How to spark joy in learning, the Marie Kondo way

Marie Kondo is now a household name, with many around the world taking to her pearls of wisdom on decluttering. But what’s new about keeping things neat and tidy, you say.

Unlike most others which extol the virtues of decluttering, the KonMari movement uses game-changing processes of ritualisation and self-actualisation to help create a lived experience for hoarders. Certainly, the force is strong for this one.

In fact, it is so strong that I feel compelled to appropriate her quirky ways and apply them in the context of parenting my two children aged four and seven.

THREE FORCES TO RECKON WITH

1. KonMari’s trademark “Does it spark joy?” helps to frame a perspective nicely

According to Marie, if an item you hold in your hand no longer gives you the “zing” feeling, you are better off letting it go than holding onto it.

Similarly, studying simply does not happen. No one in the right frame of mind would sit for hours on end to memorise or try to digest boring stuff. Our minds are naturally wired to ask questions and engineered to seek answers.

To promote the joy of learning, I tried to make it more natural and fun for my children.

For instance, I strung their spelling lists into silly sentences and sync the lyrics to the tune of a nursery rhyme. That immediately enriched their experience. My kids couldn’t get enough of the shindig and I am happy to play the role of court jester here.

On a deeper level, Marie’s mantra of keeping what sparks joy only forces us to reflect on what truly matters to the self.

By adding "what you would like to bring into the future with you", Marie forces us to be both introspective and contemplative at the same time.

Now, wouldn’t it be awesome if we could just borrow this wisdom to help our children reflect on their experiences and failures, and guide them in making decisions for their futures?

2. Identifying a vision and purpose (And counting one’s blessings)

Marie does this absurd thing of introducing herself to the hoarders’ house and asking them for permission to talk to it. By using anthropomorphism to personify the property, she’s appealing to the owners’ sense of empathy, helping them to find their sense of purpose.

I personally find this use of anthropomorphism to literally talk to the house a tad too extreme to ask of my kids, but this sparked another idea.

I encouraged them to read aloud. According to research by the University of Waterloo in Ontario published in the journal Memory, the act of reading text out loud is a more effective way to remembering versus reading it silently or just hearing it simply because the sense of self-involvement helps to retain information better.

After a while, my kids began to improvise and taught their stuffed toys how to read — which was really cool.

When it comes to discarding things, Marie also asks the hoarders to first thank them. By personifying the unwanted item, she is helping them to show gratitude and seek closure.

To this effect, I started asking my kids over dinner about the one thing that made them smile and thanked them for simply being who they are on a regular basis.

Suffice it to say, the ritual indirectly made me feel very grateful for having them in my life — you could literally see KonMarie’s internalisation spell in action and it is nothing short of spellbinding.

3. Taking ownership

Instead of merely instructing and dictating, Marie gives hoarders attainable, bite-size, short-term goals, which make decluttering a whole roomful of unwanted things less daunting.

The same motto can be applied to studying. Instead of telling a child that he has to learn fractions by the mid-term, it might be more productive to work with him to set weekly, specific goals to first learn his halves in the first week, followed by quarters in the second, for instance.

Ideally, your kid should have a say in determining what, how much he wants to achieve and by when — so that he reconciles with the fact that it is something he agrees with and want to do.

In the same vein, Marie does not actually do the decluttering. She supervises, gives advice, demonstrates where required, corrects where appropriate and leaves the hoarders to think about what to do and decide how they want go about doing it.

She also promises to check in on them at a stipulated date (ie, giving a deadline), so they have a timeline to work towards.

Just like helping a child with homework, a helicopter parent could take a leaf from this approach by stepping back, letting him take ownership and providing guidance (checkpoints) where needed.

We might just be surprised by a very different outcome.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Linda Lee, a Singaporean mother of two, works in marketing.