Best Teaching Method is Family Culture

by Linda Berman

Parents are concerned with the education of their children, but they often forget where it starts – right at home! Family culture about education is the first wave of influence on your child’s willingness to learn.

Yes, the parents may read books to their children, teach them the alphabet, how to count and many other skills. They want to be sure their children have a head start with their education.

All of that is rather obvious; many people from different cultures share a common thought that education is important … and it is! The child begins to understand that the parent really wants their child to develop behaviors that encourage learning.

The child might embrace the learning, great! Or the child may be impacted by the strong parental intentions and reject them outright.

You may wonder – “What’s going on? I did everything right and my child doesn’t want to learn!” At that point, resistance can begin to build between the parent and child.

What we have here are the parent and child having two different intentions. Parents want the best for their children. The parents knows the bigger picture. The parents know what it represents when children fail to embrace learning. So parents may become very stern about the learning process.

The child feels the strong intention of the parent and often pulls away from it, not wanting to have anything to do with what the parent wants.

This explains how a separation between the parent and child gets created at a young age. The children just want to have fun and the adults want the children to have education. The parents have a lot vested into their perceived outcome. Parents want to be sure to get the results they want, right from the start!

Your extended family culture may represent a family where everyone is highly educated, or barely educated. There’s a full spectrum of possibilities.

Here are three points that help you look at the situation at hand and clarify what’s best for you and your family.

Look at your family culture. What are the expectations of learning that you experienced as a child and what do you expect from your child?
Look at who did the teaching and held children accountable for their actions.
Look at the learning experience. Is the learning method forceful, oppositional, and authoritarian? Or is it a pleasant and joyful experience that encourages verbal interaction while honoring the thoughts expressed by the child?

When children are taught with force or pressure – resistance builds. This hampers the learning process.

When the child remains happy and free to express and question, without being chastised, an opportunity for joyful learning emerges with an attitude of ease.

Often the culture your parents experienced when they were young is represented in the ways you teach your children. Those old ways are worthy of a place of honor – they represent the best efforts of the time.

This is a different time. Now you have the opportunity to take what you learned and update it to create a new culture for yourself and your family. These changes encourage freedom of expression and acceptance, with parent and child united in a newly created supportive culture of learning.

What you teach and what your child learns is important.

How you teach and how your child learns can set the course for success!

Linda Berman is a writer, speaker and consultant. She brings rich life experience and deep insight to address topics related to individual growth, relationships, parenting, and family life.