lack of motivation – normally kids become what they have been brought up to be expected to become as part of their heritage – as Dr J Sacks says – they want to be anothert letter in the scroll.
So they may be expected to become a doctor, an athlete, jet-fghter pilot etc. It can happen that parents decide against their own heritage in which case they suppress the subtle messages that express their expectations about their children becoming what their grandparents / great-grandparents are or were.
Even in a teenage rebellion where the child is developing their sense of ‘I’ (which when they grow older will again become part of the ‘we’ (we jews, we robinsons, we french..) they will still be aware of their destiny. But if they have none there is no regulator