Teach To Learn. How To Motivate A Child?

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

As soon as a child crosses the threshold of school, a modern parent in a panic tries to do everything to make him go there with pleasure. What methods and techniques are not used by parents! And blackmail, and intimidation, and rewards in the form of gifts, all kinds of benefits and even money … But children, as a rule, lose interest in learning already in elementary school

When confronted with desperate parents in counseling, I often realize that they do the opposite with enviable tenacity, even if they have read the "right books on psychology." I perfectly understand that the scenarios of behavior based on the motivation of their children, dads and moms draw in their childhood, from their own parents, whose main motto was: "To teach!" And in this chaos they are trying to remember what exactly made them learn. Often parents say so: “My father beat me up, and I began to study!”, Choosing from the entire arsenal of methods, alas, the most memorable, and not the most effective. Now it is important to understand that studying in a modern school looks different than 20 years ago

Training is, in fact, a stream of necessary and unnecessary, useful and useless information. In the flow of such diverse information from all kinds of sources, it is much more difficult for a child to choose, although the choice itself is huge. Since the child has a real opportunity to choose where to get knowledge, alas, he often makes a choice not in favor of the teacher. Against the background of modern technology, the teacher looks like a boring retrograde, and he has less and less chances of being interesting. This is probably why the "cool" metropolitan schools are equipped with multimedia boards, smart TVs and computers. And even surrounded by these technologies, the teacher loses competitiveness. It is no secret that computers and the Internet cope better with the role of a storage device and a translator of information, and the school needs to accept this and reorganize its staff in order to become rather a guide, a guide accompanying a child in the world of information. In a complex, information-rich world, the teacher's task is to teach a child to weed out, filter information, distinguish lies from truth, analyze, systematize, seek, direct attention in the right direction. Otherwise, a child "overfed" by the information flow is always fed up and does not want to learn new things, just like a child who is full of candy will not eat soup. And this is the first reason for the lack of motivation to learn. It is impossible to feed a well-fed child even with tasty and healthy food.

The next reason for the decline in interest in school among children is, paradoxically as it may sound, the so-called. early development that literally grips the parents. At a time when the child must play, be creative and develop physically, the parent who is too worried about the future success of the child puts him at his desk and makes him study. Not only are some parts of the brain not yet ready to perceive certain information, motor functions have not matured that allow the baby to sit and be attentive, but also the parent adds evaluativeness to this, letting the child understand that they can and will love him only for that, what he achieved. Excessive requirements at this age paralyze the will of the child, he begins to understand that the love of adults for him is not unconditional, but depends on his success. This significantly disturbs the picture of the world and completely disarms parents in search of motivating ideas. I am not against early development, but by early development I do not mean teaching school subjects.

I will add one more reason to this. If, due to the incompetence, tactlessness, bias of the teacher (parent), the child receives a negative assessment of his activities, write lost: the child will not approach this activity anymore. And it looks like phrases: "Oh, what are you doing here?", "What kind of stupid little animal did you blind?" Look how beautiful Katya is, and yours, as always … ". Criticism from adults is another reason for the decline in motivation. Usually it is accompanied by the desire of adults to do everything not TOGETHER with the baby, but INSTEAD of the baby. For a child, this is a signal: you cannot cope on your own, you are not capable, give up this business! Where does healthy motivation come from? Therefore, it is necessary to encourage independence in the child, help only when he himself asks for it, praise for his successes. Praise, too, must be able to correctly. It is not enough just to say "well done" to the child. When you praise the work, the baby should feel that you are not only looking at it, but also seeing what is shown. It is important to note the details that you saw, ask what is drawn and done there, then your interest will be obvious to the child, and he will want to repeat this pleasant experience. Having exhausted his child by early development, the parent rushes to send him to school too early, believing that the intellectual level is the only thing that the child needs in order to be successful in learning. This does not take into account the child's needs, his ability to perceive and process information, his physical development, health and that very healthy motivation. As a rule, going to the first grade, the kid does not quite understand what school is and why he needs it. More often than not, he just wants to "please his parents", since at this time they are the most significant people in his life. And if my mother said that the school is needed, therefore, it is so. The child at this time often has external motivation, but this does not mean that it cannot turn into internal motivation with the right approach.

