Are You Impacting Your Child’s Education?

This is a collaborative post 

Are you impacting your child’s education? This can be in either a positive or a negative way, but the important thing is that you realize you are doing it. If you’re impacting it in a negative way, then you need to take a step back and see if there is anything that you can do to change this as soon as possible. Your children deserve the best possible education, and some of that is going to come from home. If you are interested in learning about some of the things that you can do to be a positive influence in your child’s education, keep reading down below.

Be Supportive

The first thing that we are going to look at is the fact that you should remain supportive of your child or children at all times. Every child is different when it comes to academics, and you need to be careful with how you treat them. There is no such thing as a stupid child, and we don’t want you to ever make your child feel as though they are. There are different ability levels, but you will usually find that what they lack in one subject, they more than make up for in another. 

You need to be the supportive parent that will sit with them, and tell them that all they can do is their best, because it’s true. Not a single one of us is going to be able to do anything other than our best, and we can’t expect kids to somehow manage it. If they are trying, and if they are giving it everything that they have got, then you should be giving them your full support, no matter what they are doing.

Help Where You Can

It’s also important that you are involved enough to help where you can. This might mean that you sit down with them a couple of times per week to help them with their homework. Or, it might be that you aid them when it comes to certain projects that you would be good at. We’re not saying to do it for them, but you can always help if it’s a possibility. We’re not telling you to be good at everything here either, as it’s not going to happen. But, what we are saying is that you need to make the effort to help if they need it.

Sometimes you might find yourself looking up the answers to certain things on Google, but that’s okay. It’s okay to check, and it’s okay to give them answers from Google, as long as you’re not looking at Wikipedia because teachers hate that!

Work With The Kids

If you’re working from home, or even if you are just doing some work while you are at home, you can sit at the kitchen table and work with the kids. You’re not doing the same thing, and you’re not getting involved in what they’re doing, you’re simply just working together. Sometimes, all it takes is to see a good, strong work ethic in parents for kids to understand that this is a good thing. Of course, this doesn’t mean that you should go too far in the opposite direction and become a workaholic who doesn’t have time for anyone or anything else.

It might be the case that you are worried about disturbing them, and if this is true then ask them if they mind the company. Some kids might not want you there, where it will help others to focus on what they are doing rather than the many distractions around them.

Encourage Breaks

You cannot force your children to work all the time. You cannot have them working on school work all day while they are at school, and then force them to spend all evening doing the same thing. We know that some parents think that this is helpful and that they are doing their part as a parent, but all you’re going to do is create someone who sets unreasonably high standards for themselves. Do you know what happens to kids who do this and then can’t achieve? They give up, or they become mentally ill.

You need to be encouraging them to take regular breaks, allowing their mind to calm down and take in the information that it was given. Brain breaks for kids are essential to the learning process, but they’re also to keep them feeling happy. Nobody wants to be working ALL day, especially not young people.

Are They Enjoying It?

Another thing that you need to be taking a look at is whether or not they are enjoying their education. If they’re not, you need to find out why and see if you can help to fix it. There are some kids out there that simply don’t like to learn, and there are very limited things that you can do to help this, but there are some things that you can do if you’re willing to try. For example, you can try to find a way to make it more fun for them to learn, or you can try explaining it to them in a different way.

A lot of the time, you will find that if the child is not enjoying learning, and we mean any learning in any subject, then there is an external factor causing this. Some parents talk about how boring and pointless school is when kids are around which is definitely enough to stop them being interested. It’s things like this that need to be avoided so that your child can enjoy going to school and getting their education.

Are You Involved Enough?

An absent parent is worse than one who shows up but gets it a little wrong. Something that you need to ask yourself is whether or not you are involved enough in your child’s schooling? Most schools do lots of things to encourage parent participation such as asking for volunteers for things, hosting bake sales and so on. In order to be as involved as possible, you need to be taking on this role where you can.

But, that is a lower level compared to being actively involved in their education. For example, when report cards come out, are you the kind of parent that actually looks through them to see how your child has been doing and then discusses with them? Or, are you the parent that gives it a quick glance, tells them to do better and that’s the end of that? If the latter is true, then you need to understand that this is not being involved in their education. You might be busy, but nothing should make you too busy to take an interest in the education of your child.

If It’s Important To Them

If something is important to them, whether it’s a subject or an extracurricular activity, you need to be paying attention when they speak about it. It doesn’t matter if you find it interesting or if it’s the last thing that you want to hear about, if it’s important to them then it should become important to you. As well as this, you should be in attendance to every event that they ask you to if you can. Of course, we know that sometimes things come up that are unavoidable, but you should make your best effort.

This could be things like sports, or it could be academic competitions. Just understand that you need to take an interest in things that are important to your child, no matter what it is.

Make Time Each Day

The final thing that we are going to say is that you should make time each day to talk about things with your child. You can bring up education here, see how they are doing, see if they want to talk about where they are struggling and so on. Some days they might not have anything to say, and other days you’re not going to be able to get them to stop talking. If you make this time, you are going to be a positive influence on the life of your child in all aspects, not just education. Time is the most precious thing that you can give your child or children, so make sure that you’re giving yours wherever you can because one day, they’re going to realize this too.

We hope that you have found this article helpful, and now see some of the things that you could be doing to impact your child’s education. Whether you realize it or not, everything that you do where your children are concerned is going to impact them in some way or another, so you need to try and make sure that it’s all for the better, not the worse. We’re not perfect as parents though, and we don’t need to be. Do your best to be a positive influence on your child’s education, and everything is going to be fine. We wish you the very best of luck.