Self-determination theory 101: Why motivation matters

Self-determination theory underpins a lot of our work here at Parenting Place. While this theory is a little complicated to explain, in essence it’s all about motivation. Specifically, what motivates people to act in certain ways and do the things they do. Self-determination theory (or SDT, which is much quicker to type) also considers the impact on well-being when we do things for different reasons.

Research has shown there are loads of benefits when self-determined motivation is our main driver, but it’s pretty normal to dip and out of all sorts of motivation types. To illustrate this, let’s take a quick look at what might motivate a parent of young children to do certain activities across a day.

The day starts with changing a poopy nappy. An unpleasant task, and yet, you’re motivated to do it immediately, without resentment. Why? Because you want your baby to be comfortable. You also aim to be the sort of parent who cares about your child’s needs and happiness. SDT would call this integrated regulation, which means your motivation to do an activity aligns with your values and is integrated into your identity.

Later that morning, you head to your part-time job, which you don’t really like if you’re honest. You really just turn up because you need the money. Self-determination theory calls this external regulation. It’s where you do what you’re doing only because of external rewards or punishments (like getting paid or avoiding a fine).

After work, you pick up your kids and instead of going straight home, you head to the playground where you play a game of chase crossed with peek-a-boo, ducking in and out of the equipment; swinging, climbing and sliding together. You soak in the laughter of happy kids. You’re having such a good time that you stay longer than intended. SDT calls this intrinsic motivation, the volition we have towards doing activities that are enjoyable.

Later that evening, after the kids are in bed, you force yourself to do a HIIT workout recommended by a friend. You don’t enjoy it, but you feel like you should, because everyone else in your social group seems to enjoy doing this type of exercise and you don’t want to be the only one who doesn’t. SDT would call this introjected motivation, the type of motivation where there’s no obvious external rewards or consequences, but you don’t personally identify with the activity either. You might do it to avoid feelings of guilt.

SDT suggests our motivation can come from five different origins, in the following order from most rewarding to least. Numbers 3, 4 and 5 are considered ‘self-determined’ motivations, and they also happen to be those that connect with us feeling our best.

1. External regulation
2. Introjected regulation
3. Identified regulation
4. Integrated regulation (3 & 4 can be grouped together as ‘internally regulated extrinsic motivation’)
5. Intrinsic motivation

Now, a lot of traditional parenting advice tends to focus on external regulation, informed by the psychological principles of ‘behavourism’. Behaviourist parenting approaches focus on ways parents can reward or punish various types of behaviour, in order to encourage more or less of them accordingly. And there’s nothing wrong with using behavioural strategies with kids, as long as you know what you’re doing (and what you’re not doing).

Encouraging changes in children’s behaviour through external regulation can be very effective. The vegetables get eaten with the promise of dessert, the homework gets done with the threat of an iPad ban. But external regulation doesn’t necessarily encourage children to continue with the desired behaviour when those external influences are removed.

It can be an unstable shifting sand for parents, trying to identify what motivates their children as they grow and change, and knowing that if you’re not watching, or can’t provide the reward they seek, then the motivation to do the thing you want them to do is gone. Basically, this parenting approach does not actually lead to kids growing into the type of humans who do the right thing because it is the right thing (even when it might be unpleasant). For that, we need integrated motivation, where they’ve identified values and ideas about the type of human they want to be, and they act accordingly.

Extensive research into this very question has identified three key needs that all people have to be able to live their best life, acting as much as possible from self-determined motivations. These three things need to be in place to keep us motivated to do things that are both inherently rewarding (intrinsic motivation) as well as those non-rewarding things that we believe matter (internally regulated extrinsic motivation).

Humans, young and old, need:

1. Relatedness: We need to feel connected and have a sense of belonging. We need to feel cared for and to care for others.

2. Autonomy: We need to feel able to have some control and ability to make choices. To clarify, autonomy isn’t about being independent, separate from others or selfish, it’s about whether or not we feel there’s some freedom to direct our own path at all. When it comes to our children’s autonomy, their choices can be within given confines and still feel autonomous, such as choosing what to eat at mealtime from the options made available to them, or choosing what order they want to do their morning routine in.

3. Competence: We need to feel effective. We need to learn, practise and master some skills.

Now, keeping these three needs met in every aspects of your child’s day is not possible. Any of these three needs can be easily undermined. For example, a parent casually correcting a child’s mistake or giving unsolicited ‘help’ can undermine a child’s sense of competence on a new task; a parent’s distractedness may undermines their sense of relatedness; enforcing a safety boundary may make autonomy impossible in a given situation (I’m not giving my kid the choice about whether or not to wear a seatbelt!)

Thankfully, nobody expects parents to maintain these all the time. But knowing these are the ingredients that help your child feel good about doing good things can help parents make intentional decisions about how and when they use control, rewards and punishments in their parenting.

