I have many years of experience working with and teaching children. I helped to care for three of my five younger siblings, worked in three different daycares, watched my nephews and nieces, as well as raising my own four children starting six years ago. Through all these years it saddens me to see slip-ups people have when trying to help children to learn. I of course especially hate when I find myself doing the things that I know can be more harmful to a child’s learning. I know that we all make mistakes since we are only human, but I also know I can do better at teaching my children and the children around me. I know that I am not an expert on children, even with all the experiences I have had, but I still feel that things I am learning or have learned can help someone else to find the path that they may be seeking to help their children.
I had all of this written out once before, but felt it was sounding much more judgemental than I wanted to and so here I am rewriting it. I am in no way a judge to anyone on how they help children but am hoping to make sure we are aware of the way we interact with children to keep them positive about learning. I do believe that sometimes when we talk with children we may forget that there is still a lot they do not understand. I try to remember that these little brains are interested in learning, but can only take in so much at a time.
I know that as human beings we sometimes get set in our ways, and while that can be good in some instances, yet there are definitely times when it can have the opposite effect of what we are looking for. As an example, I have noticed people who may have grown up with dogs as pets and are used to dog training methods, but when they are around young children and end up using such methods on the children it will have a negative effect. There have been times when I find myself saying things that I know can hurt the joy of learning and I have to correct it so that my children will want to continue to learn. Now I am in no way an expert on dog training as I have only had dogs for pets in my adult life and out of all the ones I have had I have only been responsible to help train two of them. This being said maybe I am just naive, but when training a dog and telling it “bad” for something wrong it did, the dog gets that it was in the wrong and after a few times of hearing this stops the behavior. I understand using short commands such as this, but I think it still has a negative effect on the animal. While I have seen the same technique used on children occasionally I know that this negative effect can cause the child to lose interest in the thing they were trying to learn.
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