In this insightful episode, Dr. Tim Jordan delves into the importance of allowing your daughter to take charge of her own motivation by setting her intentions for the school year. He discusses how giving her the autonomy to decide her academic goals, social engagements, activities, family interactions, and personal growth areas can foster a stronger sense of responsibility and self-confidence. Dr. Jordan also provides practical advice on how parents can support their daughters in this process without micromanaging, ensuring they have the space to learn, grow, and thrive.
Related Episodes:
- Homework, Chores, and Routines: Top 4 Tips to Avoid Messing Up the School Year
- How to Purposefully Parent with the End in Mind
- Why Teens Don’t Want to Grow Up
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Listen to the podcast here
Why Your Daughter MUST Set Her Own Intentions For The School Year
Ready or not, the school year is upon us. I thought I would add a few ideas to your toolbox about how you can make sure your daughters and sons have a good start to their school year. My title is Why Your Daughter MUST Set Her Own Intentions for the School Year. That’s the part that’s most important. I once heard about a teacher who asked her class to write an essay on what they would do if given $5 million. Very quickly, this little girl, Emma, turned in her paper. It was a blank piece of paper.
Why Setting Your Own Intentions Matters
The teacher was like, “Emma, you didn’t write anything. You haven’t done anything. Why?” Emma said, “Because that’s what I would do if someone gave me $5 million.” This motivation piece is a tricky one. I think the start of the school year is an important time for kids to set intentions and for them to set their own intentions.
That’s a lot different than kids who are striving to meet our expectations, our standards, and what we set out for them. I think that’s not, in my mind, the best way to get your kids to be motivated for school. You might be able to get some kids who are compliant and obedient to try hard for you. In the long run, is that what we want?
I feel like what I’m going to say next is really important. I think kids need autonomy in picking the things that they love to do, whether you’re talking about their grades in school, whether you’re talking about whether or not they want to go to college, whether you’re talking about the activities that they do. The more say-so they have in picking what they want, the more engaged they will be in doing that thing.
The more engaged they are, the more fulfillment they’ll get out of it. Also, they’ll be much more willing to try hard, stick it out when it gets tough, stay determined, and overcome obstacles because they chose it. It’s their thing. It’s their expectations. It’s their standard. I don’t think your kids are ever too young to start that process.
Are they going to really get it when they’re in first grade? Perhaps not. I think it’s never too late. I remember, I think I told this story one time, but I’m going to repeat it. When my wife and I took our daughter to start college, there was a session as the boys were starting the university. We were in this big auditorium, and the dean of students was giving this talk to everybody. He sent our kids off to another area, another room, to sign up for their first-semester classes.
My wife and I and the other parents sat in the auditorium. One of the things that this dean of students said to us was, “Parents, it’s time to start letting go. Your sons and daughters are down the hallway and setting up their own classes. We have people at the door. We’re not going to let you in. We want them to start to grow up, make decisions for themselves, and start knowing what they want.”
When Should Kids Start Making Their Own Choices?
I think it was a nice thing to say. The first thing I thought of was, if this is the first time you’re going to let your kids go, and the first time you’re going to let your kids start making decisions for themselves, your son or daughter is in big trouble. That process should have started when they were toddlers to develop the ability to choose for themselves, make decisions, experience the mistakes they make, and learn how to overcome those mistakes and experience the high you get from making a good choice.
That process can start early. This start of the school year is an opportunity for you to start that process. I’ll never forget one time my wife and I were giving a talk out in California to a group of very successful business people. I remember one of the dads raised his hand. He said, “I’ve got a great story for you.” He said, “My sixteen-year-old son was not motivated in school. We were on him all the time. He was pushing back, lots of resistance. He was getting D’s and F’s when he should have been getting A’s or could have been getting A’s.”
He said, “What switched it for him was not a punishment. It was not a reward. We took him to a talk at Stanford one evening. There was a young man who was in his early 20s. He gave a talk about how he had made his first million dollars by the time he was 22. This sixteen-year-old boy sat there with his mouth open like, ‘Oh my gosh.’ When he left the auditorium, he was determined that that’s what he wanted. He set himself a goal. I want to make $1 million by the time I turn 22 as well.” For the first time in a long time, he tried hard in school. He ended up getting into Stanford, and he did well because it was his thing. It was autonomy that did that for him.
There are some stages of morality. They’re called Kohlberg’s stages of moral development. I messed around with those. This is like the reasons why kids do what they do, where their motivation comes from. The lowest level of motivation is you do something to avoid a punishment. If your kids decide they’re going to try in school to avoid being punished, getting things taken away.
