How to help your child love learning

It’s simple: Don’t give them too much, too soon.

Simple, but not easy.

My friend sent me a couple of adorable videos of her four-year-old daughter at the piano, singing passionately while tenderly pressing the keys to create a bit of avant garde atonal accompaniment. The lyrics were surprisingly sophisticated — kind of a Nick Cave meets Tori Amos vaguely-confessional-but-abstract vibe. In short, pretty good for a four-year-old.

Notwithstanding the fact that nurturing your child’s interests is important, it’s all about timing and pacing. If my friend and her husband were to begin formal instruction in piano or songwriting for their daughter, it would be like dumping a gallon of water on a pea shoot. Too much of a good thing is toxic to any living creature.

Until learners become confident, the “dosage” of new material needs to be carefully controlled in terms of both amount and timing. Ideally, we let them come to us when they are ready for more. Otherwise, we overwhelm them, and they become disengaged or even hostile.

As a society, Americans do pretty well with this until about first grade, when school stops being fun for many children. We lose the next wave of kids in third grade, and then another in fifth or sixth. By high school, a large percentage are doing only the minimum required to achieve the grades they feel comfortable with. There are a still kids who still love learning, but many of them prefer to seek out these opportunities outside of school.

It’s difficult to restore a love of learning to a child who has become fearful and resentful. It takes time and space. To prevent this precious and fragile sprout from being crushed in the first place is challenging, too. It may require alternative schooling, careful management of a child’s activities, and painfully reckoning with one’s own ideas about achievement, competition, success, and living up to other’s expectations.

It’s worth it. Haven’t we all known homeschooled teenagers (and actualized adults) who were able to retain or regain the curiosity and willingness to experiment that virtually all of us demonstrate as four-year-olds? The enthusiasm, and confidence they radiate is accessible to all of us, if we only proceed slowly and gently in the beginning.