For School Success, Don't Coddle Your Kids

Parents want their children to succeed in school. However, sometimes their best intentions are misguided. Attempts to provide children with a wonderful life can, in fact, increase the stress of the entire family.

One of parents’ most common mistakes is to want to make everything easy for their children. It’s painful for parents to see their children struggle. If children never do anything difficult, however, they never learn that they can successfully meet a challenge.

Here are some things parents can do to promote their children’s success in school:

• Make school attendance a family priority. Try to schedule doctors’ appointments and family vacations when school is not in session. Have your child arrive at school in time to organize for the day.

• Show your child that you consider school to be important. Attend parent meetings and conferences. Talk with your child about school. Don’t overemphasize grades.

• Read to and with your child. Let your child also see you reading alone.

• Either rule out or treat physical difficulties, such as vision problems, hearing problems, or attention deficit, that may impede learning.

• Don’t overschedule your child. Be sure at least three hours between school and bedtime are free of extracurricular activities.

• Encourage healthy sleep patterns. Because of the changes their bodies are undergoing, adolescents actually require more sleep than younger children, perhaps nine hours per night.

• Provide your child with nutritious foods (limited in sugar, fats, caffeine, and additives). Be sure your child starts the day with breakfast.

• Make dinner a family activity, complete with conversation on a wide range of topics.

• Provide a place, with minimal distractions, for your child to study. Be sure the study area is well lit, well ventilated, and equipped with all the supplies your child is likely to need: pencils and pens, dictionary, ruler, stapler, etc.

• Establish a definite time each day for homework, reading, or other academic activities.

• Don’t allow TV or video games in the morning before school. Limit total time for these activities to 10 hours per week.

• Don’t give your child everything he or she wants. Doing so will teach the child that desires can be satisfied without work.

• Be sure your child has household chores to complete without reminders.

• Help your child develop the habit of writing all assignments in an assignment notebook. It works best if assignments are written on the date they are due.

• Help your child learn to organize time and materials. Begin to wean your child from this help as soon as he or she is able to assume partial responsibility.

• On nights before a test, have your child review material just before bedtime and then go to sleep without reading or listening to music. This will aid retention of material studied.

• Make homework your child’s responsibility. This lets your child know that you recognize him or her as a capable person.

• Be sure your child gathers together each evening all the materials that he or she will take to school the next morning.

• Allow your child to experience the natural consequences of his or her actions. For example, don’t retrieve things the child forgot.

• Have realistic expectations for your child. If his or her abilities are slightly above average, do not expect the child to be at the top of the class.

• Recognize that your child’s teachers are striving for the academic, social, and emotional development of many children besides yours. Seating your child next to a best friend, for example, may not be in the best interest of the class -- or even of your own child.

• Recognize that there will be times when your child will be frustrated by a difficult task. Resist the temptation to solve the problem yourself. Your child will learn and grow from this experience and will emerge with confidence to face the next challenge.

A successful school year depends on the cooperative efforts of parents and teachers -- and, of course, on the students themselves. Each member of the team must fulfill his or her own responsibilities -- and allow the other members to fulfill theirs.

A parent and former teacher, Fran Hamilton is the author of Hands-On English, now in its second edition. Hands-On English gives quick access to English fundamentals and makes grammar visual by using icons to represent parts of speech. The book is for anyone 9 years or older, including adults. Fran also publishes companion products to Hands-On English and free e-mail newsletters: LinguaPhile, published monthly, is for people who teach and/or enjoy English; Acu-Write, published weekly, addresses common errors in English. Both are available at http://www.GrammarAndMore.com.

7 Ways to Survive the Start of the School Year

It happens every year. Just when you are settled in to the lazy days of summer, you are startled to find Back to School catalogs in your mailbox and bikinis going on sale in favor of turtlenecks. Your local store has devoted an entire aisle to pencils, notebooks, and lunch bags. Soon there will be no more long days at the beach, late nights watching movies with popcorn, or mornings free of alarm clock jitters. It’s enough to make you dread September, but it doesn’t need to be that way. With a slight change in attitude and a plan in place, September can be one of the best months of the year.

