Are your children still relying on you to help them get dressed in the morning? Are your students still asking you for help with every worksheet? Then here are 5 tips to help our little ones become more independent and grow into their own person.
1. Start off with Mini Responsibilities
Having their own responsibilities will help children to grow in confidence to be independent and do things themselves. However, if it’s still quite new for your child to do things by themselves or they are finding it difficult to do things without your help, starting off with smaller responsibilities will help them a lot. It will be less overwhelming and will help them to adjust much more easily in learning independence.
At home, you could give them small tasks like bring their bowl to the kitchen after dinner or putting their socks in the laundry basket. In class, teachers could give them an assignment to tidy their colour pencils themselves or check that everyone on their table has written their name on their worksheet, for example.
2. Give them Limited Options
Another way to build independence is by giving kids options to choose things for themselves. For example, picking their clothes for the day or what they want to do that day. This can take forever when a child has their whole wardrobe at their disposal and all the activities in the world to choose from.
Instead of asking 'What do you want to wear today?' or 'What do you want to do today?', give your child or student limited options. Having about 2-3 options is great. This will not only speed up their decision, it will also help them to start to enjoy making decisions themselves. So instead, for example, you could say 'Do you want to wear your pink dress or blue shorts today?' or 'Do you want to go for a walk in the park or play in the garden today?'
Don't forget to give them praise after making a good decision. To emphasise the fact that they are gaining independence, talk to them about ‘your choice', ‘your outfit you chose’ and ‘your schedule’. This will help them to notice that they did something (pretty much) by themselves and encourage them to do it more in the future.
Check out our book about getting dressed! This book teaches kids how to get dressed by themselves as they see how Tommy does it. Learn independence and new clothes words at the same time!
3. Don’t Make Failure a Big Deal
It's important to remember that independence is something that needs to be learnt, and as with learning anything, the learner will make mistakes. Be careful not to make a big deal out of a poor choice or a task they weren't able to complete. This can easily make them feel as though 'it's not worth doing the tasks because mummy/daddy/teacher will scold me anyway' or 'I can't do it anyway, so why bother?'
Instead, try to focus on the positives of what happened. Maybe they completed half the task, so commend them on that. Maybe they made a decision but it wasn't a good one, commend them on trying. In time, as their confidence grows, they'll get used to doing things independently and will improve in their skills.
Of course, there are other things we can do as well to improve the 'unfinished tasks' issue. Next tip:
4. Collaborate
No matter who we are, we all need help once in a while. For a child just learning how to become more independent, help is very important.
When doing a big task or something new that your child may not know how to do yet, why not collaborate? Why do we say 'collaborate with them' and not 'help them'? Because collaborating is teamwork, and teamwork means equal roles.
When teaching a child independence, telling a child you are 'helping' them could translate as 'you can't do this by yourself' which in turn could be either discouraging for a child or seen as a way out. 'If Mummy is going to help me because I can't do it alone, then she can finish it.'
Instead, why not use words like 'let's work together on your/our project.', 'Do you need a teammate for this task?', 'How about I do this half of the task/project and you do that half, then we can finish it together!'
Using phrases like that will help your child to see that they are an important part of whatever you are doing and that their work/input/contribution is needed.
5. Leave Them Alone
Our final tip is to leave them alone to do what you assigned them to do. This may sound like it's contradicting our previous tip, but what we mean by 'leave them alone' is let them do what you told them to do. Whether you are collaborating on a bigger task or you have given them a task appropriate for their ability, let them get on with it.
Interfering, interrupting and giving critique or "advice" will only slow them down or think that they are always doing things wrong. Instead let them give it a go and don't forget to commend them for their efforts afterwards. Commendation only helps them grow in independence, confidence and happiness.
What do you do to teach your child/student independence? Let us know in the comments below!
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