Applying SDT in parenting is not about getting your kids to be more compliant with their chores (if only). It’s about helping your kids become the kind of adults who care about others and their environment, and act accordingly. These three needs apply to intrinsic motivation as much as to internally regulated extrinsic motivation. This is why kids can lose the enjoyment of a sport they loved if they feel their coach is pushing them too hard. For example, an inflexible demanding coach can undermine a child’s sense of competence, reduce their autonomy and reduce their sense of relational connectedness in the sport.

The types of parenting acts that help support this kind of growth in our kids have been researched under the term ‘autonomy supportive parenting’ and thankfully they align really well with the ‘Parent Coach’ approach, AKA authoritative parenting (see here).

Autonomy-supportive parents...

• Establish rules, limits and demands with their children, within developmentally appropriate guidelines. Most importantly, they communicate the reasons and rationale for the rules. Reasons may include an element of concern for their child's safety (the seatbelts!), or may explain an aspect of how the world works or how doing certain things and avoiding others is good for our child. The reason and rationale will never be “...because I said so!” Rather, it will sound more like “We need to know where you are after school so we don’t worry, and in case there’s an emergency. So you need to check in with us before your go to your friend’s house.” Or, “You need to get enough sleep so you can focus at school, and play well at your tournament this weekend. That’s why our family’s time limit on devices is 8PM on a weeknight.”

• Care about the child’s perspective. Even when the rules are inflexible, children are allowed to feel annoyed about having to do things they don’t want to do. The child’s frustration doesn’t mean the rules will change. But wherever possible, autonomy supportive parents will get curious about what makes it hard for their child to do the behaviours they expect of them, and they’ll problem solve together.

• Recognise the developmental stage of the child and set expectations within the bounds of what they could become competent at, stepping in to assert authority as needed. Just like you can’t expect a five-year-old to make dinner alone, it might also be an unreasonable ask to expect a 15-year-old to voluntarily stop using their phone an hour before bedtime (lots of adults struggle to do that!).

• Offer choices, encourage initiative and promote responsibility. Their kids get to pursue their own goals and passions, experiment with different ways to meet their parents’ rules, and experience success and failure. It might mean that your pre-schooler goes through the day with a rather odd outfit - their shirt on backwards and shoes on the wrong feet - but they’ve felt the competence and autonomy of getting dressed without micromanagement. And another aspect of choice - just as one of your kids might enjoy rugby while another does robot battles, you might find one of your teens would much rather contribute to the family by cooking while another would prefer to mow the lawn.

• Model the type of behaviour they want to see. That is, if they want their child to be helpful they demonstrate helpfulness. If they want their kid to be creative, they’ll find a way to show their child their own creative side.

With this approach, over time, children take on some of their parents’ values themselves. They trust and believe in their parents, and therefore in the rules their parents set, and they want to do the right thing. As children absorb and identify with these values, the parent no longer needs to use tools like bribes, rewards and punishments to get kids to comply. That doesn’t mean your children will always behave perfectly in line with what you want! But it does mean they’ll probably have a solid reason for why they didn’t do what you expect of them (even if you don’t agree with the reason).

Absolutely not! In fact, it’s really common for people start to do an activity because of external rewards or punishments, only to grow to believe in it. Like the child who only does violin practice because their parents insist upon it, who complains as they scratch out horrible sounds and tend their sore fingers. But after a while, this child (may) go on to love playing the violin, practising for hours and forgoing other pleasures to attend orchestra practices. Violin playing started as externally motivated, and transitioned to intrinsically motivated. But in order to make that transition, the three needs of autonomy, competence, and connection had to be in place.

So in this case, that was probably a supportive teacher, who notices and comments positively on progress made, who allows freedom and creativity, and parents who allow them to sometimes skip violin practice as time goes on, or even make it known that they can quit if they wish. Also, the theorists do recognise that the range of behaviours which can become self-regulated increases with age. A three-year-old cannot truly internalise the idea that they are an environmental steward to the world and therefore choose ethically made long-lasting toys. But they might choose a wooden toy over plastic if prompted to by a caregiver they love and trust, and they might want to learn how to fix what’s broken, rather than discarding it, if they’ve seen their parent fix broken things before. At this age, the child is motivated by connecting with their caregiver, not the values the caregiver holds.

But over time, with explanations, discussion, autonomy, and competence, the value of environmental stewardship may become internalised.

Now, one last way that SDT is important to everything we do at Parenting Place is that we want parents to feel good about their parenting too. Let’s be honest, a lot of parenting is not inherently enjoyable, so we need that internalised regulation. To do the hard parts of parenting we need to connect with our values about the type of parent and human we want to be. This is facilitated by feeling like we have some autonomy, competence and relatedness in regard to our parenting. Parenting Place supports all these.

• We support connection by helping parents connect with other parents so you know you’re not alone, helping co-parents get on the same page about parenting, and most importantly, helping parents learn how to connect with their kids.
• We support your autonomy by steering away from prescriptive scripts or single solutions that supposedly work for every child (newsflash, nothing does!). Instead we empower you with options to take or leave, with room to adapt them to your own unique circumstances and child.
• We also supports parents to feel competence, removing any emphasis on perfection, sharing our parenting struggles and encouraging parents to reflect on all the awesome work they’re doing.