Sometimes we receive questions about what to do when children don’t want to complete their Smartick sessions. Whether they are tired, bored, or simply don’t feel like it. When is it a good time to say “now you can’t play” or ”you still have to do it even if you don’t feel like it”? Without pretending that there is some magic formula, we think that these three approaches that our Smartick Team believes in can help parents make these decisions.
Approaches to Help Parents Make Educational Decisions
- Learning is slow and steady like Catherine L’Ecuyer says. This is a good thing because if not, we would not grow. Let’s banish the myth that ”learning always has to be playing.” Not always, and not every game. Math can be fun (our students know that well!), but it is always going to require commitment and effort. Working and striving toward a difficult problem is something that is trained and there comes a time where you pick up the habit and it becomes easier each time.
- Intelligence and capacity development. We are not born with fixed intelligence that determines success when we are older. Think about your favorite athlete or genius, one thing that they all have in common is their effort. As one of the greatest players in the NBA Larry Bird, once said, ”The harder I work, the luckier I get.” That being said, our ability is flexible and by training it every day, we realize how far it can go and the satisfaction it may bring.
- What you don’t learn as a child is going to be much harder once you get older. It has been said that no one will achieve in life what one has achieved as a young man. No doubt, many will think this is an exaggeration because they know people that have achieved great things after 40. However, there are habits and skills that if they had not been acquired as a young child (from brushing your teeth to not being afraid of challenges), are much more difficult to achieve, or easier to neglect, as an adult.
What do we want to say with all this? That without effort and perseverance one can lose the best of oneself. We have all been at the crossroads where one option was laziness and the other was effort. These small daily decisions are shaping the character of our little ones.
But let’s not kid ourselves, we don’t have a magic formula for each and every one of our students. It doesn’t exist because: it is the parents! They are the ones that need to make the best judgment each time, to leave the last few pieces from lunch or save it to be finished at dinner; tell their children they need to do Smartick now or allow them to play first.
We are sorry that we do not have the ”right answer,” but we hope that these little notes will serve as a reminder that taking children’s development seriously often means saying no. We bet, that like us, our readers do not do what they want every day, however, they still enjoy it and owe that to their parents and the people that raised them.
Learn More:
- Compete to Grow: Learning Through Competition
- 9 Tips for Improving Frustration in Children
- Mathematics, the Same as Sports
- Cell Phone Addicted Parents: Do We Practice What We Preach?
- Coping with Hyper-Parenting in Today’s Society
Master’s in International Education from the Universidad de Alcalá– Instituto Franklin.
She has worked as a teacher in three different countries and is now a Translator on the Content Creation Team at Smartick and helps to adapt content for blog posts.
As a native Rhode Islander she loves any activity on the water and when she’s not working you can find her traveling, kickboxing, or trying out a new recipe.
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