The order and its importance in early childhood education

The order It is not an end, but a starting point to organize your ideas and your time. When we talk about the virtue of the order we can do it from several points of view: order of ideas, that is, we know what we want and why we want it; order of activities, that is, we prioritize some issues over others, which also implies an order in time. But we are not born being ordained and, like all learning, has an adequate time for its acquisition.

The importance of order in the education of children

The order it is the foundation of all virtues, it makes virtue possible. In addition, it is the first habit that a child can acquire, because his sensitive period is lived between 2 and 6 years, being the base on which all other habits are based. From small we must make see our children that we live in an orderly world: there are schedules, rules and laws that make life easier. But order is not an end in itself, our goal is not that the child is ordered, because we would fall into excessive perfectionism.


How and when the children are educated in order

The first thing a child must learn is the material order of things; then, this habit will allow you to know how to organize your time and therefore be more effective; and, finally, these habits of order will probably contribute to make your life more fruitful and happy.

Regarding the how, it is good to remember that children learn by imitation and that it is much simpler to imitate disorder than order, because it does not imply any kind of effort.

1. The order enters through the eyes, so it is good to compare their room before and after having ordered, so that they themselves feel the difference and find out that it compensates to be ordered, even if it costs a little.


It is normal for a child to think: "then mom or dad will pick up all this and order my room". The bad part of this sentence is that it is true, because we prefer to do things ourselves rather than face the costly task of educating. But overprotection, which deprives them of the effort, does not help them at all to improve as people, because it is impossible to educate without demanding.

2. It is important to motivate positively, with love and patience. Order requires a minimum of flexibility, because we can not live for order. We have to excite and motivate our children so that they want to be ordained, making them participate in the tasks of ordering the toys, the stories or their clothes, praising them or pulling them off each time they help us. Thus, your child will experience the intimate connection that exists between the effort, the good and the consequent joy that it entails.

We must never cry out to him, with reproaches like "You're a mess!", "You never order anything!", "I'm tired of having to collect everything myself!"; or, with threats: "As you do not pick up right now, you're left without seeing the drawings." There is a need to ensure that our children, little by little, make these habits of order their own, so that they end up doing things by themselves. We can not expect our three-year-old son to get that habit in a week. In its achievement sometimes will have advances and setbacks, and this is something that a priori we must tell and not discouraged if this happened.


Tips to educate children in order

- Regulate sleep schedules, since they are small, so that the child associates to it a series of routine acts. For example: put on your pajamas, pray, read a story, kiss and turn off the lights. And, above all, to be clear that at that moment it is time to sleep and not play.

- A place for every occasion. In order to achieve material order, it is customary for your child to sit in the same place to eat or to see cartoons, to use the same napkin and the same glass for water, etc. Leave your shoes or toys in the same place, or dirty clothes in the washing machine.

- The games must end: If you have started a puzzle, finish it; If you have started a drawing, do not leave it halfway and move on to something else. This type of behaviors favor the dispersion and inconstancy of the child, and denote little or no effort of the will.

A simple and excellent test, which we could do to check if in our house there is a real concern for the order and care of things is to leave lying on the floor of the room or somewhere forced and frequent, something in a very visible way, for example, a paper handkerchief already used. Then you just have to wait to see how long it remains on the ground, without anyone picking it up. If no one in our house is struck by the fact that there is a torn tissue on the floor, let's start worrying!

Ana Aznar
Advice:Inmaculada Núñez Lagos. Professor at the Villanueva University Center.

Video: In order to improve quality in early child development, we have to pay attention to adult learning


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