Children may give up or become frustrated when working on complicated tasks. Encouraging and offering them instruction and praise may help motivate them.

We all get frustrated and want to give up on demanding tasks sometimes, but the ability to persevere and work through it can foster growth and a sense of accomplishment.

Gentle motivation and encouragement in the context of healthy parent-child relationships can help your child feel secure and grow.

If you’re a parent or work with kids in any way, getting them to do challenging tasks can be difficult. Practicing hard things builds a child’s capacity for frustration, but many kids haven’t learned these skills yet and may give up quickly without certain environmental factors present.

Acknowledge their challenges

Encouraging your child and helping motivate them through complex tasks can make a huge difference in whether the child completes the task or can cope with the frustration of a task. Research from 2023 suggests that when parents work with children and acknowledge and discuss a challenging task, this can serve as a motivating factor.

Additionally, the researchers note that when children seek out challenges and remain persistent, this is associated with positive learning outcomes. The parent-child dyads in this study made general statements of praise and talked about how easy or difficult a task was.

With schoolwork, research indicates that children are motivated by schoolwork that is not too easy or too challenging. When tasks are too complicated, children may be prone to frustration, stress, and giving up on a task too quickly.

Offer clear instructions and consistent practice

Another way that children can learn to practice complex tasks is through deliberate practice. According to 2022 research, deliberate practice is a self-initiated, repetitive practice that helps children learn a specific skill.

The researchers note that deliberate practice may involve encouragement from a teacher, parent, or coach in some situations. However, not all situations allow this, and children can choose their own strategies for deliberate practice.

The researchers found that when children received verbal instruction for challenging tasks and were allowed to practice for them beforehand, children of all ages scored higher on the more complex tasks. This suggests that encouragement and instruction for deliberate practice can motivate children to work on demanding tasks.

Determine support based on their understanding

You can support a child by assessing their current level of understanding of the task. This can be done by using a concept known as the zone of proximal development. This concept focuses on recognizing what a child can learn independently and areas where they may need additional guidance or support.

For example, a child may identify an item when looking at a picture of it but have difficulties recognizing the word without an image. With this knowledge, you may consider a technique known as scaffolding.

Scaffolding involves chunking information into smaller pieces to help children learn at a level that is just above their current understanding, which they may not be able to learn without support.

This may include spelling out an item, such as a lamp, on a sticky note and then placing it near that item to support word recognition.

Develop emotional safety

Providing a safe and healthy emotional environment can help children learn healthy skills. Research from 2019 indicates that the emotional relationships between parents and children are critical for a child’s development.

Bowlby and Bronfenbrenner, two child development researchers, highlighted the importance of healthy emotional relationships between children and their parents in their research. They also discussed the importance of the systems and communities in which these emotional relationships occur.

Learn more about mental health

The 2019 research mentioned above also proposed that parents can help build healthy skills by learning to understand the mental states that drive their behavior and the behavior of others.

By doing this, parents can learn how to foster healthy emotional relationships with their children.

Provide constructive feedback

You can also encourage your child and offer them praise. Research suggests that while providing children with criticism can harm their growth, praising them can help them stay motivated when working on difficult things.

Children need the motivational frameworks of praise to help support learning. Parental expectations about children’s success help motivate children. Believing in your child and showing them support can help them develop the necessary skills to continue even when it is frustrating.

Incorporate play

Another way children can build healthy skills is through play. According to 2018 research, when children engage in developmentally appropriate play with parents, peers, or independently, they learn skills that help them manage stress and promote healthy development.

Children are prone to frustration from time to time, and in moments of frustration, it can be easy to give up on a task that you find difficult. How parents react and manage expectations of their children can make a huge difference.

Learning to notice your and your child’s reactions and respond healthily can foster growth and achievement in school and other areas of life. When you offer criticism in these moments, you diminish the child’s belief in themselves.

Encouraging your child to build healthy skills takes practice, but it becomes easier once you have the awareness to help motivate them. A little encouragement from you can give your child the confidence to complete the task.