We all want what’s best for our children, but sometimes, what’s best for them isn’t exactly what they want, which makes life harder for everyone involved. You may be able to see how much your child would benefit from learning to play an instrument, but if they don’t see it, it will be a challenge to get them to practice at all. Here are some ways to get your child excited about learning.
Listen to Your Child
Listen to what your children want to do. Before you go and force your child to learn ballet because they need to exercise, listen to your child. Maybe they want to join the swim team instead—that way, it’s a win-win. You don’t have to force your child into an activity they don’t want to do. They can still reap the benefits of doing something extracurricular.
There are countless ways to enrich your child’s life, from music classes for children, to sports, to foreign languages. You don’t need to be so set on one way of making them a better person. It will just create conflict and put a damper on what should be an enlightening experience.
Personalize Your Child’s Experience
Personalize their experience. Admit it; it’s hard to keep a child’s attention. Children generally aren’t interested in the world’s problems or other people’s lives in general. They’re still learning how to function in their own life. Make paying attention a little easier by customizing their lesson for them. Math is going to be a lot more interesting when they’re counting out the Jolly Ranchers that they’re going to eat. Reading is a lot more interesting when you can write the book, and your child can play a role in the plot they’re listening to in real-time. You don’t just want your children to show up at the lesson. You want them to be actively listening, and making the lesson about them is a great way to draw some attention.
Do a Little Compromising
Compromise with them. Compromising is an amazing lesson for a child to learn in life; they will have to use it often enough in the real world, and a great way to teach this lesson is by getting a child to compromise about how much schoolwork they will do before having fun. A compromise gives the illusion of choice. Do you want to practice for one hour or half an hour? They will gladly take half an hour, forgetting that not practicing at all was ever on their mind. Compromising is a great life lesson. It teaches your child that you don’t always get what you want. It will also help you get what you want: a child that’s excited about learning.
Add Some Excitement to the Work
Make their work exciting. If you can’t personalize an experience, the next best thing is to make it interesting. No child wants to learn the periodic table, but every child would be up to experiment with mixing different elements, learning the periodic table along the way. This strategy is used in science classes at school, but there’s no reason for you not to use it at home. Soon, your child will be coming up with their experiments and asking for the materials to try them out on their own. Making lessons exciting is a great way to create a life-long love of learning in your child.
Limit Those Distractions
Finally, a key to getting your child excited about learning is to remove or limit distractions. An example of this is setting screen time limits on the TV, iPad, or computer. If there’s one thing that children hate more than work, it is being bored. If they run out of screen time, they will soon be begging for exciting experiments to do. Not only does this encourage your child to work on practicing or other work, but it will also limit screen time and create a habit of finding things to do other than watching TV and playing video games. It’s a win-win situation.
In the end, relying on compromise and making lessons exciting are two of the most important things you can do if you want to encourage your child to be a life-long learner. With these tips, your child should be excited to learn daily. The conflict between wanting to enrich your child’s life and your child not wanting to work should disappear.
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