What Can Parents Do to Help their Children Excel in School?

Every parent wants their children to succeed in life later, but in their rush to plan future education strategies, they often end up ignoring the children’s formative years. Multiple observations across the decades have confirmed the fact that, in addition to a student’s innate intelligence, their social, educational and other environmental experiences are responsible for determining many of their future life choices.

For example, native American students with prospective futures would often avoid going to college because of their negative experiences in school. On the other hand, Catholic schooled students from all races and communities have held an incredibly high rate of graduation for multiple decades. As should be easy to understand from these examples, experiences in elementary, middle and high school play a huge role in deciding whether a child will even go to college post high school.

Can Parents Do Anything to Help their Children Excel?

As parents, it is important to understand that for a child to excel in school, they must also excel in their life as a whole. Unhappy children grow up to be troublesome youths and as a parent, there is a lot you can do to keep that from happening. We will discuss a few ideas about this next.

Choose Schools Carefully

Always do your research on a school before enrolling your child. Don’t just settle after finding out how well their students perform, but focus more on how they teach and guide. Look through forums to find what former students and parents are saying about their experiences to get an in-depth understanding of what to expect.

The experiences of children throughout their formative years come from multiple points of interaction, but the two most influential points are their school and home. Choose a school which does not just focus on the academic aspects, but also the individual struggles that students face while coping with school, education, and life itself. Pay a visit to visitation.net/ and go through the Salesian Philosophy this famous Catholic school follows. The school prioritizes every student’s mental and spiritual wellbeing, ensuring that your child is never left alone with their troubles, even at school.

Listen to Your Child

Setting aside the teachers, you are everything that your child has in terms of support. When you ignore what they are saying, or disregard them outright, you are essentially taking away the most important source of support that a child needs. Sit, talk, play and spend time with your children, listen to what they are saying about their school experiences and always be vigilant regarding what they are saying between the words, especially when they are still very young. Taking action may or may not be necessary, but listening and discussing the issue always is.

Help them Develop Outside Schoolwork

Getting your child into sports, dance, singing, etc. because you want them to shine in a particular department is a bad idea. However, encouraging them to pursue interests outside of schoolwork is highly advised.

If you indeed listen to what your children say and talk to them about their interests, you should be able to figure out where their interests are. Now, keep in mind that kids are whimsical, so their interests may shift as they mature, and that is also okay. A bit of trial and error is necessary for both parents and children to determine what’s best for them in the end.