In order for a person to be able to reach their full potential later on, they are dependent on a high quality education in the first three years of life. Research also shows that the next three years are the optimal learning time to acquire the basic skills. Are you surprised?
The Beginning of Learning
It is clear that we parents are our children's first teachers. Although we do not give formal lessons, it is important in this phase to encourage the toddlers' innate urge to learn, in any case not to hinder or neglect it. These children are born with an innate hunger for experience and knowledge. This hunger remains as long as it is not driven out by wrong behavior such as lack of supply, beatings or constant frustration.
This early learning behavior is so strongly influenced by the strong intrinsic motivation. The need for movement alone will make you stand up from crawling and later steps will be dared. It wants to conquer the world with a thousand questions. Through observation, many behaviors and peculiarities are adopted from others, mostly from siblings. (see BLOG about this).
Teenagers mimic adults. Everything that is fun and cool is copied. The joy of learning usually remains as long as you can actively deal with it.
Learning through identification and imitiation is an everyday learning method for children and young people. They get along very well, especially with the media. Fascinating on the one hand, but also dangerous for social skills and the frontal lobe on the other. More on that later.
Learning at Home
Ideally, intellectual advancement will take place at home. Using your five senses, colors, tones, objects and edibles are tested and possibly set out on a discovery tour in nature. Verbal stimulation promotes language and allows the natural urge to learn new things.
A balanced atmosphere at home encourages learning. Because children are emotional beings, they also learn best about their feelings. So learning has a lot to do with the child's emotional maturity. The more developed a child is on the emotional intelligent level, the better learning outcomes can be expected. The parents encourage or inhibit this spiritual maturity. Learning becomes a joy thanks to the child's filled love tank.
A warm and loving relationship between parents and children is the basis for relaxed, joyful learning and also for a healthy self-esteem. So it's not just about promoting the intellect, but also about emotional maturation.
We are currently experiencing it with our little grandchildren: We totally unite in learning. If the child is met at their learning level, a strong bond develops with you. Take this chance.
What can go wrong
Divorce or Separation of Parents
There is hardly an event that has such a striking impact on the relationship between love and learning in children. Such a traumatic event empties the love tank and with it the joy of learning. This uprooting is followed by additional fears (fear-of-loss blog). If, through appropriate parental measures, there is a little more security and the child learns to enjoy parental love again, things will be a little better. But it can no longer recover. It is all the more important in such cases to use the five love languages as consistently as possible.
The basic need for love and security, security and appreciation is so great and strongly developed in all children that a separation or divorce is extremely irritating. Now that the child is learning in great development what love actually is, it is disturbed at the most delicate point in this learning process: the bond with its parents, the most important people and authorities.
Disinterest
Statistics show that with parents interested in school material, the children's ability to absorb the material is significantly better. There is no learning without motivation. The children are sometimes dependent on parental motivation. If we show disinterest in whether our child smokes or takes drugs, the likelihood of a subsequent dependency increases.
Sure, we parents learned the multiplication table at some point. But for the child there are hurdles that still have to be overcome, as playful, fun and interested as possible. Help him.
Father Role
The influence of fathers on children's development is mostly underestimated. For example, an 11-year study showed that the more interested the father was in family life, the less likely the children were to later become criminals. In addition, their level of education was considerably higher. 584 families with children between 7-11 years old were examined. As a 20-year-old, the line was drawn, with the result that the more committed the father, the higher the level of schooling and the less often there were social failures.
The fathers usually prefer a certain age for the children: some feel comfortable with children who can already play football, others can do well with small children. For many, it is a challenge to move on the level of the child's mind. But where there is a will, there is also a way. Don't give up so easily. It's about your own child. It is definitely worth jumping over your own shadow for this.
Dealing with fears
We are all born with fear. One child is - partly due to genetic factors - more sensitive than the other. If a child learns to deal with their fears well, they will be able to develop positively. If, however, there are many fears that cannot be overcome by means of love language, i.e. the child feels unloved, this is particularly evident when taking new learning steps. Fears of failure tend to develop when learning content becomes more abstract (e.g. early 4th grade). The feeling of losing touch with classmates can be a big drain on self-esteem. Sooner or later this can lead to depression (see toxic thoughts BLOG).