Motivation built on avoiding punishment or seeking rewards is fragile. True motivation comes from aligning actions with personal values and goals. Share on XA lot of parents are holding their kids to a standard of, “If you don’t get a certain grade, we’re going to take your phone away,” that sort of thing. That’s a low level of motivation. Just up from that is kids who do things for rewards. Their interest is not in doing it for the right reasons. Their interest is in, “What am I going to get for it? What’s the prize? What’s the reward?” The next level up is, “I do it because I’m supposed to. It’s a rule. I should. It’s a have to.” The next level up is to do things to please you, not disappoint you, or please their teachers or to please anybody.
It is a level of motivation, but it’s not a very strong one. It’s not the kind of motivation that’s going to last. The higher level of motivation is when they do it because it’s part of their personal code of ethics. It’s a principle for them to work hard at things, to do well, to do their best. That kind of personal code of ethics can be developed in childhood if we get out of their way. If you distract them with rewards and punishments and all those kinds of things, if you’re trying to do things to get your kids to please you, they get distracted from what’s right on the inside.
Helping Your Daughter Set Learning Goals
Why do I want to do this? I think it should start at the beginning of the school year. I think it’d be great to sit down with your daughter and say to her, “What are your intentions for the school year? What do you want? I want this to come from you. I don’t want you doing things anymore because you want to please Mom and Dad.”
It’s not wrong. It’s not bad. It’s just not a high level of motivation. I would maybe break this down into several categories. The first one you might want to talk about is their learning. What do you want to learn this year? I didn’t start with, “What grades do you want?” even though that could be part of the question because it’s not always about grades.
It’s about what do you want? What classes interest you? If you want to do well in school, why? What kind of grades do you want? That’s not a bad question to ask. It just wouldn’t be the first one when it comes to learning. If they say, “I want all A’s,” which is what most girls say to me in my counseling practice, I’ll ask them a follow-up question, which is, “Why do you want A’s?” It gets fuzzy.
Many girls will say, “If I get straight A’s or good grades, I can get into a top college.” I’ll say, “Why do you want to get into a good college?” “I can get a good job.” “Why do you want to get a good job?” “I can make a lot of money.” I’ve talked about that line of thinking, which I think is unhealthy in the long run. I also think that for some kids, I want them to learn for the love of learning. We’ve distracted our kids so much from that, the love of learning.
Kids are intrinsically motivated to learn. They have been since the day they were born. There are intrinsic good feelings that come with everything that they do. They don’t need a reward to feel good about what they did. That, again, is a distraction from their autonomy, their intrinsic, their internal motivation. I remember I gave a talk one time.
True learning isn’t about grades—it’s about following your passions and being curious. Let’s help kids rediscover the love of learning. Share on XI was teaching a class at a local university. It was a class for teachers, a master’s level class for teachers. I was talking about kids’ emotions. I was talking about motivation. I was talking about emotional intelligence, those sorts of things. I always had, on one of the last classes, some high schoolers come in to answer questions from the teachers. These were girls who were from my summer camps, my retreats. I knew them. They were outgoing. They would say anything. They were really bright, out-there, whatever kind of kids. These are not straight-A students, necessarily, but they were articulate.
One of the things that always surprised the teachers was how the girls who tended to have good grades were the least motivated in school. They’re the ones who hated school the most. The teachers were like, “You have great grades. Why don’t you like school?” What they said was, “School is a game. School is a game. What I’ve learned up until now is my job is to sit in class and to listen to the teacher to figure out what’s going to be on the test. That’s what I study.” The school system had totally zapped their intrinsic motivation. They’d made it about grades.
Navigating Social Life And Friendships
They’d made it all about having the right answer, which is not healthy for them in the short or long term. Ask your daughter, “What classes are you most interested in? What kind of grades do you want? What’s the purpose of your education?” If they’re getting along in high school, if they’re juniors and seniors, I ask them, “Do you have any plans for after high school?” I ask girls that question in my counseling practice. They’ll oftentimes say, “I’m going to go to college.”
I’ll ask them the follow-up, which is, “Why do you want to go to college?” Then I get those same murky answers. Either that lineage of good job, make a lot of money, whatever, but also a lot of them stutter. They don’t know the answer to the question of, “Why do you want good grades?” or “Why might you want to go to college?” They haven’t had the chance to think for themselves.