1. Practice
Don’t wait until Labor Day to get ready for the changeover to the school year. Begin pulling back bedtime during the last two weeks of August—around 8:30 to 9:00 PM for elementary school kids.

2. Lower Your Expectations
Major transitions equal disruption. Routines change and priorities shift. Allow yourself extra leeway when it comes to chores and tasks. Avoid scheduling appointments during the month surrounding the start of the school year.

3. Carve Out Extra Time
Clear the decks of added responsibilities so that you can get through the transition with less stress. Don’t sign up for your usual extra-curricular activities. Keep your family commitments to a minimum.

4. Motivate Your Kids
Preparing for school isn’t a job only for parents. The students themselves have things they must do to get ready. Make all the back to school activities, like shopping for school clothes, a fun family event. Devote the first week of school to getting settled and having fun as a family. Plan pizza nights and ice cream socials. Schedule extra game nights and buy a new puzzle.

5. Ask for Help
Reduce your stress during this transition. Enlist help to complete all the back to school tasks. Hire a babysitter to watch your younger children while you take your older children to buy school clothes. Ask grandparents to supervise school supplies purchases.

6. Set the Tone
Set a positive tone for the new school year. If you approach September with the kind of dread usually associated with prison terms, you can be sure your kids aren’t going to be too happy about going to school. On the other hand, if you show interest and excitement in what lies ahead, then your child will be eager to get started.

7. Focus
The beginning of a new school year is an important time for a child. The whole family should be interested and involved in the process. Express interest about the upcoming year, classes, and school friends. Share your school memories. Celebrate this new beginning!

The beginning of a new school year can be an exciting time for a family. It’s a fresh start with new teachers and classmates, and perhaps even a new school. Planning for the best possible beginning to the year shows your child how much you care. The more effort you put into it, the more you and your child will reap the rewards.

End Homework Battles

Ask parents what their biggest school year challenge is, and you’ll likely hear that it is the difficulty they face in getting their kids to do homework. With so many other attractive ways for kids to spend their time, getting them to buckle down and complete that extra bit of schoolwork can be like pulling teeth. As with any chore, though, there are strategies you can use to get it done and make it more fun.

1. Make Time for Homework
Fitness gurus have known this for years: you are more likely to stick to an exercise regimen if you do it at the same time everyday and make it an inviolable part of your schedule. The same goes for homework. Don’t leave it up in the air as to when homework will be completed. This only ensures that it won’t get completed until you have an extended argument with your child about it—usually one hour after bedtime. Instead, sit down with your child and review your family schedule for the upcoming semester. Decide where homework will fit in your daily schedule and make it non-negotiable. It is always helpful to anchor homework time to some other regular activity. Good choices are: directly after school or right before or after dinner. (Scheduling homework in the hour before bedtime is usually not a good practice since your child may be too sleepy to do a good job.)

It is also important to dedicate a set amount of time for homework. This will discourage students from rushing through homework so that they can watch the latest Disney video. What is a reasonable amount of time to spend on homework? That varies with age. Check with your child’s teacher. It is generally accepted, though, that First and Second graders should spend about a half hour on homework each night while Third and Fourth graders might need to spend as much as an hour per night.

2. Don’t Accept No for an Answer
A common refrain from students is “I finished my homework in school” or “The teacher didn’t assign us any homework today.” It should not matter that they don’t have a specific assignment. Homework is an extension of the learning that occurred that day in school, and what they learned that day can be extended in any number of ways. Students can read silently during their allotted homework time, they can look up information in an encyclopedia to enhance what they are learning in Science or Social Studies, or they can look at flashcards, practice math facts, and test their spelling. This is how to teach your child to be a self-directed learner. You will be giving them a gift to get them in the habit of doing this now. When they are in high school, having this extra study habit will bring them academic success.

