The Championship Game No One Talks About. Teaching vs. Training. Which One Wins?
Two competitors. One goal. Raising a child who grows into who God designed them to be.
In one corner: Teaching. Quick. Efficient. Full of good information. Teaching can explain the rules, name the plays, and lay out the whole game plan.
In the other corner: Training. Slower. Repetitive. Sometimes exhausting. But Training? Training shows up every single day.
Proverbs 22:6 doesn’t say teach a child. It says train a child, and that word changes everything.
Walk into The Perch and the first thing you’ll notice is the music. Faith-filled, upbeat, alive. It’s not background noise. It’s intentional. Because what fills a room fills a heart. What fills a heart shapes a mind. We want joy in the air before the first move is made.
Think about it this way. When you train a baby to eat Cheerios, you don’t explain the concept of finger food. You put the Cheerio to your own mouth first. You model it, again, and again. Twenty times, sometimes fifty times, and then one day, their little fingers grasp that Cheerio and it clicks.
Potty training is the same. You don’t hand a toddler a book. You show them. You take their hand, walk them over to the potty, sit or stand, and instruct them to do their business. Again and again. I even threw Cheerios in the toilet so my son could aim for them. Whatever it takes! It can take 5 times. It can take 50 times. You don’t give up because they didn’t get it the first ten times. You push through on your training until their little brain clicks. And IT WILL CLICK. Every single time. Because every little brain grows differently, and that is something worth celebrating!
That’s training. That’s the win!
Children learn by watching you and copying what you do. Every move you make is a play they’re studying. When your child sees a phone in your hand, they notice. They want to mirror it. The same is true for how you move, how you speak, how you treat people, and whether you show up fully present when it counts.
Training takes longer than teaching. Some days it feels like the scoreboard isn’t moving.
But training is what shapes a child’s character for the long run. Not a lecture. Not a one-time talk.
A thousand small repetitions together. That’s how little champions are made.
God didn’t design your child to absorb information and change. He designed them to be trained. Through mirroring, modeling, through practice, repeated and repeated over time, until the right thing becomes the natural.
That design isn’t a problem to fix. It’s the actual game plan.
At The Perch, every session is training.
In athletic play, children learn to mirror their grown-ups, they learn to try, to fall, to get back up, and to cheer for someone else. That’s character being built, one rep at a time. In creative art, they learn to take risks, let go of perfection, and trust what’s inside them. In the Imagine branch, they hear stories rooted in biblical truth and wrestle with real questions. That’s critical thinking getting its workout.
It all happens together, with you. Phones down and fully present.
Move. Imagine. Create. Practiced together, week after week.
So which one wins? Teaching or Training?
Training wins. Every time!
Because the most powerful coaching your child will ever receive is from you. From birth to 18.
Get in the game!
With so much love and a giant high five,
Coach Michelle
Founder, The Perch Academy
If you're a Baton Rouge family, a St. George family, or a Prairieville family searching for something different, you found it. Looking for kids activities that actually bring your family closer? At The Perch, grown-ups don't drop off and wait. They're part of every class. Our faith-filled, screen-free family enrichment studio include toddler classes, mommy and me sessions, parent and child classes, and classes for pre-teens and teens, all built around athletic play and creative arts. We serve St. George, Prairieville, and Greater Baton Rouge families who are ready to put the phones down and show up fully present. Together.
