Emotionally Nurturing Your Child For Enthusiastic Learning

Integrated Learning Strategies is excited to feature how to emotionally nurture your child for learning in this guest post. While many of the recommendations below are great for select children and parents, some accommodations or exceptions may be made for children with learning challenges and learning disabilities. Integrated Learning Strategies (ILS) is a learning and academic center. As a reminder, ILS is not a health care provider and none of our materials or services provide a diagnosis or treatment of a specific condition or learning challenge you may see in your child or student. If you seek a diagnosis or treatment for your child or student, please contact a trained professional who can provide an evaluation of the child.

When you see a title that suggests you should ‘emotionally calibrate/nurture’ them to success, it can feel a little strange. Children have so much inbuilt personality that doing anything to artificially change them is completely wrong. However, you can try to encourage certain behaviours and expose them to certain activities that can help them develop in the right way. The right way can be considered in many different ways, but for the most part we are alluding to a willingness to engage, a willingness to be social and try to head outside of their comfort zones.

Child education is one of the most important things in the world, and it directly either improves or decreases the quality of later society. More importantly though, it determines the happiness and authority a child can exercise over their own life now and later down the line. They needn’t be the best person in their class, or perform outstandingly at all. Emotionally nurturing is not the same as expecting excellence, but it does mean expecting your child to perform their best.

Remember, with a child of a young age, you are the main reason for any of their behavioural habits (outside of deficiencies or disorders,) and so strong parenting will always be the best way forward. If you’re reading this blog we already know that you’re a wonderful parent/teacher with the interest of your child/pupils at heart, so consider these following tips to enhance your efforts in every conceivable way:

Active, Active, Active

It’s important for a child to be active. But why? How does this help, and why should our advice offer you something new in this regard? Of course you know that your child should be finding time to exercise in a natural way (as in not working out directly,) but how do you foster this? Well, different children have different temperaments, and what works for one is not always likely to work for another. However, if you’re smart, you can try and help your child burn their seemingly limitless energy reserve by introducing them to hobbies and activities they love.

Simply developing your garden space could allow for children to spend more time exercising with one another on your custom built playframe, or spending the time to make catching ball or squash a fun activity the both of you participate in can work wonders too. It’s important to always equate activity with fun, safety, and more fun. This might mean exploring child friendly natural reserve farms with them at the weekend, taking them to shows they might want to see and get involved with, or finding their niche.

Every child is interested in something, so it just pays to find what that is and try to help them find regular activity (and preferably progression) in that. Before long, school sports days around the world will be something your child looks upon fondly, and they will likely enjoy trying to impress you with their cute feats of athleticism.

Knowledge, Knowledge, Knowledge

School is not easy for a child. Not only do they have to get used to an organized hierarchical structure, but must do so with a list of strange peers they might not be familiar with yet, and slowly learn the intricacies of communication and classroom social etiquette. Children are usually very adept at this, and even those with trouble initially acclimating can find their way given the right support.

One of the main responsibilities of attending school is to learn new information and skills. In the first years, this is relegated to playing in cooperation with other children, and then onto reading, learning to count and multiply, and then even abstract those problems out to find more complex solutions. This is a lot of knowledge for a small brain. That’s great, because children have the easiest time learning new things, as evidenced by the ease in which a child can become bilingual through exposure alone. However, this can sometimes fatigue them and their minds, which means going through homework at the appropriate age or trying to teach them life lessons yourself can be a difficult task.

For this effort, it’s important to know where to begin. This means associating learning with fun. Loving to learn and get better at tasks is always something valuable for a child. Children learn primarily well through games, and dialogue. They also learn through either kinesthetic, visual or aesthetic means (usually a combination of all three.) Learning should be fun. Repeat it to yourself ten times. A child will never enjoy being mentally force fed information, and so breaking down tasks into small chunks, continually encouraging good work (but not bad or messy work,) and never scolding or reprimanding your children for an initial challenge can make all the difference.

This emotionally calibrates them in a way to be mentally comfortable with ideas that they are unfamiliar with. They will be encountering ideas like that throughout the entirety of their life, so it’s the most healthy to help them get started young. This helps children cognitively blossom, yet still retain their wonder at the world, and the willingness to learn more. We all know that teacher in our middle or high school who killed our interest in a certain subject, so be sure that you are never the person who could directly or indirectly be responsible for that blame, and you’ll be on the right path.

A Balance Of Pressure

You’ll hear two arguments when it comes to encouraging your child. Motivated or ‘pushy parents’ are often those who reinforce their child’s excellence to them, and try to make it a guiding force through which that child will always return to. Some parents feel that a child will naturally make their way no matter what they say, and choose to leave off the positive reinforcement until results are found. Both sides have this wrong. Children need positive encouragement like a plant needs light and water.

However, balance is the key here. You need to help a child understand their worth, but also to develop and find it themselves. You need to praise them for genuinely good work with huge encouragement, so they can understand what good valued work is, and not feel satisfied and encouraged despite not putting effort forth. This is hard to strike well, but always try and gauge it relating to how much effort or inspiration your child has. Sometimes plenty of encouragement can work well in the face of a challenge, or when they are overflowing with passion for example.

With this effort, not only will your child be in the right framing for a successful early school career, but also you can regard yourself as the brilliant parent you know you are.

Integrated Learning Strategies is a Utah-based center dedicated to helping mainstream children and children with learning challenges achieve academic success. Our services provide kids with non-traditional tutoring programs within the Davis County, Kaysville, Layton, Syracuse, Farmington, and Centerville areas. Areas to find Integrated Learning Strategies include: Reading tutors in Kaysville, Math tutors in Kaysville, Common Core Tutors in Kaysville, Tutors in Utah, Utah Tutoring Programs