How to get your child interested in learning: tips from psychologists

Tip 1. Create a Learning Mindset
If you have a hobby – say, playing the piano or common core workbooks – you are unlikely to sit down at it when hungry, tired, in a bad mood or when you have a headache. It’s the same with studying.

The child should sit down to lessons calm, rested and satiated. You can attract him to lessons, help him tune in to his studies by making with him an ideal workplace: with an organizer, stickers, a comfortable chair and suitable lighting. Looking over notes on previous lessons before preparing homework also helps to get him in the mood.

Tip 2. Support your child’s hobbies and kinesthetic learning
Encourage anything positive that falls on your teen’s interest radar. If he likes astronomy and the stars, take him to a lecture at the planetarium, buy a map of the starry sky and a colorful encyclopedia. If there is an interest in reading, visit literary places like the Pushkin Mountains and Yasnaya Polyana, and visit open poetry evenings. Try to participate in all activities on the topic of interest to the child, and after be sure to share your impressions with each other.

Tip 3. Be inspired by great people
As mentioned above, people who have been successful in life are walking volcanoes of inner motivation. The centenarian generation loves the success stories of businessmen, entrepreneurs, and technological innovators. Read with your child the biographies of Jack Ma, Ilon Musk, Sergey Brin. Each of them is an example of constant self-learning. Jack spent many hours talking to foreign tourists since childhood to learn English, while Ilon studied from scratch manuals on astronautics, physics, rocket science and became a great professional. Their success stories are sure to get children interested in learning.

Tip 4. Answer all questions
Don’t turn away, no matter how naive or unhelpful your child’s questions may seem. Telling everything in detail and with pleasure, you will form a habit of being inquisitive, analyzing what is happening around him, think critically, ask questions of yourself and others. And then you do not have to force the child to learn, he will do it with great pleasure.

Tip 5. Form the right environment

Boy student sleeps during lessons in his classroom

Often it is the lack of interest in learning among peers that discourages a teenager from learning. The right environment can help foster a love of education including https://argoprep.com/blog/how-many-seconds-in-a-day-lets-find-out/. Friends in clubs and sections, classmates and mentors, older brothers and sisters, buddies from competitions and contests – any person whom the teenager respects, can set an example and interest him in learning.

Tip 6. Study with your child
Show that you, too, are interested in learning new things. At home online school “Foxford”, for example, you can watch webinars together with your child, when you have a free minute. Educational videos and documentaries on YouTube will also work.

Games are another good way to learn together.

Tip 7. Praise and correct criticism
Proper feedback is one of the effective tools of motivation. Praise your child for showing interest in learning, creative solutions and disciplinary successes. Criticism is also necessary, but not in the form of value judgments (“You didn’t prepare well!”) or emotions (“I knew you would let me down again”). Sit down with your child and analyze what worked and what could be improved next time.