Cultivating a Love of Learning in Children

Cultivating a love of learning is the most important thing we can do in children today. We can do this with every child if we know how to approach it. It matters because this can make or break a child’s future. Yet, it’s not so simple as making them love what they don’t love. That seems rather hard to do. So, what do we do?

How do we cultivate a love of learning?

My clue came during my Waldorf Teacher Training years ago. A peer asked our teacher how to help a struggling child, and his response was, “Well, what do they love?” That simple question became a profound method for me. With physically, emotionally, and cognitively healthy children, the love of learning comes natural. It’s the challenged children who need our help the most, and it begins with connecting with what they already love. Love begets love, so if you start with love you can capitalize on that.

Here’s an example. I recently had a tutoring student who struggled a lot in his life. He wasn’t really good at anything, his family relationships were quite poor, and he had very little motivation to do work of any kind. One could see the malaise in his very limbs. Tasked with helping him with math, my job was not as simple as rehearsing the times tables or working on problems. He saw no reason to invest himself in any of it.

However, there were two things I noticed. First, he was excellent at recognizing patterns. Second, he loved mysteries and puzzles. He also loved The Hardy Boys books (which are all mysteries). Aha! Those clues became my in with him. Maybe he wasn’t going to do a page of problems, at least not yet. My success came in starting with puzzles and patterns and geek out about all that, first. In other words, in order to cultivate a love of learning in this student, I started by connecting with what he already loved. That became my key to his heart, and that becomes everything, especially with students who need support.

Why does cultivating a love of learning matter so much?

As I discuss in this post, humans are threefold beings of thinking, feeling, and willing. Each of these soul capacities has its vital place in our life, and feeling provides the motivation. It is the engine of our energy. This is why extraordinary feats are performed for love. Children and youth need to learn to love when they are young because it keeps them focused on the good, beautiful, and true as they grow up. This is paramount for adolescents who enter into the age when depression and negativity can became a crystallized reality for them.

That they should not succumb to such a fate, we should steward a love of learning in them from a young age. Then, when our children start to stray from us during the teen years they have a reason to stay focused on what is good and right.