Okay, so as parents, let’s admit it: we are permanent members of the F.A.S.T club: Fear, Anxiety, Stress, and Tension! 

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We often give ourselves way too much grief over our parenting - from the food, to the way we discipline our child. Sound familiar? But this is not a general parenting site, remember? At Polymath Parenting, we focus on your child’s learning-to-learn journey and your role in that journey. 

In the context of our child’s learning, I feel - unfortunately - that despite our FAST, we do not actually pay as much attention as we should, to what really matters when it comes to helping them become better lifelong learners.

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We spend too much time worrying about their school, teachers, exams,  and marks  - the inputs and outputs - when actually we should be thinking about their learning process. 

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We parents end up asking all the wrong questions, like: 

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1. Why is my child not motivated at school? Why isn’t he/ she more like XYZ?
2. Which subjects are they weak at? Can I get them tuition or an online course for it?
3. Why can’t my child just do what I tell them? How do I get them to do what I want?
4. Why isn’t she scared of her future? How can I make her understand that real life is scary and difficult?
5. Why doesn’t she know all the answers?
6. How will this school prepare her for a good career?

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Instead, the questions we should be asking are:

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1. Is my child a strong, effective learner? Can he/she understand, connect, apply and improve upon the things they learn? 
2. Do they have the learning strategies - the learning skills, techniques, and mindset - to actually be an effective learner under any circumstances that life and their careers will throw at them? How can I help them be better equipped with a learning strategy that will serve them through life?
3. How can I help them find their motivation as a learner? Do they have self-awareness about what interests them, and pursue the things they realize are important to them?
4. Do they know how to ask the right questions?
5. How can I empower her to make the right career choices for herself? What skills will she need to make it happen for herself? 

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I’ve written enough about why it's important for us as parents to shift our focus from WHAT to learn (i.e. the contents or curriculum) to HOW to learn - i.e, the process of learning and paying attention to helping the child develop their learning skills. 

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This post continues on from there to gently remind ourselves about these under-the-radar mistakes we tend to make - despite our best intentions - when it comes to supporting our children with their learning journey and developing their ‘learning-to-learn’ skills.

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There’s a reason I’ve picked the 9 most overlooked, underestimated, under-the-radar mistakes we as parents make. You may be wondering, why not the most common mistakes?  For the record, there is a ton of stuff out there on parenting mistakes and many of them overlap into the learning space as well, so I’m going to club ALL those other usual suspects into my #9 - aptly called “The Usual Suspects”.

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Everything else here is pretty counterintuitive and you may find that you are doing one or two of these without realizing that they may be unproductive for your child’s effective learning.

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9 Under-the-Radar Learning-to-Learn Mistakes Parents Make with Children

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1. Trying to make learning too easy: 

Learning is a process, and somehow, we in the modern world have decided that this process has to be made as easy and painless as possible for our kids. This attitude assumes or implies that learning is something inherently painful and unpleasant, and must therefore be made palatable, easy, and as pleasant as possible.

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Of course, I don’t need to spell out that this is really only confusing the term learning with studying. All the above are true of STUDYING as we know it. 

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Let’s visualize this from the child’s point-of-view: having to memorize and be evaluated in subjects that we didn’t choose, that have no application in our daily life.

To be given no real reason for having to put ourselves through the torture at the cost of several hours of our day, giving up all the things we love to do like playtime and leisure time like staring into space and daydreaming. (Not to mention parents having to pay through their nose for the privilege of this torture on their kids). 

And so, perhaps it is our guilt (or some associated element of F.A.S.T) or our desperate desire to see them ‘succeed’ (where success = ‘get marks’, not necessarily ‘learn’) that makes us try and ease the process of learning. 

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For this, we try things like dumbing down concepts, memorization from notes someone else wrote, cutification of the content (or what I call ‘Disney-fication’) and other such tactics apparently meant to make the act of learning less tiresome. 

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Reality check: Learning is a process, not an isolated activity or event. It’s not always an easy, linear, convenient, or comfortable one. Learning - true learning- where the learner is able to arrive at an understanding of the subject or topic and use it to solve problems or get closer to their goal - requires the learner to go through the grind of asking questions, experimenting, coming up against dead ends, recalibrating, getting frustrated, and much more before arriving at their EUREKA moment! 

