Hi, I hope you are enjoying your day!
If you are enjoying your day, then you are probably ready to learn something new. If you are not enjoying your day, then you are probably in no mood to learn anything new at all – especially if it is hard.
It is the same for your child.
Brains are ready to learn when they are relaxed and happy. The moment any negative emotions come into play — stress, anger, worry – then our learning brain shuts down. REALLY shuts down.
And if your child’s learning brain is shut down… you are wasting your time trying to get them to learn and improve an academic skill.
So does this mean that your child gets a free ride any time they are in a bad mood? No way. Our earlier strategies of regularity and consistency come into play. You must practice about 5 times per week.
If you see that your child is coming to the reading session upset or worried, maybe resistant, then your first job is to make sure your child feels some success in the first minute. And in the next minute and the minute after that.
Perhaps the first 5 minutes of your session is super-easy or a little silly. So what? If you can get that brain to relax, it means you can have a productive 15 minutes after that.
Or maybe you notice that your child is getting stressed or losing focus half-way through. If your child’s brain is starting to turn off, DON’T push through. Remember, once that brain is turned off, you are wasting your time. Instead, change what you are doing, add a bit more success, put your child in the teacher role instead of you – just keep that learning brain turned on.
Over time, you’ll find that you can worry less about keeping the learning brain turned on and focus more on working on reading skills. But in the beginning, for as long as it takes, you may need to be training your child’s brain to trust that reading time is a safe experience.
If you do need to switch up to a fun but educational activity… well, you know what I going to recommend 🙂 Yes, our apps 🙂
All our apps are carefully graded so that ALL children can feel success. And if your child needs a bit of solo time – where no-one is watching to see if they make a mistake – our apps fit the bill. Your child can use our apps independently because we guide your child to the correct answer with timely feedback and hints.
