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How To Improve Your Child's Learning Ability:

Gone are those days when you could make your child mug up a few basics and send him off to the interview for admission at school. In the increasingly competitive world of today there is no end to what one can learn to be the best. Therefore you need to equip your child with abilities to be a good learner and not just a good mugger. The good news is that you as a parent can play a part in doing so.

Improvement of his learning skills can start at home. All you need to do is find ways to make his brain sharper. You can do this by intellect stimulating exercises.

Also, you should encourage them to be able to put into words what they are thinking as also to generally talk and express themselves. Give them all your time when they need to speak to you, ask questions and ask them to express how they feel about certain things. It could be anything from homely affairs to things happened during the day with them.

Have playful teaching sessions with them. Gather normal things at home (like fruits, remote controllers, bottles etc) and discuss shapes, colors, smells and all with them. Play with water. Discuss with them the concepts of floating and sinking though not one or two but various objects and substances.

Let them explore their surroundings and discover things on themselves. Let them ask you questions and satisfy their curiosity. Do off beat, fun activities with them like mix colors to form new ones, sprout up shoots from shoots of vegetables at home make sounds of a xylophone by filling in similar glasses with different levels of water.

Make your kids enterprising. Let them solve small problems and achieve targets on their own. Don't help them unnecessarily.

Let their artistic streak show. Give them clay, building blocks and things of the like to express themselves through artwork.

All these activities along with a lot of encouragement and love will sharpen your child's mental skills to a great extent and he will shine out from the rest of the crowd!

How To Improve Your Child's Concentration:

Lack of concentration these days looms large as a hindrance in the performance of most of the children today. Not only are the studies adversely affected, but also a great amount of time is wasted just in an attempt to concentrate on the subject.

You can keep some things in mind while your child is studying to help him concentrate better.

• See to it that he has all the things that he needs while studying before he starts to keep him away from getting distracted again and again.
• Set a target to achieve within a particular time frame and keep inquiring where has he reached.
• If it is a dull topic, then add interesting facts from your side and ask questions.
• Make it an interesting session by changing the method from monotonous mugging to games like quizzes on the topic or rapid fire rounds.
• Also see to it that he is neither hungry nor sleepy while studying.
• Give him the value of ownership of the work. Let him feel that he is studying for himself and not performing any duty or chore for his parents.
• Also tell him not to study just with the purpose of avoiding shame or humiliation if not done well. Ask him to study for his own benefit.
• You can also team him up with a better performer in class. Ask your child to pick up good studying habits and methods from such a student and set goals to slowly reach his level and then beat him. Healthy competition is an excellent motivator.
• Tell him the story of the spider which kept climbing the wall each time it fell till he conquered it. It would motivate him not to get discouraged if initially he is not succeeding and to keep trying.
• Patience should be the key factor.
• Invest your confidence in him. Even if he is not succeeding, keep telling him that you have absolute faith in his abilities and he will do well if he tries.
• Do not ever humiliate or put down your child. It will be a great loss on his self esteem.
• Inculcate positive thinking in your child. Help him to think better about himself.
• The best motivator is recognition. Do not miss to praise him even for a single time when your child does well.
• Also teach him to applaud for himself. This would do wonders for his self esteem and would motivate him to do better.
• Make him learn relaxation and meditation. If his mind gets too crowded, ask him to take a mental break. Tell him to stop thinking about everything and meditate. If not that then he could simply think of a calmer scene and relax his mind.

If sincere and honest attempts are made on both your sides then it would not be difficult for your child to master concentration and soon become an excellent performer.

Understanding Your Child's Learning Style:

The learning styles of children are divided into three categories- visual, auditory and kinesthetic learning styles.

Visual learners are those who see and learn, auditory learners are those who listen and learn and those children who use the sense of touch to learn something are called kinesthetic learners.

It would be good to identify your child's learning style and help him improve it accordingly.

A visual learner is characterized by his skill of absorbing information just by looking at things. He uses his sense of sight to learn things. Their visual capacity is better than other and they remember clues by looking at things. They could be however lacking in social skills, articulation and language abilities.

You can help your child if he is a visual learner by providing him with visual aids like diagrams, maps, pictures etc to simplify his learning. You can also highlight important words and sentences in bright colors to make them remember it better.

If your child is an auditory learner, you can recognize him by his characteristics of being able to start talking early and having an excellent vocabulary for expressing themselves. They are good readers and ask a lot of questions. They like singing and reciting poems and love listening games.

To enhance an auditory learner's learning skills, ask him read out aloud and learn. For younger kids get audio cassettes easily available in the market regarding alphabets, number etc.

Kinesthetic learners are basically all those children who have a difficulty in sitting still and taking lectures. These are the kids who require a practical experience of everything to learn it. They cannot pay attention in classroom and since they want to put their hands directly in everything, have a fearless and commanding personality.

