Learning Styles

So if you're a parent you recognize that each new year (heck, each new hour) you are discovering new things about how your kids relate to the world. And how they learn. This is especially pronounced once the kids are in school and spend more of their time learning from someone other than you.

In the interest of full disclosure here, I should say that I am a very specific kind of learner. I'm not sure of the professional term, but in layman's speak I'm the kind of learner that has to get it right the first time. I'm a little anal when it comes to schooling, and learning. I have very little (ok, ok I have NO) patience for others who struggle. It's not fair, its not good, but my mom (an extremely gifted teacher) would only let me interact with the brightest of bright students in her classroom because she knew my tolerance level would only go so far. Which is to say it doesn't go far at all. You want to drive me truly insane? Stick me in a room with a bunch of people who JUST DON'T GET IT.

Anyhow, fast forward to raising my two little learners. First off, I should say that I have been extremely blessed by an all-knowing Heavenly Father who - in His infinite wisdom - recognized that I needed fairly intelligent children or the poor things would have to see a not-so-pretty side to their mom. Luckily, I've got two kids who do, in fact, GET IT. But still, they have their own unique learning styles.

K1 is more of a life-of-the-party kind of learner. He's naturally smart, but he's not so much what you would call conscientious. He reminds me of B (just another example of how - as my parents like to point out - B and I cloned ourselves). K1 is an amazing reader - I'm not sure I've found anything he can't read, but again if he's tired or distracted his reading gets lazy. He's a good speller - he almost always knows how to spell his words each week before we've even worked on them. However, throughout the week of practicing he'll easily misspell a word if he's not truly focused and listening. K1 would much rather have fun than be structured, but because it comes so naturally to him its harder for him to think he needs to "work" for it. He's a lucky boy because - as his teacher pointed out at his last conference - he's well-rounded in his intelligence and good at all subjects. But the struggle we'll have is how to teach him solid learning and studying principles now so that when things do get harder, he has the tools and skills to continue to excel.

Then we have K2, who is the clone of me. She is a perfectionist through and through, holding herself to such insane standards that she often gets mad and frustrated when she isn't able to recreate the perfection she has in her mind. She has a command of language unlike anything I've ever seen and a capacity for memorization that floors me. She has a weekly bible verse that she has to memorize for school, and she gets it after I tell her the verse once. She can spell K1's words and tell you the answers to his math problems - simply because she's overheard and memorized. In fact, when she reads its hard to tell what she is actually sounding out, versus what she has memorized. I prefer to have her read way above her level just so I can see that she truly does know how to sound out words, not just know them automatically. K2 HAS to be the best. She HAS to have gold stars next to her name. She HAS to know she's got a leg up on the competition. With K2, our challenge will be helping her to see that even when things don't turn out just right, even when she isn't the best in something, even when she might have to struggle to learn something new, that she's still good enough. I know first hand how easy it is to beat yourself up and hold yourself to an impossibly high standard, and I hope to teach K2 how to maintain that inner drive without letting it pull her down.

And so I would love to end this post by saying that not only do I recognize these unique learning styles, but that I strive to meet my kids at where they each are in their abilities. It's more true to say that I have been guilty of speaking harshly to K1 when he languishes over his work and doesn't seem too affected whether its right or not. I get frustrated when K2 jumps in to answer K1's homework questions to show that she, in fact, can do it too. I may have even used the phrase "I will not be the mother of the kid who..." OK, its not about me. I know that. But I just feel so incredibly passionate about learning and schooling and know that now is the time to instill these life-long habits for success. So while my kids learn, I learn too. I learn how to be patient and understanding. And most importantly, I learn how to accept their strengths and teach them to work through their weaknesses. After all, that's what I'm trying to learn too.