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"Dr. Laura....I'm working at home while trying to supervise two kids doing remote learning. They used to love school, but now they complain constantly. How can I motivate them and protect their love of learning?"
In a previous post, we covered tips to increase your child's resilience and readiness to focus on learning, while you decrease any defiance and procrastination. Today, let's consider 6 tips to engage and motivate your child in remote learning.
Sometimes I agree with the Twitter tease who said it's called remote schooling because there's such a remote chance they'll learn anything.
But research does suggest ways that we can engage and motivate children in learning, and I think those apply even to remote school.
There are two keys to engaging and motivating:
- Engage your child by giving them more control and autonomy, and helping them feel more related to the other students and teachers.
- Motivate your child by setting up an environment and schedule to support them in staying focused, so they begin to enjoy a sense of mastery and competence.
Here's your guide:
1. Consciously create opportunities for your child to connect with other children.
One reason that remote learning often feels disengaged and demotivated is that children feel isolated. Children like to be part of groups and they naturally engage more with school work when other kids are participating, so find ways to counter the isolation so many are feeling.
- Find a learning buddy: Set up a regular time with another student in your child’s class so your kids can meet on Zoom to do assignments together or quiz each other on spelling words or multiplication. You can also have kids explore things that are not assigned by the teacher, but will strengthen connection between the kids and thus facilitate learning. So, for example, you might have your child meet with other kids to discuss the book they’re reading for school, even if the teacher doesn’t assign it. That increases the children’s excitement about the book, and reading in general.
- Partner with a few neighborhood families just to have the kids sit and do work together — masked and distanced, and maybe even outside. Call it your one-room schoolhouse group, and make sure there's always a fun snack.
- Zoom playdates also help strengthen kids’ friendships, so that a classmate becomes more of a friend and your child becomes more interested in engaging in learning collaboration with them. So even if you don’t want your child playing Minecraft nonstop, some video time with classmates can actually help your child feel more connected to school.
2. Create a predictable daily rhythm and routine.
If you don't have a schedule, then every moment becomes an opportunity for a power struggle over what comes next. Routines replace chaos with the reassurance that life is unfolding as it was meant to. Routines also develop the prefrontal cortex, as the child comes to know what to expect. Finally, routines help children manage themselves through less interesting tasks because they have something positive to look forward to.
- Create a clear start to learning each day. Have kids get ready as if they're going to school, instead of lolling on their bed in their jammies. Let your children take turns ringing a bell every morning to start the day. If your child resists, set an alarm with a rousing tone, and when it goes off, say "Oh, there's the bell, now it’s time for school!" (Kids are less likely to feel bossed around by an alarm than a parent.)
- If you want your child to follow the schedule, let them help make it. Kids need a schedule that is easy for them to understand, which means a visually represented schedule with photos and colors.
- Limit schoolwork to no more than 2.5 hours spread over the day.
- Kids need a break every 10-30 minutes to move around. Limit work to short periods of no more than half an hour, alternating with frequent breaks for refueling activities. Even these half-hour work periods might require several 3-minute breaks, to do some jumping jacks with you, get a drink of water, or play one song and dance to it.
- Refueling periods include hugs, outdoor fun, dance parties, GoNoodle, roughhousing, art, crafts, cooking, fun science experiments, making “inventions,” building, sensory play, free play, reading, and special time with a parent. Be sure to include at least three hours a day of these refueling periods. This is the gas that keeps your child going under stressful conditions.
- Connection is your secret weapon to keep your child on track, so build it into your routine throughout the day, with special time, snuggling to read together, roughhousing, and playing your child's favorite game.
- If your children are sharing screens, be sure you cover this on the schedule.
3. Keep your child’s school screen instruction time to a minimum.
Don’t expect your child to do schoolwork from 9am to 3pm, or whatever hours they had been in live school. While math games and some other interactive learning programs can be fun and motivating, teaching children via a screen is not developmentally appropriate until kids are teens. Many children cannot manage much live time on Zoom and get stressed and cranky.
When the teacher expects your child to be online, they don’t have to actually log off. Teach them just to turn off the sound and video whenever they need a break. If you need to, negotiate with the teacher. For instance, you might explain that you spend the afternoons outside, so your child will only be participating in the morning. Assess what your child can handle, and what the school requires, to find the sweet spot for your child.
In our next post, we will discuss the final three steps.
