If you ever wondered whether there was any way to get your child to be excited about school, then read on for some useful tips towards making that happen. Sometimes the best way to convince your child to put extra effort towards school is for them to truly want it themselves. With the right attitude and motivation, any student can greatly increase their grades and learning speed in school.
1) Allow your child to choose
Allowing your child to choose what to learn does not mean allowing your child to be lazy whenever they want. Quite the opposite! By allowing your child to help choose the areas they want to improve on, it helps build their skill set for knowing when they need additional focus in certain areas. Not only will this help them in school, but it is a life skill that will benefit them forever.
You can start off with a casual conversation about school, and go over each school subject to gauge their reaction. Guide the conversation in a way that allows your child to self-recognize the need for improvement in an area, then provide the solution by offering your assistance. Over time, this process will become a habit, and you may then ask your child to suggest solutions themselves.
2) Guide your child with plan creation
After finding out which area your child would like to focus on improving, the next step is to create a solid plan to achieve improvement. First, it is a good idea to break down the overall plan into smaller goals. This will give a sense of accomplishment whenever each smaller goal is achieved. At the same time, challenges are easier to overcome if they are more bite-sized. This will greatly decrease chances of your child being frustrated and giving up on the plan.
3) Explain why something is important
Following all these different techniques in learning is great, but not understanding the reason behind it all may become a problem. It is important that your child understand why learning is important. Of course, it is unreasonable to expect your child to have the same level of understanding as you, but the explanations can be simplified to adapt to each child’s age.
By being patient and explaining why something is important, it will create internal motivation for your child. This will eventually evolve to become a habit for them, and will allow them to proceed in learning without your continuous supervision.
4) Learn to love reading
With the need and reasoning for learning established, information understanding needs to be strengthened for your child. Learning materials come in all shapes and sizes, and understanding such material can only become more efficient with practice. While it is possible to constantly train your child to understand learning materials, it is a great idea to develop a love for reading for them.
By nourishing a love of reading for them, they will be exposed to many more types of information and learning materials on their own. This allows them to learn from many more sources, rather than just the preplanned teaching materials.
5) Choosing the right rewards
One of the most important things in developing new habits would be rewards. Often, a material reward is used for convenience, but these act more as bribes and does not provide a meaningful satisfaction. Choosing the right type of rewards for your child is highly important. The act of rewarding can also be used to build further development in other aspects of your child’s life as well.
For example, a very positive reward can be an activity spending time with the parents. This helps to establish a stronger relationship with your child and will promote continued communication as your child grows up.
Another positive example of a reward is elective learning. Such as learning a skill that is more fun and playful, compared to a core subject in school. Riding a bicycle, or playing with a ball are examples of this.
As the relationship develops positively with your child, an appropriately timed praise can have a very positive result as a reward. Be careful not to praise continuously, as this will greatly diminish the value of your praises.
6) Be an inspiration to them
Children learn by observing and imitating. Be an inspiration to them by demonstrating traits that you want to impart onto your child. An example of this is to vocalize and explain your thinking and behavior process when handling your personal daily tasks. This will reinforce positive thinking and confidence in their own growth.
7) Encourage overcoming obstacles
Whether it is in daily life or in learning new subjects, everyone will encounter obstacles. It is important for your child to have the necessary life tools to handle such obstacles, without feeling overly stressed by the experience.
First, explain that encountering difficulties is a normal event and show confidence in being able to resolve it. Then, explain how you would approach in resolving the difficulty. This is a life lesson that should be repeated many times to establish a positive habit for your child. Until they are fully able to handle encountering new challenges and being able to figure out steps to resolve them.
8) Add some competition
While having an obsessive level of competition may induce too much stress for your child, having some level of competition can be a healthy thing. By challenging your child to meet new reasonable goals, this guides them towards constant improvement. This is a trait that is built up over time, and will allow your child to excel in many areas. Adding competition does not have to be limited to school subjects, and may be reinforced in other areas too. Such as, competing against you to clean up a room, or some other activities that allow for friendly competition.
9) Try different learning styles
It is important to figure out what is the ideal learning style for your child. Some learn best by seeing the problem or demonstration, some learn best by hearing the problem or solution. Some people learn best by reading and then writing it out. And then there are some who learn best by moving and doing. Not only is it important for you and the teachers to know what your child’s best learning method is, but it is also very important for your child to know as well.
When your child knows and fully understands their strengths and weaknesses in learning methods, it will minimize chances of feeling discouraged when some learning materials appear difficult to absorb.
At Success Tutorial School, we strive to understand the individual needs of your child and make sure they learn in the most efficient way for them.
10) Learn to love learning
Most importantly, developing a love for learning will make everything proceed much smoother. Nourish a joy in learning new things in your child, teach your child to have a sense of wonder and exploration of new knowledge. By doing this, any learning tasks will be greatly accelerated because your child will have a deep desire to do so themselves.
There are many skills and tools to help your child to be motivated in school and in learning anything. While some externally enforced stress may assist in creating discipline, too much of it may create an undesired rebellious nature. The ideal goal is to balance a mixture of self desire to learn, positive external reinforcements and a consistent parental discipline built upon a trusting relationship with your child.
At Success Tutorial School, we pride ourselves on developing a balanced discipline with your child. We have the best tutors for subjects such as math, English, science, and French to help your child learn better. Contact us to learn more about how we can help you and your child to achieve a wonderfully successful future together.
