50 Ways to Bring Out Your Child’s Best
Written by Thomas Armstrong, Ph.D.

1. Let your child discover her own interests. Pay attention the activities she chooses. This free-time play can say a lot about where her gifts lie.

2. Expose your child to a broad spectrum of experiences. They may activate latent talents. Don’t assume that he isn’t gifted in an area because he hasn’t shown an interest.

3. Give your child permission to make mistakes. If she has to do things perfectly, she’ll never take the risks necessary to discover and develop a gift.

4. Ask questions. Help your child open up to he wonders of the world by asking intriguing questions: Why is the sky blue? Find the answers together.

5. Plan special family projects. Shared creativity can awaken and develop new talents.

6. Don’t pressure your child to learn. If children are sent to special lessons every day in the hope of developing their gifts, they may become too stressed or exhausted to shine. Encourage, but don’t push.

7. Have high expectations. But make them realistic.

8. Share your work life. Expose your child to images of success by taking him to work. Let him see you engaged in meaningful activities and allow him to become involved.

9. Provide a sensory-rich environment. Have materials around the home that will stimulate the senses: finger paints, percussion instruments, and puppets.

10. Keep your own passion for learning alive. Your child will be influenced by your example.

11. Don’t limit your child with labels. They may saddle her with a reputation that doesn’t match her inner gifts.

12. Play games together as a family.

13. Have a regular family time for reading, listening to music, talking.

14. Have reference materials available to give your child access to the world.

15. Allow your child to participate in community activities that interest her.

16. Use humor, jokes, silly stories to encourage creativity.

17. Don’t criticize or judge the things your child does. He may give up on his talents if he feels evaluated.

18. Play with your child to show your own sense of playfulness.

19. Share your successes as a family. Talk about good things that happened during the day to enhance self-esteem.

20. Provide your child with access to a home, school or public library computer.

21. Listen to your child. The things he cares about most may provide clues to his special talents.

22. Give your child a special space at home to be creative.

23. Praise your child’s sense of responsibility at home when she completes assigned chores.

24. Visit new places as a family.

25. Give your child open-ended playthings. Toys like blocks and puppets encourage imaginative play.

26. Give your child unstructured time to simply daydream and wonder.

27. Share inspirational stories of people who succeeded in life.

28. Don’t bribe your child with rewards. Using incentives to get children to perform sends a message that learning is not rewarding in its own right

29. Suggest that your child join peer groups that focus on her gifts.

30. Discuss the news to spark interests.

31. Discourage gender bias. Expose your child to both feminine and masculine toys and activities.

32. Avoid comparing your child to others. Help your child compare himself to his own past performance.

33. Be an authoritative parent.

34. Use community events and institutions to activate interests. Take trips to the library, museums, concerts, plays.

35. Give presents that nourish your child’s strengths.

36. Encourage your child to think about her future. Support her visions without directing her into any specific field.

37. Introduce your child to interesting and capable people.

38. Think of your home as a learning place. The kitchen is great for teaching math and science through cooking.

39. Share feelings. A child’s gifts can be stifled by repressed emotions.

40. Encourage your child to read.

41. Honor your child’s creations.

42. Do things with your child in his areas of interest.

43. Teach your child to trust her intuition and believe in her capabilities.

44. Give your child choices. It builds willpower and fuels initiative.

45. Show your child how to use books to further an interest. For example, “how to” books for the “hands-on” learner.

46. Set aside an area of the house for displaying creations and awards.

47. Encourage your child to tackle areas that are difficult for him. Help him learn to confront any limitations.

48. Be a liaison between your child’s special talents and the real world. Help her find outlets for her talents.

49. Introduce children’s literature that honors and develops gifts. Books like the Little Engine That could encourage a “can do” attitude.

50. Accept your child as he or she is.

Originally posted 1/2009

Related posts

• Why Whole Life Unschooling? (5)
• Unschooling Math (7)
• Unschooling Conferences & Gatherings (5)
• Post Tribune Unschooling Article (0)
• Learning All The Time (11)

Principles of Unschooling:

Learning happens all the time. The brain never stops working and it is not possible to divide time up into “learning periods” versus “non-learning periods.” Everything that goes on around a person, everything they hear, see, touch, smell, and taste, results in learning of some kind.

Learning does not require coercion. In fact, learning cannot really be forced against someone’s will. Coercion feels bad and creates resistance.

Learning feels good. It is satisfying and intrinsically rewarding. Irrelevant rewards can have unintended side effects that do not support learning.

