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Guiding Kids’ Energy
by Steven Rudolph
November 4, 2009

Children have huge amounts of energy and parents find great satisfaction when that energy is harnessed in constructive ways. For instance, when kids are engaged in drawing a picture or reading a book, parents feel comforted knowing they are improving their artistic or linguistic skills and are learning to be independent. However, when children’s energy is unbridled or misdirected into destructive activities, parents become frustrated and exhausted as they struggle to direct their kids into productive pursuits.

Why is it that some kids seem so much better at controlling themselves and behaving well, while others appear to be bouncing off the walls, creating a wake of turbulence behind them? My The 10 Laws of Learning book sheds some light on this topic and provides some practical suggestions to help kids focus their energy and help parents find greater peace of mind. Here are a few laws that can be applied to solving the challenge of guiding kids’ energy:

Law No. 1: Teach your children to take care of themselves.
The first aspect is to make sure that kids’ energy levels are controlled by ensuring they eat the right types of foods and get enough sleep. Kids that consume too much refined sugar and white flour (Maida) may find it hard to control themselves with so much extra glucose in the bloodstream. Instead, ensure they eat products made from whole grain wheat and ones that are naturally sweet (such as fruits), which give them energy sources that burn longer and slower.

Further, if kids are not well rested, they are often unable to effectively concentrate their energies. Many parents come to me because their children are behaving violently or destructively. After some investigation, I often discover that the reason is because they are not getting enough sleep. The moment they put them to bed an hour or two earlier, the misbehaviour often stops automatically.

Law No. 4: Teach your children to plan.
Children need structure in their lives—they need routines that help them realize that they should be doing a certain type of activity at a certain time. For instance, this is play time, this is study time, this is snack time and so on. By ensuring kids have a daily routine (Dincharya), they will slowly become habitual of doing certain things at certain times and within a few weeks, will no longer require constant nagging. Rather, they will start becoming self-motivated to engage in a particular task. Further, their stamina will increase and they will be less likely to jump from one activity to another.

Law No. 7: Teach your children to practice.
While there are numerous aspects of this law, the one I would like to mention here is in creating the right type of environments that are conducive to learning. External environments can either be very supportive of or very antithetical to getting your kids to engage their attention. Noisy rooms, TVs, areas of the house with lots of movement, all create distractions that prevent children from maintaining their ability to focus. If your children appear to be irritated or distracted, see if you can make a change in the atmosphere by turning off the TV or computer, putting on some relaxing music or suggesting that the kids shift to a quieter space that will permit them to concentrate.

It is not necessarily so that channeling kids’ energy demands an equal amount of energy to be expended by parents themselves. There is so much to do with creating structure in children’s lives and promoting habits that enable them to balance themselves. When kids are consistently exposed to such parameters (such as the ones mentioned above), they automatically develop a sense of self-discipline, and ultimately, are able to independently create their own boundaries and operate successfully within them.

There are many other things parents can do to help their children focus their energies in positive ways. The three suggestions above are just a few of them. Please do read my The 10 Laws of Learning book to discover more.

 
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