It seems you you can have gain without pain
Are you a bit skeptical of tearless shampoo? You’ve probably learnt (the hard way) that respectable shampoo that sticks it to oils and dirt also sticks it to eyeballs. Good cleaning should mean some pain right?
Yet, tear free shampoo is a thing. Baby is fresh and clean whether they giggle or wail when suds get into their eyes. The pain is not a prerequisite for the clean.
You might be trapped in an Easy Come, Easy Go mindset
Most of us are conditioned to believe that if something is unpleasant or painful, then it is getting the job done. In fact, we believe this so much so that if the same job is achieved in a pain free or even pleasant way, we kind of doubt the value.
When it comes to helping kids to learn, you can say it is tearless shampoo syndrome on a grand scale. It’s hard to accept that kids are learning when they are not finding an activity, boring, difficult or in general, something they wouldn’t choose to do.
It’s almost like, we feel more secure in the educational value of what a child is doing if they kind of hate it – like we did when we were learning it.
Learning in the 21st Century – It’s not your grandma’s rodeo
Our own experience and expectations of what learning looks like are so different from what is possible for our kids. Easy come, easy go is just not true. Easy come, easy stay – why not?
This week, we remind you of why you’re probably already doing an awesome job of supporting your kids learning. Look out for these scenarios and give yourself a big pat on the back when you see any of them.
Your child’s favorite show is edutainment of some sort
Kids may change their favorite show as often as they change their socks (ideally everyday). So you get the pat if for any period of time, your child’s favorite show is an edutainment program.
Your child is enjoying themself and learning – that is like the nirvana of teaching and parenting.
But you’ve got to play it cool. Don’t go and start to push that program on the child. For some kids, parental approval of their choices is kryptonite to that choice.
How do I know if a show is edutainment you say? This is a hard question to answer. There are terrible people who make mindless shows specifically for kids. Kids shows and kids channels don’t mean edutainment. A good bet is if it’s on PBS, it’s edutainment. If it’s in an Anetapack, it’s edutainment. If you read the credits and it mentions the child psychologists and educators involved in creating it, it’s probably edutainment – but not always.
“Team”, “Kind”, “Get back up” and “learn” pop up often in content your kid likes
Hey, we didn’t say this rubric was scientific. But these words show up with uncanny frequency in content focused on teaching soft skills and social and emotional learning camouflaged as entertainment.
An aside on the term ‘soft skills’. Whoever made that up should be smacked. We love our STEAM in Anetaland but so called ‘soft skills’ are just as important. (We’ve seen what happens when one gets to adulthood and even into presidency without learning these. Le sigh.)
If the content your kid engages with uses these words a lot, odds are your kid is learning, empathy, resilience, how to manage emotions, problem solving, interpersonal skills…. Oh so many ‘soft skills’ critical for life. You get a pat on the back.
Your kid actively searches for content on a particular topic
Why do you get a pat for this you say? You’ve got a little researcher on your hands that is why.
Kids can have fascinations. At any point their, thing can be cars, LoL dolls, legos, dinosaurs, basketball, football, space, buildings, toads, birds, cow farts etc. A kid who has a thing and gathers knowledge on that thing this is learning!
Kids may never be tested on their thing, but it is important learning. Besides just knowing cool stuff, they also learn how to learn. And importantly, they drive themselves to acquire more knowledge. That is such an important skill. So whatever the thing is, you get a pat!
So there you have it. You may be doing so much right already and not even know it.
And if you didn’t get a pat this time. No worries. At least know you. Just make sure that the kids have a wide choice of edutainment and something is bound to align with their interests. For the day at least.
