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 e
Children need positive reinforcement in order to enjoy learning as they grow. When children are young and growing they are ready to learn and want to learn. A baby starts to learn as soon as they are born, they start to search for comfort and once that is found they try to figure out how to get food. Even though these babies must rely on adults for their needs, they have no problem figuring out that when they make sounds someone will help them fulfill their needs. As babies grow they are constantly learning, but even those that are sick when they are born to do better when they feel cared for by those around them. When babies or children do not feel cared for they lose the desire to want to do better. I have watched my three older children learn through the process of figuring out how to move themselves around and what not. I am still watching my youngest do this, but the most contrasting one was my twins. My boy was always eager to move around and even as a young baby would turn himself in circles on the floor while his sister was content with just laying still and waiting for someone to move her to somewhere new. While I know every child is different, having twins allows you to witness this first hand through all the stages of learning. Even now my daughter is much more interested in sitting around and coloring more than her brother is.
Recently I read a book called The Five Love Languages of Children by Gary Chapman and Dr. Ross Campbell that helped me to understand the need that children have for positive reinforcement. They say that children rely more on their emotions than they do the cognitive part of themselves and that feelings are remembered more easily than facts are. This tells me that if we are teaching a child or children who make a mistake and we tell them “bad” for that mistake they will remember the shameful feeling and it may be hard to get them to want to work on the lesson or skill again. In this book, they also point out that to help a child want to continue learning (since all young children are always eager to learn), that we need to make them feel good about themselves and not to criticize or humiliate them. A child will likely react to a boring or degrading learning experience making it harder for them to learn or have the desire to learn. This book is about making sure you know how to let a child feel they are loved, but also tells of how a child who feels unloved has a harder time learning. I believe this book has a lot of good information in it for any parent or adult dealing with children and you can read more of my thoughts on this book in my book review here.
” children are more emotional than cognitive; they remember feelings more readily than they do facts. “
Gary Chapman & Ross Campbell
I want to be encouraging to my children in their learning process. Last year my oldest started elementary school and while he has always had a thirst for knowledge there were times when I would talk with his teacher because he was doing things that he knew that he shouldn’t be doing or just was too busy talking to the other kids instead of doing his work. This is what led me to try to refocus things at home and look into what could be causing this problem. Since I am a reader I did turn to books and that is when I read The Five Love Languages of Children.
As I am writing this I have come to realize that even though I am talking about children and how making sure they feel good about themselves in order to want to continue to learn, this really pertains to every person in the world. Just because we become adults does not take away our child like desires. Those who are cared for the most want to continue to always be learning new things or striving for a better way. We all need to remember this and help one another out.
I do feel I have gotten a little off topic, so I will return to what I was saying. I know that I am not perfect in all my dealings with children, or that I know everything that there is to know about them. At this time in my life, I am trying to learn the skills I need to be a better mother and hope that writing what I learn will help others.
Teaching children is something that you start from the moment they are born, but is not just about the teaching of learning to read and write and math or any of the normal school things. While we all help children to learn these things, they also just learn by watching the world around them. They learn from watching you take interest in reading, writing, math or science. Children are blank slates that are just curious and want to learn as I have stated earlier. A lot of times if a child does not see many people in their lives enjoy reading or have someone in their life willing to read to them all the time then they will most likely end up not learning to enjoy reading. While most children will be interested in doing new things, if they are not encouraged in that direction in some way they will lose interest.
At times I know that my children need me to be more engaged with them and I need to read to them more. Sometimes I find that when they want me to read to them and I do not exactly feel like it I need to take the time to read to them anyway so that I do not discourage their love of books. I know that there are times when it is okay not to read when they want me to, but for the most part it is not going to hurt me to take time to read them a little book.
I would love to hear your thoughts on what you do to help your children to love to learn and to read.
Leave a Reply