To help such a learner excel, give him what he wants. Let him put his hands in everything he does and quite physically. For instance, he might be tapping the table while learning or keeping his hands involve in some other thing. Let him do it as it will help him concentrate better. Play games like scrabble, puzzles etc with him.

If you're able to recognize your child's learning style, you would definitely be able to help him know better learning skills. He will know the easy way to master concentration and perform better.

Understanding Your Child's Personality:

New researches contradict the old theories that said that a child's nature and behavior depended entirely on how his upbringing has been. It is now proposed that how your child behaves could largely depend on his genes and whatever his nature is, it is by birth.

If you notice, you can observe your child's behavior soon after the first few months of his birth - much before you even think of teaching him something. He could be a happy child, or a fussy one. A naughty child or an over sensitive one. You can learn his temperament by just noticing his behavior for a few days.

If you're a mother yourself, or have had a chance of listening to two mothers discussing their babies, you would know that no two babies behave in the same manner. Some would want a lot of attention, some would not. Some would be very difficult to handle and some would just be fine by themselves. Every child has his own personality and you only need to take a closer look to judge your child.

Your child could be a happy one if he is usually playful, does not throw too many tantrums and easily adaptive to any kind of change.

A sensitive child starts crying easily, does not accept anything or anybody new and wants only to be in his own familiar surroundings.

These are a part of nature your child was born with and there is really nothing too worry about. On your part as a parent if you notice something in your child's personality that needs to be changed you can start working on it as soon as your baby is ready to understand.

You can do this by keeping the following in mind;

• First, be extremely patient with the child.
• Identify his weak areas and work on them gradually.
• Introduce new things and people slowly.
• Do not leave your child to face what he hates alone, be there with him.
• Use encouragement as your basic tool.
• Praise your child on every good thing that he adapts and also reward him. He will remember that and would want to repeat it.

Slowly it would become a part of his habits and viola! There's a change in his personality!

So all in all, a right time for learning, patience and encouragement could be the key tools for understanding and if necessary re molding your child's personality.

How To Encourage Reading In Children:

With the advent of so many new modes of entertainment, things like good reading habits seem to be pass?. If you want your child to develop this wonderful habit you need to serve it in front of him not as a compulsion but as an entertainment.

You can try the following points to inculcate good reading habits in your children.

• Rather than forcing them to read what you think is right, initially let them choose what they want to read and eventually introduce the books you think are right also.
• Reading along with them or aloud to them can be another good idea.
• Starting as early as your baby would start recognizing the pictures in the book is another helpful idea.
• There are a lot of baby books available in the market. Choose the one for your baby which is brightly colored, has big, attractive pictures and is easy to hold.
• At this age, choosing books with lesser words and more of pictures is better. Just hand it over to him and let him explore it whichever way he wants to.
• Kids get fascinated by fairytale books which have pop-ups, different textured pictures and flaps to be lifted.
• Once your child starts pre-school and learns to recognize some words, you can introduce him to books with very short stories written in bold letters and illustrated with pictures.
• To little older children, you can get books which have games that teach numbers, alphabets, dates, knowing the clock.
• Remember that all such things should be very colorful and illustrated with a lot of diagrams and pictures to keep your child's interest.
• Once your child begins to read properly, you can start taking him to the library or the bookstore.
• Let him decide what level of books is he comfortable in reading alone. You can also make him read aloud to his younger sibling.
• If you feel that your child gets easily bored of his books you can make out games out of the book, like enacting the title, narrating an incidence of the story and finding the related picture etc.
• If you child wants to go back to his old books there's no harm in it. Remember, even some grown ups love reading their childhood comic books.
• To a little grown up kids between the age group of 8-11, you can give story books that have a mix of longer imaginative stories.
• You can also try non-fiction for children who do not like stories. You can introduce him to encyclopedias with photographs and illustrations and other such knowledge books.
• You can also find out books that suit his interest. For instance, if he likes sports, then you can get him books on that. For girls, you can get books like Nancy Drew and for boys something like Hardy Boys. You can also try imaginative books of magic and horror.

Kids in their pre-teens should strictly not be forced to read what their parents think is right for them. Accept the fact that by this time your child is in an age to take his own decisions as far as reading is concerned. Romance and science fiction rule supreme at this age but you can also introduce them to old classics.

This way, slowly you can lead your child to the path of making reading a hobby. They will soon discover that they are loving it and it is much better than spending time on useless play stations and video games!

Hi Shel,
Very nice and useful information
thanks for taking the efforts to put them here
aparna

Thanks Shel for posting such detailed info...it is so useful.

I am reading it over and over each and every detail of it.


Adara

Thank you Aparna for your first feedback.

Thank you Adara for dropping in.

Originally Posted by adara

I am reading it over and over each and every detail of it.

Keep reading and explore new ideas everyday.