Written by: Founder and Volunteer Secretary-General of GLP, Lam Ho Pei Yee
A child’s learning ability, whether strong or weak, is not innate; it is largely developed through training. Logical reasoning is a crucial component of reading methods. Some parents use “teaching reference books” intended for teachers, giving them a sneak peek at the lesson content prepared by the teacher. On the surface, this seems to help children grasp the key points of the teacher’s lessons and accurately understand the classroom content more easily. In reality, however, it deprives children of the valuable opportunity to enhance their own learning abilities. Most people agree that the purpose of education is to learn how to think and communicate. Classroom learning is a comprehensive process that requires children to follow the teacher’s thought process and instruction, step by step, to understand and accept the material. Therefore, learning is a dialectical process of thinking, involving active questioning rather than passive acceptance.
In fact, as long as parents find the right methods, a child’s learning ability can be easily improved. Parents should teach children to establish a system of thinking, and organizing information before storing it in the brain, rather than letting it become a chaotic mess. This way, the information becomes organized, systematic, and orderly, making it easier to retrieve and recall in the future.
Unfortunately, if parents only focus on exam results, feeling happy when the results are good and criticizing when they are not, rather than focusing on how to cultivate their child’s learning ability, then even if the child fails a hundred times, parents can only feel helpless and anxious.
Moreover, if one has acquired extensive knowledge but cannot use it or leverage it to discover more knowledge, what is the value of such learning? When exam results are poor, parents’ emotions can easily become tense and irritable, and these negative emotions make us focus only on the present moment, leading parents to resort to immediate reward and punishment methods (such as coaxing or scolding). On the contrary, cultivating a child’s attitude of “not being arrogant in victory and not being discouraged in defeat,” and believing that abilities can be changed through effort, is an important factor in developing perseverance and resilience. Once this principle is understood, the issue of whether a child is ahead or behind at the starting line becomes irrelevant.
Let us understand children’s behavior more from their needs. When a child is disobedient, let us gently remind ourselves: “Pause and think.” Consider whether the child needs more attention in terms of ability, autonomy, or relationships.
