Why do we stop learning?

How many of us as parents make our children do homework, send them to tuitions, and blame them for not understanding their lessons. Why do we have to treat learning which is a natural thing for the human mind into such a chore? Coming to think of that, when did we last learn something for the sake of learning? After we get into our jobs, we only think about money and job position. I once met a maths teacher who teaches math for primary classes. I was telling her about the website khanacademy.org and how it helps understand math concepts in a simpler way. And the reaction I got from her was ‘chal forget it, it’s boring, I keep doing this day in and day out’. I was surprised by that comment from a teacher. And it made me wonder, if teachers teach because they want the kids to learn or just listen to what they have to say?

I was never thinking about teaching until recently. But I come to understand that to teach, you first have to be open to learn. How can u inspire a child to learn when you yourself are not open to the concept? When I’m talking about learning, it’s not just about the subject that you teach but also try to learn how the child understands what u teach. And I’m not talking just about a school environment; it can even be the day to day teaching that you do as a parent for your child. Even when we discipline the kid, we only want the kid to listen to us but don’t really bother about why he should learn a certain behavior or why something is bad.

I know I can just go on about this, but the other day I was playing Mega Bloks with my boy, he made something out of 3 blocks and proudly announced ‘Amma, look four’. I was really looking in awe as to how he was able to perceive a number by fixing a few blocks. So after that we both tried to make a few alphabets and numbers through the blocks.

PAL completed two years recently and one of the gifts he got was the alphabet and number puzzle made out of foam board. So I was removing the alphabets and making him fix it into the right board. After sometime he was playing by himself while I moved on to do some other work. He comes out from his room and shows me alphabet ‘V’ upside down and told me ‘Amma, pant’. I was almost on tears. I then learnt that there are absolutely no rules or boundaries to learn, the difference it takes is just in our minds.

It's so beautiful how kids learn in the most unconventional way, through play, through music, through conversation, by asking questions and it just gives us more responsibility to give them a more conducive environment for them to learn than confine to the conventional parenthood which comes with the mindset that 'i'm now a parent and hence i don't have to learn anything, its only my child's duty to learn.' When we as parents inspire our kids to learn, why would our kids treat learning a chore?

PAL and myself made this Car Park for all this cars, he takes reverse of the cars he wants outside by humming reverse tunes similar to his dad's car :-)

Lessons through storytelling

Offlate I’ve been so taken by this whole concept of storytelling. PAL loves stories and he loves hearing the same story again and again and again. Sometimes I get so bored, but he doesn’t. There are some situational stories that I make up for him to brush his teeth and drink his milk. He started going to playschool and I had to make the morning chores of waking him up, brushing his teeth, drinking milk an easy experience for both of us without leading to any power struggles or conflicts. Hence one fine morning I just came up with a story for making him brush his teeth:

“Once Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse were playing in the garden (kutty park in his language) when suddenly a worm jumped out from Mickey’s mouth and Minnie jumped on seeing the wiggly worm come out of his mouth. So she asked him if he brushes his teeth for which Mickey says, ‘it’s a boring thing to do’. So Minnie takes him to a dentist who examines his teeth and tells him there are lots of worms inside and cleans up everything. So he then gives mickey a red color toothbrush and toothpaste and tells him it is wise to brush his teeth everyday”.

So finally he brushes his teeth.. Well life’s not so easy, cos sometimes the story doesn’t work, so I’ve to think of other creative ways to make him brush his teeth. Once his friend gifted him a Lightning Macqueen car and thanks to it, as it shows its teeth all smiling. So I brush its teeth first and make him brush his own. These are characters he loves being associated with, he’s mad about Mickey and adores Lightning. And then comes drinking milk. Now when he takes the glass of milk from me he immediately asks me for the goofy story that I tell him. That story goes something like this:

“Mickey, Minnie, Pluto, Goofy, Daisy and Donald are playing in the park and after sometime Goofy becomes very tired. And Mickey asks him if he had anything to eat or drink before coming for play. So Goofy tells Mickey how he dislikes milk so much. So then Mickey takes him to his house and makes him a special chocolate milk like how I give for PAL. Goofy takes a liking for it and after he drinks it, becomes very strong that he’s able to play lots of games”.

Well, these stories may seem very silly, but not to my 2 year old hero. He loves them and what’s better, there’s no fighting or power struggles for getting him to eat his food or drink his milk. Off late I made up my stories out of a cartoon he watched in YouTube about a Tractor Tom, and he just loves them and wants to hear them again and again. He loves listening to stories at bedtime. I have a collection of few Disney and ladybird books from which I tell him stories and sometimes he’d want to listen to Hindu mythology stories and on a few nights it’s the old traditional fables. And the best thing about this is that he once told us a story by combining three stories together (by randomly jumping from one story to another) and made it into one .
I feel stories are just great ways of connecting with your child. Whether you want to teach him about values or candidly encourage him to do a task, they come in very handy.

SR