Want to learn how to love learning?

Here's an audio clip so you can listen to the Mom Tip while you fold yet another load of laundry.

Hi, I’m Regan Barnes from Momivate, and this is your two-minute Mom Tip empowering you to elevate your mothering experience.

I’m a little jealous of my children -- the fact that they get to spend the majority of their time learning. I wish LEARNING was on my to-do list -- I genuinely enjoy discovering facts and building skills.

Oddly, children seem to have a built-in aversion to didactic learning. Oh, they'll learn all day long if you don't TELL them that they're learning. If they're the ones asking the questions, their brainy appetite is insatiable. But once it's an assignment, once someone else wants them to go learn such-and-so, for whatever reason, that makes it an oppressive chore. 

The fact is, though, that learning is an element of childhood in the way oxygen is an element of water. I think their struggle comes from their innate desire to be in control of what they're learning. The tricky part is that learning HOW to learn is a subject in and of itself -- arguably far more valuable, than memorizing lists of facts.

Of course, our gray matter is programmed to learn from day one -- no one has to teach a baby to learn how to walk. The baby is just wired to eventually get up off its knees, practice balancing, and one day, almost without thinking, those first steps are taken.

When you aren't a baby any longer, though, that automated learning mode gets complicated with too many (or too few) options, countless distractions, and that awful human-nature state of laziness...

And so the motivational games begin... to encourage learning, embellish it, give incentives for it, exemplify it, all with the hope that they'll embrace learning and love it for life! 

Mom, in what ways can you give your children a love of learning? Do you verbalize how grateful you are for a good education? Do you take advantage of opportunities to learn even when you aren’t required to? Create a family culture that includes efforts to satiate curiosity! Then share if this practice elevates your mothering!

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