A really popular guy here at Summit is an educator by the name of Richard “Rick” Lavoie.
Rick Lavoie, M.A., M.Ed.
Special Education Expert
Rick Lavoie is an internationally known expert on children with learning disabilities, a best-selling author (It’s So Much Work to Be Your Friend: Helping the Child with Learning Disabilities Find Social Success), speaker, and workshop leader. Many parents and educators know Rick from his popular videos How Difficult Can This Be? The F.A.T. City Workshop, Last One Picked, First One Picked On, and When the Chips are Down: Learning Disabilities and Discipline.
Video Interview: https://youtu.be/ODxwotH5IEo?list=PLLxDwKxHx1yJT3UWo6ZCBetXIlU9YP_Fc
Rick has provided us at Summit with many of our important analogies. Poker Chips- the amount of resources that one has to “risk” when entering into a relationship with another person. Equity rather than equal- giving everyone what they need to have a positive experience rather than “one size fits all” programming. However I think Rick Lavoie’s most valuable life lesson for all of us is called The Motivation of Success.
Rick takes an old phrase you have probably heard over the years yourself: “If he would just work harder, he’d do better”, and corrects it:
IF HE WOULD JUST DO BETTER, HE’D WORK HARDER.
This is “the motivation of success”.
Consider that you have decided you want to lose weight and get in shape. You sign up for a gym (a financial commitment and physical effort) and you fill your refrigerator with vegetables (for many of us, a non-exciting food option). It’s HARD to go to the gym every day. It is difficult to eat boring vegetables. But, you stick to it for a month, thinking that your reward (feeling good) will be waiting for you.
30 days go by and you jump on the scale. You see you have not lost any weight, not even a pound. You have not done any better. Your reward is crushed. You feel very defeated.
Will you go to the gym again on day 31? Maybe. Another month passes. Again you lose not one single pound. Will you go the gym on day 61?
The longer you keep going to the gym and eating vegetables and not earning any ‘reward’, the higher the chance you will stop going. For many of us, even delayed rewards are not sufficient motivation to keep at things that aren’t offering any immediate pay off- as far as the gym, how many people sign up January 1st and have stopped going by the end of the month?
However, and what is significant here, is that tasks that come EASY and provide a FAST reward are VERY motivating. It’s obvious that we easily get frustrated and stop working at something that has no payoff. However, what you may not have considered is just how hard we are willing to work at things that come easy to us.
Now imagine you went to the gym for only a week and at the end of the week you found out that you lost 5 pounds, when you were only meant to lose maybe 1 pound. You will not only be satisfied-you will be thrilled! Now, not only will you go back to the gym on Monday- when you go to the gym on Monday you will work harder than you did last week. Yes, that is the interesting part about motivation- we are motivated to work HARDER at things that come easier to us- even though we were already successful doing them the first time.
At Summit we like to employ this principle, the Motivation of Success. Our campers have been the first guy- the one who has been at the gym for 60 days without losing a pound- in pretty much all aspects of their lives, since the beginning of their memory of time. That is very difficult to imagine or to relate to, but I figure it must lead to a great deal of frustration, sadness, and eagerness to GIVE. UP.
So, we make things easy for our campers to accomplish. At least as easy for them as they are for us. For if we are motivated, we now know that the reason we are motivated is because things are not too hard for us to accomplish- and not because we are particularly special. We can just as easily become de-motivated when things become too hard for us to accomplish.
Further, as we also know we are most motivated by those things we are best at, the things that come absolutely easiest to us. So, we help our kids find things that they are best at. That are easiest for them. This will make them happier. It will become an “island of competence”. It will improve their self-esteem. This will be the Magic on the Hill.
If you are interested in human behavior I strongly suggest you spend some time watching Rick Lavoie’s presentations. At camp we have them all on video. There are many shorts available on youtube. He also has a website, and has written many articles.
Website: https://www.ricklavoie.com/gateindex.html
Interview Article: https://childrenofthecode.org/interviews/lavoie.htm
Playdates: https://youtu.be/ODxwotH5IEo?list=PLLxDwKxHx1yJT3UWo6ZCBetXIlU9YP_Fc
When the chips are down (entire presentation) : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78bwTPUCBsE
Commencement at Eagle Hill: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnKCU0_cxts