Whether it’s your young preschooler just starting to read, or your college-bound teen, you want to make sure they learn to love their education and become self-directed learners.

Both have been endowed with a remarkable ability to learn just about anything they set their minds to.

However, your attitude towards learning will depend on your mentors and the teaching methods they use.

That is why it is vitally important that parents understand the difference between teaching skills and teaching content.

And they can kill your child’s motivation if they don’t.

Traditionally, all subjects are assigned according to a curriculum chosen by the parents.

The different study guidelines and hours are clearly predetermined and the student only has to follow the step-by-step instructions to acquire all that knowledge and, voila!, he educates himself!

Is it really?

I mean, it would be great if education was that easy. Just shove it all down your throat in 12 parts of a year and you go on to an adult life with a fabulous education.

Judging by the vast majority of teens and young adults who are bored to death with their education today, this method doesn’t work.

The key issue here is the difference between teaching skills and teaching content!

The skills require daily practice and discipline. It will take years and years of practice, perseverance, and consistency for a student to reach a level of excellence in a certain skill.

Math and language arts are skills. Parents have to demand the daily practice of these with levels of difficulty and schedules carefully designed according to the needs of each child.

In this way, the student will develop excellent character traits such as perseverance, diligence, responsibility, rigor, and excellence.

Learning content, like nature or social studies, is a whole different story. It should always be fun and chosen according to the predominant interests of the students.

Never choose content for your child. Let him use his acquired skills like reading, writing, and math to study the subject of his choice.

Let him experience his favorite area of ​​interest with books, hands-on experiments, and real-life situations.

Don’t worry if your chosen topic isn’t very academic to begin with. Just let him enjoy learning about it. You will be very naturally inspired to use your language and math skills while being captivated by your subject of interest.

This will catapult you into a study habit that will eventually lead you to love learning.