Giving your Child a Holisitic Education

Education today is focused more on educating individuals to be able to relate to themselves and society. A lot of reflection and self analysis are encouraged among students.

It is nowadays not good enough just to memorize and regurgitate what has been taught to you.  You would need to analyze and explain the rational behind your choice and support it with evidence you have researched prior to you presenting your case.

To be able to think strategically and analyze  rationally the problem laid out before you is not an easy task for an adult least a child. Getting to the crux of a problem and understanding it is already mind blogging enough.

Being able to think through and consider all possibilities plausible is quality that is expected of a great leader.

How then are we able to cultivate such a mindset in our child?

1. Give your child time and space.

   Showing signs of being  bored or irritated with your child who is struggling to find the answer will make them want to give up without trying.  Give you child ample time to source for the needed information with minimal assistance.

2. Do not spoonfeed your child with information.

   Searching for information by oneself is something that shouldn’t be robbed from a child. Information gathered through a child’s own resources is more readily absorbed than have information just placed at their feet.

   Spoonfeeding also breads laziness as they would expect everything to be given to them on a silver platter.

3. Allow your child to make mistakes and grow.

   To expect perfect results from a child every time  is simply unrealistic. As if many life lessons are learn from experience. Sometimes we do not give a child the opportunity to falter as we want to spare them the agony of failure. You may think that you are doing your child a favor
   by sparing them from the pain but in fact you are doing them an unjust as you are robbing from them a learning opportunity.

4. Teach them to think out of the box.

   There may not be a “model answer” for every question or project that one is faced with.  Different solutions may surface depending on the angle you are looking at.  It is like you looking through a prism. Light hitting the prism at a different angle will produce different colors of the rainbow.  The answer maybe easier then one had expected it to be.

5. Teach them how to reflect on their actions.

   For each action there is a consequence be it for good or bad. Being able to reflect will allow one to self assess what has been done properly and what needs to be corrected.  If the child is able to self reflect it will greatly increase their ability to understand their surroundings and how complex problems can be broken down and simplified.

Related posts:

1. How well do you ACTUALLY know your child? Photo by Flickr Conception —- Birth(Baby)——Toddler—- Pre -Schooler- –Pre-teen–Teenager–Adult...
2. Is the Door Wide Open? Communicating with your Child Photo from Flickr A little gesture, a warm smile...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.