How Parents Affect Their Kids' Goals
For both children and adults, goals are essential because they provide motivation. Yet, not every goal affects our emotional well-being in the same way.
The way that intrinsic goals directly meet our psychological demands for relatedness, competence, and autonomy sets them apart from extrinsic goals. Aiming for personal development, establishing meaningful and mutually beneficial relationships, and scheduling time for community service are examples of intrinsic goals. It is more likely that these kinds of goals will promote wellbeing.
Extrinsic objectives are those that are focused on things that are outside of oneself, such as money, notoriety, status, or a thousand social media likes. These goals are nearly impossible to achieve with a sense of fulfillment. There's always someone more affluent, well-known, popular, or popular, and there's always the latest shiny object to pursue, which always comes at a higher price.
Can children's intrinsic motivation be increased? As it happens, we may be unwittingly steering our kids in the direction of certain goals.
Parental values
In fact, the kinds of goals that parents respected were often linked to the values that children had when selecting goals. This is especially true for extrinsic objectives. Children also tend to value more externally based goals, such as aiming for straight As, winning a sports trophy, or getting admitted into a famous university, if their parents seem to place emphasis on things like higher wages or a bigger home.
For intrinsic goals, you would anticipate a similar parent-child correspondence. This means that if parents emphasize finding a happy career, you would expect the child to follow a more introspective path as well, whether that involves finding a vocation that feels like a good fit or concentrating on learning and developing from course content rather than obsessing over grades.
However, the relationship here might not be as straightforward as it seems. Children's extrinsic goals grew in tandem with their parents' intrinsic goals. In reality, these goal kinds could develop via different processes.
A nurturing environment
Apart from goal-modeling, a child's approach to goals may also be significantly influenced by the parenting style used.
However, messaging that places too much emphasis on money success or social prestige should be avoided. Establishing an atmosphere that fosters children's sense of independence, competence, and relatedness should be a top priority.
A need-supportive environment encourages intrinsic goals that, by definition, "emerge naturally from within" when a child is loved, supported to feel capable, and has a sense of volition.
Children may be pushed to compromise their own goals in order to get the acceptance of their parents in need-frustrating circumstances if the parent is psychologically domineering, contemptuous, or unsupportive. This dynamic may consequently promote externally driven goal-setting and impede the formation of internal objectives.
The difficulties a parent may be going through may be correlated with the type of goals a child has. It makes senseâfocusing on financial goals is normal if you're struggling to pay your expenses, and children may follow suit.
However, there isn't any proof of that. More investigation is required, and it may be especially interesting to look into how various stressors may affect children's extrinsic goals.
