Two Ways to Help Children Learn Faster

Some people may be a bit disgusted with Way #1 to help children learn faster. It has taken many experiential lessons for me to accept Way #1, but I have finally realized its worth.

Way #1 to Help Children Learn Faster:

Give them more time.

Most skills that we want our children to learn will be learned in time. Extra struggles come when we try to make them learn things sooner than they are ready to learn them.

Parents are not helped by state and school standards here, or guidelines and rules of thumb from experts and non-expert advice givers. When we see an age next to a skill, we want our child to have learned the skill AT LEAST six months earlier than that age. Right? Am I the only one?

Those standards and guidelines are made for a reason, and they are helpful in certain circumstances. For most children, they should be used only as a guide and not as an age past which your child will never acquire the skill and the world will come to an end.

I recently read a very interesting book called The Way of Boys: Raising Healthy Boys in a Challenging and Complex World. The author, Anthony Rao, Ph.D., seems to recommend two basic strategies to help boys acquire social skills: One is to simply wait for them to grow up a little! Most boys will mature in a healthy way and acquire the skills they need. The problem arises when they don't do it fast enough for their parents or teachers or school administrations.

His second strategy is to use consistent behavioral programs (such as clear rule-setting, slow progression from simple to more complicated behaviors, and rewards like sticker charts).

I'm sure many of us can share stories of working day after day, painstakingly, with a child to gain a particular skill and getting nowhere with it. Then some time later, the same child can "suddenly" do it with almost no effort at all. Laying groundwork by working on particular skills is well and good, and very helpful, as long as it done as slowly as necessary and without high emotional stakes placed on learning something right away.

Way #2: Embrace Your Child's Interests

Here is an illustration: I wanted to teach my older son chivalrous manners, though I wasn't sure how to go about it. It finally hit me that he would be amenable to talking about chivalry and manners through King Arthur's knights of the Round Table. He has an obsession with knights, castles, kings, battles, and good and evil. I began to talk about chivalry and what it meant to King Arthur. 

He said, "Watch this, Mom!" and went down into a low bended-knee bow. It was a perfect example of a knight's bow, complete with hands gripping the hilt of an imaginary sword.

Due to his passion for all things knights-related, he had already absorbed at least that much of a medieval sense of chivalry and honor. This was an easy topic to discuss.

 

Sometimes a favorite stuffed animal role-playing what we want to teach is more effective than words coming out of Mommy's mouth. Sometimes Daddy or an aunt or uncle is a better teacher because our child is able to listen more intently to them at that time.

People have always known it is easier to encourage children to do things if they are related to the children's interests. Diego toddler utensils, Dora toothbrushes, dinosaur stickers on a potty training chart...  We probably all use this method quite often. 

There are some things that family members here are slowly learning to do. I coach myself to take a deep breath and remember that, contrary to what my brain is telling me, there is not a specific date on the calendar that these things have to be perfectly learned. It also helps to look around for examples of things that I myself have taken long taken a long time to learn. And I successfully made it through all my (academic) schooling!