Your Child and His Academics- What You Can Do as a Parent.

Every parent loves to hear that their child is succeeding in terms of their academics and most parents do their best to see to it that indeed their children excel. What most parents don’t know however, is how best they can ensure that their children succeed, and what it really means to succeed.

Academic success does not merely mean attaining the best grades at the end of the day, rather, it means realizing ones maximum potential while at it. The best for one child, may not necessarily be the same for another child. Children differ in their potential.

With regard to helping your child realize his/ her maximum potential academically, the following are skills and strategies you can adapt:

• Take care of your child’s basic needs. Ensure your child has enough sleep, nutritious food, good hygiene and regular medical care. Children need to be in good health for them to study well.
•  Practice discipline and respect at home. Some parents look to their child’s school to handle discipline, but discipline is something that needs to be reinforced foremost in the home. As a parent, you must be a good role model to your child when it comes to discipline and respect. Children learn to respect others right from the home environment and this happens practically, and also through observational learning. Any mature adult knows pretty well, that for one to gain any positive results in whatever they embark on in life, discipline is a virtue to uphold. In the same way, your children can only realize their maximum potential in life, with reference to academics and all other areas, if only they are disciplined and respectful.
• Stress to your child that school is more about learning- the acquisition of knowledge and skills, and not merely about grades. The latter are important, but they can only be achieved through the former.
• Support your children in their school commitment.
  
  Ensure that your child has got adequate time and space for schoolwork. Know which environment works best for them, and do your best to create it for them. For instance, if your children study best in a quiet place with minimal distractions, you may create a place for them to study away from the living room where there may be electronics like TV or radio. A quiet study room or a study table in their room might work best for them.
• Work with your child’s teachers and support his/her school’s efforts. Talk to your child’s teacher regularly. Schedule a time that works for both of you and show up at school- sponsored conferences. As a parent, realize and embrace the fact that, you and your child’s teachers are the most important partners in helping your child gain the best academically. They impart them with knowledge in school and you do so at home.
• Regularly monitor schoolwork with progress reports and give positive consequences such as extra privileges and rewards for any positive results like an improvement in a particular subject, especially if it is one that he/she struggles with.
• Never allow your children to believe that their value is measured by school success. Don’t just look for A’s as a parent. Encourage your child to do their best, but be willing to accept that their best might not translate into an A. Again, children differ in their potential. As a parent, do NOT compare your child to others- this lowers their self- esteem and makes them feel like they do not matter to you, unless they excel academically.
• Find out what your child is good at, even if it’s not Math or Science, and help him cultivate that interest. Your child could be the best writer in waiting; the Albert Einstein of his generation or the Beethoven of his age. It takes you as a parent to be keen in identifying your child’s interests, gifts or talents, and help them nurture it into full blossom over the course of his/her lifetime. We cannot all be the same in this life- we are gifted differently; there is something each of us is better at than the rest. The only way we stand out from the crowd is by being unique. If your child has to stand out from the rest, learn to nurture their uniqueness.
  
• Praise and encourage your child- be your child’s biggest cheerleader. For a child to do well at school, he needs to believe in himself; to have confidence that no matter what his report card says, he is valuable, loved and gifted in his own unique way(s). Be  the hands that hold up your child and support them through the different seasons in life.
• Know your child’s motivation. Empower your child to make the right choices, not out of fear of punishment, but because they see the value of doing their best. As a parent, help them see this value in a gentle way. Fear can actually paralyze your child and make them unable to realize their best potential.
• Help your children improve their study skills, their academic skills, and their social skills. Improving study skills include helping your child get organized and setting structures in place to encourage good study habits. Children can also learn specific study skill techniques such as speed reading, memorization helps, etc.
• Be knowledgeable as a parent. Seek to know more information on different aspects of parenting by seeking the advice of professionals whenever necessary, and searching for information in both print and electronic media.

We hope that you will apply the techniques above and that you will realize the joy of seeing your children succeed academically and in all other areas in life.