There is a lot of pressure to preform in school these days, at least in the school that I am at. And when grades hinge on what college you can get into, people lose their minds the minute a challenge is put in their way.
The top 3 challenges that seem to derail kids from finding personal success are: Disabilities (specifically in the form of ADHD and anxiety), teaching and learning styles differences, and focusing on the rewards instead of the process (i.e. grades verses learning).
So as a parent how can you help?
I see four main ways you can help your child succeed in school.
- Self-Education
- Empower don’t Enable
- Acknowledge the System is a System
- Instill Education as a way of life
This article will hopefully cast a vision of inspiration for you, and I will get more practical in each of the three areas in future articles.
1. Self-Education
A brilliant teacher from the late 1800s once said “Therefore, teaching, talk, and tale, however lucid or fascinating, affect nothing until self-activity be set up; that is, self-education is the only possible education; the rest is mere veneer laid on the surface of a child’s nature” (Charlotte Mason, A Philosophy of Education)
If there is one nugget you get today I hope it is this: teach your children the skills of self-educating.
Think about it, as an adult, what do you to do when you want to learn something? First, you assess the problem or question at hand. Then, you go get books, read articles, or watch YouTube to learn the answer to your question. After that, you try out what you learn and asses if it solved your problem. If not, you go back to the beginning and start the process over again.
We live in the Age of Information! I don’t want to take away the value of a good teacher, because they can certainly be a great resource that we turn to. But, they should be one of the many resources we turn to when we are learning. Give your child the gift of a teaching them how to find good resources apart from their teacher.
Can you imagine if an engineer at NASA told his team, “Sorry, I had a bad quantum physics teacher, so I wont’ be able to solve that problem.” That is ridiculous! Regardless of how good or bad his teachers were he would still be expected to solve the problem.
So when your child is faced with a teacher that is hard to learn from, view it as an awesome opportunity to practice the skill of self-educating. Learning does not have to stop just because one of your resources wasn’t helpful.
2. Empower don’t Enable
Our job, as parents, is to empower our children towards independence not to enable them to remain dependent.
If your child misses a deadline, empower them to write an email to the teacher seeing if it is possible to still turn it in. And then, accept whatever that answer is. Yup you heard me, if the teacher says no, swooping in to demand the teacher accept the assignment is NOT helpful.
Instead of teaching them deadlines matter you taught them deadlines don’t matter. And now they will probably miss other deadlines.
As a parent, this is painful to watch. But, we have to let our children learn from their mistakes and empower them to respond in a healthy way. If you come in and cover their mistake it teaches them that they are not capable of dealing with challenging feelings and situations in the future. Our children our more capable than we often give them credit for.
Dr. David Anderson, a clinical psychologist at Child Mind Institute states, “Smaller risks are where kids build coping skills and confidence. As parents we have to learn to tolerate our own discomfort at seeing kids struggle if we are going to help them grow” (Attaway, 2023).
This gets tricky when your child struggles with a disability. I can’t tell you how many times I have heard parents tell me, “Johnny has ADHD, he just can’t focus.” This might be hard for some of you to hear, but that is both enabling and simply untrue.
I once had a mom tell me that I don’t understand ADHD because I expected her son to focus…I also knew that this student loved to fish and would fish for 8+ hours straight on the weekends. Sure, focusing in math is hard for him but he can focus, so don’t take that away from him.
All too often I see parents and students letting their diagnosis define them. As parents, if we have a child that has a disability, we need to understand the impact it has. The disability should inform how your child approaches their learning, but your child MUST learn how to reach their goals even if they have ADHD, anxiety, depression, etc.
Do not let the disability define your child or cap their potential. There are so many successful people in that have overcome challenges, in fact, most successful people are successful because they have persevered and overcome. Let that be your child’s story!
3. Acknowledge the School System is a System
There is a difference between school and education. Now, you can certainly be educated in a school but we need to acknowledge them as separate things. A school is a system, and as we know there is not one system that can meet the need of all 53.9 million kids ages 5-17 (Kids Count Data Center) in the United States.
