Forums IMPORTANT: PLEASE READ Beyond Human Staying in the accelerated learning mode your born with

If it is true that humans are born with the ability to learn effortlessly, how does one raise a child so as not to remove this ability from them?

I don't have children but I have a niece & nephew. I would like to direct my sister to information that could help her acheive this with her children.

Are there any good books/websites that address the topic?

I really am interested in how to raise my children in a way so that do not lose their "natural brillance". I really dont know the answer other than try to teach them in a way they do not feel like they can't
I look forward to some feedback on this I feel pretty clueless and I think it is very important.

Well I have a couple of kids. I've wondered about the best way to teach them. I'm slowly learning how to help.

First you don't have to teach them how to learn. You don't have to teach yourself how to learn either. You do it naturally.

When you go to school you learn how to learn. They make you go through many different structured patterns for learning material. However, you natural observe patterns and learn when you are doing something in which you are interested / motivated .

The key to helping your kids would seem to me, to find ways that they can experience the fullness of a pattern and be interested in it.

I've spent a lot of time, trying to rewrite some of the negative and limiting self-talk my daughter has developed while in school. It is working. Teaching her what the accelerated learning state is. Teaching her to notice when she is not there. Using Brain Gym elements to help get there and return there. Noticing the WOW events in her learning. By WOW I mean those times when the other-than-conscious mind just drops the answer into her consciousness. I've given her some understanding of the conscious and other-than-conscious mind dynamics and have developed a trick of two to get passed some of the road block her conscious mind erects.

When learning something, build for success with success. Don't every test unless you are very confident that you will get great results. However, you can do experiments. Do the "What will happen if we ..." type things.

Dispite my ramblings, I'm still wondering the same thing. I've thought about doing LSC Accelements program. However, they don't develop material for pre-adult client. I believe it has to do with their license status.

Anyways, I'm curious to hear others view on this topic.

You are perfection.
Iam2

I've been informed by a teacher that it's illegal to use NLP techniques or suggestopaedia techniques on children in school. Here in Australia and New Zealand.

I can understand why.

Really learning is easiest if there is no pressure attached on the child. Exams and test is what unnerves them over the years. I think it helps if parents encourage learning and talk to kids about what they learnt more than just waiting until they see the report card to discover that the child is having difficulty. If the child is free to talk about challenging subjects they will often discover they are learning. However as the system goes they are required to slog it out themselves, not knowing who to ask or how to find the answers then when they get the report card there is a please explain or you need to try harder.

As adults we procastinate when faced with something daunting as children we discovered this ineffective form or escapism. We knew we needed to try harder for learning and also knew we didn't know what we needed to learn. This caused us to find our escapist techniques, Daydreams (not trying hard enough you need to concentrate more... when you think about it day dreaming is pure concentration on something just not what they want you to concentrate on,) or Agressive behaviour, you need to settle down so that you can focus, the child is told. The thing is we do not tell them "how" to do what is expected of them only "what".

Perhaps the problem remains with the fact that even we never learnt 'how' we stumbled in the dark.

How does one understand a math problem?
How does one memorise a poem or tables?
How does one learn to spell better?
How does one comprehend the written language?

Listen to the kids it will challenge you to explain not the 'what' but the "how". There is no easy answer so it seems to me we need to work with the child to discover the "How" with them and that takes patience more than anything else.

Alex

I'm on my third year of trying to discouver the HOW to help her learn. How is it she will learn X? I only ask when she isn't learning.

I currently spend about 2 hours a day with my daughter. In the last month she has grown emensely, and is working much more independently. I keep interacting with her, because I know she likes this. I don't want to reward her progress with isolation. I'm trying to balance the "you can do it yourself now" with the "I'm here to help and direct".

I've tried to build on the linkage between the conscious and non-conscious mind.

Recently I've shifted from just working on the mechanics of the problem (reading decoding skills, or mathematical steps) to do it and try. See how fast you can do it and don't worry about mistakes.

Here is this morning's wow. She is currently learning the multiplication tables. She has better than a 90% correct answer rate, but I can see she is working the answers out. I've tried the relax and don't read, don't solve just look at the flash cards (a couple of days ago), while I flash them as fast as I can (the side with the answers to). The the next day I watch her doing her multiplication and not real difference. This morning. I said "I want to try something. I want you to tell me the answer as fast as you can." I'd orally give her the question, then count to three then show the answer. The first few she just froze. Then she seemed to get frustrated. I said "It's okay, I just want to see what happens. I don't expect you to get the answer. Just say the first number that comes into your head." I did a few more and counted to five, this time. She started to get some answers out. The were still wrong, but they were getting close to the correct answer. I gave her some positive feed back. More importantly I could tell she was seeing progress and was patting herself on the back. After the little wow that was great session we did some more. She then started getting the answer correct, within the five seconds. She then was getting them in 3 seconds and then most of them within 1 second. She was just bubbling with self pride and excitement.

I skipped the rest of the homework (it was extra development stuff). I didn't keep increasing the difficulty until she failed. This whole experience was after doing some other homework. The multiplication experience was about 10 minutes in total time. It surprised me and her.

I believe that my daughter's problems stem from a fear to making mistakes. In the last few months I've been trying to work on the idea that it's okay. I've tried many different approaches to convey, or hide the idea with an activity. I've seem much better progress with this than just working on the mechanics. These are my efforts to get past her limiting conscious filters.

