The first thing to know is that there are five types of children's strengths, namely exploration, leadership, aggressiveness, analysis, and social skills.
Children like to procrastinate when doing homework, urging 10 sentences to write a word;
When I was reading, I couldn't sit still, so I had to roar and make a fire, and I barely watched for ten minutes.
The composition is not well written, so I have to memorize a few sample essays to cope with the exam...
Look, push, push, roar. In these different requests for help, there is actually only one essential question that many people do not understand:
Whether the child's learning depends on external or internal driving force.
Children who rely on external drive are not interested in learning themselves, but because of the persecution of their parents, they have to do it. Slowly, learning became a parent's business. As long as parents do not urge to teach, children will return to liberation overnight.
And what about children who rely on internal drive?
Teacher Qiu Tian of Tsinghua Once summed it up in his column: When having internal driving force, a person does a thing because he is interested, really likes, especially wants to do it, and is very happy and satisfied when he does it.
In this way, without your urging, the child will also take the initiative to do it. This is what we call self-directed learners.
Teacher Qiu Tian also introduced a Portuguese study of psychology and pedagogy .
From the first to the fourth grade of primary school, the stronger the internal drive, the better the grades, and the two are highly correlated;
From the first grade to the third grade, the external drive has nothing to do with the grade and has no significant impact on the grade;
But by the fourth grade, the external drive becomes negatively correlated, that is, the more children who experience the external drive, the worse their grades.
To put it simply, children who actively learn under the internal drive are getting better and better, and children who are pushed away under the external drive are doomed to go far.
Therefore, what we should do most is not to stare at the children's homework and give them lessons. It is to cultivate the child's internal drive, so that the child changes from "I want to learn" to "I want to learn".
Is it difficult? I will tell you very seriously: it is not so difficult, as long as you learn to observe the strengths of children.
01
How to use the advantages to cultivate the internal drive of children?
Here's a case study to share with you.
Once, a mother came to me, and her daughter had just entered the first grade, just like the legendary scum.
A third of an essay typos make it difficult to read quietly. The teacher's comments were also very direct. He was absent-minded in class, and did not have enough concentration and self-control.
In order to exercise the child's concentration, the mother took some reading lessons, took her to the library to find her favorite books, and bought some music to exercise her concentration. As a result, during that time, she had a headache as soon as she read a book.
The children were still struggling to recite poems, and each time they were the last in the class. As long as there is a task of memorizing poems, her mother will take a lot of time to teach her to memorize poems, explaining to her what it means sentence by sentence, and she seems to understand it.
But just after memorizing the front, I forgot about the back. Mom also thought of a lot of ways, looping audio at home, doing memory training, anyway, I can't remember. The mother was so anxious that she was almost desperate.
This is a classic example of trying to force a child to change through external drive. But if you patiently dig into the child's strengths, start from the heart, the child will take the initiative to change.
From my observation, this child is a typical "exploratory" child. Such children are not necessarily interested in written information. Her strength lies in her ability to obtain information by exploring and discovering problems.
The mother said, yes, during their travels, the children always asked a lot of questions:
"What is the origin of plants?"
"The trees here are straight. Why are the trees in the South crooked?"
"Cows can sleep on their stomachs. Why do horses sleep standing up?"
......
She has an endless curiosity about the world and a strong desire to explore. It's not that she doesn't like to learn, it's that she really isn't fit to stay quiet.
Children with strong exploration skills often need to experience stronger pain when adapting to schooling. They are not interested in conventional, boring knowledge, and are often labeled as "inattentive", "slow learning progress", "procrastinators", "timid and dare not take the initiative to speak"... These negative labels.
Mom said, yeah, before she started school, what a smart kid she was. She hosts family meetings, loves to play, loves to do all the unconventional things...
Sorry, these advantages, if parents have forgotten, should not be discovered by the second person in this world.
In line with the child's exploration advantage, I gave this mother some advice. I am glad that the child's inner drive will soon be rekindled - she does not love language, we can try not to force her to read, but to chat with her, let her ask questions, accompany her to watch popular science enlightenment animation, stimulate her curiosity and desire to explore, so that she has always maintained the motivation to learn.
As for memorizing poems, every ancient poem is performed by children. Now, their family's poetry recitation is no longer a chaotic scene of chickens flying and dogs jumping, but a play time of hip-hop, hip-hop, and hip-hop. The internal drive came up, and academic performance was a side matter.
02
For children with different advantages, the method of stimulating internal drive is different. Let me give you another example.
This time, a pair of parents came to me with their 12-year-old son: the child's time management ability is so poor, so rebellious, we really can't manage it! Day by day, homework mixed days, do not sleep at night, can not get up in the morning, and always quarrel with us!
The parents eagerly asked, "Teacher, how do we take care of him?"
I watched the family communicate and said to my parents, "Leave him alone."
They were amazed, "How can you ignore it!"
I explained to them, "This kid's time management is not good, not because he is lazy, but because he needs to control himself and hate the control of others." This trait is called leadership. If you have to take care of him, he'd rather ruin it than do it."
The child is older next to him.
I said to this child, "Son, I teach you a method of time management called the prioritization method. This way not only does not have to be controlled, but also your parents' time can be controlled. Do you want to learn?"
The child's eyes lit up: "Yes!"
After this trick is taken away, the child will no longer be chased by the parents to write homework. Not only will they arrange their own time, but they will also "chicken" their parents. As soon as I entered the house, I started shouting, "This is a priority meeting!"
He has an intrinsic drive to manage his time independently.
Hope every parent knows. Every child is born an independent learner. Every child has an intrinsic drive and only needs a chance to be seduced.
03
What are your child's strengths?
In addition to the exploration and leadership advantages mentioned above, children have the following three types of advantages.
Enterprising children like challenges, like to compete, like to compete with strong opponents, especially want to win, very competitive, obsessed with milestone achievements.
So, if learning can be a competition or challenge for the child, he will enjoy it.
Children with strong analytical skills like to find answers, have the obsession to break the casserole to ask the end, and enjoy the process of solving difficult problems.
The characteristics of this type of child are clearer in solving problems, a better understanding of the underlying logic of knowledge, and a preference for understanding the underlying logic behind things.
In addition to keen feelings, children with social advantages also pay special attention to relationships and value the evaluation of others. In order to gain and maintain the affirmation and recognition of others, they will try their best to do things well, and at the same time they will pay for the love from the outside world.