Cultivating Intrinsic Motivation Through Play
Children often receive messages from the adults around them that aggressive, risky, and messy play are undesirable. However, engagement in these types of play is critical for children’s social, physical, and emotional development. Through aggressive play, children experience heightened emotions and can learn skills in self-regulation. Through risky play, they can test the limits of their abilities and learn to make choices. Through messy play, they can build fine and gross motor skills and meet sensory needs and experiences.
Engagement in play — including aggressive, risky, and messy play—facilitates the development of skills that form the building blocks of intrinsic motivation, such as negotiation, problem-solving, sensory integration, self-control, and emotional regulation. Intrinsic motivation involves satisfaction in the doing, rather than the outcome. Children who are intrinsically motivated are driven to engage in activities for enjoyment, rather than for external influences such as parental approval or tangible rewards. Intrinsic motivation fosters independence, persistence, and promotes positive psychological wellbeing.
One of the key challenges for adults aiming to build intrinsic motivation in children is being able to step back and allow the child to lead. As adults, we tend to want to facilitate skill-building, teach an easier way, or cushion the blow when children experience disappointment or frustration. Unfortunately, this approach can lead to children learning to rely on others to reinforce and support skill development.
To nurture intrinsic motivation, children must be allowed to experience failure, frustration, and disappointment without undue reassurance or expectations of future outcomes. Statements like “Better luck next time” subtly deny the challenge and process involved in the task. We can leave room for challenge and disappointment by acknowledging the child’s actions and feelings—for example, “You feel disappointed you missed.” This statement validates the child’s experience and emotions without placing expectations on future outcomes.
By choosing our language carefully, we can foster the child’s agency in seeking satisfaction from undertaking challenging tasks, rather than seeking rewards from external motivators. What we want is for children to feel confident in their capacity to choose, and to gain a sense of achievement regardless of the outcome. By standing back and trusting in the child’s ability to tackle challenges and know their own limits, we communicate belief in their autonomy and capability.
