Education consultant and parenting coach Joseph Driessen talks about children who lack motivation and drive - what's behind this, and how can parents help them regain direction?

When children lack motivation and drive, their parents can be lost as to how to help them regain direction.

Education consultant and parenting coach Joseph Driessen told Kathryn Ryan that in these situations some children can be defeated by their lack of self-management, amid other possible problems like learning difficulties.

"They're just depressed because they can't make themselves follow through. They can't make themselves tidy up their work. They can't make themselves remember what to do. They go to school disorganised.

"Or some small children are just caught into a sort of an ADHD pattern of completely kind of being hyperactive and not calming down and not doing anything and eventually, both the parent and the child give up because they lack the skills or the system isn't working."

Listen to the full interview with Joseph Driessen

A lack of belief in one's self or lack of confidence can arise after repeated failures, Driessen says.

Eventually, the child can fall into a pit of realisation that they will not be able to accomplish anything and gives up, he says. Ultimately, their energy and feelings become negative.

But there are also children with attention deficit disorder, Driessen says, whose neurological system is far more focused on the immediate outcomes rather than the prioritising the most important goals and tasks.

"And so you get sidetracked, you don't read your list, you forget your diary, you don't pack your bags because something else takes the place and you just get caught in the moment and you think, 'well, that's fine that's what my brain told me to do, but now I forgotten this'.

"Repeated failures of that, that can cause a child to become deeply demotivated."

As a result of a lack of coherent planning and execution of important tasks, he says teenagers can feel down about sustained failure and not progressing in areas at school.

Strategies to help

However, there are ways for parents to help children who fall into that predicament. Driessen says the first thing to note is sometimes in these situations even the parent feels defeated.

"But what the children really most respond to, what I found and what the research finds, is that actually the adult takes it seriously and sits down with them and initiates a series of conversations initially, then actions…

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details