Going to school early for children has negative results almost immediately. A child's biological unpreparedness for school leads to fatigue, inability to concentrate on assignments, disappointment and, as a result, to school maladjustment. And this does not contribute to the desire to learn and enjoy it. Therefore, the main motto of the first trip to school is "On time!" If the kid has not yet attended kindergarten, then he may not have formed arbitrary behavior, which makes it possible for him to play and interact according to the rules, taking into account the interests and needs of other people, their desires and feelings. Such a student often acts at his own discretion, without considering the need to reckon with the opinions of others. As a result, he receives a reaction to his actions, to which he is not used to, and in the future this can develop into a persistent unwillingness to go to school, which lives according to laws that are inaccessible and incomprehensible to him. If the parents blame the school and the teacher for everything, the child will immediately record that the school is a foreign object for him, and will be hostile to it. And it will become impossible to study in such conditions. A child's motivation directly depends on the positive attitude of his parents towards the school, their personal experience and scenarios affect their phrases about the school, the assessment of the teacher and his activities, the ability to criticize and devalue school events. Therefore, parents need to be extremely attentive to their own statements about school, teachers and school subjects. Familiarity and lack of subordination in relation to the teacher in no way contributes to the formation of a respectful attitude towards the school. Devaluing phrases about school subjects, about the fact that learning is a waste of time, will not lead to the fact that a child suddenly starts learning against this background and loves school with all his heart. A huge role is played by the personality of the first teacher, and if the child suddenly declares that, they say, "Mom, you are speaking incorrectly, but the teacher is correct," you should not expose "this impostor with a diploma" - it is better to rejoice that the child has found an authoritative one in the teacher. person. And so the child came to school on time and in full readiness. What can demotivate him? As a rule, children who do not want to study live in families where there are no uniform rules and requirements for the child from parents or other family members, where mom and dad give the baby conflicting instructions on how to complete, for example, homework, adherence to the daily routine, where the criteria for success and correct behavior differ significantly. The child, having grasped such differences, learns to manipulate requirements, adapting parental differences to suit his needs. In such families, there is no daily routine, a clear organization of the child's life and life, homework is monitored in a random, unsystematic form, the criteria change depending on the mood and dominance of one of the family members. Therefore, it is important to develop a general strategy in the upbringing and education of the baby, as well as uniform criteria that will not change in the absence of one or another family member. It is necessary to jointly (and with the participation of the child) develop a daily routine, rules for performing various kinds of tasks, and distribute responsibilities for monitoring their implementation. Sometimes for this it is necessary to exclude grandmothers from the upbringing process, if they condone the child and change their requirements depending on their personal attitude towards the grandson or out of false pity. Children, in whose families there are frequent conflicts and scandals between parents, may also be reluctant to study, regardless of whether the parents live together or separately. A child in such a family spends a lot of energy on experiencing or settling conflicts, and he may simply not have enough energy to study. It is difficult for the child himself to abstract from such a situation without outside help, and he reacts to such stress by reducing all forms of activity. To worry about grades in such an environment simply does not occur to him. Therefore, it is important to understand that a child cannot and should not play the role of a mediator between parents, you cannot make him responsible for your relationship, ask his opinion and include him in your dialogue. It should be remembered: if a family faces the threat of divorce, then the child's academic performance may decrease, and before reproaching him for this, adults should sort out their relationships. Changes in the family can also be pleasant, for example, the birth of a second (third) child. But even this situation can seriously affect the older child, causing jealous, competitive feelings. The elder, wanting to receive the privileges of the younger, may try to psychologically regress, literally lower his intellectual level in order to attract parental attention. I know of cases when older children switched to "children's language", began to demand to dress and feed them, to do lessons with them, although they were already quite coping with them on their own. Especially if the parents say all the time that the younger has an advantage in love and attention, "because he is small." The older child clearly captures the message: if you want to be loved, be small! Another favorite "trick" of parents is the desire to clone themselves in a child, imposing on the child their ideas about his future, often realizing unfulfilled dreams and aspirations. But the child is not your improved copy, but a separate personality with, possibly, completely different needs, talents and desires, and your attempts to mold "your dream" out of him may end, if not tragically, then quite real disappointments. Nothing demotivates a person like fulfilling someone else's dream. In a situation of searching for a vocation, it is important for a child to provide freedom, allowing him to change his preferences, to look for himself in different forms and types of activities, without prohibiting him from changing his hobbies, trusting his choice. This is how it is easier to decide on a profession in the future than, after graduating from a music school, forever forget about the piano and erase the musical notation from memory. Often, parents, in a last-ditch attempt to motivate their child to learn, resort to monetary rewards. I confess that all such cases, which are familiar to me from practice, ended in complete failure. Money is a really strong and powerful motivator, but only when a person knows how to use it. In addition, the criteria for paying for grades look very dubious. In one family, the father started a home "bank account" for the child: he put money on it for high marks and removed for low ones. After a while, the child went into a "deep minus" and completely lost interest in this "fun", as well as in studying, because he simply had nothing to repay the debt with. And dad had nothing to motivate either. The choice to pay or not pay is up to you, but will your child then do something for you for free if he learns for you for money? I hope you won't think of hitting your child for grades … It is important to know that comparing a child with other children, ridicule, incorrect statements about him and his activities, suppression of personality, accusations, threats, beatings are bad helpers in motivating a child to learn …

So what motivates a child to learn?

• Timely start of the educational process, according to physical and psychological age.
• Adequate study load and requirements for the child.
• Adequate assessment of his successes and failures.
• Fixation on successes.
• Teaching the child HOW to learn, giving him the correct schemes and methods of acquiring knowledge, the appropriateness of the methods for his age and needs.
• Respect for school, teacher, educational process.
• Timely encouragement and praise in case of success, support and help in case of failure.
• A favorable environment in the family, uniform requirements and methods of upbringing, a trusting atmosphere in the family.
• Control and regime of the day, accustoming to self-control.
• If you see a personality in a child, believe in his strength and support in difficult times, this will always bear fruit, and you will be proud of him.