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Yes - this process should occur even when trying to learn something that is already an established concept. Unfortunately, we have replaced this process with spoon-feeding them answers, over-simplification of concepts, or memorization, just to ensure our child has a guaranteed shot at ‘success’. (Some parents even do the actual school work for their kids, so focused are they on the optics versus their child’s learning process!)

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Speaking of Eureka, do you really think Archimedes came upon his principle without his share of struggle and frustration that comes with trying to figure stuff out? 

But today, we place it in front of our children in pretty-looking PDFs and expect them to ‘learn’ the concept of buoyancy in one 30 minute lesson! Do we encourage them to question the concept? Do we ask them to find 5 real-life examples or applications of the concept around them? Do we challenge them to solve 2 real-life problems using that concept? 

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Or do we end ‘learning’ the concept by memorizing it and being able to answer the canned questions about it? (and passing an exam, of course.)

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Let’s not deprive our kids of the joy of learning, complete with struggles and disappointments, wrong turns, and blind alleys, and let them experience the joy that comes when real understanding dawns. Or they could be victims of one of these learning myths that fool us into believing we have learned something when in actuality we have not.

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Try this instead‍

Do not be too quick to answer their questions. Instead, challenge them to find out the answers themselves. Do not get them ready-made packages promising to make them a genius: instead, ask them to use a book to identify the materials they need and collect them independently from around the house. 

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Challenge them to find substitutes when they don’t have the materials an experiment may need. Ask a lot of questions about their projects to engage them and understand their thinking process. And if you see them struggling with it, be there but don't interfere or judge. Let them struggle, let them ask for help, let them do it all at their pace. When you see them move from the challenge zone to the comfort zone, encourage them to add constraints and try the same activity.

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2. Trying to make learning too difficult 

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At the other end of the spectrum is the constant lecturing and reminding about how nothing great comes without struggle and challenge, forcing children to sit at their table for long hours, forcing them to learn in ways that are not natural to them, forcing them to learn …or else all the unpleasant things possible will happen to them in life. 

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We expect children to be able to grasp complex concepts quickly, just because it's all written there in front of them! We assume they should be able to learn if we hand out the content and learning resources to them. We often put time pressures that do not give them the mental space to process and develop the concept in their own world-view. We get over strict about using formulas and steps and entirely discourage them to think about an old problem in new ways.

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Reality Check: Remember - like anything else, learning is a process where one gets better with practice. Just because something is easy for you doesn’t mean it will be easy for the child. 

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Also, here’s something I figured out the other day and was somewhat counter-intuitive for me: just because something is challenging or difficult doesn't make it a worthwhile learning pursuit either. 

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It goes back to letting the child set the pace, choose the level of challenge they are ready for, and find their inner motivation and context for wanting to learn the next step of something. 

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Helping our children set realistic goals and expectations for each learning activity is key. I say this because many of us parents have unrealistic expectations - we forget the value of daily micro-improvements, instead of expecting that they should be able to memorize concepts that took hundreds of years to perfect, in a few days! Instead, let us focus on helping them develop the right learning mindset and the right practice tools to help them get just a little better at something every day.

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Try this instead

Tying shoelaces is easy for you today because you’ve been doing it all your life. Try doing it with your eyes shut or while also eating your food, or in some other unfamiliar way, and you will be reminded that learning new things is a process. It takes time but, with the right learning strategies and skills, you do get better with time.

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3. Not asking enough questions 

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I get it - we are often exhausted after work and everything else we do. We are too tired to answer all our children’s seemingly endless questions, let alone engage in an inquiry where we encourage them to ask more questions. Isn’t it easier to just tell them what they need to know and be done with it?

In the short term, sure, it is. But in the long term, it will only dull their ability to follow their curiosity and find out what they want to know. Sure, you can argue that everyone uses Google anyway. 

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Yes, they do. Why I discourage google searches for my kids is that they miss out on the process of finding the information they need from different resources such as books and experts.  

