The Socially Skilled Kids Blog

How can you help your students with challenging behavior who are completely unmotivated and unengaged? Having students who are bored, unmotivated and unengaged, is a huge challenge for teachers! Nothing is harder for a teacher than an unmotivated student.

Ugh! It can be so frustrating trying to reach them!

Here are 10 different ways that I hope will help you motivate your students with challenging behavior.

1. Make It Less Painful: People are motivated to do something if it is less painful to do it than to not do it. When trying to motivate students, be sure to start by making doing the desired behavior, less “painful” than not doing it. In other words, try to make it fun, easy, and quick. 

2. Make It Successful: People are motivated when a behavior meets with success. It’s very challenging to motivate someone to do something if they always fail when doing it. If the child has a history or memory of failing doing it, you will need to back up in...