Motivate Your Child

Actually, children like to learn. Actually. Many children lose their motivation to learn early on.

Every child is born with an incredible desire to discover and shape. Never again in his life will a child be as curious and inquisitive as in his early childhood. Parents (and educators) should become aware of this treasure and this openness and uphold it because this basis can facilitate the school career.

Of Time Windows

Many parents strive to teach their children as much knowledge as possible because certain time windows close again—at least one hears this in every corner. However, modern brain research sees the focus elsewhere. The basis for educational processes is to provide the children with experiential spaces in which they can experience and educate themselves. The self-efficacy concept plays a special role here. Unfortunately, in reality, it looks like we are always providing our children with fixed answers and given toys that stifle any curiosity and creativity in the bud. We answer children's questions far too extensively, instead of giving them space and turning the children themselves into researchers. We buy toys that leave no room for maneuver, but pretend a finished game. And if the kids do not play it, we'll point them out to play real or beautiful. But parents have the task to encourage their children, to challenge them and to inspire them to remain cosmopolitan. Every day anew. Why this is of great importance for the later development is a look into the brain of the children:

It has to get under your skin.

The child is initially provided with huge surpluses at synapses—but only those remain that are used and fed by individual experience. After the age of six, those contacts that are not used gradually wither away. The own experiences have a great influence on which interconnections between the nerve cells and which do not. Anything that literally gets under your skin is better anchored in the brain than memorized knowledge. Learning and feelings are closely linked.

Motivation Killer

The school system helps to reduce learning motivation among children. Good grades, performance and who does not fit in the system flies out are motivational killers that create a great pressure to succeed in parents and children. Under these conditions, learning cannot be fun. Of the innate thirst for knowledge of children is usually not much left—instead of learning gets a negative connotation. But what can parents do?

Enthusiasm and Interest

Studies have often shown that children enjoy learning if they want to understand the learning content from their own inner drive (intrinsic motivation). Only what really interests them gives them pleasure and is reason enough to immerse themselves in a topic. Children do not have to learn motivation today, but enthusiasm and interest—then the motivation come naturally. Instead of focusing on it, something completely different happens in family life and in school life. The extrinsic motivation is in the foreground: rewards, praise, notes—all this weakens the inner drive of the children and leads to the fact that children no longer learn for themselves, but for the assessment from outside. The own motivation is weakened.

How can parents motivate their children to learn?

Tip 1: Pay attention to a pleasant learning environment.

Sufficient sleep, breaks, nutrition, and exercise are fixed cornerstones of learning motivation, as well as a separate, tidy, bright workplace and a quiet learning environment.

Tip 2: School is not everything.

If the family life of the child is all about school, then it makes it feel stressed. At home, there should be a place of well-being, where the child can arrive and relax from everyday school life.

Tip 3: Set incentives.

It helps many children to understand what they should learn for: For example, those who are good at biology can become a doctor later. Such goals can increase motivation.

Tip 4: Integrate learning material into everyday life.

There are many ways to integrate the learning material into everyday life. Mathematics can be practiced while baking or shopping, physics can be tried out in the museum and biology can be learned well during a trip. Thus, the learning material is brought to life and with many senses.

Tip 5: Stand behind the child.

A child needs a sense of achievement and parents who support him. Maybe it has a past-time that is really good! Recognition and appreciation for the person should always be independent of the grades—the child is more than the result of a test. What does not help are promised rewards such as TV or candy. These increase motivation only in the short term and do not help if the child just can not make it. Instead, his "failure" is shown to him even more clearly.

Tip 6: Learning with Games

Numerous board games and educational games help to consolidate the learning material and to experience it in a playful context. Brings variety to learning!

Tip 7: Self-Efficacy

Your child can concentrate better after work in the evening than after school? Okay, no problem. Then it's better to take a lap first and then learn.

Tip 8: Praise right.

It would be wrong to praise the child only with good school work or with good grades. It is much better if you also acknowledge the efforts of your child.

Tip 9: Create a learning plan.

For many children, it helps to create a learning plan to keep track. Learning goals that are fulfilled in this way create motivation.

Tip 10: Learning with the New Media

There are many sites on the internet that kids can use for research and good apps that teach learning content in a fun and easy way. Even interactive learning stories help your child learn and make more fun.

About Author:

I am Matthew Evans and I am a blogger, jackpot city review writer and photographer. I want to show people how beautiful and interesting our planet is. In addition, I really like to read new information about psychological books. I started to learn psychology and relationship problems when I was 18-years-old.