5 Significant Ways for Parents to Help with Children's Learning and Development

Parents are always under pressure to see their children perform well with their studies amid everything they are going through. You may try to focus only on your child's school curriculum, but that's not sufficient. It is very paramount to focus on their overall learning and development as well. It would not only enhance your child's overall growth but help with their studies as well.

So, what could you do to achieve that?

Here are some very effective ways to enhance your child's learning and development.

Prevent overwhelming

One of the most valuable things that any parent could do for their children is to remove the overwhelming feeling. When the children feel overwhelmed, their efficiency and functioning get impacted, if you have noticed.

Keep asking your children if they can cope up with all that they are doing. Do they need help with anything? Is there anything bothering them?

For example, my son goes through online coding classes. Every week he schedules classes based on his availability. I always encourage him to feel free to cancel them as needed based on his needs if he ever feels overwhelmed. I also have requested the relationship manager to be flexible with the class hours for my son. It seems they are also learning to do it better as they cannot be pushing too many classes in a week or a month because the child also has school and other activities they are going through. It's good to see everyone is working to ensure children are not overwhelmed.

Online self-learning courses

Many parents have the intention and the urge to teach their children many things. Nothing wrong with it, but it also comes down to a suitable time window that can work for both parents and children.

If you cannot make time with your child to teach some new skills, you can leverage online self-learning courses for your children. You can use portals such as Udemy and have your child signup for very fundamental topics focused on their learning and development. There are plenty of courses available on various topics.

Their screen-time may have increased multifold during the pandemic, and you may think you don't want to add another online thing for your child. But by ensuring your child has scheduled time for learning, be it 30 minutes a day to learn something fundamental, you can see great results over time.

Help them work in atomic ways

Break down their learning and development into smaller goals. Help them understand that they don't have to boil the ocean. They could take as little as possible every day to make progress with their broken-down goals.

Working this way, they would develop the conviction they can succeed if they focused efforts consistently over time in atomic nature. It would help reduce the overwhelming feeling as well to a great extent.

Celebrate all their micro successes

Take time out to celebrate all their small successes and make it a regular practice. It can leave your child with lasting positive feelings about how they are progressing and achieving results.

The more your children are happier, the more they can find positive energy to work on their things. Keep encouraging them with positive words about their achievements.

When they complete an online course by themselves over a few days or weeks, take them out and celebrate it. As you do it, you can also talk through what they learnt. Get more into a listening mode so that they get a chance to elaborate more and reaffirm their understanding.

Inculcate the culture of self-reflection

By asking them few simple questions, you can understand how they are really feeling with their education, learning, and development. Never show your inhibition when they share their stories or state of affairs.

When we genuinely understand by getting into their shoes, we will gain more resources to help them accordingly.

For example, two grades ago, I used to help my son plan the schedule for his studies, such as studying physics & mathematics on Monday, English & Chemistry on Tuesday, and so on so forth. As he followed that plan, I checked routinely if it worked well for him and if he wants to change anything in that plan. He came forward and proposed a couple of changes on his own. He got more committed since it was becoming his plan. These days, he comes up with the entire schedule without needing my help.

Summing it up

Nothing can beat the effect of time from parents on their children. That's precious.

But if you see that's getting challenging, you could step back, self-reflect to see what else you could be doing to help with the situation. The more you enable and empower your children, you can set a great path for them to become very independent and self-sufficient towards their learning and development.

Watching out closely for your children's health also is equally important. Their nutrition, hydration, and overall diet play prime roles in their productivity and cheerfulness.

Happy Parenting!