Are you worried about how much your child is learning through online classes? These tips will help you streamline your child learning.

The virtual classes introduced during the pandemic helped sustain the sessions, but have their own challenges. Especially when most children fall in the category of 99% of the students for whom learning isn’t the priority. You must be lucky if your child falls in 1% of self-starter and high achiever.

The rest of them fidget, wander, ping each other, and their attention hops around, moving away from what is being taught during online class.

Difficult to blame them - holding the attention span of younger children is a challenging job. They could be hooked to TV and gadgets for hours watching cartoons and playing video games, but when it comes to learning, their attention rambles.

If you’re worried about your child shrinking focus and comprehension during online class, then you need to spare some time and streamline the process.

It sounds perplexing, but to help your child grasp and develop study skills, you have to be the super mom.

Photo by Thomas Park on Unsplash

There are few things you can do:

1. Make learning experience a fun activity:

Dopamine is culprit. As a pleasure-seeking organ, the brain releases dopamine when the experience is pleasurable, even the expectation of pleasurable experiences also releases the hormone.

Dopamine release increases attentive focus and memory formation. It increases children’s capacities to control attention and store long-term memories.

If you are wondering how to make the learning experience pleasurable, try introducing;

· Physical movement

· Personal interest connections

· Social contacts

· Music novelty

· Sense of achievement

· Intrinsic reward

· Choice of play

· Humor

2. Create subject enthusiasm:

Do you know negative experiences like a bad remark, mockery, low grades or a punishment could take away your child’s interest in the subject?

Children, like adults, avoid stress. Unclear topics, vague information, teacher or any past negative experiences impact children learning as they start associating negative emotions with the subject and develop escaping tendency.

Our brain retains things which make us feel good. Emotions play a significant role in learning.

Brain avoids the things which stir up negative emotions in us.

To avoid strain in children, brief the topic to your child before it is introduced in the class. The moment children feel that they are unable to understand the concept, their attention starts fading and so is the confidence on the subject.

While you are explaining the concept, ensure the circumstances are favorable and pleasant because anger and resentment hamper learning.

Pleasant environment builds strong positive emotions, confidence, motivation and boost learning.

3. Avoid nagging and winning:

I understand it’s easier to say than done. How can you 'not nag' when you are surrounded by a lot of day-to-day challenges and your children are testing your patience by ignoring every piece of advice you give.

When you have more than one child, then you are a referee settling them. Asking you to stop nagging seems to be a bit hard, but let’s try.

Because nagging and winning hardly help. It only soars your frustration and nothing else. Look at your children, it looks like your words fall flat without making any difference.

Though it sounds challenging, but nagging and winning need to be stopped, it creates a negative atmosphere not in sync with your objective.

You want them to be responsible towards their studies and maintain a decorum, but nagging is definitely an unwanted tool to achieve that objective.

4. Limit screen timings:

TV and Gadgets are the best babysitters, children can be glued to screen for hours in spite of knowing the screen abuses, limiting screen time is intriguing for children and to us.

The reason behind the screen addiction is the feel good hormone ‘dopamine’. When children don’t get the similar pleasurable experience at the time of studies their focus and attention wanders. Limiting screen time and gadget detox helps to neutralise the level.

Let say your child is engrossed in playing an adrenaline rushing game, suddenly you ask them to study history. It would be difficult for them to enjoy the subject as they won’t get the same surge unless you make the learning pleasurable.

Effective learning takes place when there is an association of content with the positive feelings.

5. Encourage Self-Discipline:

When it comes to studying, self-discipline and motivation is the key. Helping children learn to be self-motivated requires a bit of hard work, but once done, it has a lasting impact.

To avoid nagging and running after them, ensure they follow a schedule, and appreciate when they achieve a task. Study buddy could also help.

6. Assign task:

Each day, assign a task and review it at the end of the day.

You can create a scorecard for them for visibility. You both can track the progress when they achieve the set target.

Appreciate their effort and give a star on the scorecard, this helps in building intrinsic motivation.

You may also offer them a gift at the end of a month or a period you decide once they have scored well.

7. Mindfulness:

Making a child sit idle focusing on breathing seems to be tough, but mindfulness introduced at the earliest stage helps to gain focus in the long run.

Just to introduce a habit, ask them to focus on reverse count with closed eyes. They can start with 2 minutes and slowly increase the duration.

8. Positive reward or points:

Positive words and encouragement helps to build child confidence.

Use positive words to build confidence and self-esteem.

Encourage your child to take ownership of their studies and appreciate their small success. These small words are the building block for the child’s future. Once they believe they can actually perform, they start working towards it. More than the score, self-faith is crucial in dealing with difficult problems.

9. Spend some time:

Easy to say than done, spending time when you’re overloaded with your work is tough job, but as a parent, you need to make this small sacrifice for your child’s future spending quality time where you have fun activities takes away stress of both.

It helps to develop a bond. Give some time to play with them and listen to the challenges they are facing on a day to day basis.

10. Use online resources:

They are many online learning resources available for children. Use these resources to help them learn and avoid spending time on online games and watching TV. Using these resources, you can also help them explain topics, not all of us are well-versed in all the subjects, these resources are quiet, helpful.

Conclusion:

Our lives revolve around our children and we want them to focus on studies. This simple demand is mostly turned down by our children. Transforming us into a nagging mother losing our sanity.

To help our children learn better, we need to make learning fun and engaging, and most importantly remove gadget addictions to improve their focus.