The reality is some kids figure out the system and do great, but many kids don’t. There are a lot of different models but most include being in a classroom or building for about 7 hours plus homework after. The article How Much Homework Is Enough? Depends Who You Ask cites, “In 2013, the University of Phoenix College of Education commissioned a survey of how much homework teachers typically give their students. From kindergarten to 5th grade, it was just under three hours per week; from 6th to 8th grade, it was 3.2 hours; and from 9th to 12th grade, it was 3.5 hours” (Robinson and Aronica, 2018).
You will note that amount is per teacher so for my students that have 5-6 teachers in high school that is 17.5 hours a week. That is equivalent to over a 50 hour work week when you factor in the time they are at school. Can you imagine working 50+ hours a week for years in an organization that required you to be operating mostly from your weaknesses…. sounds tough.
So what do we do if that is our child that is in a system that is not designed from them?
We know the benefits of graduating and getting a diploma so we can’t just throw the baby out with the bathwater and say school doesn’t matter. But we can show them that there are other places that their strengths and talents can be used. This can take the form of a job or a passion or a hobby outside of school.
I once had a student who struggled to find success in our school setting. But I had so much hope for her once she graduated because I saw her ability to learn as she pursued her hobbies. She had stumbled across a very niche hobby that led her to being a keynote speaker at a convention. She was asked as an 18 year old to share her expertise to a couple hundred adults!
Work hard to allow your child to go deep into their passions that they might not be able to be experience in a school setting. Create a culture of curiosity at home and reinforce that. While they do need to graduate high school, their ability and intellect may not be represented in their grades. And lastly, ensure they have the skills of self-education like I mentioned above!
4. Education as a way of life
I think this is going to be a hard pill to swallow for many, but one problem I see is that parents view schools as the main provider of their child’s learning. This makes sense, right? After all, kids are going to school for 8 hours to learn.
What if, instead, parents viewed themselves as the primary educators and the school as supplemental? Before we go any further we need to define what learning or educating is. In her article What is Learning, Carol Sirney (2019) states, “At the core, learning is a process that results in a change in knowledge or behavior as a result of experience.” Deep learning takes place through connecting new ideas with prior ideas about oneself, others, or the world. Learning is relational.
Memorizing facts off of a study guide is not learning. Learning is when growth or change happens. So take the pressure off of yourself for having to teach specific facts. Instead provide a variety and an abundance of good and worthy ideas and let your child create their own personal relationship with that material.
Charlotte Mason, a British educator from the late 1800s, said that we should give children a feast of ideas. If we picture a feast of food there are a ton of different options on the table and each individual decides what they want. This is true of ideas. If we provide our children with a feast of different ideas they will take what they want and decide how much they need to be filled.
Create a feast of ideas that come from building things, reading excellent literature, poetry, art, nature study, sciences, music, history, technology, Scripture, and the list goes on. I’m not saying facts are all bad but facts should be surround by bigger ideas.
Parents, I want to empower you that you DO have what it takes to be the primary educator in your child’s life. Your job isn’t to teach specific facts it’s to share a bunch of beautiful, noble, and true ideas to see what sticks. Yes, that might require a shift of thinking, and yes, that might stretch you to new places, but I think you will find it quite delightful!
Put it into Practice
I’m a full-time working mom, so I know what you are thinking when would I have time to do this? Here are are few ideas:
- Talk about the lyrics of some songs your child likes. What are the ideas presented in that song?
- Find a documentary or movie that is connected to a topic your child is learning at school and talk about it.
- When you are out in nature take note of what you noticed and how you felt.
- Ask your child how they would handle a challenge that you ran into at work (this is for older kids). For example if you manage people and you always have an employee that is late, ask your kid what they would do. It makes them think about ideas related to timeliness, ethics, and responsibility.
Starting with young kids will make this feel a lot more natural. If you have older kids they might be highly suspicious or you or even scoff at you when you first start trying. That’s because many kids aren’t used to this way of thinking and being. Be honest about what you are trying and even have them read this article to see what they think!
Putting it All Together
You will notice that this article doesn’t talk about how to get your child straight As. That is because I believe being successful in school means graduating with a curiosity and desire to continue learning and growing for the rest of your life.
If you are wondering where to start, I want you to think about what your child needs the most? Start there. And stay tuned for practical steps to tackle the challenges of disabilities, learning styles, and overemphasis of grades.