To give children a truly meaningful summer

QTO - As summer vacation approaches, parents become busy and stressed planning their children's summer activities. The questions they face, such as: What should their children learn, where should they play, and how can they effectively manage their children throughout the two-month summer break? This is a difficult problem for many families.

1. Browsing through social media and parent forums, it's easy to see that this is no longer just a children's activity, but seems to have become a "strategy" for adults. There are countless offers to enroll children: English classes, calligraphy classes, music, drawing, dancing, swimming... Occasionally, you might come across comments from parents taking their children on trips or to visit grandparents in the countryside.

Having worked in education for many years, I agree that every child's education is absolutely essential. Learning from an early age, and the more knowledge they acquire, the more beneficial it is. Parents, out of love and a desire for their children to excel and not fall behind their peers, often feel anxious and compare themselves to "other people's children," leading them to use every means and opportunity to develop their children solely through education.

However, the reality is that many children today are "averse" to studying, even stressed out by academic pressure. The question here is how much time should children spend studying, how can they study effectively, and how can we make them enjoy learning? Parents need to seek more thorough advice on these matters.

Teaching children to swim and equipping them with safety skills and drowning prevention skills - Photo: Internet

Learning through play, playing through learning – a familiar philosophy, but understanding it thoroughly and adjusting it appropriately is not simple for many parents. Adults, after a hard day's work, need rest and recovery, and of course, children need that too. Proof of this is that after a year of grueling schooling, from school to tutoring centers and private lessons with countless subjects, children clearly need to relieve stress, even temporarily forget that invisible pressure, through beneficial recreational time. Giving children back their summer, giving them back their true childhood, seems like a "command" for the healthy development of their psychological functions.

2. Looking at the general reality, many parents are quite concerned because the majority of urban students are at a significant disadvantage compared to rural students due to a lack of playgrounds and enriching living environments in many areas. This leads to many children being confined to the "school-home-neighborhood" setting, which hinders their skill development.

Therefore, expanding children's exposure to and experiences in soft skills classes, art classes, or foreign language classes that are more active and entertaining will help them live in a vibrant group environment, giving them opportunities to learn from each other while increasing their confidence and dynamism.

In addition, parents need to focus on creating more open, airy, and comfortable spaces for children to move around, such as picnics, kite flying, and swimming. These activities contribute to nurturing new skills in children, helping them discover their potential, live in harmony with nature, and most importantly, have a truly meaningful time for rest and recreation.

Many families maintain a very positive habit in many aspects: every summer vacation, they send their children back to their grandparents in the countryside. In reality, most children are eager and look forward to such summers. Besides the emotional joy for adults, for each child, immersing themselves in rural life and living under the loving care of their grandparents is the most effective way to instill emotional values ​​and a sense of their roots. It's a completely different world, devoid of numbers and calculations, but where children learn many meaningful things about life and daily activities, learn proper conduct, and even learn their responsibilities and obligations – things that theoretical textbooks can hardly reach…

The learning and intellectual and psychological development of children is so diverse and dynamic that many parents are unable to fully grasp it. In many families, a child's education has become a personal need for the parents themselves, sometimes causing them to forget their child's legitimate interests and desires. Ironically, this love and responsibility unintentionally deprives children of their childhood—a time when they learn through play and play to learn.

We hope that parents will understand their children better to relieve pressure on them, encouraging them to learn and play naturally without demanding expectations or coercive orders. Don't "throw" children into the summer with grand plans and strict commands; please let them live their childhood to the fullest.

Ngan Giang

Source: https://baoquangtri.vn/xa-hoi/202605/de-tre-co-mot-mua-he-dung-nghia-9e823b5/