Tag Archives: school

4 Ways to Help Your Child Succeed in School

Of course, you want your children to succeed in school. You do all you can to manage getting their best. But what really is your job? Is it to insure good grades, getting involved in the right sports and extra-curriculars, and diligently doing their homework? If so how involved do you get? And what do you do if they don’t meet your expectations?

Do you know that all your best intentions can undermine your child’s school success and desire to learn?

Children are natural learners. We come evolved to soak up all the learning we can — until it becomes a requirement. Remember when your toddler kept asking you why? until you wanted to scream? How is she doing now in the curiosity department?

Here are four key aspects to help you help your children succeed in school:

1. Stay Out of It

This makes parenting so much easier, gives you more time for connection, and hands over the responsibility they need to learn. But it’s hard give up managing your kids’ school lives and work, especially if Read more…

Aug. ’18 Q&A – Does your child fit with his school, Disrespect and Test Anxiety

Does your child fit with his school?

Q. Our feisty 5 yo is not settling into school too well, and we have to attend meetings with the teacher due to his misbehaving ways. When asked why he acts out, ie: drawing on walls, running away from the class, ignoring instructions etc, he says, “because I felt like it”. This is quite concerning as he attends a Catholic School and is raised by a practising Catholic mother with very loving and devoted parents. He does not seem to understand what it feels like to be in someone else’s position. We are at a loss after trying to talk to him and discuss alternative ways of behaving with no positive results. Another concern is his lack of concentration as he has approx. 4 mins. of attentiveness before he loses interest and proceeds to do what he wants to do, sometimes ignoring instructions and/or consequences. I have been doing some research and strongly believe he may need some assistance with self-regulating. Do you have any suggestions as to how we can help our Read more…

May ’18 Q&A – Confidence, Empathy and Shopping

Is it lack of confidence or too much control?

Q. Our 5-year old boy is struggling with confidence. He has difficulty focusing at school and we don’t want him to get behind. There are 22 kids in his class and the school has an expectation of work. Also has trouble focusing at soccer practice/games, anytime things are going on around him. He has no issues interacting with people, kids or adults. I believe he lacks confidence because he is afraid of trying new things. He doesn’t like to fail and gets frustrated easily when he can’t learn fast. He also gets very embarrassed when things don’t go as expected.

Following the same type of discipline we experienced as kids and some bad advice, we controlled his environment too much the last 2-3 years, and I believe that is the reason he struggles trusting himself and us. We had a baby last year (she is 1 now) and the combination of this big change and the environment we unintentionally created for him has been damaging for him. We have been looking Read more…

January ’18 Q&A – Sharing & Hogging, School Resistance and The Dark Side

Sharing and Hogging

Q. My three-year-old has a very big issue with sharing and hogging. She has an 18 mo. old sister who is not allowed to touch anything. I understand that my daughter still is having a hard time with her arrival, she has to share me, she doesn’t get to have me all to herself, she doesn’t even get to read books alone with me and on top of it all I am three times as tired, have to do a lot more chores, can’t play with her at the drop of the hat, and she doesn’t get to have all of my adoration just for her. I still feel really guilty about that. At first I thought, fair enough the toys were hers, so I opted to buy my youngest toys for herself. I told my eldest and explained before we bought anything that I was buying for her sister so she doesn’t have to touch hers. She agreed but once the toy is bought she wants to have it and play with it. She gets so Read more…

5 Things Never to Ask Your Child Right After School

You want to interact and make connection when your kids get home from school. Your kids do too but not in the way you might think.

You’ve missed them, you want to know what they did all day, how they got along, if they had any problems. But questions can feel like an interrogation.

How was school today?
What do you have for homework?
When are you going to do your homework?
What did you get on the test?
What did you learn today?

They have just spent a long hard day meeting (or not) expectations, doing things they might not want to do, following orders, coping for hours, and hopefully working hard and learning. Probably the last they want to do is go over their day with you. They need a break. They need to know here is the place where I can be myself. They need to chill.

Each of these 5 questions is filled with an expectation.

How was school?

What if school was terrible? Your child may or may not want to tell you because Read more…

12 Ways to Boost School Motivation

Do you, unintentionally, teach your children that their school performance is for you—not for them? If so, school motivation will diminish.

Parents place so much value on grades and performance that the message to the child is, I care more about how you do than what you do. For too many children, school is a prison sentence to endure, and if they don’t do well, they are a huge disappointment to the most important people in their lives. We need to hand over education to our children and let them know they have our support in doing the best they can but not our disapproval if they don’t.

Jacquelynne Eccles, professor of psychology and research scientist at the University of Michigan, has said, “… motivation and engagement in school on average drops as they move from the elementary school into the secondary school system. You see it in attendance, in getting into trouble, in drop outs from high school and also in dropping out of college.” Dr. Eccles’ perspective of why this is stems from the mindset of the Read more…

How Kids Learn to be Bad

When kids are viewed as bad, they learn they are bad, and so they behave badly. Most parents don’t believe this. Here it is from the horses mouth.

I wanted to share with all of you this testament to connection, to listening and trusting your child and how he operates, instead of using tactics to try to get him to be who you want and losing connection in the process. This was said so beautifully and succinctly said from a parent who has been there, put connection to work and reaped the benefits.

Tyler “My son was 5 years old and starting kindergarten. I was excited for the first parent teacher meeting to hear how he had been adjusting to school. The meeting did not go very well. In short, I left disheartened and believing I had a difficult and disruptive child, an awful feeling for a parent.

It went downhill from there. He was sent to the principal’s office multiple times a week and eventually kicked off the bus as well. I was beside myself. I felt hopeless, frustrated and Read more…

12 Ways to Encourage School Motivation

As this school year it’s entering it final months, parents are thinking about how to help their kids finish up with a flourish. Here’s 12 ways to encourage school motivation.

Parents typically and unintentionally teach their children that their school performance is for the parent and the teacher—not for themselves.

Is your child being punished by rewards?

th-10 The school year has only just begun. It’s a time when children are excited to return to school, see their friends, meet their new teachers and feel really good about being a year older. Right? Not for all.

I received an email from a mother who said her son shoved his homework into his backpack all ripped up, said he doesn’t care or give a s*#t about his homework. She explained that the school has a color system for behavior—green, yellow, blue, and red (wonder what the blue means). Everyday her son comes home and tells her, I was good today or I was bad today.

Most schools have some form of behavior management program in place. Using punishment to manage behavior has much research supporting its ineffectiveness and shows that it can be counterproductive. In lieu of punishment techniques, many schools have taken to reward systems. The problem is that students who miss out on the rewards again and again, feel punished and resentful of the students who get them.

I’m sure that the administration and faculty of any Read more…

My Homework Challenge: Being Your Child’s Best Advocate

Let me guess what your biggest worries/concerns/battles are about when it comes to your child and school. Homework, right?

What do you most want for your child? Is it to be happy, respectful, kind, responsible, confident, independent, and successful? Or would you rather your child bring home a great report card, a 3.5 GPA, and high SAT scores? Often we get mired down in the minutia of day-to-day struggles and fears and fail to see the big picture of our children’s lives.

Do you set expectations for your children’s school year that are unrealistic for your child? Do you spend time worrying about your child failing or at least not meeting up to the students who do the best? Do you harp on homework and end up in battles?

Certainly a good education is important to gaining happiness and confidence. The question is, does a good education require hours of homework each night. Or is a better education achieved when a child loves to learn?

A child who loves to learn has spent the better part of his early childhood Read more…