Hate of Learning One Cause and a Possible Remedy

If you've ever had a child who resisted learning, grumping and dragging her feet over every assignment, you'll sympathize with Andrew's experience with one of his daughters. And you will be encouraged and perhaps inspired to try something new when you read the story of what finally worked for her, sparking a lifelong love of learning. When one of my daughters was around twelve years old, we faced a significant problem with her motivation and quality of work. Her school days went pretty much like this: She would get up, do everything on her checklist with as little effort as possible, often being â€Å"finished† by 10:00 a.m., and then spend the rest of the day snacking and annoying everyone else in the house. When confronted on the quality of her work, she would counter, â€Å"I did it—what more do you want?† When it was pointed out to her that she was â€Å"finished† in a couple of hours and that perhaps she could have a bit more added to her checklist, an ugly, hormone-enhanced argument would ensue: â€Å"I’m already doing everything I have to. More wouldn’t be fair! How come you want to make my life miserable? I’m doing enough, okay? Can’t you just leave me alone?† Sound familiar? Andrew  Pudewa  is the founder, principal speaker, and director of the Institute for Excellence in Writing. Presenting throughout North America, he addresses—with clarity, insight, practical experience, and welcome humor—issues relating to teaching, writing, thinking, spelling, and music. His seminars for parents, students, and teachers have helped transform many a reluctant writer and have equipped educators with powerful tools to dramatically improve students' skills.​ This sounds like such a Permalink By JBSandovalAug27 This sounds like such a wonderful possible solution for my daughter who does not look forward to school for the day? My daughter is 16, could I or rather is it too late to try this? Log in or register to post comments Never too late! Permalink By Genevieve-IEW StaffAug31 Its never too late to fall in love with learning! Since your daughter is in high school and likely has graduation requirements shes working toward, you will need to keep that in mind as you plan your approach. Also, you may want to involve your daughter more in the process than you might if she was young - ask her if shed like to take a new approach that you think she will enjoy, and then involve her in planning the process and the contents. Perhaps plan to take this approach for a specific period of time, letting her know that if it goes well and she enjoys it, then you can plan how to continue with it. Also, this will work best with content-based subjects like history, science, etc., while a skills-based subject like math really just needs steady daily effort. You could consider using the table of contents from her history book, say, as a starting point for historical topics of interest to study. Hopefully, these are some helpful ideas. If youd like to discuss this more, you c an email me at info@IEW.com. Log in or register to post comments