How Slowing Down Can Deepen Learning in Children

I am in my early thirties and only now am I learning how to slow down and be present in the moment, without rushing to the next activity or task on a never-ending to-do list.

Creating and dedicating time to think deeply, connect the dots, reflect and bring ideas together feels like such a rejuvenating experience.

So why don’t we normally do this?

Our hustle-and-bustle culture does not promote slowing down. Instead, it has become a badge of honour to be extremely busy and have a fully packed calendar of work and activities, leaving us with hardly any free time for our brains simply to think.

And guess what? We model this behaviour to our children.

They quietly observe us and may begin to associate constant busyness with success. Similarly, their calendars are full. They run from lesson to lesson and from one activity to another, while any spare time left is dedicated to homework.

But ask yourself this question: when does your child actually have time to think deeply, apply their knowledge and reflect on how it all fits together?

The likely answer is that they don’t.

Is constant busyness leading to shallow learning?

This got me thinking about how constant busyness may be affecting the depth of our children’s learning and what might be missing.

What I have increasingly observed through my academic coaching work is a culture in which some students want to receive the bare minimum of academic information required to achieve the highest grades.

It usually goes something like this: “Teach me everything I need to know to get my A*.”

One might argue that this is productive and effective. Students are handed exactly what they need to learn and can squeeze as many tasks as possible into the allocated time.

But I wonder, what has happened to genuine curiosity about academic subjects? What has happened to wanting to explore new material, analyse different theories and truly understand how it all links together?

Instead of being spoon-fed information by educators, students should be asking themselves what is important to learn, how different ideas are connected and how their knowledge applies to the wider subject.

We have almost normalised and reinforced this culture of rushing through academic tasks, calling it “being productive”. In reality, it has become about constantly creating shortcuts, which can ultimately result in shallow learning.

Is this what education is about?

Why reflection is important for deeper learning

So what can we do as parents and educators to promote deeper learning in our children?

I strongly believe that creating breaks between tasks and dedicating time after academic work to reflect on the material learned or the questions answered can support a better understanding of a subject.

Reflecting on your own work and mistakes is a skill in itself. I think it is essential to teach this skill to our children as early as possible because it can help them consolidate their learning and develop a deeper understanding of their subjects.

Research into self-explanation supports this idea. Self-explanation involves students explaining ideas, processes or answers to themselves rather than simply receiving information. Research suggests that this process can help learners connect new information with their existing knowledge and develop a deeper understanding of what they are learning (Chi et al., 1994).

More recent research has found that structured self-explanation prompts can help students produce better explanations and correct more of their mistakes. Importantly, making a mistake does not automatically result in learning. Learning is more likely to happen when students analyse what went wrong, understand why it went wrong and consider what they could do differently next time (Zhang et al., 2024).

In other words, it is not simply the additional time that matters, but how students use that time. Slowing down creates the space for deeper learning, but students still need to use that space to explain, connect, analyse and correct.

What I learned about deeper learning

I remember when I was studying at Cambridge and there was so much theory to learn. Much of it was incredibly complex.

True learning happened for me when I took the time to analyse the material and understand how it all fitted together, how it applied and what parallels I could find between different ideas.

This ultimately led me to create the teaching methods that I now share with my students as an educator and academic coach. It dawned on me that unless we take time to analyse and reflect on our learning, we are unlikely to achieve genuine depth in our academic work.

This is why, if we want our children to learn properly, we need to help them understand that academic work takes effort, analysis and reflection. We need to normalise the idea that it is acceptable for some tasks to take a little longer if that means achieving a greater understanding of a particular topic.

Creating time for reflection between academic tasks

A good practice to introduce would be to make sure that your child has a short break, whenever possible, to reflect between academic tasks.

They might ask themselves:

• What was this lesson about?

• What was the purpose of this homework?

• Why is this knowledge relevant?

• Is there something I could do better next time?

• Can I apply this knowledge to a different subject?

Like any activity, learning needs space for reflection.

When you finish a book, you don’t necessarily jump straight into the next one. You take time to understand the key themes and think about what you learned from them.

When you play a sports match, you don’t immediately jump into the next one. Again, you take time to reflect on how it went and how you could improve next time.

Academic work should be no different.

Summer is a great time to introduce this skill and model of work because there is naturally more free time and fewer rigid schedules.

1. Change the mindset to “deeper learning takes time”

Rather than rushing through an academic task, explain to your child that proper learning often requires more time and mental effort than simply completing a task.

The more they adopt this mindset, the more willing they may become to spend time analysing their work rather than simply rushing to finish it.

The question changes from “How quickly can I complete this task?” to “How well do I understand this?”

2. Dedicate reflection time after each study block

Encourage your child to spend a short amount of time reflecting after each study block.

For example, after spending an hour creating revision notes, they could spend five or ten minutes reflecting on how this information might apply to an examination question or a real-life example. They might also consider how it connects to another topic they have studied.

When practising examination questions, it is important to go through the answers and mistakes afterwards. Students should ask themselves why they made each mistake, what they misunderstood and what they could do differently next time.

The aim is not simply to discover the correct answer. It is to understand the thinking that produced the incorrect one.

3. Model reflective behaviour

Remember, children tend to copy and model our behaviour. If you take time to reflect after completing work, reading a book or even watching a film, your children will observe this.

For example, when watching a film together as a family, you could open a discussion by asking:

• What did you think about the film?

• What stayed with you?

• What did it make you think about?

These do not need to become formal learning activities. They simply show children that we do not always have to rush immediately to the next thing. We can pause, think and reflect on what an experience has taught us.

Sometimes children simply need time to think. Slowing down may not always look productive. However, this does not mean that nothing is happening.

Some of the most important learning may happen when children connect different ideas, recognise something they do not yet understand or reconsider a mistake they have made.

If we fill every available moment with another task, lesson or activity, we may be removing the very space in which deeper learning happens.

Perhaps our children do not always need another task.

Perhaps, sometimes, they simply need time to think.

If your child is struggling to learn effectively, stay organised or achieve the results they are capable of, get in touch and book a free 30-minute consultation to discuss how I could support them through academic coaching.