Another Tip: Baby Steps

Children look to the parents for approval in their accomplishments and disapproval in their failures. It is very important that we celebrate all the small successes that our children have and encourage them to stand up when they fall down.

Zenith (my eldest son) taught me this lesson of baby steps. Zenith did not start off loving to read by himself. He loved to be read to. It was good that he was interested in us reading to him but we cannot be around all the time. He needs to learn how to read by himself. However, no matter how much we encourage him, he would not read a book by himself. He will select the book and drop it on our laps and gesture us to read.

Then I decided to aim to have him read only one page. One page with only one sentence. It did not work. My final try was to read the whole book for him until the last page. Then I asked him to read with me for the last page. It took a while before he wanted to read. But slowly, he grown accustomed to reading that last page together with me. Then, it proceeded on:

- he read the last page by himself
- he read the last 2 pages together with me
- he read the last 2 pages by himself
- and the list goes on

It took sometime before he could pick up a book and read the book all by himself. And it was a series of very small incremental improvements. It was a series of baby steps.

Here is how you break something into baby steps:

- What is the main goal?
- Break it into very small successes
- Encourage your child whenever he reach a small success
- Modify and try, try and modify

For example, your goal is to have your child practice ten Math word problems per week. Let him start with one word problem first and encourage him to check his work when he is done. Celebrate his success when he gets that one word problem correct. Increase it to two Math word problems after a few days. And so on. You get the point?

Do you have any good examples on small steps to share?