5 Ways to Increase Motivation in Kids With Dyslexia & ADHD

by Marianne | Focus & Motivation | 0 comments

I get emails all the time asking for help with dyslexic kids unmotivated to learn. I’ve learned a lot in my nearly 30 years of homeschooling kids with dyslexia and ADHD. There are actually very specific things you can do to increase motivation.

Listen to the podcast or read the transcript below.

Transcript: Increasing Motivation

Hello, and welcome to the Beyond the Box Learning podcast. My name is Marianne Sunderland. I’m the founder of the website, homeschoolingwithdyslexia.com and on today’s episode, I’m answering a question about what to do with kids who are unmotivated to learn. I get this question a lot. And so we’re going to talk today about some practical ways to increase motivation. We’re also going to talk about several research-based ways to increase motivation.

So when I talk about unmotivated learners, I’m talking about really anything from kids who are just procrastinating and dawdling to kids who are outright refusing to do the schoolwork you assign.

So there’s a lot of variety of lack of motivation. I’m excited to share with you a little bit about what the research says about increasing motivation as well as what’s worked in my own home during my nearly 30 years now of homeschooling my kids with dyslexia and ADHD.

Lack of Motivation is Not Uncommon

So first of all, it’s important to know that it isn’t uncommon for homeschooled kids to lack motivation, especially this time of year. I’m recording this podcast in January of 2025. We’ve finished the holidays. It’s kind of a letdown. It’s cold and gray. We’re just not feeling like sitting down and doing math, or whatever. It’s very common.

Schools use a lot of external motivators, but we can also use these as homeschool parents. Externally motivating strategies in schools are things like peer pressure and grades or consequences from teachers. This can be hard for homeschoolers, especially moms, who tend to be a little more nurturing towards their children than maybe a stranger.

It can be difficult to motivate kids to do hard things every day and this is never more true than for kids with dyslexia, for whom reading, writing, and spelling are often very difficult. Remember how you feel about doing things that are hard for you, right? No one really naturally enjoys doing things that are hard for them.

So there are a couple of things that parents can do, though, to increase that internal motivation with our kids. We all use rewards and consequences right? Those kinds of things are external motivations, but they wear us down and tire us out and frustrate our kids. So what we’re talking about today is going to really help increase your child’s internal motivation or the desire from within to do a certain task.

Increase Motivation with an Expectation of Learning

So, first and foremost with my kids, I found it helpful to create an expectation for them that we would do what I called the ‘exercises of learning’ every day. So for my elementary age students, this included a little bit of reading instruction tailored to their needs with lots of hands-on methods.

I’m going to link in the show notes below an article with a review of the top 4 Orton-Gillingham reading programs that parents can use at home with their dyslexic kids, because it’s important to be using the right curriculum

The exercises of learning also include math and some kind of read aloud, or maybe listening to an audio book which often doubled as an informal history lesson.

I refer to these as homeschool basics. I’ve referred to them in the past as my minimum viable homeschool day. This is just the minimum amount of stuff that I need to get done each day to feel like I’ve covered enough. We don’t want to do this for months on end. But if we can get that much done each day, and the kids are playing and happy, then we’ve accomplished enough. So I’m going to include a link also to that post on the minimum viable homeschool day so you can look at that for your own homeschool.

I also loved the idea that I learned from Tricia Hodges from her website Hodgepodge. She also has the chalk pastel curriculum called You Are an Artist, but she’s got a ton of great ideas for managing your homeschool, and one of the things that I’ve always implemented because of her is doing one thing after lunch, so that might be a little science or extra history, or an art project, or it could be whatever didn’t get finished before lunch from my kids’ core learning.

However we structure it, we have this expectation. And our kids have this expectation that we’re going to be doing a little bit of the exercises of learning each day.

So when my kids would come to me and say, “I don’t want to do school”, you know, I would just tell them, “You know, we have to do a little bit of learning every day. It’s good for our brains, right?” That kind of thing. And so they began. They knew that if they came to me and said they didn’t want to do school, that was the answer they were going to get.

Increase Motivation with Consistency

So the next piece of the motivation puzzle is consistency and, to be totally honest, consistency has been one of my biggest struggles over my nearly 30 years of homeschooling.

There always seems to be something to distract us from the ideal homeschool plan for the day, whether it’s a kid’s behavior or health, or an infant or toddler or home repair, or one of a hundred other common distractions to homeschooling consistency really isn’t easy for anyone.

However, consistency really is one of the most powerful tools that we have, because it creates momentum in our home schools, which results in less resistance and more peace.

Having a routine and sticking to it with consistency avoids a lot of that inertia that comes from an inconsistent homeschool schedule. It avoids that feeling of starting the schedule all over again every couple of days.

So, aside from setting an expectation for learning and being consistent, there are a couple of other things that we can do to increase motivation with our kids. These 3 things come from research on motivation called the self-determination theory.

Increase Motivation with Competency

I did an interview with one of the researchers, Dr. Gina Riley on this fascinating research, and I’ll link to that below if you want to listen to more of this. But essentially the first element of increasing internal motivation is a feeling of competency. So that is that the task at hand isn’t too easy or too hard.

