The Learning Habit: A Groundbreaking Approach to Homework and Parenting that Helps Our Children Succeed in School and Life by Stephanie Donaldson-Pressman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I picked up The Learning Habit in hopes of gaining some insight as to how to help parents help their kids how to study. It’s part of my job as a tutor to make sure the kids do well, and the parents are part of that. The good is that they do strive to help parents do just that.
This is an interesting book with its approach to the parents role in life. They talk about how parents can help their children acquire long term skills, and not the quick fix to an A. They approach this in a very no-nonsense way, yet full of sympathy and understanding for both parents and the kids, even if there are unique learning conditions like a neurological dysfunction.
They don’t promise it will be easy. In fact, it forces both parents and children to take a hard look at their behaviours and habits — and change. They give the family tips on how to lessen their addiction to media use, toughen their resolve and focus, showing parents how to help their children become independent, fully functional, and mature in their own rights.
I can honestly say I know of a lot of parents that would take issue with many of the things they say. They are called helicopter parents, and they tend to baby their children well past the infancy stage. These researchers note that this is enabling behaviour of the parents that suppresses their children’s ability to grow and mature. To them this means:
- – Defining rules and guidelines around bedtime and media and sticking to them.
- – Rewarding for effort, not achievements, and only doing so honestly. (Doing so under every circumstance reduces the child’s ability to recognise that hard work can get them through even the toughest things.)
- – Make learning a daily habit, not another crappy task to rush through.
- – Build skills of focus, grit, and confidence through hard work, not instant gratification.
- – Communicate with the child like they are a miniature adult; don’t be condescending.
I took issue with only two concepts that they brought up. The first is that they would leave teaching to the licensed and trained teachers. I disagree with this because I learnt far more from the adults around me, life, and myself than any teacher ever taught me. I fully believe that anyone can teach what they know (they may not be good at it), and parents should definitely try to help their children understand academic concepts — you never know when the parent might be able to explain it in a way their child actually gets it.
As a corollary to this concept, and the second thing I take issue with, is that they also talk about setting up a homework timing rule. They define the time as 10 – 20 minutes for a first grader, and for every grade after that add 10 minutes a day for the total time. It works like this:
You would work for a certain set amount of time on your homework (as defined by your grade level) and that is it. If you aren’t done, you aren’t done. You turn it in unfinished.
That may seem all fine and well, but grades are based on the number of points you get on a paper. If a student consistently does this to build confidence and focus as they claim, but is consistently turning in unfinished assignments, then their grade will suffer somewhat. How is that supposed to make the kid feel? Or reflect on their report cards and college entrance marks?
I get that it is supposed to help a kid work on their focus and confidence to do the homework in a defined time — and they are rewarded with being able to do other activities without a care — but it makes me wonder how this works out in the long run. The authors focused on the increased ability of first and second graders to focus when this is applied, but they did not talk about someone in 8th grade that hasn’t had this sort of structure before.
All in all, though, it was a very interesting book with lots of great insight. Part sociology, part psychology, and definitely recommended for parents, teachers, tutors, and students who want to get serious about their academic studies to read.