They’ve been so invested in doing what other people want them to do, what everyone else is doing. If everybody in their class or their friends are going to go to college, they think it’s what we want, their parents, as opposed to, “What do you want? Why might you want to go to college if you do?” I also ask her, “What’s your plan? If she says, ‘I want these kinds of grades,’ what’s your plan to achieve that?” They may have had some struggles the year before, and I say, “What’d you learn from that?” A lot of girls procrastinate, so help them become aware of the cost to them last year when they procrastinated and what they might want to do differently this year so they won’t get behind. I see so many girls in my counseling practice who, for different reasons, procrastinate.
They’re in a play. They’re in sports. They didn’t have time. They get behind, and then it starts piling up. They get overwhelmed. They shut down. They really suffer. They get stressed out. Ask her what her plan is to avoid that this year. What’s your plan for her getting what she wants? You might want to make an agreement with her that you want to sit down with her periodically and check in with her.
I would tell them that you’re not going to be checking Infinite Campus or whatever computer system your school has where you can check on your kids every five seconds to see what they turned in, what they didn’t turn in, or what they got on the quiz. Just say, “I don’t want to get into that micromanaging kind of thing, but I want to know I’m interested in your education.” Every week or two, maybe you sit down with her and she shows you her work. She shows you what she’s up to. She can tell you, she can show you a paper she wrote in English. She can talk about things that she’s interested in. She can show you her grades. If there’s something that’s not what she wants, ask, “What’s your plan for bringing that up if you want to bring it up?” It’s not about criticizing. It’s not about being on her. It’s more about how you’re doing. If there are some things that you’re not happy with, what are you going to do about it?
It’s really hard at that point if they aren’t doing as well as they want or you want to jump in and start to micromanage. Please catch yourself and don’t do that. I would check in. I would go to the parent-teacher conferences, midterms. I would sit down and have a conversation about that. At the end of the quarter, at the end of the semester, I would have conversations at those times. Even in between, just ask her to educate you about how she’s doing. Show me your work. Tell me what you liked. Tell me about your teachers.
Learning is one area I would have her set her intentions. Another one might be her social life. What does she want with her friendships this year? Does she want different friends? All the girls in my summer camps this summer and all the years prior, when they come to camp, they all talk about wanting better friends, deeper friends, friends where they can be more real, friends where they can be authentic, friends where they wouldn’t feel judged, where they can be totally themselves and know that it’s all accepted and okay.
They want to have deeper conversations, not just this superficial stuff that a lot of them get into with their friends. Those aren’t wrong conversations, but a lot of the girls I meet, almost all of them, are yearning for deeper connections. Ask her if that’s what she wants, what could she do about that? Again, spark conversations about what she wants. She might want this year to have some friends in different groups, not just the same ones. She might want to try different activities so she will meet different kids with different interests. Sometimes, I have girls make a list of the qualities of a best friend, and I have them write those out. I have them do a couple of things with that list.
Take that list of the qualities of a BFF and first look at yourself and say, “Do I live out those qualities?” If I want a friend who has deeper conversations and who’s willing to be herself, then maybe I need to live that out. If I want a friend who doesn’t gossip and talk about people behind their backs, I need to also live that kind of thing out. I then have them take that list of the qualities of a best friend, look at the people they normally hang out with, and ask themselves, “Do my friends match the list?”
Many times, they don’t. I tell them it doesn’t mean you cut out those people. It just means I might want to start looking for friends who match my list more so that when they start school or even before they start school, if your daughter hasn’t started yet, have them go through the buzz book or whatever they have online that shows all the people in their class and think about, “Are the people I see, which ones do I think match my list the most by the way they act?”
When I start school that first week, I want to look around and be more observant about who is living out these qualities. Who is somebody who doesn’t gossip, who doesn’t talk about people behind their backs, who seems like they’re a good listener, who’s fun, and who’s funny. For some girls, it’s important to have friends who are into school because otherwise, they might drift away from their motivation. They can start looking around for people who match your list and then try to spend more time with those people. It’s important who you hang out with. Your friends are a big influence, so make sure you have the influence that you want around you.
Friends shape our lives more than we realize. Encourage your daughter to seek friendships that align with her values and support her growth. Share on XI remember one girl who came to one of my retreats. She was really disappointed in her friends because when she started high school, a lot of them started getting more wild. They were partying more, they got into the boys, and they were drinking and vaping and doing things, and she didn’t want to do those things, but they were her group. And so I remember her talking at one of our retreats about how hard it was for her. She felt like she was not living the life that she wanted.
We talked about it, and she gathered the courage to stop going out with them and start looking for people who better matched her values. That was really hard. It took a lot of guts for her to do that because for a while, she was without a group, and that’s tough. It took her a little while to find some people who matched more of what she wanted and had her kind of values. It takes a lot of courage to be able to do that and to be willing to do that.