Learning stops when a person is confused. All learning must build on what is already known.

Learning becomes difficult when a person is convinced that learning is difficult. Unfortunately, most teaching methods assume learning is difficult and that lesson is the one that is really “taught” to the students.

Learning must be meaningful. When a person doesn’t see the point, when they don’t know how the information relates or is useful in “the real world,” then the learning is superficial and temporary – not “real” learning.

Learning is often incidental. This means that we learn while engaged in activities that we enjoy for their own sakes and the learning happens as a sort of “side benefit.”

Learning is often a social activity, not something that happens in isolation from others. We learn from other people who have the skills and knowledge we’re interested in and who let us learn from them in a variety of ways.

We don’t have to be tested to find out what we’ve learned. The learning will be demonstrated as we use new skills and talk knowledgeably about a topic,

Feelings and intellect are not in opposition and not even separate things. All learning involves the emotions, as well as the intellect.

Learning requires a sense of safety. Fear blocks learning. Shame and embarrassment, stress and anxiety – these block learning.

Related posts

• Why Whole Life Unschooling? (5)
• What Is, And Isn’t Unschooling (18)
• What Is Unschooling? (5)
• Valerie Fitzenreiter And Laurie Chancey Interview (2)
• Unschooling? How Will They Learn? (5)

The message? I believe it’s two-fold.

1: If someone had to bribe me to do something, my first thought would be “It must be unpleasant if you have to bribe me to do it”. When my daughter Shawna was in school, they were always trying different bribes/rewards to make her read more. It wasn’t working and the more they tried, the more she hated reading. “We’ll give you candy if you finish that book!”. She read the book, but stopped when they candy ran out. “We’ll give you a prize”. She read for the prize and then stopped when the prizes ran out. They didn’t realize (or didn’t care) they were sending her a message that reading is so horrible that she would only want to do it for candy and prizes.

I’ve always enjoyed reading and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want my kids to enjoy it also….but only if they wanted to.

Fast forward to right now. The years that she has been out of school, she’s had the freedom to read if she wants to. There are no bribes. Just shelves and shelves of interesting books for her to read, when she’s ready and if she chooses. Nowadays, she reads for 3-4 hours a day, because she enjoys it. Ask her what her favorite activities are and reading is always in the top three. It took about a year of deschooling for her to get to that point. It took me backing off and letting go. It took me trusting her. If I forced her to read, how would she ever have the chance to do it on her own? How would she ever know if she enjoyed it, if she wasn’t given the chance to?

One of her friends came over last summer (a schooled friend) and my daughter was very excited to tell her about a book she had just read. Her friend said “You have to read in the summer??!!” My daughter was confused and caught off guard. Her friend went on to ask “What are you getting for reading that book?” My daughter said that she read the book because she enjoyed it. Her friend looked at her like she had two heads.

2: Food and candy were often used as bribes when my girls were in school. Pizza, chocolate, candy and ice cream were used time and time again to get the students to learn something that the school assumed the students would not want to learn on their own. I believe this sets them up with an unhealthy view of food. If a child has their candy controlled and then used as a reward, how else will they react other than trying to eat as much as possible when they have the chance? You see those kids at birthday parties, standing by the chips or candy, eating as much as possible. I’ve had children come to my house and finish a whole bowl of m&m’s that were meant for everybody. It’s sad. Don’t schools (and parents who do this) see that their giving that candy or pizza too much power?

Not only do I never use food as a bribe, my girls don’t have their food controlled. It didn’t happen overnight though…it took lots of discussions and modeling on my part to get to this point, but I now have two daughters with a healthier outlook of food than most adults I meet.

When we first adopted them, my middle daughter was that child hovering near the chips at a birthday party. She was the one who gorged herself on candy in fear there would be no more. So when a parent says “If I let them, they’ll eat candy all day”, I agree because if a child has their candy controlled and doled out only as rewards, yes, they will try to eat as much as they can get. Can you blame them?

But…if children are given the freedom to learn things as they come up naturally in life, there’s no need to bribe them with the promise of a reward to force them to learn something when they’re not ready. I believe that rewards motivate students to get rewards, not to learn.

PS: We’re almost done unpacking here at the new blog. If you help us tell others that we’ve moved, you could win an amazon.com gift certificate! Just a way of saying thanks!

*originally written in 2006-updated in 2009*

Related posts

• Why Whole Life Unschooling? (5)
• Letting Go Of Food Control (4)
• Letting Go – Deschooling For Parents (2)
• John Holt Interview (2)
• Unschooling Math (7)