Learning is all about timing. Get it right our your child will miss out.

The hockey playoffs have started and someone in our house (not me!) is glued to the TV whenever a game is broadcast. For those of you who don’t know, each game is made up of three periods of 20 minutes or so with two breaks of 15 minutes. I am really good at getting dinner on the table the moment that the sound goes for the end of a period. This is not as simple as it seems because of stoppages for penalties, goals, fights etc. The timing has to be carefully judged, it is important to get it right.

While clearing up last night (my husband cooks and clears on non hockey nights!), I started thinking about how important tit is to get the timing right when helping children learn. Children learn at their own pace but sometimes they need a nudge to hurry up and sometimes they need to be reminded to slow down and think about how they are learning. As a teacher I was pretty good at knowing how and when to do this. But parents do not have the experience of working with many children and understanding when a child needs to be nudged and when he needs to slow down.

This is unfortunate because it leads to two different situations, both of them hazardous to a child’s education.

Firstly, parents who try to ‘nudge’ too hard and too often – you know, the ones that get called ‘pushy parents’- may make learning so stressful for their child that he begins to hate having to learn and is so busy trying to please his parents that he never has time to think for himself. I know that parents only nudge kids in this way because the want the best for them, and many parents do not even know they are causing their child to dislike learning, but it is a problem.

Secondly, when parents do not realize that they need to nudge their child the child often misses out on getting the help he or she needs. I have worked with many parents who told me that they knew there was a problem with their child’s learning in Grade 1 but it wasn’t until the child was in Grade 4 that something was done about it. By then it is almost too late. The child has missed so much learning that it can be very difficult for him or her to catch up.

Timing is important.

Don’t try and speed up your child’s learning too much and end up putting them of learning for life

and

Do get help as soon as you suspect that your child needs help. You know your child better than anyone. Trust your instincts.

If your instincts tell you that something is wrong you can contact me to find out what you can do. Everyone gets 15 minutes free consultation.

How is your timing?