Smart Parenting

Cramming your child’s schedule with too many

structured activities might hinder your child from
learning effectively — so what are the right
approaches? By Kua Kee Eng

Boost Your Child’s

Learning Ability
“C hildren by nature have an interest in learning and that’s very important,”
was the opening line of Dr. Goh Chee Leong before he started to explain about the
three key principles to enhance children’s learning abilities — exposure,
child-initiated learning and encouragement. In psychology, it is called intellectual
(From left) Director of curiosity — which already existed within the children. “Many parents start of with
the assumption that children don’t like to learn and therefore they have to force
HELP’s Centre for them to learn. But it’s not true,” explained Dr. Goh. Most parents and teachers
Psychology Dr. Goh actually turn off the curiosity of children to learn due to this very wrong perception.
Chee Leong, Dutch Lady According to Dr. Goh, children begin to seek for information at an early age; even
Group Product Manager a one-month-old baby will observe things and people in her surrounding and
Ms. Jean Ler and Dutch react to certain activities. So how can parents help their children to a more
Lady Marketing Manager effective learning? Dr. Goh tells Parenthood the
Mr. Jan Pieter Tanis. three important approaches every parent
should adapt.

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 Expose Your Child to New Ideas
The role of parents is to expose their children to
many different ideas. It’s not so much about
motivating your child to learn, as the motivation
factor is already there — but more on the method of
exposing your child to new things and ideas. One
of the ways is to read to your child at a very young
age, even before they understand any languages,
as you can expose them to pictures, to ideas, and
all kinds of books. Taking your child to visit
different places such as the museum, art gallery,
zoo or even a shopping mall is another good way to
expose your child to new ideas. For parents who
can afford it, they may also travel with their children,
to another country or state, which could expose
them to different cultures and tradition as well as exposing them to the idea of
globalisation. Parents are seen as the channel that exposes their children to this
world.

Try Child-Initiated Learning

Parents should always start with what the child is interested in. “Never force things
down their throat as far as possible,” said Dr. Goh. Children often express certain
interests — music, plants, buildings, animals, arts — where parents can take
advantage of them as a starting point to encourage their children to learn. For
instance, if your child likes to draw, then you can supply her with paper, colour
pencils and necessary tools and make sure you allocate some time for her to draw.

Child-initiated lear ning is not a newly introduced idea, but it has been
established more than three decades ago. The Children of the Hill, a book written
by Michael Deakin (published in 1973) relates a true story about how a couple
who successfully home-schooled their children using the Montessori Philosophy
and Pedagogy. The children turned out to be extraordinary human beings who
became remarkable scholars. The parents made a deliberate choice to provide an
environment suited to bringing up children and they were also keen observers of
their children’s interest and development needs — a proven example of
child-initiated learning.

In the early years of a

child’s life, there are
many periods of
intense fascination
for learning a
particular A child doesn’t
characteristic
or skill. These distinguish between
periods are learning and playing.
called
sensitive
Playing, by itself, is a
periods or form of learning.
prime times,
as the latest — Dr. Goh

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 brain research found. Most of these sensitive periods occur during the first seven Give Your Child the
years. It is easier for a child to learn a particular skill during the corresponding Right Nutrients!
sensitive period than any other time in his life. Parents can take advantage of this
fact by allowing children to select activities correspond to their own period of Seeing the importance of the above
interest. factors that influence children’s
learning abilities during their prime
However, according to Dr. Goh, many psychologists agree in unison that too many time, providing your child with the
structured learning activities in a day will hinder the children’s ability to absorb essential nutrients that help boost your
and process information, as they need some free time to process the information child’s capability to absorb and process
they gained. Parents nowadays send their children to so many classes with information is highly recommended.
structured activities. After spending three hours in the kindergarten, they will be sent Apart from DHA, SA and AA for brain
to an art class, then for piano lessons, then dance and tuition classes and so on. development, Tyrosine and Tryptophan
The children’s schedules are so packed, that there isn’t any time allocated for are also important amino acids which
them to process the information they gained. greatly assist the brain’s function of
absorbing and processing information.
“The brain takes time to process the information. Children do that all the time. Though other food sources might
When they learn something new, like a song, they will practise it and find a way to contain these two important amino
sing the song in their free time, or trying to use words that they’ve learnt from acids, but the amount might not meet
school in their conversation with their parents — that’s processing,” said Dr. Goh. the needs of the children. So what can
As recommended by Dr. Goh, parents shouldn’t have their children attending you do to make sure your child gets
structured learning activities for more than five hours for children aged below enough Tyrosine and Tryptophan?
seven. Instead, they should allow their children some free time to play. “The child
doesn’t distinguish between learning and playing. Playing itself is a form of You may opt for the new formulation of
learning,” explained Dr. Goh. Dutch Lady Growing Up Milk 123 and
456 which are enriched with TT-Ratio
Encouragement Makes Learning More Fun that helps boost your child’s brain
Parents should encourage their children based on progress and not based on power. According to Dutch Lady Group
competition. The speed of growth of every child differs greatly in the first six years Product Manager, Miss Jean Ler, the
of their age. Many parents like to compare their child’s performance with other specific ratio of Tryptophan to Tyrosine
children. However, if parents are being too competitive, children tend to lose their at 1:3.9 for children aged from one to
interest to learn — school is not fun anymore because of too much pressure from three, and 1:4.0 for those aged between
their parents and teachers. As a result, children will associate school with the fear four and six, are the appropriate ratio
of not performing to their parents’ expectation — afraid to be punished by their which will help faster absorption and
parents and teachers — instead of relating school to fun of exploring and learning. processing of information for more
Parents should praise their children based on their individual progress, not by effective lear ning. With the right
comparison. approaches and the necessar y
nutrients, now parents can enhance
Children are bound to make mistakes when they are learning something new. their children’s learning abilities to a
Often parents and teachers point out too many of their mistakes and expect greater extent.
everything to turn out perfectly from the very beginning. This could jeopardise the
courage of their children to explore and learn. Rather than learn through exploring
and trying new things, they would just play safe and comply with whatever
requests, and doing exactly what they were told to do — which deprive
the children of any initiative in future, thus making them not able to
analyse and think independently based on their own observations.
You can still correct your child when they make mistakes, but in a
subtle way. Most importantly, do not ever humiliate your child when
he or she makes mistakes as it robs your child’s courage to learn.
Humiliation makes your child feel inferior; as if he or she is not
good enough for anything. Given more time and patience, your
child will excel as any other child would. PH

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