No one is born a good learner. While it’s true that some children will have the personality that will make them more willing to learn, becoming a good learner requires some effort, time, and encouragement. In a way, this too can be viewed as another skill. What’s more, parents and their role in children studying are crucial. It’s important to spread the learning opportunities outside just the classroom to motivate kids to take up studying on their own. Also, finding out and utilizing what motivates your child to study will make a huge difference. That said, we’ll present you with several tips that you, as parents, can make the most out of to grow and nurture your child’s motivation to study.
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- Instill a Love of Reading
Some would say that love of reading later translates to love of learning. While that doesn’t have to be necessarily true for every single person, it’s a fact that love of reading makes learning a lot easier. When they’re introduced to books and reading as something fun from an early age, children will create a link between reading and fun. What’s more, the more they read, the better their vocabulary, imagination, and critical thinking will become.
To start off this journey properly, you can introduce family reading sessions, read to your kids, have them read aloud, etc. However, keep in mind that it won’t be helpful to force the kids to read when they don’t want to or make them read the books they don’t want. This could only make the entire reading experience frustrating and consequently put a damper on the kids’ studying.
- Promote Open and Honest Communication
If you want to motivate kids to study, you also have to let them express their opinions and experiences freely, regardless of your own view on the matter. It’s only natural that you’d want them to push through, but sometimes, rants are just that – rants.
Chances are your kids will need to blow off some steam that way, and who else to confide in than their parents? Also, on some occasions, these rants can tell you a lot about their learning process so that you can assess whether you need to interfere.
If kids feel like they can’t open up to you and be honest about this particular thing in their life, you risk diminishing their motivation to study and their willingness to trust you with other life matters.
- Focus on Interests as a Motivation to Study
There will come a time when you’ll see children studying all sorts of subjects, and there certainly will be some that are less interesting to them than others. But kids who already have established learning habits and don’t fear the process itself will tackle all sorts of learning just fine. In order for this to happen, though, your initial approach should be focused on their interests.
Find out what motivates your child once you start introducing the concept of learning. Let them tell you what fascinates them the most: space, fairy tales, or dinosaurs. By showing them how to learn more about things that interest them when they’re still young, you’ll be laying the groundwork for the future.
- Children Do What Children See
Even if you have a whole plan to motivate kids to learn and study, it won’t hold up in the long run if you don’t act as a true role model. Of course, as an adult, they won’t be able to see you studying actual school subjects but they can see you read books and act enthusiastically about your own as well as their learning opportunities.
Make sure you’re not too overbearing, but once the kids get to study all sorts of different things, from math and science to history and spelling, feel free to show your excitement. Just like enthusiasm and excitement rub off, so do monotony and disinterest. Consider this – if kids show you their study material and comment how boring or difficult it is, you’ll literally make their job and willingness to learn a lot harder.
- Explore the Possibilities of Game-Based Learning
Game-based learning can make kids’ studying a lot more enjoyable and effective. And this is true for both old-school, traditional games and video games. Many parents disregard gaming and find it completely useless but if it’s what motivates your child to embrace learning, it’s definitely worth a try. Of course, video gaming should be time-limited somehow, but there are also many advantages to it as kids can effectively develop more non-cognitive skills.
What’s more, games, in general, are rather beneficial when it comes to team-based learning motivation. Getting used to giving their best in a game setting can quickly translate to giving their best in a classroom setting, both as individuals and as team members.
- Learning Is More Important Than Performance
By emphasizing the importance of the kids’ studying itself and the things they get to learn instead of pressuring them with better and better performance, you’ll actually help your child perform better and learn more in the long run.
Of course, no one says that performance is not important. However, it would do your child more good if you express interest in things they learned and have them explain that, rather than only inquire about their grades.
When they get to verbalize their newly gained knowledge, children will also start understanding it better and properly solidifying the basics necessary for the next step; and ultimately, better performance.
- Recognize and Celebrate Achievements
Positive reinforcement is not a joke, and it’s extremely beneficial to school-age kids when it comes to many different areas in their life. This, of course, includes children studying and putting effort into the learning process. Therefore, kids will find it very meaningful and motivating to know that you can recognize their achievements, no matter how small they are, and celebrate them wholeheartedly.
It’s not just a good test grade that deserves a reward; completing a project, better homework organization, taking the initiative to study, etc., are all efforts that deserve to be pointed out and praised.
When your child is happy and healthy, every day can be a learning day. Every day, they can discover new things and strengthen their motivations. The more you expose your kid to different experiences, the more critically they’ll be able to process them. What’s more, everything can be a learning and motivational opportunity during childhood, from exploring the world around them and asking all sorts of questions, to socializing with other kids and even adults. With positive discipline, you can expand your child’s horizons indefinitely.