We still review the mechanics of the learning, since you need the building blocks to build you tower of knowledge and capabilities. However, working on achieving success of by-passing the limiting conscious beliefs is my current goal. I've also worked on her noticing her personal state and using the information it gives you to better direct your efforts. If you are frustrated, concentrating harder and putting more pressure to achieve is not the best way to achieve your goal (I don't talk like that to her). Take a few seconds to relax, smile / be happy, focus, and be curious / interested.

Sorry, I had to share. These WOW are as much a thrill for me as for her.

You are perfection.
Iam2

Iam2:

Why don't you try to make a game out of your children's homework. When you sit down to help your children with like, math, geography or other subjects have like a jeopardy game or, there are many puzzles and trivia games in subjects such as math, science, etc.

EXAMPLE:

Dad/Host:

Child/Contestant: I'll take Math for two hundred.

Host gives question, child aswers, if wrong then question goes to other child. If right, the points are saved and rewards for points. ( 200p+300p questions=500p ie a trip to a sweets shop or she may decide to save them and add other points from other games for other prizes.) This isn't bribing, because the child is learning and having fun at the sametime. Bribing is if a kid pitches a fit in a store and you just "give in"

For spelling, you could play "Concentration"
etc.
Just a Thought.

Jonah

About two thirds of the work I do with her is from pre-define work, like the School or Kumon. The stuff I come up with is in a variety of forms. Games are among them.

Fun is valuable, it's like instant access to the accelerated learning state. Provided the person doesn't get to excited.

Experiental activities are better for learning than structured rules. However, a blend is nice. I use many approachs and don't expect success from anyone method. I kind of take the idea of dumping everything out there for her mind to absorb and discouver the rules / patterns it needs to achieve the goals.

We've had some really good results after some visualization work. The first few times I try to explain visualization, I just got a blank stare. Then one time she stumbled on it and after a fantastic session she described to me what she had done. I hadn't asked to do a visualization this time, but created this fun and empowering image and got great success.

She young and discouvering many of the thinks I'm learning. She's decades ahead of me in so many ways.

I like sharing these things, because the help I've recieved from the institutions and established resources are for the most part very unimaginative and not overly useful.

That all said, thanks for the game reminder. You can never play too much.

You are perfection.
Iam2

You might be interested in the information presented in the following chapters of this book:
http://www.geocities.com/forbidden_area/homesch.html http://www.geocities.com/forbidden_area/early.html http://www.geocities.com/forbidden_area/pressure.html

(Just a little warning that the other chapters of the book can contain controversial opinions that don't necessarily reflect my own.)

A lot of the almost magical ability of children to learn is chemical in nature.

The brain chemistry of children is simply different from that of adults. There is a lot more acetylcholine. Research has been done with animals that confirms that the most basic cognitive abilities cannot only be learned through increased amounts of acetylcholine, but they can also be *unlearned*.

Experiments with cats has shown that cats can unlearn and relearn depth perception through injections of acetylcholine into the brain. (Even though I use this as an example, I think these experiments are horribly inhumane.)

As time goes by, however, I do think that performance anxiety has a lot to do with lack of progress, lack of learning. When you take a human being and consign them to the role of a machine (your purpose is to produce, perform), you quite naturally get bad results.

It's inhumane, really. I've always found it hard to deal with.

Learning can be a joy when it isn't something you have to do for some purpose. It's best when it's done for its own sake. I think we learn best, then.

The very fact that productivity is demanded of us is what makes us unproductive. If performance were not tied into feelings of worth to one's self, family, community, country, etc., we'd see a lot less procrastination and escapism, I think.

Of course, a world without such demands is just an escapist fantasy.

That being said, whenever I talk to my nephew (whom I love very, very much) I always try to let him know I understand his feelings and that I love him very much ... that his performance isn't what makes me love him, it's just him. I love him for who he is. It is my hope to inform him that he doesn't need to feel he has to do x, y, or z to be a good person, to be loved and valuable.

IAM2, I think what you're doing wih your daughter is wonderful. It must be hard that you can only spend 2 hours with her a day

I get a little more than two hours a day. That's just the typical amount of time I've spent per day, during the last year, that we spend working on educational development.

She does get love. She also get lectures and hugs when she expresses the idea that she has to do well to be liked or loved. She is getting so many mature ideas about being and loving unconditionally that if this stuff sinks in she'll be a scarily mature kids. Oooops she already is and always has been. She knows in her head that she doesn't but her heart sometimes forgets. Although I think that a lot of the recent progress has be the result of her feeling it more often.

I've tried other things too. I do SFQ, and I've sent loves of love and worked her small universe and opened her channels. BTW, nasal congestion, since SFQ, is virtually non-existant. In past years she has be congested almost half the time, which makes learning a second language a little harder.
I had considered leaving work and home schooling, but I feel strongly enough about the social aspect of school being more important to ones development than academic developmentthat I'd not do it.

I also feel confident that this is a turn-around year for her. I can already see so much happening. I'll keep working with her because I can learn so much. However, I can see I'll spend less time with her and start working with her brother.

Something to consider when working with kids is the installation of a good work ethic. Also the idea of balance in life. You must put energy into all aspects of your life. A neglect or weakness in one area can draw the others down. So sometimes the area where you notice needing work is not the area you need to work on. Also if you don't know how to help one area of your life, working on others can have great indirect benefit.

Just more sharing.

You are perfection.
Iam2