5 Things You Can Do at Home To Encourage Independent Learning in Your Child

As a parent, you want your child to do well in school, and to learn all of the things that will gain them success in life. And if you’re like most parents, you’d do anything to help them get there.

But did you know that helping your child too much can actually impede their ability to learn?

Building the skills to learn independently is much more likely to set your child up for success. A self-starting mentality—the ability to look at a problem and figure out a solution—is what will most help them get ahead in life. 

However, some children have more difficulty with independent learning than others. If your child struggles to learn on their own, here are a few ways you can encourage them to take a more active role in their education. 

What Is Independent Learning?

Learning independently gives kids the skills they need to take control of their own education. It gives them agency, empowers them on their educational path, and helps them develop a lifetime love of learning. This Brainy Moms podcast recording is a great resource for fostering perseverance in your child: https://brainymoms.co/2021/06/15/academicperseverance-drpoonehroney/

As your child gets older, they won’t always have someone to offer external motivation or structure. Once they’re grown, additional education (and career advancement, for that matter) will be optional—no one will be looking over their shoulder to make sure they’re doing what they need to. They will need to rely on their own drive to learn and grow. 

Unless they have developed the skills to self-motivate, they may not thrive.   

Independent learning helps your child own their education and gives them a greater sense of investment (and achievement!) in their learning. It also makes them more likely to sustain an interest in learning throughout the rest of their life.

5 Ways To Encourage Independent Learning at Home

You need to be intentional about teaching your child to find internal motivation to learn, improve, and develop skills. Here are a few things you can do at home to encourage your child to learn independently.

1. Help Your Child Set a Homework Routine

A clearly defined homework routine, with a set time and place to do homework every day, can help kids get into the habit of studying regularly. Giving your child clear guidelines around when, where, and how they do their work will help spur them toward greater productivity.

Your child’s homework routine will be most effective if it includes both uninterrupted work time as well as regular breaks. Consider trying the Pomodoro method (25 minutes of work, then a 5 minute break) to help them get into a good rhythm.

Make sure to also provide structure for your child around sleep, exercise, and nutrition, as these things all help them build good habits—which is key to independent learning.

2. Offer Guidance, but Don’t Micromanage

Within the structure of their homework routine, let your child work in their own way. Rather than telling them how to complete their homework, give them the freedom to find their own way of handling it, even if it takes longer than you think it should.

Direct them in using the resources available to them to solve problems. Talk them through solving a problem, editing a paper, working through a math equation, and so on…rather than stepping in to do those tasks for them.

If they’re struggling with a particular problem, remind them that it’s perfectly normal to struggle. Offer suggestions for how to approach the problem differently to potentially achieve better results.

In addition, encourage your child to ask for help when they need it. This will teach them how important it is to recognize when you don’t understand something and to have the confidence to ask for help.

3. Talk About Goals

Talk with your child about their future career goals, as well as shorter-term goals for the school year or a particular subject.

When a child is focused on an end goal like this, it can help them get through projects or assignments they find frustrating or simply don’t enjoy. Help your child see how the skills they’re learning in these projects can help them reach their goals later on.

To teach your child about setting and achieving goals, talk through upcoming projects and assignments and coach them in laying out a plan to complete the final product by the due date.

4. Use Positive Reinforcement

Give your kids something to look forward to when they finish each homework project: a small reward for finishing, such as a favorite treat or an hour of screen time.

If they have multiple projects to complete in one day, you may want to give them small rewards after each one is completed…a treat after they finish their math homework, then an episode of their favorite TV show after they finish writing that poem for English class, for example.

Note: If you choose to offer rewards like this, make sure to clearly define both the rewards and the rules for achieving them beforehand.

Even if you choose not to give tangible rewards, it’s still important to make an effort to notice and call out the ways your child has improved and to offer them praise for the hard work and persistence they have put in to achieve results.

5. Let Them Fail

This may be one of the most difficult things for parents to do, but failure—and learning to respond well to failure—is an important part of success.

It is normal and healthy to struggle and fail (especially when learning something new), and it’s important to teach your child that fact. Let them push through their struggles…even if that means they fail.

No one who ever accomplished anything great did so without struggle. Making mistakes and failing is how we develop resiliency and learn to adapt. Failure also helps us learn to identify the areas in which we struggle, so we can work on improving those capabilities.

This doesn’t mean you have to be totally hands-off when it comes to seeing your child fail. 

But instead of trying to protect them from failing, offer guidance they can use to solve the problem themselves or keep it from happening again. Help them talk through what went wrong and what they could do differently next time. Teach them to ask themselves questions like:

• How will I figure this out? 
• What resources are available to me that could be helpful?
• What caused this issue in the first place?
• Are there ways to keep this from happening again in the future?

This kind of self-reflection is a vital part of becoming an independent learner.

Need More Help? Strengthen Your Child’s Cognitive Skills With Brain Training

Strong cognitive skills contribute to independent learning. So does confidence. Brain training helps strengthen both.   

If you think your child could benefit from strengthening weak cognitive skills, and you’d like to explore how brain training with LearningRx can help, contact us. We’ll talk through your goals for your child and create a personalized, one-on-one training plan to help them reach those goals.