The Trick to Teaching a Child

The important thing is what happens when a child is taught the information on number twenty one or the information on number two thousand and one. This is the secret of teaching little children. In the first case, the effect of the presenting of the data of number twenty one (when the child has seen the first twenty ad infinitum and ad nauseam) will be that the child will go out running in the opposite direction quickly as he can. This is the basic principle that is followed in formal education. We adults are aware from experience, how deadly this kind of set up can be given that we did live with it for a number of years. In the second case, the data of number two thousand one is looked forward to. The joy of learning and discovering something new is fomented and the natural curiosity and the love for learning that every child is born with is fed. Unfortunately, the first method closes the door to learning and sometimes for good. Fortunately, the second opens the door and assures against future attempts to close it. In reality, your child will learn much more than fifty out of a hundred out of what you teach him. It is more probable he will learn eighty out of one hundred to one hundred. However, if he only learned fifty out of one hundred because that was all you had to offer him, he would be happy and intellectually healthy. In the end, isn’t this what we are aiming for? Always be willing to change your set up. Make every day an exciting and fresh one. Remember that little children change every day. Sometimes we can see a child do something that he had never done before; sometimes we are able to perceive that he has reached a new way of looking at the world. Whether we have the luck or not of seeing it, his capabilities will literally multiply, and this will happen every single day. When you start to feel comfortable with a new way of teaching something, he will have already understood it all and as is natural, will want something new. We adults like to find a nice routine that is comfortable and we enjoy following that during a certain amount of time. Little children however, want to continue moving forward. When you give your child a kiss good night when putting him to bed, you should say good bye to him because tomorrow will certainly be different from today. In the same way, when you have a nice comfy routine that you like, surely you are going to have to get rid of all the flash cards and adapt yourself again for the new child that has gotten up this morning because this is literally the way it is.