That is why emotional maturity is so important. This means that the child is able to control fears, endure normal stress, and stay balanced during changes. As mentioned, this is best achieved with a love tank filling.
Children who have difficulty making eye contact and are somewhat shy of contact with their peers and adults reveal uncontrollable and unprocessed fears and tensions. These children should definitely be helped. But how ?
Motivate Children
Basics of Motivation
Perhaps you have already wondered how you can motivate your child to do something. The basis of emotion motivation is a filled love tank and more or less successful feeling management. Once these two factors are in place, it is much easier to motivate children. A child with an empty love tank tends to be passive-aggressive, doing exactly what the parents don't expect or hope. As a third component, it is therefore important to enable and encourage the child to take responsibility for their own behavior. Anyone who can do that is already motivated.
It is usually easy to motivate children if we address them in their language. They love to try something with their daddy that no one else does with them. There is nothing like an experience with your parents.
Arouse Interest
What does your child enjoy? What is it interested in, even if only partially? Maybe they like to listen to music. Why not learn a musical instrument? It is important that it is not your wish alone, but that this wish is nourished in the child (from extrinsic to intrinsic motivation) through attention and a sense of achievement.
Handing over Responsibility
After all, we want to lead our children into independence, into adulthood. We achieve this goal if we do not solve all of the child's problems ourselves, but rather, the older it is, let more and more participate in problem-solving. This gives the child the chance to develop independent thinking and acting. There is also the variant that the child is asked age-appropriate questions, the answers of which can then be used. This can leave a deep impression on the child's mental structure.
Passive Aggressiveness
Passive aggression is actually typical, especially during puberty. With this the teenager searches for the vulnerable point of the adults. You can do that with bad grades, sloppy homework, and inadequate job support. The rule here is that the parents refuse to take responsibility for their failure, otherwise their motivation cannot grow. So do not let yourself be infected by the general educational trend of relieving children of more and more responsibility. Parents in particular, who want to 'prove' their love with it, do exactly the opposite.
Still, it's important to find ways to fill teenagers' love tanks. Find out their love language. Then it will be easier to secure your emotional support.
Teenagers are in a critical development phase. A lot of uncertainty and fears produce aggression. Social instability, supported by excessive media consumption, often clearly shows social incompetence.
Use Love Language
There are two suitable moments during the school day to use the child's love language: when saying goodbye before school and when greeting after school. It can be caresses, a special farewell greeting, a wish-breakfast, a compliment or other attention. These two important moments in particular can help the child to cope better with everyday life. As already mentioned: If the father can also get involved, then it leaves its mark.
When Adults Learn
Lifestyle
As the explanations have shown, our learning behavior is influenced by various motivators and demotivators. When you hear how people used their brain potential hundreds of years ago and compare it to our kind, you get a little embarrassed, don't you? Our lifestyle defines our learning limits. Although all imaginable information is available in our information age and it doubles every 1-2 years, we are lost with our learning potential, or what is left of it.
It's great when adults recognize the importance of continuing education. The more they are
intrinsically motivated, the better.
Selection
So for us the question is rather what is worth learning. The choice is too big. We have to prioritize. This selection requires values as decision criteria. Think about what you really want to learn in your life? Is it expertise for your job? Or do you want to develop empathy, i.e. to get to know more about the functionalities of people, so that you can be of help and support in your family, among friends?
With increasing age (see 40+ BLOG) one notices that the memory and with it the memory decreases and learning becomes more and more difficult. More and more, our life is reduced to early childhood behavior until we say goodbye.
Training from Morning to Night
However, those who can still fall back on high motivators will still be able to show surprising learning results in old age. Those who have trained their brain into old age benefit from it. What was neglected can hardly be restored. Dear younger readers, bear this in mind in your everyday life. Don't always take the most comfortable learning path, challenge your IQ and EQ (BLOG). It will be worth it !