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The act of ‘tracking down’ information builds curiosity, research skills, resourcefulness, and tenacity, not to mention that en-route you will be distracted by all sorts of wonderful things that need further investigations of their own and can be connected to each other in interesting ways. 

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It is the joy of discovering things the old-fashioned way, where along the way, you also learn five other things (This is not the same as getting distracted on line where you get distracted by 5 unrelated Tweets!).

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Reality Check: Usually, parents think their job is to answer their children’s questions - but next time, don’t. Let them arrive at the answer themselves but help them lead up to it by asking questions that make them think. Ask them what they think the answer is, and engage in a discussion about the soundness of their argument. 

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In this pursuit, your best friends are:

• What if
• I wonder why…(or how, or what or when)

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Remember- the ANSWER is not important here. What is important is the PROCESS of investigation, of critically examining something, of making new connections to see old mundane things in new ways. If you are seeking to build effective learning abilities, focus on the art of asking questions. 

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Also, usually we parents think our child’s job is to answer questions! Instead, help them become masters at asking questions. As Einstein said,

“If I had an hour to solve a problem and my life depended on it, I would spend the first 55 minutes determining the proper questions to ask. Once I had the right question, finding an answer would take no more than five minutes.”

That’s coming from probably the smartest guy on the planet. But without exception, every really smart person has one or another inspiring quote about the value of questions over answers. 

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As a culture we place too much value in knowing the right answers, in always being right, in looking like a real smartie. But the real geniuses will tell you that the safety of knowing all the answers is for mediocre under-achievers. 

If you really want to grow, then focus on the questions, be prepared to ask questions, do not fear failure or be ashamed of ‘not knowing’ something.

Instead, take pride in saying “I don’t know, but I’m going to find out!” That growth mindset is what leads to break-through success.  

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The art and science of asking questions is the source of all knowledge. Thomas Berger

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Try this instead

If a child asks why plug points are dangerous, what questions can you ask them, to get them closer to an understanding of the answer? How can you use the art of questioning to help your child answer their own question? Your child will give you opportunities to ask questions multiple times in a day - don’t miss them! 

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Here is another idea. Instead of giving your child a quiz where they try to work out the answers, challenge them to set a question paper for you. That's right- ask them to test you! Ask them to ask you 10 questions about something- any concept they are learning. You will be AMAZED at what they come up with.

Last week, I tried this with my elder son as we worked on the water cycle. Instead of asking him questions during our active recall practice session on the topic, I asked him to ask me 10 questions about the water cycle. 

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His questions included:

• What happens when the evaporated water goes into a cloud and the cloud moves to a place where there is no pond for it to rain into- where will the water go? (we had a great discussion about underground water tables which led to discussions about drainage and why water ‘stands’ in some places and not in others.)

• Why can’t we send rainy clouds to places with drought? (Again, a lovely discussion about ‘rain seeding’ clouds and wind direction ensued)...and so on.

You get the idea.

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4. Too much focus on learning content (what) and outcomes (why) than on the learning process (how).

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This is something I write a lot about. The process of learning is far more important than what children learn and why they learn it, especially in the early years.

Learning should be about growth. When it becomes strictly about a goal (such as an exam or a certificate or a job), our ability to retain the learning beyond the goal achievement is questionable. The value of the learning itself diminishes in our mind, instead of compounding and making us smarter.

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For us as parents, understanding the child’s learning process is key to understanding how they are ‘learning to learn’. 

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Once they have understood that learning to learn (something new) is a process and they are in charge of the process, the ‘what’ should not really matter - they would be able to learn anything, at their pace, in their unique learning style, which itself is something that will keep evolving. 

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Reality Check: The future is unknown. In fact, the only thing we know about the future is that it is unknown and that disruptions and changes are the norms, not the exception. 85% of the jobs in 5 years’ time have not been invented yet. 

So it follows that the skills of the future are about being able to learn new things efficiently and effectively, being able to connect the dots and solve problems in disruptive environments, and being able to adapt and adjust to constant change. 

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And yet, we parents, schools, and colleges insist on teaching a curriculum. We limit the scope of learning to what’s in that curriculum, evaluating our children on knowledge and information that will most likely be hopelessly outdated in 5 - maybe 3 years from now!

