Richard Lavoie is widely known for a popular PBS video and workshops that show teachers what school is really like for struggling kids. A special-educator for more than 30 years, he has written "The Motivation Breakthrough: 6 Secrets for Turning On the Tuned-Out Child" (Touchstone).

Q. You say that when you started studying motivation, you discovered that what you thought about it wasn't really true. Like what?

A. Well, I used to — and many teachers do — brand kids as lazy. I thought they just weren't trying, whereas now I realize that's really something we call "learned helplessness." When a child faces failure enough times, he begins to feel he's not going to succeed and doesn't see any sense in investing himself. Every child hits this sort of motivation brick wall at some point, and then what we do as teachers and parents, unfortunately, is sort of blame the victim and say that it's the child's fault.

Q. What can parents do if a child is struggling in school?

A. You need to collaborate with the school. When the adults in a child's life are fighting, it's ultimately the child who gets hurt. What I see is parents being very critical of the teachers and the homework "to" the child. If mom has difficulties with the homework that the teacher is giving, she should talk to the teacher and not talk to the teacher through the child.

And it's important to communicate with the child, effectively and often. But the most important thing parents and teachers need to do is to keep in mind the balance between what I call support and challenge. You need to constantly challenge kids. But you need to give them the support to meet those challenges.

Q. You challenge the wisdom of some very common practices, such as reward systems, competition and punishment. Is it realistic to get rid of all of this?

A. Not to get rid of it, not at all, but to realize that it doesn't work for all kids. A good example is competition. The reality is, the only person motivated by competition is the person who thinks he has a chance of winning.

Rewards don't work, either, if the child is having difficulty. All reward systems are based on the concept that the child can do it, he just chooses not to.

Punishment is just a totally ineffective way to motivate kids.

Q. Does motivating kids get harder or easier as they age?

A. It probably gets more difficult. I've never known a 5-year-old who hasn't been eager to get on the school bus and go to school and do like his brothers and sisters did. And it begins to wane as the child begins to confront more failure and challenge. The irony is that high school teachers particularly, and parents of high school kids, need to be more skilled at motivating, and yet it's the high school teacher who often says, "It's not my job."

You need to continue to be a salesman and a motivator as a high school teacher and as a parent of high school kids.