How to motivate your child to do better in school

We tend to be near-sighted. The grades your child gets in school, your child’s ability in math or reading and his or her attitude towards school are largely explained by your own concept of “Education”.

You can define “Education” as an organized process and system to get the selected knowledge and skills “installed” in your child’s brain or, you can define “Education” as “Learning”: that magical ability we humans have to “Unveil the Secrets of the World”.

Every child is unique. But children have something in common: when inspired, they are capable of everything.

If you inspire your child to learn new things, then you will stop worrying about you child’s grades.   

Try these 6 Tips to Motivate your Child for School while strengthening your "connection" and nurturing his or her self-confidence:

1)    Connection. Communication. Talk to your child every time you can. Answer their questions and ask back. If you can’t find any topic, take a book from Jules Verne and start sharing what you are reading.

2)    Mind Game: Question of the Day. Ask a question: "Why giraffes have such long neck?" or "Why do stars shine only at night?". If you don’t have the answer, you go and look for it together. You get the answer before putting your child to bed. You’ll be asking the questions first. Over time, you’ll see you child comes up with his or her own very interesting questions.

3)    Excursion: Trip to the Bookstore. Take your child to the Library or the Bookstore and have fun in there. Dive together into hundred’s of books and topics. Observe your child. Find out what topics is he or she attracted to. Mine was all into Princesses and, all of a sudden, she is now into “How Machines Work” and “The Kratts”.

4)    Experience: Experiment of the week. There are some very cool experiments you can do at home during the weekend. Your kids will get super excited and they will find out: It is SO fun to learn new stuff!!!. There is a website that has some awesome ideas: www.growingajeweledrose.com

5)    Give the right message. –“Do you know why you go to school? To have FUN. We take you to school to learn because learning new stuff is super fun”-.

6)   Ask the right questions. Stop asking about the quiz. Ask your child what he or she learned today. If there is no answer, share what you learned today. Teach by example. Be the person you want your child to be, your child will follow your example.  

Grades at School or Performance Ratings when working for a big Company, they all get pretty high when you are “Doing what you love to do”. If you put your anxiety or pressure behind your child's education, he or she will very likely end up hating it. The more peaceful you are, the happier and healthier your child will be, and it will show up in his or her learning curve.   

How to help my child read

If your child is having a hard time learning to read, you can inspire him (or her) to while nurturing your child's self-confidence. Most children struggling to learn to read feel embarrassed and afraid of not being up to their parents' expectations, and this keeps them from practicing and trying harder. 

Children learn a lot better when there is no anxiety and when they feel love, safe and praised by their parents. These Tips will motivate your child and strengthen your "connection":

     Read to your child every day 

     During dinner, talk about this book you two are reading. There is an article with very helpful tips for you to become a great “out-loud reader” for your child: Helping Your Child Learn to Read

     Create mind-games from that book you are reading

     A fun mind-game we have is to change parts of the story and make a whole new book out of it. Let your child make the story and you write it down as he or she speaks. Show your child how important it is to write down the story he or she just pulled together. After a few days, you can read to your child that story he or she made up.

     Let your child see how much you enjoy reading a book

     We grownups spend a lot of time reading from our phones and other devices. Our children learn by example, meaning they will most likely imitate you. So, if you want your child to spend his or her time in books, start by yourself and let them see how excited you are about this new book you are reading, tell them what is it about. There are very good classics you can start with. My favorite author is Jules Verne. Children love to hear about the adventures captured in his books, like “A Capitan at Fifteen”.

     Let your child play with books 

     Give them the right message: Books are fun. Learning is fun. We have many “lift-the-flap” books and my child enjoys them by herself. They are pricey but worth it as they reinforce the message: “Books hide many wonderful secrets and it is so fun to find them all”. After all, that is what learning is all about: “Unveiling the Secrets of the World”.  

Make a major event out of your trips to the Bookstore. 

     Plan your trip to the bookstore as if you were going out on an adventure trip, like camping. Talk about what book you would like to read together. Try to spend hours in the store just “diving” into all the options. Sit on a table together with your books and enjoy while you are leafing through the pages. When you are done, let your child pick only one book.