This is not a post about telling you several ways to introduce experimentation and plays to instigate better learning possibilities in kids. This is a post about understanding that learning is supposed to be beautiful, exploratory, curious, and enlightening.

We have attached tension, burden, and stress with learning, making our children highly competitive and jealous of other children’s progress. We judge them based on their rank and constantly remind them how much more grades their other friends have got.

We let them stress too much over the tests and exams and feel proud of our children who get distressed on seeing lesser than the expected percentile. We give them ample time and space to come out of their grief, stating that it is understandable. As if stressing over lesser marks is the most important thing in life. It proves a point, no, that our children care a lot about their progress?

We are responsible for sowing the seeds of jealousy and insecurity in the minds of these young people who have only started exploring the innocent fruit of friendship. We even motivate them to stay humble with their intelligence until they’d get a chance to prove their worth and knowledge on the day of results. Their friends get surprised by seeing the results as a little contradictory to their general behaviour in class. The kids keep saying to their friends that they were not able to study much throughout the days, weeks, and months, on being asked by any friend.

You motivate your kids not to share their notebooks and assignments with other kids lest the other kids would plagiarize from your child’s brilliant mind and your child will go unnoticed in the eyes of the teachers.

You provoke them to answer more questions in class instead of motivating them to ask more questions, let alone asking the stupidest ones. Your kid is supposed to be smart, brilliant, and a possessor of infinite knowledge and wisdom.

You probably have made a home timetable for your kid keeping them as busy as they are at school, filling their space with all kinds of subjects, activities, and a little time for play, dinner, and sleep too. All that your child knows is the cage of time which they want to break free from.

You want to have a conventional, routinely, punctual, smart, likable, attractive, decent, well-mannered, intelligent white-collared kid. You are not fond of their messy clothes, or hair, or having them lost their tie.

A mixture of creativeness works well for you. Apart from being a good academician, if your kid can play some sport nicely, or music instrument such as guitar, or can paint well, out of all the orderliness they portray, you feel happy to point out that your kid is very creative just because they are engaging in the kind of activities categorized under creativity. But, strangely, this new-age creativity knows no mess, disobedience, chaos, and rebelliousness at all.

No, learning is not fun for these kids. This has only become a routine. They will pull themselves out well enough for a few years for sure, but they will also have a very hard time unlearning all this in future. They might even feel the urge to break free from this. Will you be hurt then?

It is therefore important that instead of making learning a part of their routine life so that it may seem inevitable to them, you make them understand the importance of learning anything and then set them free to learn whatever they want. Childlike curiosity and willingness can make a person fly to great heights and places. They don’t need a routine set-up for that. Once they are willing enough, they’ll explore the depths of the subject they are interested in. Once you unleash the wild imagination and curiosity of a child, what you see right in front of your eyes in another wonder set in motion — a time-lapse of a blooming plant.

Therefore, it is not necessary to control too much of your child’s instincts, or their mind and thoughts. Let them explore the world for themselves. Let them run not because you told them to run or because you told them that running is good and they have believed you, but because they realized that they need to just run. And then you’ll see how long and fast they can run, much more than what you calculated, put on the paper, or proudly boasted among your friends and other relatives.