3. Establish a Partnership with Teachers
Early in the school year make an effort to get to know your child’s teacher. Make an appointment to talk with the teacher in the first few weeks of school, so that you can express your desire to be a good partner in your child’s education. She will appreciate it, and you will be one step closer to a smooth school year. Find out what her homework policy is so that you know what to expect. It is also helpful to know how high her standards are, so that you can ensure that your child’s homework is acceptable.

4. Provide the Right Environment
Most people’s advice on homework is to set up a desk in your child’s room and make sure that they have a quiet and distraction-free work environment. This sounds very reasonable, but few people seem to be able to follow this advice. I know many students who instead do their homework on the living room floor, at the kitchen counter, or at the dining room table. It seems that some people work best when they aren’t isolated from household activity. If that is the case with your child, then provide a small traveling office for him so that he has all of the necessary items at hand and won’t waste time running around the house looking for a sharp pencil. With all the supplies nearby, and distractions limited to the general background noise of family living, your student ought to be able to concentrate on homework.

5. Set a Good Example
“Do as I say not as I do” is no longer considered appropriate parental advice. In order to instill the proper values in our children, we must model them. If we expect our children to be conscientious, hard-working students, then that is what they must see in us. Make an effort to show your child your work ethic by reading trade magazines and business books while they do their homework. Take out a pencil and write notes as you read. Investigate ideas fully. If you read something interesting in the newspaper, look up information about it on the Internet. Always be eager to learn something new. Sign up for an adult education class, teach yourself to knit, or write that novel you’ve always dreamed of. The more that you can show your child that learning is a lifelong adventure that requires their involvement, the more likely it is that homework will cease being a chore and start being an integral part of a life well-lived.

If you take the time to set up these parameters around homework, you’ll find that you waste less energy arguing over homework and making up for lost assignments. You’ll have more time and energy for other pursuits, and so will your child. What’s more, you’ll discover that the benefits of hassle free homework add up to more than just scheduling efficiency, they equal a better education.

10 Steps to School Year Success

One of the most important aspects of parenting, is ensuring that your child gets a good education. School is a place where your child not only learns skills such as reading and writing; it is also where your child will learn about friendship, responsibility, and fairness. In short, school is a test run for the ‘real world’, and your child needs your help to navigate this complicated arena. When your child was a baby, you set your life around nap times and diaper changes,

1. Establish Consistent Routines
Take the ‘year at a glance’ approach. If you have a child starting first grade and one in fourth, one a musician and the other an athlete, then you must sketch out how you will achieve a balance between school, their activities, your work, and your activities. It is best to look at all of these areas at once, so that you can spot the trouble areas. Once you have the big picture, it is time to ask how you can set up a regular routine to ensure that everyone’s needs are met, including yours.

Early in the school year, decide which activities will fit, and which will have to be postponed. One of the biggest areas of concern for modern families is activity overload. Avoid it! Now that you know what activities you will be engaged in, decide where homework fits and set a regular time for it. Whether there are assignments or not, this should be the time of day that your child always does a little extra school work. When will you have dinner? If possible, make it at the same time everyday and expect all family members to attend. Don’t eat on the run! If you have to eat in the car in order to make everything fit, then you are doing too much!

2. Set Reasonable Bedtimes
Open any magazine in America and you will find a story on the cumulative sleep debt that Americans are suffering from. It causes accidents, ill health, and poor work performance. It has the same effect on young students. Without enough sleep, their learning suffers as does their behavior. Additionally, lack of sleep makes kids prone to getting sick, which means they miss school and get behind in their learning.

Avoid these problems by setting a reasonable bedtime for your children and sticking to it. According to Dr. Jodi Mindell, Ph.D., a member of the National Sleep Foundation, elementary age children need between 10-12 hours of sleep each night. She also recommends allowing an additional 10-20 minutes to that amount in order to account for the time is takes your child to fall asleep. Keeping these times in mind, your child’s bedtime should be no later than 8:30pm.

