Children spend more time at their home with their parents than they do in school. Parents need to remember that not all kids are naturally good learners. So, how can you motivate your child to learn?
Take yourself for an example; when you are at work, you need more than your pay to help you motivate to work better. It may be appreciation, better pay, a better working environment or even a good supervisor. You get motivated to work when you receive one or all of these factors.
Therefore, you should expect no less when you are trying to help your child learn better. You are the support system that they depend on when they need motivation. Parents can be the best cheerleaders for their child. So it is your responsibility to help your child be excited to learn. You must be wondering how you can motivate your child to learn? How can you get them interested or even excited to study?
Ways to motivate your child to learn
Here are ten ways to motivate your child to learn:
1. Set boundaries
Create a sense of boundaries for your child when they are studying. Separate the time they spend at home by assigning proper names to each activity. Name the activity according to what they have to do, such as study time, game time, family time and screen time. This will help you have a smooth family life too.
By setting boundaries for each activity, you will classify each activity according to these assigned groups. You will be able to make your child focus on studying in the study time. They will complete their school work at that time.
It will also help you separate the jumble of screen time from study time. Since children these days need to study on their devices, it will separate the time they spend on social media or entertainment from purely studying or completing their school work.
You can also create boundaries by setting a specific spot to study for your child. You can assign a separate room or even a studying space for your child. It can also be a specific studying corner. Just communicate to your child that they have to spend their study time in the study space with children’s books.
Make sure that the study space is comfortable for your child. Ensure the space gets enough light for them to study. Ban devices that are not used in studying from taking to space. Make sure that your child keeps the space tidy and organized.
2. Set a routine
Creating a routine is the best way to encourage your child to study. This will help them divide the time that they have at home into more effective sets, which will facilitate an efficient learning time.
As said earlier, divide the time of your child into different activities. Do not just separate time for study. You should separate time for entertainment and leisure time for your child as well. Having a perfect sleep schedule for your child is also important.
Having a set routine will help them create a structure. Helping your child develop a proper structure for studying and setting a routine. The routine can be made entirely by your child themselves if they are older, or you can help your child if they are young.
You need to check in on them on certain days on how they are following their routine. This will help them stick to their routine. Please help your child ascertain leisure time too so they can take breaks between studying.
Make the routine and print it out and stick it on the wall of their study area. Having a routine and following it will help you and your child maintain a proper family life without overstepping each other’s work time.
3. Create a learning atmosphere
Help your child develop your reading habit. Your child imitates your habits more than you care for. You have to be aware of the activities that you do in front of your child. This might impact them in the best way or in the worst way.
You can create a reading atmosphere for your child by reading yourself first. Reading a good book can be the best way to learn for your child. So help make an impact on them by first making a habit to establish a reading habit.
You can create a reading habit for your child by taking them to a library. You can also buy good and interesting books for them to read. Create a family life where every member reads a book at least 20 minutes a day during the holidays or over the weekend.
A learning atmosphere can be created by making the study space distraction-free for your child. Remove the noisy TV, wear earphones if you are using your phone, do not play music during study hours. These family habits and steps need to be ensured for a better learning environment to be established for your child.
4. Create an open talking environment
You should try to encourage your kid to talk to you about the problems they have been facing at school and during studying. Help them solve the problem without any judgement.
Most kids are scared to talk to their parents about their concern because they fear judgement. They may be scared of the consequences they will face if they talk to you about their problems.
It would help if you made sure that your children don’t feel this way about talking to you. This will cause them to hide their difficulties and concerns from you. They might have severe problems from you that they might be suffering from.
These problems might manifest later in their life to some other issues. They might come in the form of mental health issues in the life of your child.
Talking to your child openly about feelings and problems they face in school will help them in the learning process. You have to tell them that their opinions matter. Do not discourage them from asking questions either.
When children ask questions at home and school, they gain the opportunity to learn more. So do not dismiss their silly questions. Talk to them rather than disengaging. You should try keeping your doors open when it comes to sharing problems and helping overcome them.
5. Focus on their interest
We all love doing something we like or something we are fond of. The same goes for your children. They might love reading a book or are fascinated with dinosaurs.
For example, your child is fascinated by dinosaurs. You need to help them pursue their interests. Do not judge what they love. It might discourage them from pursuing that very thing.
Motivate your children to follow their interests. You can do this by helping your child pick out their favourite book on a certain topic. You can also motivate your child by taking them to museums where there are bones of dinosaurs. You can ask them about sports kids love.
