By Jeni Hooper -

Discovering your child’s strengths is not a recipe for encouraging your child to pursue each and every short term pleasure. Pleasures tend to be brief and feed the senses rather than the mind or the emotions. The impact tends to wear off quickly leaving your child dissatisfied. Children need a highly stimulating mental diet to satisfy their curiousity and leave them feeling both stimulated and content. Interests which have real meaning will leave a sense of achievement and long lasting satisfaction.

To compare the difference between pleasure and satisfaction we can take the examples of using a games console and learning a sport.

Electronic games can be absorbing, but the pleasurable impact of the last score soon wears off, and players can find it difficult to stop. This need for repetition exists because there is no lasting sense of achievement. Also because the body is not involved there is no natural high which comes from endorphins.

Research findings from neuroscience have suggested that satisfaction is more likely to be reported when we are fully involved with a task. Being fully involved can be summed up as the trio of the “senses, body and brain” This makes evolutionary sense. Our ancestor’s best chances of survival were to be alert, active and involved.

Playing a sport involves our trio of “senses, body and brain” and gives us a greater sense of achievement and satisfaction. Our senses provide the information that we need to plan what we are doing. We have to be alert and watch the play around us, listen to commands from our team mates, be aware of our body and alert to other players actions. Using our body provides exercise which releases endorphins and makes us feel alert and vibrant. Finally sport involves the brain in remembering the rules and developing a game plan.

In contrast using a games console may be fun, but it is a passive activity. It makes no demand on the body and only a limited demand on the senses: quick fingers and fast, visual reaction times.

But what if your child is a budding scientist does this trio still hold true?

·        Does your child like taking things apart to see how they work?
·        Do they invent experiments to test things out?
·        Do they read something that fascinates them in a book but then have to see it for themselves?

Children, unlike some adults are rarely satisfied with second hand knowledge, they need to get involved to fully understand and be excited by something. They naturally use the trio of sense, body and brain in their free play where no toys are involved.

That explains why many children enjoy working with a parent on a real live task where they can join in. They may slow you down but they learn so much in the process.

Look out for other articles in Happy2Learn’s series Raising Happy Confident and Successful Children here on Ezine Articles

My name is Jeni Hooper and I am a Child Psychologist and Parent Coach with an excellent track record of helping families to raise happy, confident and successful children. I can show you how to discover and build your child’s unique strengths and abilities so that your child can floursih and enjoy learning.

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