All parents worry about giving their children a good education and helping them learn – but what is learning?

Learning is not actually an intellectual experience, but an emotional experience. And learning educationally related things like, English, math(s) and science are no different; in the early stages they are all emotional experiences.

The system which governs all our emotional responses (including our response to learning) is the Limbic System. This system is working from the day we are born. It’s our primary learning system for many, many years, well into adulthood. It actually never stops, but later it becomes intermingled with logic, rationale, personality and all kinds of psychological and biological influences.

The Limbic System is a feeling system so it’s no surprise that it’s very strong in early childhood and school years.

Now, according to respected psychologists like Carl Jung, our primary feelings and foundations for likes and dislikes can form as early as seven to eight years old. And these likes and dislikes will have been formed purely through the emotional experiences we’ve received and encountered. This is also true of our likes or dislikes of educational subjects. They can be traced to our early emotional experiences of them.

So in simple terms, according to how to the limbic system works;

•If we experience something we enjoy – get pleasure out of it in some way – we like it – and then, we’re likely to keep liking it.

•If we experience something we don’t enjoy - we don’t get pleasure from it - it’s actually emotionally painful – we don’t enjoy it – we won’t want to do it again and even go out of our way to avoid it.

Yes, it’s a simple description, but in childhood it really is that simple when it comes to the limbic system and emotional likes and dislikes. And it’s this simplicity of such a powerful emotional system which is the key to helping our children learn well educationally.

In a learning context, anything which has the feelings of fun, enjoyment and all around pleasure attached to it makes a very strong impression on our emotional system – and anything which has within it the feelings of disapproval, stupidity, negativity and all around pain and discomfort, also makes a strong impression our emotional system! From here it’s quite easy to predict what the emotional outcomes of the two sides of a learning experience are likely to be.

Helping children have a good emotional experience is the best way to cultivate a love of any educational subject.

How can this be done?

There are quite a few ways. The easiest one is to be enthusiastic yourself as an adult. The limbic system is like a huge emotional sponge and enthusiasm and fun are picked up quickly by children.

Research shows that the single key thing which allows pleasure to develop in an independent way towards any learning experience is creativity. Creativity naturally has within it, fun, enjoyment and pleasure.

Games are a good way to stimulate creativity; especially ones which can be played together – ones where children can express and explore their ideas confidently. Word games for language, using dominoes for math(s), that sort of thing.

But more recently a very powerful form of creative learning has been extensively studied and found to have very positive results. This is learning through stories. Psychologists have found that stories are very emotionally engaging experiences and that the learning takes place at a very individual and emotional level. Even with a story that’s being read out-loud, the young listener is able to use their own imagination to creatively explore the story. And a story which is self-read often takes this creative experience even deeper.

If you think about it, it’s been around since our societies needed and wanted to pass on information; we used stories, and still do. Who doesn’t remember a funny story or an emotionally uplifting film? But it’s only recently psychologists and teachers are beginning to see the useful link between the power of stories and learning.

As parents we can provide our children with great creative experiences. If we can get the limbic system to experience enjoyment, fun and pleasure form learning, then according to psychologists, neuroscientists and my own experiences, our children will have a positive educational foundation which will stay with them all their lives.