It’s Easy When You Know How!

I heard someone say this a few days ago, it is something my mother used to say to me, but I haven’t heard it for ages. As a young child I remember that when I was struggling to learn how to knit, or to make a bed properly, or to do any of the thousand things she showed me how to do she would always say “It is easy when you know how!”

At the time it didn’t seem to help much. I would still get frustrated and upset, but my mother, being my mother, would patiently (or sometimes not so patiently, she is human after all!) showed me yet again how to do things right.

And it is true it IS easy when you know how!

Once you know HOW to do things, how to bake a cake, how to fix a car, how to read a map, how to build a house…. the actual doing of the thing makes much more sense and may even become second nature. How often have you been driving and looked up to wonder how you got to where you are?

It is the ‘knowing HOW’ that is the difference between what you can’t do and what you can do.

Too often we confuse not knowing how with the inability to do something.

For instance, children say they can’t do their homework when they are totally capable of being able to do the work, the problem is that they just don’t know HOW to do the work. Their feeling that they can’t do the work has nothing to do with their ability and everything to do with whether or not they know how to do it.

It is easy when you know how.

So, the next time your child says, “I can’t do that”, take a moment and reflect that he could do it, and could probably do it easily if he knew how to do it. Don’t let lack of knowing how to do something effect his belief in his ability to do something.

Many parents think that their child is incapable of learning when the truth is that the child just doesn’t know how to learn. How can we expect children to learn if we don’t teach them how?

Let us stop putting the cart before the horse – another of my mother’s sayings! – and make sure children know HOW to learn before we expect them to learn. Otherwise we are building a life of frustration for ourselves and one of disappointment and anger for our children.

It IS easy when you know how.

Does your child know how to learn?

Do YOU know how to help?