How to correct a child's bad habits?

So this week we got a new junior to our club.  He is 10 years old, and had being playing chess (at home) for two years with his dad. Unfortuately his well meaning dad has taught him a lot of bad chess habits.

Part of the reason is because he has played games almost exclusively.

Anyway what we are looking to do is to get him into NOT playing games at the club, but to focus on some coaching (which would certainly start with some technical endgames.)

My question is how do you correct a child's bad chess habits WITHOUT wanting them to make them feel unwelcome.

What habits are they? Without knowing it's hard to give advice.

Two common habits that I come across are leaving pieces hanging, and not seeing the plan/tactics of the opponent. I have these problems sometimes.

The best advice I can give at the moment is to teach the child to:

• Visualise the whole board. Tell them to look at not just their pieces, but look at their opponent's pieces as well. 
• Play at a pace they are comfortable with to give them time to think things through.

In the king + queen vs lone king technical endgame checkmate, they kept moving the queen to check the lone king, which led to nothing as obviously the king then just moves out of check. 

Instead I would like something such as this: 

Just show him it. I bet he will be happy to learn how to play better.

You have just demonstrated that, for this endgame, it's not about attacking the opposing king directly, but about not letting it get away.

I don't think that it would be difficult to make the child understand this without making them feel unwelcome. If he gets put off with something simple like this, he obviously doesn't want to put the effort in.

I doubt this will happen though, seeing that he has been playing regular games for two years already. This means that he probably has an idea of more complicated concepts (like openings) already.

He just keep checking, this is no bad habit. Look like he no learn checkmate yet.

2 years spent playing chess with his dad, is not the same as spending time at an OTB chess club for 2 years.  Moving the same piece twice (or 3 or 4 times in the opening,) as well as moving a and h pawns to start, were also things that he did. 

Have him practice the mating patterns.  Print them out like flash cards and print out a game or two that exemplify the patterns.  Drill the basics, give a puzzle book and that should be a good start.  Odd as it sounds but Averbakh's Tactics for the Advanced Player is a good place to look.

I have the feeling you shouldn't press young children that much into doing annalytical work, or anything. I mean, chess is first and foremost a game and 10 is still very young.

For your specific problem with the Q+K checkmate, we used a game at my club : we show the children how to execute the chekmate, and then, we challenge them to do it with a clock running (5') against one of the instructors, all chess rules apply (touch-move, etc.). If they manage it, they get a small diploma. If they can't do it, we explain to them how they could have done it better and they can try again at the next club session.

Each diploma is a 'level' - checkmate with K+Q vs. K is 'level 2'. Kids like this, because there's some competition between them, and I guess it sounds a bit like their video games too

I agree. I just thought that he might have had a certain level of understanding to build upon.

Moving the same piece twice (or 3 or 4 times in the opening,) as well as moving a and h pawns to start, were also things that he did. 

I think that he needs to be taught the basic chess principles first, above all else.

I'll discuss this topic with you further when we next meet at our club!

Simple: make them feel welcome first.

By that I mean don't start pressing him about his play immediately. Give him a few months to get to know everyone at the club and to feel like he's being welcomed there. Let him play games and have fun.

Then when he starts to have questions about things is the point when you can start coaching him and gently trying to correct his mistakes.

 I agree. Take it easy. As with any other sport or hobby (writing, baseball, circus skills, chess, whatever), this kid is at a critical point where he could easily "lose interest" or become intimidated because he's made to feel unwelcome. Doesn't anybody remember losing interest in a certain activity as a kid, not necessarily because it was too hard, but because somebody else seemingly rubbed your own lack of skill in your face? If done wrong, such a "lesson" can backfire real fast.

Let kids be kids. Make the kid feel welcome, as Dirty_Sandbagger says. Let him feel his way around. If he's interested in playing chess at any level competitively, he will probably come to you once he realises he loses a lot/blunders/eats dirt a few times. 10 is a little young to be sucking the fun out of anything. If he wants to study, watch chess lectures, work his way through a tactics book, let it be something he chooses to do. So he probably doesn't know what tactics problems are. But he will know how to ask for help if he needs it. Then you can start introducing pedagogical methods. If you shove a pile of work (figuratively or not) in his face, he will not have that opportunity to evaluate his own skill level. He will not do anything for himself. 

I really love that "winning is everything!1!!11" mindset. Funny thing is, the people that don't have that mindset when it comes to a certain pursuit often get pushed to the wayside. Let the kid have some fun. He'll work it out. Forget that you may have a potential Fisher on your hands and remember it's just a little kid who should be discovering -- on his own -- a game he can enjoy for life.

Well a little bit of a good news update we have successfully showed him how to do the Queen + King vs long king checkmate, and he has enjoyed himself whilst learning how to do it. 

And yes he still has played games, intergrated amongst the technical stuff, as he is there between an hour and an hour and a half.