I would encourage your daughter to have some thought about what kind of social life she wants this year and therefore what’s her plan for that. It also might be that you ask her about the activities that she does. Some girls I know have started doing club sports, starting in early grade school, and they are the same sport. They’re being pushed and encouraged by coaches and parents and the whole system to hyper-specialize into one sport early on. By the time I see them in 7th, 8th, 9th, or 10th grade, a lot of them are burned out because it’s been too much, not enough downtime. They need to try other sports.
I would give her a lane. Some girls just need a lane to come off of because there’s so much pressure from the coaches, their teammates, and parents. Sometimes, the girls think, “My parents have invested so much energy and money in my sport that I can’t quit. It would disappoint too many people.” I would let her know there’s an off-ramp for her if she wants. She might want to adjust. Maybe she doesn’t want to play two sports or be on two club teams. Maybe she wants to try a new sport. God forbid she would try a different sport. I would give them off-ramps. I would give her the opportunity to think about what she would like to do.
I encourage kids who are really sporty to try something not sporty. Maybe be in a play this year. Maybe do some stuff with the art club. Maybe take photographs at some other events. Maybe make posters for the homecoming dance. I encourage the more arty kids to try something physical. Broaden yourself, enrich yourself, do different things. When you do that, you’re going to meet different people, number one, who probably are a little bit different, which is nice.
You learn something new about yourself when you start hanging out with different people. Plus, you may be surprised at the kind of things you might be interested in that you didn’t know before because you didn’t take the time to try it. It’s a good time for kids in grade school, middle school, and high school to sample. What do I like? They’ll never know that unless they’re given the opportunity and have the time. Maybe you can have discussions about making sure that their time is not all spent with a club traveling team because then there isn’t much time to socialize with their friends. There’s not much time for self-care and downtime.
Balancing Activities And Avoiding Burnout
Talk about activities. Make sure it’s a balanced approach to their life so that it’s not out of balance where they end up being burned out. It’s hard to keep up. They get stressed, etc., etc. Excuse me. I had a girl one time who was really sporty. She also liked to draw. One of the things she did, this was her junior year in high school, was she didn’t want to act, but she joined a play and worked on the sets. She loved it. She made some really good new friends, some of the theater kids, if you will. Some kids judge because they’re theater kids, but once you get to know them, they’re awesome. They’re just like anybody else, but there’s so much of that comparing and judgment in high school. Sometimes, they don’t realize that they have so much in common with so many different kinds of people.
I also would sit down and talk about family. What kind of support do you want from mom and dad this semester or this school year? What would that support look like? If you don’t want me to micromanage you and if you don’t want me to be on you, I’m interested in your education. What kind of support do you want? How can I check in with you? Make agreements about maybe checking in every couple of weeks to sit down and have a heart-to-heart conversation about how she’s doing, what she’s into, and what she’s up to. You also might want to have some discussions about family time.
What would it look like? Instead of crabbing at her about always being in her room or always being on social media, I would let her know that you also want to have some time with her and what it could look like. It could look like taking her to school once every couple of weeks and going out to breakfast before school. Find some rituals you can do with your daughter that let her know that you care and want to spend time with her. Give her lots of choices in what that looks like.
I finished a summer camp this year, and lots of the girls were talking about wanting more time with their parents. A lot of families, both parents work, and both parents are busy. A lot of parents, even when they work from home, are working from home, so they’re not available. Some kids go through divorces, etc. There are reasons why. A lot of them are not getting the time that they really want with their parents, and especially girls with their dads.
I encourage them to have a heart-to-heart with their moms and dads and say, “I would like some time. This is what it would look like. How can we create some time?” You may have to get your calendars and put stuff in the calendar, and that’s okay if it causes you to commit to it and to do it. It doesn’t have to be taking them out of the country or something like that. It may mean just tuck-ins. It may be walks after dinner. Take the dog for a walk after dinner, drop them off at school, or stop by and get a coffee with them.
You also might want to talk about how, as they get older, they’re going to want more freedoms and more privileges. I would talk about how they can earn those. They’re not things you’re just going to give them because they’re 12 or 14 or 16 or 18. They will have to earn those privileges and freedoms with their behavior over time. The last category is growth. Ask them, “Are there any places you’d like to grow in your life? What are your growing edges, if you will? Are there places where you might want to get out of your comfort zone a little bit more?” That could look like sitting at different lunch tables at school. It could look like taking a different class at school that you haven’t had before.
