How To Help Your Child Succeed in School: A Parent Guide
Every parent is eager to raise an independent learner and, at the same time, to help their child succeed in school. For most parents, there’s a bit of a balancing act that goes into encouraging children to solve their own problems while also giving them the support they need.
The balancing begins as early as preschool. When a child is learning to write his or her name, you may draw dots on a piece of paper for them to trace, then fewer dots, progressing gradually to writing one letter on their own, then all of them. You are giving them guidance, but you can’t hold the pencil for them, or they will never be able to write it themselves.
That’s the challenge you’ll face as your children progress through their school years, and some parents find it more difficult to strike that balance as their children get older as the tasks and challenges get bigger.
Developing Good Learning Habits: Even before children start kindergarten, parents can help them succeed in school by creating a schedule conducive to learning and instilling good learning habits in their children. Children thrive when kept on a schedule, and that includes regular bedtimes, wakeup times and mealtimes. For school-age children, having a set time to do homework, chores and any after-school activities, such as Kumon, sports or piano practice, is essential to helping kids learn to fit everything into the day.
Good sleep habits can help a child stay healthy and wake up rested and ready to learn every day. An evening routine that includes a bath or shower before reading a bedtime story works for many families. A bath and book becomes a signal to kids that they need to slow down and prepare for bed. If children are hungry, a light snack before bedtime is fine.
How To Encourage Reading: There is very little you can do to support your child’s learning more than help them become strong readers. In kindergarten and throughout most of elementary school, children are very focused on learning to read. After they have become proficient readers, however, their attention turns to reading to learn other subjects. How is a student going to learn about history or science if they can’t read a textbook or article?
A good start toward raising a reader is to ingrain reading in their daily schedule. That starts long before children can read themselves with bedtime stories and reading books for fun every day. It also helps when children see their parents or older siblings reading for enjoyment, so they think of reading as something to be done for pleasure rather than a chore.
With young children, reading aloud together not only helps them learn that reading is fun but also to become more fluent readers. Listening to their parents read aloud teaches children to read at a proper pace accurately and expressively. It also allows the parent to listen and ask questions to help them improve reading comprehension.
As children grow and become more comfortable reading silently, you can continue to prompt them with questions to ensure they understand what they are reading. Ask, “What was the story about? How did it end? What do you think will happen next?”
Supporting your child’s education is one of the most important jobs a parent will undertake. You can help your child develop healthy routines and good study habits, teach them to manage their teachers’ expectations and support them as they navigate challenging situations at school.
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