The example to the children begins even when they are babies
Parents are a mirror in which children are looked at. Every child has an example in his parents to take values and through which to mark its development. But, from what age do they begin to acquire this learning? It could be thought that from the moment in which the child develops his reasoning skills and begin to capture messages and decipher them.
But the study conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology explains that children could begin to learn from the attitude of their parents since they are babies. At a very early age, the youngest ones begin to understand values as effort and dedication and those parents who show great care in achieving their goals teach a great lesson to their children.
The value of the effort
For this research the researchers congregated several groups of children 15 months of age. Each of them was shown various situations, one of them showed an adult making awkward attempts for 30 seconds before succeeding in his mission. The rest saw a major complete other tasks easily three times during the same half-minute period.
Both groups of children had a toy that emitted music if they pressed a button that was intended to verify if the effort of the Adults He had some influence on the minors. "Children who saw an adult struggle at the end pushed the button almost twice as many times as those who saw an adult reach their goal with ease," explains the lead author of this study, Julia Leonard.
The researcher explains that you can not take this as a imitation act since children did not see adults perform actions related to pressing buttons. The message that was transmitted was that they should strive, which is why they performed greater actions than the rest.
Educate in the effort
Not only must we give an example to the youngest ones to educate in effort. You also have to motivate the little ones to persist until they reach their goals. These are some tips for it:
- Encourage the desire. Do you really want something? If you do not want to get a mint, there will never be an effort to get it. If the child wants something, the father should encourage the child to get it, but remembering the obstacles that will be encountered.
- External rewards. When children are small, the motivations will come from external rewards, social assessment and attraction of the activity associated with the game (extrinsic motivation). Little by little, they will begin to develop motivations related to the experience of pride that follows the success achieved and the pleasure that comes with carrying out the task itself (intrinsic motivation).
- The intrinsic motivation is one that allows you to do something because you are directly interested in doing it and not for another reason. We have some resources to develop intrinsic motivation: from the intellectual field: curiosity and challenge; and from the emotional: pleasure and self-knowledge.
- The requirement It generates a great motivation and this in turn leads children to get involved and to strive more intensely in their tasks when they are carriers of meaning. The simple imposition of a requirement and the fear of possible negative consequences of non-compliance do not lead, in most cases, to a greater motivation for the completion of tasks and learning, nor increase the willingness of the person to strive .
- The final goals and objectives. We all strive in the accomplishment of a task or activity when we understand its purposes and purposes, when it seems attractive to us, when we feel it responds to our needs and interests, when we can participate actively in its planning and development, when we are competent to address it, when we feel cognitively and affectively involved and engaged in its development, when we can attribute a meaning to it. And, with the children, exactly the same thing happens.
Damián Montero
