I think I can extrapolate this to apply to my headstrong, highly intelligent, passionate, unapologetic, under-performing, creative, scattered 14 year old son. Looking at your Vehn Diagram I can see why so many of our and his teachers’ attempts to “motivate” him have fallen on deaf ears.

The trick is to somehow use the “understanding why” and working for a “greater cause” as the underlying support for “working on something you care about.” But how do you make it apply to school work? I am not sure that is possible. It is quite clear that the work he’s given at school is not something he cares about, does not connect him to “awesome, like-motivated peers” (remember group work in high school?!), and often doesn’t even feel like “the right work.” (i.e., some of the color and paste assignments coming out of high school biology are a true shame, an embarrassment to education, insulting to students.)

I see more clearly now that we have been basically standing over him nagging, counting down the hour, pointing to the priority list, due dates, grades all in the hopes of making it clear that whether he wants to or not, school work must get transformed into “something you care about” at least enough to complete it on time and turn it in. We are often met with the response: “I KNOW!” and I think it really reflects that left side of the diagram … his lack of agency and action is not due to lack of knowledge about what is important, when it is due, or the date on the calendar. He even is kinda motivated by the idea of getting a high grade or being recognized as honors or high achieving.

Yet, he is as frustrated as we are that he knows what he SHOULD do and HOW to be successful in school but he just finds it so tedious and draining and can’t seem to FORCE himself to do the work. While some adults spend their lives in jobs like that (I say this because I’ve been told — well, he needs to get used to it because that’s what work is in the real world.). I’d like to believe that most people (like my husband and I at different points have had to do in our careers) refuse to accept such misery and unsatisfactory work and use any remaining energy to leave the situation — maybe it takes months, maybe years but the goal is there.

So I refuse to accept that my son needs to accept this as a permanent state of the human condition. Somehow, though, I need him to accept that this is the state of things for a few years — or maybe just on a few assignments in a few classes he hates — and that he can tolerate such dissatisfaction in the name of the greater goal: graduation, college, and ultimately autonomy, creative production, adult life. It’s a pretty tall order to try and inspire a sense of purpose in most of high school work.