As a mother of four, I have a good idea of what goes into ensuring your kids get good grades. As someone who works in a school, I have seen plenty of kids who need help with their education. Here are some ideas on how to help your kids at school.
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Spend quality time with them
This might seem like a simple thing to do but a lot of people forget that kids are people and need to interact with adults. Planning out fun trips and doing things together will help them bond with you. Plus, they will be learning something. Got to take the car to the garage for fuel? Take them with you and explain it. Need to go food shopping with the teenager? Get them involved by pushing the trolley and explaining your meal ideas for the week. Want to go fishing? Take the kids and explain the process of what you are doing. You can even get them their own rods and let them have a go. Will this all be perfect? Absolutely not, it might be a total disaster the first few times you do stuff together. But they are learning. they are away from their screens and doing stuff in the real world.
Help them with their homework
Getting back from school and work, the last thing anyone wants to do is sit down to do more work. We have a dinner to make, prep things for the next day, and a million things to do on our to-do lists. But homework should not take that long. Once you get in, grab a snack for everyone, make yourself a cup of coffee, clear the table, and get cracking. You might have to ask for a pause to put the oven on or dump the veg into a pot, but it is better than nothing. You could even put them on a seat in the kitchen and have them read to you while you are chopping and prepping the dinner. Doing homework with them will help keep you involved with where they are in their learning journey and it will show your kids that you care about their education.
Read to them
This is something I cannot stress enough, read to your kids. Even if they are tiny. Newborn baby? Read to them. Toddler? Get some nice picture books. In primary school? Grab a novel at bedtime and read a chapter every night. The point is, you need to expose your kids to books and reading. Will they fully understand what is being said? No, but by repeatedly saying words, they will pick up language a lot quicker, have a bigger vocabulary, and make learning easier. I used to read my textbooks to my kids when they were really small. Did the 3 month old have a clue what I was talking about? Nope. But she loved the sound of my voice. If you can get into a healthy reading habit early, they will have a love of books for the rest of their lives.
Listen to what they have to say
It can be tempting to sit with your phone and doom-scroll at the end of a hard day, but this is a great time to listen to your kids instead. Ask yourself this, do you really care that someone you worked with for a New York minute 10 years ago has a new puppy? Probably not. So put the phone down and ask them about their day. They might only take 5 minutes to tell you about football in the playground, how they managed to count to a “big number”, or how so-and-so in the other class got caught vaping in the toilets and is suspended. Having a safe space to vent these issues can help clear mental space for them. It also means that if there is trouble (and they are in trouble) they will be more likely to come to you for help and guidance.
Stay in contact with the school
You would be surprised by the amount of parents who do not stay in contact with the school. I’m not going to lie, there are times you are not going to like what we tell you, but they are your kids. We get it, after weekly calls about bad behaviour or complaints from staff, it is tempting to switch off. But we are contacting you for a reason. Be a part of the school by staying in contact. We don’t expect you to join the PTA (but if you have time, that would be great) but if your kids are not happy in school, get in touch. We are not against them, we want them to do well, but we need your support and for you to stay in touch so that we can make the most out of their education.
These are some very simple steps that will help your children be more settled in school. If you can use these simple steps, you will discover that your kids will take more of an interest in their education and you will be one step closer to help your kids at school.