Shouldn’t we be spending our time helping them develop the skills that will help them survive and thrive in the unknown future rather than memorizing stuff that, at a pinch, Alexa can tell them better than they could ever remember? 

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5. Not letting children ‘own’ their learning

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It is bad enough that our children today enjoy literally no agency in deciding their life choices. From the early morning (when they are told what time to get up), to what they wear, what they will spend each moment of their day doing, what to study, when to study, when and what to eat, when and what to play, how long to do any of those activities; switching on and off between these activities at the random whim of the 30-minute bell, whether they are immersed in an activity or not. 

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Let’s face it - our children have zero agency in deciding what they do with their time. 

And yet, we want them to become free and independent thinkers, innovators, creators, adventurers, risk-takers!!!

How will that happen if we do not involve them in any of the basic decisions about their own day?

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When children do not own their learning journey - when they do not have to take responsibility for ‘what’ to learn (someone else gives the curriculum), ‘how’ to learn (someone provides all the resources, material list, etc), or even ‘why’ to learn (for exams, marks, college seat, the job of course!) then do not expect them to take accountability or responsibility for the results or care about the long-term consequences.

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Not in any authentic way at least. 

And no- no amount of lecturing (the same ones we heard from our folks back in the day) about responsibility will help - unless they are convinced they need to get better at something.

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Reality Check: Gifting our kids curated kits called “Genius This’ and ‘Einstein That’ is not going to turn them into creative and independent-minded thinkers and creators! 

What will, is giving them time and space to make decisions - even small ones-  about their day, and consulting and collaborating with them to run the home.

You may not be able to afford expensive consultants and therapists, but when it comes to raising confident, fearless learners and independent-minded thinkers, there is a world-class consultant available, exclusively to you: your child. 

The only question you as a parent need to ask is: “How can I support my child to own their own journey, to empower themselves, and learn out of choices instead of compulsions?”

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6. Making learning the enemy

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Often, learning is either seen as the enemy or as something unpleasant and not fun. Something that we need to overcome. Something we need to master in order to meet some goals.  We say things like, “Finish your lessons and then we can play”. Or “weekdays are for ‘work’ and weekends are for ‘fun’” - as if the two are mutually exclusive and no learning is happening when you are having fun or at play! 

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Are we really reducing learning to only the act of studying a curriculum? Are we learning only out of fear?

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As we progress in life, learning something becomes an interruption (taking a break from our career to learn something new, for example) or something that is out of bounds (I’m too old for that) or simply as a means to an end (if I don’t learn this, I’m going to get fired). 

Second, we polarize learning outcomes into success and failure, as if one does not include the other. This only builds fear of failure and resistance to learning things we don’t feel comfortable with. 

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Reality Check: By helping our children build a lifelong happy and healthy relationship with the idea of learning, we help them build a skill that will enable all growth and progress, through life. I mean it! In an increasingly digital, AI-driven world, our human skills - problem-solving, connecting the dots, learning to learn new things out of sheer self-motivation- are what will set us apart. 

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Try this instead

To create this strong and healthy relationship with the idea of learning new things, devoid of fear and trepidation, focus on building a healthy learning environment at home. Help your child build their effective learning strategy with the right set of learning techniques, and learning skills.

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7. Learning in Silos

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Learning does not occur in silos because life does not occur in silos. Asking children to switch on a math switch at 10 am and then, just as they are getting immersed, asking them to switch that off and put on an English switch, is so counter-productive! Every single creative genius - without exception - is an ‘inter-disciplinary’ learner and thinker. They know everything is connected, that the best ideas come from connecting two seemingly unrelated ideas and creating something new. 

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Without this ability to connect and integrate and apply, forget about your child being the creative genius you want them to be!

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Reality check: being connected is not just how we learn - it is how we live! 

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We use physics when we play sports and science in the kitchen, biology in our cosmetics and history in everything from fashion design to architecture. 

So why are we ‘learning’ only in silos? How can you help your children develop the ability to connect the dots across diverse subjects - in other words, develop their polymath thinking skills to learn anything about anything?

