When It's Time To Hit The Books: How To Motivate Your Child To Study And Ace Tests
Do you want to know how to get your child to do better in school? Are you looking to learn how to motivate your child to study? If you are, read on below for a guide on how to make studying more appealing to your child.
Parents in Australia are spending less time helping their children with schoolwork. The average time an Australian parent spends on helping their children study is only 4.4 hours per week. If you’re expecting your child to get better grades, how will they if you don’t help them?
Don’t expect too much from your child if you’re not engaged with his learning. The key to guiding them is to stay involved in the process but not intrusive. Keep reading for some tips on how to motivate children to learn.
1. Motivate Your Child to Study with Game-Based Learning
Games are the main interests of many young children, so don’t take it out of the process. Instead, incorporate games into your child’s study time. That way, he’ll see that learning and studying is yet another fun thing to do.
Diversify your games, so the child doesn’t get bored of them right away. If you have children that are close in age, incorporate games for team-based learning. The younger children can pick up advanced concepts, and older children can help younger children out.
2. Engage Your Child More by Communicating More
If you want to know how to motivate your child to study, you need to open a sincere line of communication. Let your child share his opinion on a subject or a study technique and listen. When children feel that their opinions matter, they’ll feel more encouraged to study.
You can even try to hold a debate for your child if he’s older. It’s a great way to check his reasoning and core beliefs. You also train your child to become comfortable in extemporaneous speaking.
3. Avoid Giving Long Lectures
Effective parenting shouldn’t have an overload of preaching, threatening, and lecturing. It’s a necessary parenting tool, but if you use it all the time, it loses its value. Your child will lose interest, ignore these lectures, and find ways to avoid them.
You can already expect teachers to give long lectures, so use a different approach. Instead, give clear, precise, and short instructions. Be firm when you give instructions.
4. Storytelling Makes the Lesson More Memorable
Do you want to know how to improve your child’s test scores? Storytelling is a great way for a child’s imaginative mind to keep information. It triggers their creativeness as well as a thirst to learn more.
It’s a great way to prepare them for tests. Technical tests can be a little more challenging to incorporate into a story. However, if you’re creative enough, you might find a way around it.
5. Provide a Peaceful Study Environment
One of the top tips on how you can motivate a child to learn is to provide the right learning environment. Your child needs a quiet, peaceful place he can go to read or complete his schoolwork. This place needs to be conducive for study.
That means easy ambience, a comfortable study table, and plenty of light. A child’s attention span is often very short so make sure there aren’t any distractions. Turn off the TV and any mobile device that you’re not using for study.
6. Don’t Get Too Involved
You can take control of your kid’s learning experience but don’t control your child. If you want to know how to improve your child’s grades, you need to provide guidance. Let your child decide how he wants to study.
For example, if you want to check for spelling, have your kid choose a topic to write about. If your child finds video games interesting, let him or her play. This research found that students who play video games do better than those who use social media.
7. Encourage Different Learning Styles
Expand your kid’s learning styles. There’s more to education than classroom-style learning, which is often audio-visual.
When you can, incorporate more physical or verbal learning. Let your child use music, math, and speech in his learning. Let him learn by speaking with other people or by self-study.
These are only a few types of learning styles that you can integrate into your child’s education.
8. Share and Show Your Enthusiasm for Learning
How do you get your kid to study harder? You show him your enthusiasm for learning. Often, a child will copycat what he observes from his parents.
Enthusiasm rubs off, and a child is always open to new things. If you want your child to be studious, then you must show, don’t tell. Share your enthusiasm in history, math, science, or even literature.
Chances are your child will pick up your interests as well.
9. Recognise Effort and Celebrate Accomplishments
Positive reinforcement is vital in developing your child’s study habits. Praising your child after he finished a difficult project will help motivate him to do more. You don’t have to give him praise for everything he does right but doesn’t disregard his significant achievements.
If your child failed to do something but gave it his best, acknowledge his efforts. Let him know that failure is a step closer to success and that he should keep trying. You can even tell him about Thomas Edison’s 1,000 attempts at the light bulb.
10. Focus on the Journey of Your Child’s Learning
Most kids think that studying for tests is boring and unnecessary. It’s your job as a parent to let them see how crucial some tests can be. However, it isn’t right to always focus on the results.
The manner of getting those results is of equal importance, if not more. The development of your child’s study habits will later develop into his work ethic. It can also translate then to his beliefs, like enjoying life rather than racing to reach the top.
Learn How to Motivate a Child to Study Now
Those are some tips on how to motivate your child to study.
It’s not easy to get a child to sit down and study, especially when they’re in a very active age. Instead of bringing them to your level of passive study, bring yourself to their level of engaged curiosity. When you and your child are on the same page, it’s easier to get them to study.
If you learned from this blog post, feel free to view our other guides for more content like this. Does your child need help with studying? Explore our practice tests today.
