Ten Tips for Keeping the Joy Alive

1. Be joyful. The most important factor for keeping the joy of learning alive for your children is to be joyful about it yourself. Parents who are attentive and excited about their children’s schooling (and their own) usually have children who are attentive and excited about school.

2. Take on a new challenge for yourself that is visible to your kids. Work on a project while the kids do their homework. Let them see you figuring out how to do something that is sometimes hard. Let them see your satisfaction in learning.
3. Make time to read to your children every day that you can. Shoot for at least four days each week. Read chapter books aloud as a family or read books that are age-appropriate for each child. Ham it up! Give the characters voices. And here’s the most important part — show the kids you are involved with the story by commenting on the action and by asking them to make connections or to guess what will happen next.
4. Use your local library. I know many families in our town who make a big ritual for their kids out of getting their own library cards. Until a kid can sign his or her name, he or she has to use a parent’s card. For these families, getting a library card is a sign of growing up. With cards in hand, go to the library regularly. Stay awhile to browse. Then bring home a pile. At our house, we have a special canvas bag that we bring for carrying all the books. During the week, we always return the books to the bag after reading from them so we won’t have to do one of those frantic book hunts when the time for the next week’s trip to the library rolls around.
5. Share interesting things with your children. You don’t have to be an expert. As a matter of fact, it’s better if you are not. Puzzling things out together will encourage your child’s thinking skills. Out for a walk? Show them that the leaves on trees have different shapes. “Hmmm. I wonder why that is?” Making pancakes? Ask the kids why bubbles pop open on the tops as you cook the first side.
6. Look it up. One of the most important things you can give your children is comfort with looking things up. Let the kids know when you don’t know an answer. Get excited about looking for it. Show them how much fun it can be to track down information on the Internet, in the dictionary, or in an encyclopedia. Make sure that a dictionary is handy in the kitchen. Bring field guides of plants and birds on your vacation.
7. Become involved with your children’s school. Volunteer to help with the annual book sale, the playground cleanup, or whatever events help keep the school going. Be willing to help out in the classroom. Ask your child’s teacher for ideas about how to help. Get to know the teachers and staff.
8. Talk about education. That means asking your kids about their day. That means spending time around the dinner table talking about what they are learning. That means not grilling and drilling the kids but instead sharing stories and asking questions that make them — and you — think.
9. Play word games and board games that hone skills. Have a family Scrabble tournament. Too difficult for individuals to do alone? Create parent/child(ren) teams. Buy an easy crossword puzzle book. Work on it together. Don’t be deadly serious about something that is supposed to be family fun. If you are not laughing and having a good time with the games, you are undoing all the good you were intending to do by playing them.
10. Use car time as learning time. Play tapes of good books on long rides. Make a game out of the multiplication tables or common spelling words. You don’t have to set it up as a competition between the kids. Instead, you can see how long it takes the “team” of kids in the car to answer, say, 20 questions or problems. Then see if they can beat their own time. (I always saved the “ones” table for the 4-year-old so that he could be on the team too.)

Enthusiasm is contagious. If you don’t have it, fake it. If you think your child’s education is important, you need to behave as if it is. Often enough, when parents make the decision to be involved in their children’s learning in new and more active ways, they find themselves getting genuinely excited and interested.

I’ll know that this generation of parents has succeeded in shifting attitudes towards learning when I see a June headline that reads “Only 89 Days to Go Before School Begins Again.” I’ll know that we really value our schools when a radio ad begins with something like “Remember when you got to be in a place where you had to do nothing but learn new things every day?” I’ll know that our kids are getting the right message when a DJ asks, “What’s your favorite part of the day?” and kids say things like “writing stories,” “figuring out stuff in the science lab,” or “talking about new ideas.” Then we’ll all deserve prizes!

    Last reviewed: By John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on 12 Dec 2006
    Published on PsychCentral.com. All rights reserved.