If parenting teaches you anything, it is that you have control over exactly nothing. Like writing, for instance. I had been writing a post about Wonder Woman—the new one, the old ones and myself. I had a great start. About a page and a half. Then I remembered I was a Mom. Or, rather, I was reminded. Or maybe more accurately, my I’m-going-to-write-now-so-leave-me-alone bubble was completely exploded.

This happens all the time. I go to work and feel amazing. I’ve been teaching for 26 years. It’s great! Hard. Impossible, even, but it’s the place I go when I want to feel like I’ve got this! I am Nationally Board Certified, experienced, respected by colleagues. Students say hello to me in the hall, I get good reviews, I enjoy building curriculum and solving complex problems throughout the day (the ASCD estimates that a teacher makes more than 3,000 nontrivial decisions every day (http://www.ascd.org/publications/books/104138/chapters/The-Qualities-of-Great-Teachers.aspx). I wonder what and how many trivial decisions I make. The point of this being that I like my challenging job, and am pretty good at it. I get a huge slice of self-worth pie every day I’m teaching.

And then I come home to the hardest job I’ve ever done, and I feel completely under water.

Last night, my plan was to pick up the kids, head home, cook up one of the recipes from purewow.com (see What I’m Cooking), then write. Easy peasy. But as Ray Davies so eloquently crooned, there is no plan that cannot be demolished. The whole evening exploded over homework.

It’s a simple math equation. Take one kid with anxiety and ADHD, add one middle school teacher who is tired and doesn’t really get it, anyway, and you have a negative reaction. Negative reactions breed negative reactions, usually involving unsuspecting elements who should have known better, and a formula for addressing conflicts that hasn’t worked in the past so why should it work now and an addiction to electronics that is self-medicating while being used, but causes severe withdrawals when taken away. And there you have my afternoon and evening.

So, exhausted from the emotional upheaval, I made a bowl of cereal, watched an episode of The White Princess, and went to bed without finishing my blog entry.

And woke up exhausted this morning, but we have SBA testing at work, so off I trudged.

Now, calmer and more grounded, I’m in the process of making sense of all of this. I could practice tough love, remove all electronics and other detritus of creature comforts from my kids room until all homework was completed. Or I could offer some sweet-flavored carrot in hopes of enticement toward productivity.   Or do I need a different strategy all together? If the definition of insanity is really is “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results” (thanks Mr. Einstein or Twain or Franklin, depending on who you ask), then I have lost it utterly and should be committed. So if not punishment or rewards, then what? How do I motivate my child to care about school, i.e.: their future? I started searching.

According to Dennis Bumgarner, ACSW, LCSW, you cannot motivate someone to do something you want them to do. They have to want to do it. In his book, Motivating Your Intelligent But Unmotivated Teenager, Bumgarner confirmed my diagnosis. My partner and I keep trying different flavors of ice cream expecting to motivate my kid to do homework. But what if my kid is lactose intolerant, like me, and isn’t motivated by any ice cream? And what if, like Bumgarner says, discomfort isn’t really a motivator either? Surprisingly, Bumgarner’s book say that pep talks do little to nothing, rewards and punishments mean less than nothing, and that, in fact, it is the relationship between the two of us that is motivating, and that “truly motivational relationships are not those in which one of the members is in a one-up position, as when an authority directs the behavior of a subordinate. Relationships which are motivational are genuine partnerships” (http://behavior-coach.com/EbookMotivatingVer3.pdf).   And, if that isn’t sticky enough, no person motivates another. It is completely intrinsic on the part of the person being motivate. In other words, no matter what I do to incentivize my child to go to school, work hard and thoughtfully complete homework, it’s never going to work! Awesome!

But motivation and change are possible. At least, that’s what this guy says. But there are some precursors that are three musts:

1. There must be some intrinsic value in the work, even if that is some other teen thinks smart kids who do their work are sexy. Whatever, I’ll take it.
2. The individual must be willing and able to do the work, so factors like behavior, attention, emotion and cognition abilities must be accounted and adjusted for.
3. The individual must exist in an environment that is marked by safety, acceptance, and empowerment; empowerment, not just safety and acceptance.

Alright, this just got complex. Motivating my precious child to do the homework is more than just threatening or rewarding. It is really about how I treat them day-to-day and how I empower them in the relationship. I love my child – crazy, sloppy love my child! But how much empowering do I do? Maybe I have made things too easy. Maybe I have facilitated dependence without meaning to. Or expected independence without the education to do that. It seems to me to get to 1 & 2, I first need to focus on 3.

Again, according to Dr. Bumgarner, getting to 3 is about learning how to empathize cognitively. Cognitive empathy is really about understanding the facts of someone else’s word. It is not feeling their feelings, but understanding their situation. It is saying, “So this is the way it is for you, this is your current experience, this is how you see it” (behavior-coach.com). Getting to a place of deep, authentic understanding and empathy means I can accept my child for who they are, and in so doing, free them to change. That is the motivational factor of relationship.

Next question, am I motivated to change? Parenting does not happen in a vacuum. As we parent, we rely on our own experiences as children, in how we were parented. Conscious or not of the details, we parent as we were parented. We also perceive expectations from others. We set certain standards for performance. We judge ourselves. Can I create enough safety for myself to make mistakes as a mom or go against the shoulds of parenthood?

Maybe my experience last night is not so far off from my original post. Wonder Woman, too, had to break away from expectations of who she was and what she could do to become the superhero the world needed. She did not leave her home and fight against tyranny because her mother told her to do so. She found the motivation herself. She was empowered by her sense of morality and justice to fight those who would impose their will on others. And she was my hero. Time to buy a kick-ass pair of red boots and be someone else’s hero. Wish me luck.