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Easy answer: the extra time spent every day helping my daughter with her homework. This has paid off enormously. Not because she's a grade-A student (far from i
by massung 5y ago
Easy answer: the extra time spent every day helping my daughter with her homework. This has paid off enormously. Not because she's a grade-A student (far from it; she has a lot of difficulty). But because I've been able to consistently, calmly teach her the following skills that I'm now starting to see her pick up:
1. Everything looks difficult the first time. The hardest step is always the first one. Take a deep breath and just "begin".
2. Never give up. Even impossible tasks are just lots of easy, smaller tasks. Learn to break things down into manageable pieces.
3. When in a time crunch (e.g. a test), learning to triage is a very important skill. Don't get stuck. Just skip and move on. Come back later. Learn to prioritize, etc.
4. Don't be scared. Everyone gets it wrong sometimes. You'll never succeed if your too afraid to fail.
5. Trust your gut. If something seems wrong, then it very well may be. Don't just accept someone else's answer because you don't happen to know the answer.
6. Always verify your answers. Don't just finish a problem and assume it's right. And learn to verify the answers of others as well.
Finally, never ever ever say "I'm not good at that." Say "I'm not good at that YET!" That little difference over time is reminding yourself that you could learn/do it if you wanted, you just haven't learned to yet.
- Marciplan 5y agoThis is glorious advice to give. Thank you. Going to try to talk to my baby sister about this :)
- ___luigi 5y agoThis is one of those timeless HN comments that impact any parent's life (in a positive sense).
- behan 5y agoIt's interesting you say that, I actually recently wrote a blog post title "Don't help your kids with their homework" https://www.chrisbehan.ca/posts/dont-help-your-kids-with-their-homework https://www.chrisbehan.ca/posts/dont-help-your-kids-with-the... although for very different reason than you have highlighted here. Thanks for sharing your perspective (:
- wheelinsupial 5y ago"an essential ingredient of learning is feedback, often received in the form of grades" "Recommend resources for learning" The best thing someone can do to help another learner is to teach them how to evaluate their own work. If there is an answer key to the book, that's great. If there isn't, then they should learn how to use the worked examples to evaluate their learning. Feedback is important as you say, but having a long time delay between completing something and the evaluation through a grade isn't helpful. It can be demotivating, lead to reinforcing or practicing bad habits, or not making the connection between seeing continuous improvement.
- trOmpY 5y agoI am framing this comment because especially today I needed to hear/read something like this :)
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y agoI wish everyone had this mindset. There was a thread the other day about mandatory highschool classes but these simple life lessons are priceless.