Parenting: Habit For a Lifetime - Teach Your Child to Listen Faster
By Mimi Rothschild
When parents decide to home school their children, it is for a variety of reasons. Quite often, mainstream schooling does not work for the child, so the option of home school is taken on as an alternative. The hardest thing about home schooling is getting children to listen faster and learn at their own pace. Home school children do not have time for laziness or arguments. How do you get an argumentative or lazy child to do their home school work? Teach them how to listen faster.
If your child can listen fast and answer politely when they are asked to do something, their success rate in a home school environment will greatly improve. The key concept to teaching a child to listen fast is simply to have them say “Okay, Mom/Dad” whenever you ask them to do something.
Saying “Okay, Mom/Dad” will not be an easy thing for many children at the start. The key is to practice with easier things first: such as asking your child to turn off the television. They look you in the eye, say “Okay, Mom/Dad,” and then do what they were asked. When they have turned off the television, reinforce to them that they did a great job; lots of positive reinforcement and praise is important through all the stages. If you practice a couple of times every day, eventually you have established a habit that will carry on into home schooling.
With this ‘Okay' habit established, your child has now learned to listen to you faster. So when you do say ‘It is time to do your math work,' they will look at you and say ‘Okay.' Ensure that you review this new habit with your child when the opportunities arise. Discuss past situations where your child could have, and should have said, “Okay, Mom/Dad” as well as the situations where your child correctly responded. This concept is wonderful for home schooled children—it helps them be successful at school when they no longer attend a mainstream school.
Home school is a viable option for many families and many children. Home school allows children and parents to go at the pace that is best suited to each individual child. It allows the parents to observe the learning style that each child responds best to individually. Beyond that, by teaching your child to listen fast, you are teaching them respect and how to handle every day situations: a habit that will last a lifetime.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mimi Rothschild is a homeschooling parent, children's rights activist, author, and Founder and C.E.O. of online education company Learning by Grace, Inc. Rothschild and her husband of twenty-eight years reside in suburban Philadelphia with their eight children.
Feeling that “our current system of education has broken its promise,” Rothschild co-founded Learning By Grace, Inc. to provide families with Internet-based multimedia education to PreK-12 children all over the world.
In addition to her twenty years of experience as a homeschool mother, Rothschild has written a number of books dealing with education published by McGraw Hill and others. Her Home Education Websites Blog consists of helpful online content and activities for Christian homeschooling families.
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