Okay, now for the Small Steps Big Wins strategy. The strategy that is going to improve your child’s confidence for life. The strategy that is going to teach them even more than confidence. By using this technique you will help your child develop a love of learning. And that is the most important skill for lifelong success.
It will also teach them grit. Grit is the ability to push through hard things. Grit is another critically important skill for ensuring success in life. By helping your child develop you grit you will ensure that they will have a bright future.
Ready to learn how to do that?
Okay, let's go.
For the first part of this strategy what you need to do is to very carefully record your child’s progress. And you need to do this in minute detail.
So, for example, if you are trying to improve spelling. You will record all of the words that they spell correctly and those that they don’t. But not only that, record how they actually misspelled words. The more detail the better.
If you are trying to improve handwriting, keep all the handwriting samples logged in chronological order.
If you are trying to improve reading, then measure the amount of time it takes them to read a given paragraph. You can also measure accuracy. How many words they got right. So you would record, for example, that they got 30 out of 35 words correct. Not 5 out of 35 wrong.
For math, you can record the number of questions they get right in a given time period.
Now, as your child does each day's homework, look for improvement. You might have to look very very closely. It might have to be the tiniest things. Sometimes you have to start with something so tiny it’s a bit ridiculous. Do whatever you have to do to find an improvement.
Then celebrate that improvement with your child.
You can high five, or congratulate them, dance a jig. Whatever you want, just celebrate that improvement somehow.
If you can’t find any improvements at all then break the task down even smaller and start again.
You might have to go with something like one line in one letter of their handwriting being a little straighter. Or a spelling word being a little closer. Or a half second faster reading time. Or a math problem simply being lined up a little neater. Whatever it takes, be on the lookout for that improvement. Whatever it is. No matter how small. Then celebrate.
Keep doing this. Every day. Every time your child does homework.
Heck, do it everywhere. Things like “Hey, I see you got your dirty clothes A LITTLE CLOSER to the hamper. Your getting there. Good job”
Make sure to use your happy voice. Leave sarcastic voice out of it. Despite how ridiculous this may seem.
Yes, I said be ridiculous if you have too. You need to start somewhere. You just need one small thing to get the ball rolling. Later these wins will grow into big wins. You just have to nurture them a bit.
This does two things. It gets your child focussed on improvement. And they will get more of what they focus on. And it gets you focussed on the positive as well. And, of course, you’ll get more of what you focus on.
Do that for a few weeks, or a month, or whatever it takes until you see that your child is a little more improvement focussed. It may take awhile but it will happen. And it’ll make your life so much easier.
I also promised you a sneaky trick to make this even more powerful.
Are you ready for that?
Great. Let’s learn it. But don’t tell anyone you are doing it. This is just for you.
What I want you to do is to create some little ritual that you do just before you celebrate the little success. So after you notice the improvement but before the celebration. Something like clapping your hands together and yelling “Yeah”. Or snapping your fingers and saying “Good for you”. Or “Good on you” if you are Australian.
It doesn’t matter what this ritual is. Make it your own. It just matters that it is consistent. Get creative with it. Go overboard with it if you want. And for fun, tell us in the comments what your ritual is going to be.
Over time, this habit is going to start training your child’s mind to react to the ritual, rather than the celebration. That’s because our brain reacts to the expectation of reward. Not the reward itself. Our brain releases dopamine when it expects to be rewarded. Not when it gets the reward. Use that tidbit of neuroscience to your advantage.
Once you have this practiced in for awhile you can extend out the time for the reward. This is useful if you want to go do a bigger better celebration. Such as ice cream. This work’s because the ritual is now a stand in for the reward. So you can repeat the ritual as many times as needed and then pay it off with a bigger reward later. The older the child the longer you can wait for the actual reward. Small children need them fairly soon. Older children can wait a little longer. Just trigger the expectation of reward as much as possible. In the brain its just as good as the reward itself.
That’s it. It’ll take you some time to get this trained in, but everything will get so much easier as you do.
And if your child is struggling in school, do what thousands of other parents have done and get them started on the Learning Success System.