Remember, in the beginning of this episode I talked about how nobody likes to do hard things, and that for our kids with dyslexia, reading practice can be something that’s particularly unpleasant, because it’s so hard for them.

So this is really important to understand as homeschoolers and parents of kids with dyslexia, especially if you yourself are not dyslexic.

Now, one way to know whether you’re working at your child’s level is to do a placement test with whichever Orton-gillingham reading program you’re using. So I’m going to link to that article on the top, 4 reading programs to use at home. No need to reinvent the wheel here. There are lots of excellent reading programs available for parents to use, but use the placement test and follow along with it consistently to be sure that you’re working at your child’s level, and don’t hesitate to go back and review if you need to.

I often encourage parents who are teaching their dyslexic kids at home to think of themselves as tutors to their kids. A tutor will see that one of their students has forgotten a particular rule, for example, and will take time to review that rule without any guilt or shame. It really is important for us, as homeschool parents, to meet our kids where they’re at. Remember, it takes a lot of practice and repetition for our kids to master language skills. So don’t stress go at their pace and with a good program as consistently as possible.

Now, here’s something kind of unique to kids with dyslexia, and that is that some days it seems like they’re really ready to take in information, and lessons go smoothly, and the information goes in. And then on other days it seems like the new information is literally bouncing off their brains

Their level of competency, what they’re capable of doing or what’s easy for them or the right level of challenge, may vary from day to day. And so with time you will begin to recognize the good learning days and the bad learning days, and a wise parent will adapt their teaching to meet their kids needs that day. So if the information isn’t going in.

You’re teaching reading or math or whatever and you pivot and maybe just do read alouds, play a game, something like that, so that they are feeling smart. They’re feeling successful, but they’re accommodating their unique needs.

Increase Motivation with Autonomy

The next way to encourage internal motivation from this self-determination theory is to give them autonomy or choice over what they’re learning. So when we allow our kids to have choice, that increases motivation because they feel more in control of their learning.

So what this might look like could be allowing them to choose which subjects they do first, or for our teens what time they get up in the morning. This could be allowing them to choose what read aloud to do next, or what topic of history or science to study. So we want to give our kids as much choice as we reasonably can. And then, when we give our kids choice, it cultivates this sense of intrinsic motivation.

Increase Motivation with Related Learning

The third way from self-determination theory to foster internal motivation in kids is to build this sense of relatedness or some kind of supportive community. Humans are inherently social creatures and fostering a sense of relatedness can be a game changer for struggling learners. Relatedness is about feeling understood, valued, and supported by others, which in turn contributes to a person’s overall psychological well-being.

Relatedness, refers to the need for social connection, belonging, and interpersonal relationships. It’s that desire to feel connected to others, to experience a sense of belongingness, to establish meaningful connections with family or friends or social groups, and so they know they’re not alone in their journey. This knowledge is really good for boosting motivation and confidence.

And so a couple of ways to incorporate relatedness in learning are to try to arrange opportunities for your kids to interact with their peers. So peer interaction is a big way to foster this sense of relatedness, and this can be either in person or virtually. Interacting with peers can provide a sense of belonging and social connection.

Another way to incorporate relatedness is family involvement. So try to involve family members in the learning process, encourage siblings and parents to participate in discussions, group projects, or collaborative activities. This fosters a sense of relatedness within the family unit. There are a lot of different ways that you can do this, whether you’re volunteering together, you’re working on a project of some sort of family garden, animals, whatever it is. Some kind of family project really boosts that sense of relatedness.

Another way to boost relatedness is community engagement. So exploring local community resources and activities, preferably ones that align with your kids interests and learning goals. So that’s clubs, teams, or community classes that can help your child build relationships outside the home and feel a sense of belonging within the community.

There are also online learning communities. Many online platforms and educational websites have forums or communities where homeschoolers can connect. So encourage your kids to participate in these online communities if that’s something that interests them to share their experience, to ask questions, and to engage with like-minded learners.

Another way to increase relatedness is cooperative learning. Any kind of cooperative learning activities that you can involve your kids in where kids work together to achieve a common goal. It promotes teamwork and a sense of relatedness among all the participants.

Motivation Recap

So, in conclusion, just a quick recap to increase kids’ internal motivation or desire to do things, we can set an expectation for what kind of learning we want our kids to be doing.

And we can implement that schedule as consistently as possible. And then we also want to incorporate the elements of competency, making sure the work isn’t too hard or too easy; autonomy, giving our kids as much control over their learning as we can; and relatedness, providing relationships in learning of various kinds to increase engagement.

So that’s the nuts and bolts of motivation. If you’re looking for more ways to give your kids choice as you homeschool. I created a list of 20 ways to give kids more choice. And so I’m going to link to that PDF download in the show notes or on the blog post page, wherever you’re consuming this podcast and remember, nobody’s motivated all the time, right? You just want to do your best to implement these strategies and listen to the real needs of your kids.

So I hope this is helpful, and thanks for joining me.