Commentary : Parents Should Help Child Learn

Schools, parents and community have vital interests in the education of our youth. The teachers and the schools cannot do the job alone, so parents must take a greater interest in the education of their children than merely sending the child off to school. They are teachers, too, and their children look to them first. Parent involvement and student achievement go hand in hand.

Recognizing that learning is a set of skills which must be developed and practiced, here is a list of some important ways parents can help reinforce the efforts of classroom teachers:

Provide proper seating, lighting and freedom from noise and distraction for study at home.

Do not call your child away from study to run an errand or answer a question which could wait.

Encourage initiative and responsibility in studies.

Help your child develop a daily activity schedule that includes time for homework with small rest periods.

Advise your child to maintain bound notebooks so that all notes of a particular class could be found in one notebook. Students should take detailed class notes and go over them at home on a daily basis.

Advise your child to study for each class daily regardless of any due homework or test.

Advise your child to study book chapters by first getting an overview and asking questions of interest and then, after reading the chapter without skipping diagrams or tables, to put the book aside and recall ideas learned. Even better, list ideas and periodically review the material.

Suggest that material not understood easily should be read again and, if still not understood, studied in another textbook obtained from the library of the teacher. Advise your child to prepare his own notes for each chapter in a textbook by combining major ideas from the chapter as well as the class notes and review the notes several times before the next test.

Ask your child to make note of deadlines for different assignments and stick with them as much as possible.

Advise your child to study in a quiet place in the library during free periods at school.

Advise your child not to study too late at night to avoid feeling sleepy in classes the following morning and thus miss important lessons. It’s better to study early in the morning when you feel fresh and tend to retain most of the concepts.

Advise your child to make a daily list of all important tasks to do done in a given day and cross them off as each is done.

Advise your child to try to complete an assignment in a single sitting if possible.

Provide your child a newspaper and magazines to improve his reading ability and general knowledge. Discuss what he has read.

Encourage your child to use a dictionary whenever he comes across a new word in order to understand its meaning.

Encourage high school level students to graph performance on homework and tests in each class for review.

Advise that your child go over returned homework, test papers and written reports to learn from mistakes as well as the teacher’s comments.

Help your child plan recreation and extracurricular activities if he does not have any and encourage an active interest in individual activities and hobbies such as learning music or other arts and crafts for a full life.

Advise your child to be optimistic and maintain a positive self-image believing that he can be successful.

Advise your child to feel free to meet with his teacher at school if help is needed.

Encourage your child to be patient. Learning takes time.

Promote good discipline at home.

Monitor your child’s television viewing and talk about the programs being watched.

Talk with your child about school and everyday events in his life. Show that you care.

Meet your child’s teachers on “Back-to-School-Nights” and consult with them frequently regarding your child’s progress. Teachers welcome this interest enthusiastically.

Many teachers try to teach students good study habits, but their effectiveness can be best supervised by parents at home. These suggestions can help.

Children have a limited amount of energy and parents have the responsibility to help them plan their time so that their lives have balance and a variety of activities that include recreation, physical activities, reading for enjoyment, cultural and social participation and community and social service projects in addition to scholastic pursuits.

Your child will then have a well-rounded personality and will grow up with a high self-concept, good feelings about you, people in general and the world around him.

You can then congratulate yourself on a job well done.