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Charlie Munger, the less-known but arguably more brilliant partner of Warren Buffet in Berkshire Hathaway Investments, often references this idea in his many talks about mental models as an effective learning technique. Himself a polymath thinker and learner, he says that you can make smarter decisions when your reasoning is drawn from multiple disciplines. 

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Making a strong argument for polymath thinking, which cuts across subject-specific silos and makes connections between atypical ideas, he says,

“The (mental) models (for smarter decision making) have to come from multiple disciplines because all the wisdom of the world is not to be found in one little academic department. That’s why poetry professors, by and large, are so unwise in a worldly sense. They don’t have enough (diverse) models in their heads. 

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Specialists do not, he goes on to say, look out of their boxes often enough, and that leads to an echo-chamber sort of situation. In simpler terms, to a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

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Try this instead

‍Challenge yourself and your child to think through things from a multi-disciplinary lens. Learning in silos means so much meaning that could have been created by connecting the dots gets lost. Gradually, they lose the ability to think beyond the subject and field they are involved in, defining themselves by their profession and learning only about that profession.

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But the 21st century doesn’t need people who only know one thing. Robots can do that. It needs people who can learn about multiple things and connect them in creative new ways. That is why our children need to build strong 21st-century learning skills.

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Next time you are in the kitchen with your child, talk about the chemistry and biology of food. When you are playing sports, talk about all the physics concepts in use. When you take a walk in the garden or park, talk about the math of leaves - size, weight, number, volume, shapes, and more! 

Similarly, next time your child needs to practice English grammar, why not ask her to write a letter to her grandmother or a friend instead of just what's in the textbook? 

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8. Not Reflecting Enough

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My reflections on reflection have led me to understand what a key role this activity plays when it comes to deep learning. Usually, when we expose our children to experiences, we want them to have a goal in mind- either do something, achieve something or if nothing else, be able to post pictures of them doing something unusual on social media. 

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After a particular learning experience, say ‘feeding sheep at a farm’, we come home and forget all about it (aside from checking how many people liked our pics on Insta). 

What could have been a learning opportunity gets reduced to just another photo opportunity. 

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Reflection is all about asking yourself or each other a bunch of questions about the experiences of the day. There are many reflection techniques such as Rose-Thorn-Bud; What/Why/When/What Next; Stop-Start-Continue; or just make up your own prompts for reflection. For example, using food analogies- what was sweet, salty, bitter, nutritious about my day/ experience? 

Without reflection, there can be no real learning progress. If we are not actively thinking about how what we just learned has changed us or what we know about the world.

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Reality check: Reflection is a key effective learning skill. Experiencing without reflection can be quite hollow, as we are unable to really think about how we can create value from the experience. 

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We tend to then just flit from one experience to another, one day to another, without really letting it touch us deeply. 

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Try this instead

Reflecting helps hardwire some key takeaways when they are still fresh in our minds, and when we store those, we can apply them in many different ways in many different learning contexts. It doesn't have to be some fancy experience like scuba diving or horse riding!

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It could just be reflecting on a regular day - once you begin thinking along the lines of what worked and what did not and why you will find each day is really full of extraordinary experiences you didn't even realize. 

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9. The Usual Suspects 

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As promised, I’m going to end the post with a grouping of mistakes called “The Usual Suspects.” You can guess what all it includes: comparing, labeling, yelling, blaming, unrealistic expectations, and on and on and on the list goes! 

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These are standard parenting gaffes but of course, they apply in the learning context as well. There is no reality check here - all I can say is, we have all been children ourselves. All learners need a conducive learning environment at home, but parents often misunderstand what this means or over-rely on schools and coaches to provide the right learning environment instead of focusing on what is in their control, at home.

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To get it right, there is no need to look beyond our own experiences as children, reflect on what worked and what didn't work for us, in the learning context, and try to ensure we don't repeat some of those mistakes that we were victims too!

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Before I end, let me say that I by no means want us to go deeper into the F.A.S.T club (Parental fear, anxiety, stress and tension) with this list of ‘mistakes’- they are just here to serve as a reminder that we may need to step back and give our children space to discover their love for learning and develop their ability to learn anything. 

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Also read:

18 Practical Ideas to Help Build Your Child's Growth Mindset

Our Curated Set of One-Page Guides and Infographics About Effective Learning