Helping your kids learn STEM should be family fun time
Parents are increasingly worried about the quality of their kids’ education and expect their kids to be exposed to more STEM content. But parents can also turn STEM into family fun time and relax because we have less influence on our kids’ future than we think.
Environment matters
Family engagement in the children’s education has been recognized as one of the strongest predictors of children’s school success. The more parents care about their kids’ schooling, the higher is the kids’ school success. It makes sense – kids benefit from encouragement, emotional support, extracurricular activities, and more learning time in general. Not surprisingly, this kind of support is more prominent in families of socioeconomically higher status than in disadvantaged homes. Parents who can afford spending more time with their kids and provide more learning material will also create more stimulating environment for their kids to finish schools. But it is not only about financial factors. Understanding how to guide kids through education is also important. More educated parents also have more academic skills to transfer to their kids and better social networks to help their kids’ careers.
These socioeconomic gaps are now growing larger during the COVID-19 pandemic as schools switched to on-line classes. Families of higher socioeconomic status can adapt their time and resources to these new conditions to help kids, while socioeconomically disadvantaged families found themselves under increased pressure of financial risks and stress due to loss of employment. Suddenly, our understanding of what is really driving kids’ success and how to approach STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) education became more important than ever.
Genes also matter. A lot.
One of the most important recent discoveries in this field is how much genes participate in our life trajectories. Genes are about a half of our kids’ future, but also the source of their uniqueness. Genes give your kids inclination toward some interests, boost their talents, and guide life preferences. The problem is that you don’t know what exactly is covered by these genetic 50% and you can become a victim of your own prejudices on what your kids should become. Moreover, even the genes you did not transmit to your kids still matter because the environment you create for your kids is also driven in a large fraction by your own genes.
This is where nature (genes) and nurture (environment) intermingle. They are not in conflict, but rather work in conjunction. This means that socioeconomic status combined with genetic predisposition for some talent can push kids into extraordinary careers, but it also means that lots of extraordinary talent is hidden in kids from disadvantaged families. This puts both types of families – higher and low status – into the same predicament: how to maximize the effects of invested time and resources on the kids’ success in life. An affluent family might throw lots of resources into their kids’ education but achieve essentially nothing, while a poor family might get a lot from very small things they can afford to provide to their kids.
Relax and enjoy the ride
The main massage that we can take from all this is that parents should prepare their kids to be ready to build on the life chances that will appear randomly in their life. While schools have a mandate to teach all their students some general basic skills, parents can focus on recognizing and minimizing their kids’ weaknesses and maximizing the strengths. Finding what the kids are good at can be a slow process, but if parents make it enjoyable it will be more effective and less stressful.
Learning in young humans is slow compared to other animals for a reason as it maximizes chances for our brains to learn from environment and accumulate more knowledge. Since we do not know what exactly our kids will eventually become, we can only buy them a “ticket” for a possible success. This ticket is an environment where they can play and dream together with their parents. So, if you are a parent, relax. Do not overthink your influence on their future careers, do not obsess with their talent, do not put a pressure on them to be “geniuses”. Think more about how to make your time with them both fun and educational, without long term expectations.
The fear of STEM
STEM education is today generally recognized as one of the key assets that can propel kids into better careers. Unfortunately, STEM skills are often approached as something that kids will absorb simply because they are exposed to STEM content. Even worse, STEM is often introduced to children when they are too old and already have negative attitudes toward those subjects or misconceptions on their personal lack of “talent” for STEM.
Parents can do a lot to mitigate such problems for their kids if they play with STEM content at home. This should not be forced onto kids because parents think STEM is important. Instead, STEM should be treated as a family quality time where parents enjoy discovering stuff together with their kids. Also, this fun can (and should) start early in kids’ life, already at the pre-school age.
However, many parents find it hard to engage into STEM activities at home as they are not confident into their own STEM skills and knowledge. But this can be vanquished if parents accept STEM activities as a fun family activity where both the kids and adults learn together. This is actually a powerful message – when it comes to STEM, better get used to learn new stuff your whole life because the world is changing so fast that we have to live in a permanent state of learning.
Another thing that can make parents feel more relaxed while playing STEM is to stick to topics closer to their profession. There is literally no profession today that cannot be connected to some fun STEM content. For example, if parents are more into art, they can look for STEM material about sound, colors, psychology, human senses, and brain. Actually, art should be an integral part of STEM (which makes it STEAM then) as there are many benefits of gaining art skills in combination with STEM. Or if kids are totally into sports, they can play with STEM material that will help them understand human body or sport gadgets, which can lead to better performances in sports. As a matter of fact, professional sports today are fully loaded with STEM support.
Dreams and excitement
Children should also be allowed to dream big dreams. Parents should let their kids to aspire careers that seem unreachable by the parents’ opinion. Yes, most of the kids will not fulfill their dreams, but there is no stronger motivator for learning than going after a dream. Of course, dreams will change as kids grow older, but if kids learn from very early on that STEM is an integral part of a greater success, it will open new ideas in their heads on what could be achieved. Again, it is important that parents do not fall into a trap of thinking that they can predestine their kids’ future. Unpredictable events steer our lives more than we are willing to admit.
This is also why parents should not put pressure on the kids to be “smart” or “geniuses”. Nothing good will come out of such pressure, only the kids’ frustrations with failures. On the contrary, children should be reminded repeatedly that failures are part of life and unavoidable in any quest for dreams. What is important is how we deal with failure and stress in life and how to bounce back. This is where parents are often over-protective and try to keep their kids as isolated from stress and dangers as possible. The outcome are young adults who do not know how to handle stressful unfriendly situations.
After all, the most fun for kids are STEM experiments that are flashy, loud, smelly, or colorful. This often means a certain level of danger from fire, explosion, or chemicals, where the sense of danger pumps up the excitement. Parent’s role is to make sure kids are aware of the danger and teach them how to take safety measures. This is also a good advice to parents who find themselves exploring such STEM experiments for the first time.
Parents who approach their kids’ STEM education in this way will find quickly that STEM can be truly a family fun time.