3. Learn to Say No
There are many demands placed on our time. There are after school opportunities galore: sports, music, drama, art, and more. Parents have an equal number of options for after work activities. Parents want to provide the best for their children and many believe that giving them access to numerous opportunities is the best way to enhance their learning. In fact, the best way to enhance a child’s learning is to allow them to slow down and think about what happened in class and to talk to them about it. This type of reflection can only come when parents and children have some downtime together. I advocate the motto: “Just Do Nothing”.

4. Limit TV
Now, I’ll be the first to admit that I love TV. I loved cartoons as a kid, and I love sitcoms and drama shows now. But I’m careful not to watch TV to the exclusion of all other forms of entertainment. Kids are not as good at moderating their exposure to TV. They need the help of their parents to make good choices and to limit the time spent being a passive observer. Kids learn best when they are actively involved in what they’re doing. Reading, talking, exploring, drawing, building, playing—these are all important parts of childhood. Make sure that they don’t get squeezed out by too much Scooby Doo.

5. Encourage Reading
Research has shown that one of the greatest predictors of academic success is the amount of time a student reads. When asked by the parents of my students what they should do to help their child learn, I always answer, “Get them to read.” Books not only open new worlds and ideas for children, they build their vocabulary, improve their memory, grow their imagination, and teach them valuable thinking skills. Time spent reading is an investment in your child’s future.

6. Support Your Child’s Teacher
It is an unfortunate fact of modern day society that teachers feel less support from parents, administrations, and governments than ever before. This is a shame, not only for the hard working teachers who deserve to feel respected as professionals, but for the students they teach. Students receive the best education when they are part of a committed triumvirate. For a child to truly learn in school, all three members of the team need to work together. The teacher, student, and parents need to be all working towards the same goal with commitment and help from one another. All parts of the triangle must be connected for the goal to be met. Go against the tide, give your child’s teacher the respect she deserves and the support she requires. Your child will thank you.

7. Enlist Support
It truly does take a village to raise a child. Too often these days, however, parents find themselves struggling to do it all with very little support. If you live near grandparents, aunts, or uncles, ask if they can occasionally go to the soccer game, or pick up the art materials, or buy the new notebook. Very often it is the little tasks that combine to make parents feel overwhelmed. Spreading the small tasks around to willing volunteers may give you more time to focus on the important aspects of the school year. If family members aren’t available to help, exchange help with neighbors and friends.

8. Practice what you Preach
In order to make the school year go more smoothly, it is important that your child is responsible, timely, and well-behaved. You are far more likely to have a child who behaves this way, if you model appropriate behavior for them. If you are frequently late, often forget important items, and are stressed and irritable most of the time, you are far more likely to have chronic problems with your children—especially during the school year when time is tight. Give your child the skills to succeed by working on them yourself. Nobody’s perfect, but if you show that you ask of yourself the same things you ask of them, then you are more likely to garner their cooperation.

9. Plan Ahead
If you fail to plan, then plan to fail. Harsh though that statement may be, it often happens that you’d experience more success at school if you’d take the time to plan ahead. If you know that your daughter is going to appear in a play during the month of November, and that it will require lots of rehearsals after school, don’t enroll her in tap class and swimming. When you know that time will be tight, it also makes sense to speak to your child’s teacher in order to advise him of the situation and to get his help with scheduling homework. Always keep in mind what is coming up next week and what may be required due to the seasons. Getting to school in September may not be much of an issue, but what will you do when the snow flies?

10. Keep your Eye on the Prize
Being committed to managing the school year well takes effort. Keeping your family balanced despite all of the demands on everyone’s time can be difficult. All of it can be managed better if you always stay focused on your purpose. Your purpose as a parent is to raise well-adjusted children who can enter society and forge a good life on their own. They need a good education in order to do this. How to ensure that your child receives the best education possible ought to be the first thing you think about in the morning and the thoughts you keep as you close your eyes at night.