The lessons we teach our children

Yesterday I was watching a 5 yo boy hitting his father at a restaurant. The father picked him up took him away from the table and instantly played games with him and this changed the boy's mood. But the father is probably baffled as to why his son always acts up. Little does he realise that he is rewarding his son for bad behaviour. This boy has learnt to associate punching his father with good times. If only they knew where they were going wrong.

So what should he have done? Time out. He should have taken his son away from the table and asked him to think about what he was doing. Leave him for a few minutes, come back and ask him if he is sorry. For this father it may take a few times to change his sons behaviour but persistence will pay off.

The Mind of a Child

This is a tough one for most adults because we forget what it was like to be a child. We are not children and therefore cannot see the world from their perspective. Even if we could remember it is only a memory of our own childhood and not our present reality. We are not living it. Many adults try to teach children as if they were adults. Teaching a child as if they were an adult just doesn’t make sense to them. Teaching children is very much a skill. Like anything some adults are naturally gifted at teaching but most are not. Teaching children requires an understanding of how children think and respond. Children respond to repetition The adult mind is looking for new experiences. Most adults will watch a movie or a TV show once maybe twice. A child can watch the same movie 100 times or more. I can have a running joke with a child for months. The same joke would not be funny to an adult after the third time. The trick is to use repetition to your advantage. Let me use an example. If you want to teach your child to count you only need to make up a game that involves counting and do it everyday for fun. Your child will learn to count in record time. The biggest challenge for music teachers of children is often parents. Teaching children music requires playing the same song hundreds of times. For parents this drives them crazy but children are happy to do it again and again. A common request from parents is ‘Can my child learn a new song?’