It could look like a club you haven’t been in before. It could be trying a new sport. I would encourage her to branch out. New clubs. Maybe it’s about raising your hand more in class. Maybe it’s about advocating for herself more in school when she has needs since you’re not going to be micromanaging her anymore.
Maybe she can make a growth piece this year about not comparing herself so much to other people, or maybe not caring so much about what other people think of her or basing her decisions on what other people think or do. She can start thinking more for herself, even if it goes against the grain. She might want to do a little bit differently this year in classes where she doesn’t like the teacher.
I see a lot of girls who get the lowest grades in classes where they like the teacher. They allow that to cause them to not try as much. That could be a growth piece for her. I would ask her, “If you want to grow some this year, if you want to stretch yourself out of your comfort zone, what might that look like?” With all these things, as they start taking on more responsibility and autonomy, they may falter at first. They may not pick up the ball, run with it, and score a touchdown the first time they run down the field, but it’s okay. I’d rather they make those mistakes when they’re young than when they get older.
I always say that the mistakes we’re not allowed to make in our youth will be made later on at greater cost and with less benefit. I believe that’s true. I heard about this guy who went to a psychiatrist one time, and he said, “I need some help with my son. He’s a teenager.” I’m sorry, he didn’t say that. He said, “I want you to help with my son.”
The psychiatrist said, “What’s wrong? What’s wrong with your son?” He said, “Well, I know it’s going to be hard to believe, but he’s always eating mud pies. I get up in the morning, he’s out in the yard, eating mud pies. I come home for lunch some days, and he’s out in the yard, eating mud pies. I come home at dinner time, and he’s out in the yard eating mud pies. I don’t know what to do.” The psychiatrist tried to reassure him by saying, “That’s probably not so bad. Just give him some time. It’s all part of growing up.” The dad said, “Well, I don’t like it. Neither does his wife.”
When will you let go? When will you start allowing your kids to set their own intentions? When will you allow them to find their own motivation for doing what they do and doing well in what they do? When will you let them? If you set them free and let them choose and they falter, don’t rush in and fix and rescue. That’s what I see happening a lot.
Letting go is tough, but essential. Allow your child to make mistakes, learn, and grow into their own person. It’s part of the journey. Share on XThey falter at first, but it doesn’t mean they can’t do it. It just means they may have to make some mistakes along the way. You can sit down and talk about those mistakes. You can ask them what their plan is and what they’ll do differently, but allow them to take care of themselves, fix it themselves, and problem-solve for themselves.
There’s a great quote from Buckminster Fuller. It goes like this, “We’re brought up, unfortunately, to think that nobody should make mistakes. Most kids get de-geniused by the love and the fear of their parents, that they might make a mistake, that all of my advances were made by mistakes. You uncover what is when you get rid of what isn’t.”
This is a good time to let go at the start of the school year. Have these conversations with your daughter about what she wants as far as her learning, her academics this school year, her activities, her friendships, what she wants with the family, and what kind of support she needs from mom and dad, which oftentimes changes every year because they’re different and the kind of support that they need changes over time.
Ask her what kind of growth she wants this year, how she wants to get out of her comfort zone, and how she wants to stretch herself. Those are great conversations to have, and I would support her in what she wants and let her know that I’m willing to support you, but let me know how. Check in with her about all those things as the school year advances.
Start it with the beginning, beginning with the end in mind at the beginning of the school year. It’s really important to help her get clear about what her end in mind is for all those things. I thought I would put links to three previous episodes. One was called Homework, Chores, Routines: The Top 4 Tips on How to Not Mess Up the School Year. One was called How to Purposefully Parent with the End in Mind. The last one is called Why Teens Don’t Want to Grow Up.
I interviewed 3 or 4 of my campers who were all seniors in high school, and they talked about how they were so scared about growing up, scared about the end of the school year when they were going to go off to college because they had never been allowed to make mistakes. They’d never been allowed the opportunity to take care of themselves, to make decisions, to deal with all the feelings that they had. Their parents had done too much for them.
Don’t let that be your daughter when she’s a senior in high school. Start now, no matter what age your daughter is. I think you will see her slowly but surely blossom. I’ll be back, as always. Thanks so much for stopping by. You might want to read this with your daughter, and then this could spark the conversation about intentions for her school year. I’ll be back here. I’ll see you then. Thanks so much for stopping by.
Important Links
- Homework, Chores, Routines: The Top 4 Tips on How to Not Mess Up the School Year – Past Episode
- How to Purposefully Parent with the End in Mind – Past Episode
- Why Teens Don’t Want to Grow Up – Past Episode