball league has been a sacred time for me the past four years since my wife and I moved to town. Why? Because I love the game of basketball. Or so I thought. Read more →

You have been living a sheltered life if you have not heard the cliche “Sports build character”. Throughout my childhood and even into my young adult life, I took this to be fact. I played sports. My character morphed and solidified the more I played. The seemed like a direct correlation. Well, as my colleagues remind me, correlation isn’t causation.

It is probably not a stretch to venture that most people who believe that sports build character are similar to me and have had positive experiences with sports in which they can draw life lessons from. On the flip side, those who disagree with the statement that participation in athletics is a ‘personality enhancer’ likely did not have a positive experience and may even see sports as being detrimental to one’s character development.  Read more →