Talking to them about their interests also helps your child in getting validation from you. Ask them about their favourite dinosaurs, why it is their favourite compared to others. Ask them what they found out after the museum visit.
You can follow a similar route with subjects that are at school. Ask your child about their favourite subjects. Talk to them more about why they like it. You should encourage them to explore more about these subjects. Helping your child explore will also help in motivating your children.
6. Focus on the process rather than the results
You need in helping your children realize that learning is more important than grades. You need to make sure that your child is performing by focusing on what they learn rather than what grades they receive.
Talk to them about how grades are just a reflection of what they know rather than of what they are. You should help your child realize that grades are not the most important things in their life.
You need to help them realize that learning to understand and then performing is more important than rote learning. Ask them how they did at school by asking what they learnt in the class.
Do not pressurize your child for better results. Ask them what they do not understand. Ask them to talk to their teacher when they do not understand certain topics. You can also teach them certain things if they do not understand the subject.
By focusing on understanding the topics, you will help them establish that learning is more important than getting high scores. They will be more motivated to study as they will be focusing on getting to know things better.
7. Use educational applications
Nothing motivates your child to learn more than using educational gaming or educational applications. There are an array of educational applications available for children that will help them learn better and faster.
These educational applications are available in different forms. Whether it be new language learning or learning maths, they can make anything fun and interesting.
These educational games and apps are also available for children of different ages. Small children have apps that teach them alphabets and numbers. Children who are older than can learn nursery rhymes and songs from these educational apps. While you enter credential data be careful of your digital footprint.
These applications can also be used by children who are struggling with maths and science. The apps will help them learn basic multiplication and even fraction. Some games will help teach them mathematics on different levels, rewarding them with climbing up and knowing each thing well.
Some of the examples of these educational applications are as follows:
- Coolmath Games
- Phonic Ninja
- Khan Academy
- Busy Shapes
- Pizza Fraction
- Duolingo
- Science 360
- Baby games for preschoolers
- Stack the States and many more
There are a plethora of more applications available for children to help them learn. You can choose the gaming or other app that your child needs, help them operate the app if they are younger.
You can also play these games with your child to keep them interested. This will help them learn better and faster. They will also have a clear understanding of the topic.
8. Establish different learning styles
We have already talked about teaching your child using educational applications. However, there are also many other ways you can help them learn. Learning is not only done by reading books or taking notes.
It is proven that children are more motivated to learn when provided with visuals rather than just plain texts. So you can help your child learn science or other subjects by buying books or researching online on books that have colourful visuals.
It is also motivating for children to learn when they can learn from videos. Videos have both audio and visuals, which help children in understanding the topic clearly. These can also be effective in helping teenagers learn. Suppose your child is not able to understand how cells function.
Do a quick search on Youtube. There will be a ton of videos that show exactly how this process takes place. You can show these videos to your child and help them understand the topic.
Another learning style that you can apply is travelling. Travelling to the places that the history books mention will help your child retain what they were learning about in their classes.
Visit the museum when they are learning about history or related places. Visit the zoo when they are first starting to learn about animals. You can visit the aquarium or zoo when they are older and learn about sea animals and mammals.
9. Celebrate accomplishments
You must recognize the accomplishments made by your children. Celebrating their accomplishments will help them feel like they are appreciated. You can motivate your child with positive reinforcements when they achieve something.
This does not mean that you have to reward them every time they do something good, but it means to keep them motivated to stay on the right track. It can be treating them with ice cream when they do well on the science test they had been working really hard on.
You need also to celebrate their hard work and sincerity. Bring them a hot meal when they are studying for their test. Make them their favourite meal when they are worried about their result.
It does not have to be special monetary rewards every time they do something good. The scale of the celebration should match the level of accomplishment too.
Simple praise or an occasional well done can also go a long way when trying to motivate your child to learn.
10. Be consistent
The most important suggestion that we can provide you with is to stay consistent with whatever steps or efforts you make.
You need to make sure that your partner or their other parent is also consistent with the same methods as you are. Having consistent and methodical parenting can help your child stay focused on learning.
So it would help if you made sure that every member of your family is aware of the efforts to keep your child motivated. Talk to your partner when certain methods are changed or when something is not working out.
Consistency is the key to keeping your child motivated to learn. Without following the tips that we provided, your child will just be confused when trying to learn.
