Discover How Your Child Learns Best

This blog post comes from Dr. James Dobson’s Family Talk radio program.  Learn more about the Family Talk ministry here.

Do you know your child’s learning style? It’s easy to determine, and knowing that can help you communicate better. Cheri Fuller defines three learning styles.

Many children are visual learners, that is they learn mostly by looking and seeing. These boys and girls learn to read by looking at the words on a page, by noticing billboards and signs, and they have an easy time visualizing things. Other children are auditory learners. They learn best by hearing information and verbalizing it. They’ll learn a foreign language much better by listening to an audio tape than by reading a book, for example. The third type, and perhaps the least understood, is the kinesthetic learner.

Kinesthetic learners need to touch and feel and handle things. They’ll take a brand new toy apart and see how it works inside. Hands-on demonstrations and experiments work great for these kids. However, this type is most at risk in schools, because the classroom experience is usually targeted for visual and auditory learners. Sitting at a desk all day is a very draining and stressful experience for kinesthetic learners, and their restlessness is often diagnosed as a behavioral problem.

Watch your child for a week or so. Do they want to read or be read to? Do they express themselves by talking or by doing? Know your child’s learning type, and use that as a channel to communicate what you want to teach him.

Catch the full story (with audio) here.