The Importance of Active Involvement in Your Child’s Educational Process

ith the onset of the admissions process for schools, parents get more and more involved in the process of school selection for their kids. 

Is the school well reputed? Do they have well-qualified teachers including other faculty members? Do they have a proper infrastructure in place? And many more such questions begin crawling up the minds of the parents during the admissions season.

But does it end here? 

Well, NO – Rather the duties of the parents extend well beyond it.

How many times as a parent did you ask your child what he/she did in school, or how their day was? I’m sure the answer would be unanimous – every day!
And not surprisingly, you must have come across very redundant sort of one-liner answers sounding somewhat like – “Nothing” “Great” “Good” etc. 

Well to improve this situation, you would certainly need to take the right steps to make your child more responsive (definitely better than one-liner) and Active involvement in their educational process is just the solution that you might be looking for.

Active Involvement

Getting actively involved in your child’s education, schooling, everyday activities – sounds apt! 

But what does it actually mean?

Involvement would mean supporting your child in all the dimensions of his/her life including their educational or schooling process and even at home. This active engagement, as many studies have proved, helps the children achieve incredible success in their life, helping them make a brighter future for themselves.

This is because the process of involvement includes caring, nurturing and cooperating with the kids and their schools to provide them a better understanding of various other aspects including their holistic development, helping them deal with various ups and downs in life as well.

It is observed that children truly feel enthusiastic about their studies or attending their schools or even while performing other activities if their parents actively participate with them. 

This has also resulted in reduced absenteeism at school. Also, the children are believed to share many of their school experiences with their parents on a regular basis, having achieved that connect with them through active involvement.

Active involvement will definitely establish a very stronger child-parent bond, leading to their social, academic, psychological, intellectual and emotional well being and excellence.

The Do’s and the Don’ts
 

Having stated the benefits of active engagement in your child’s learning process, you should also as a parent, focus on when to step back and when to step up. It is a task that you might really want to consider.

You definitely want them to feel supported, being there for them whenever they need you. But at the same time, you want them to grow with a sense of independence and face the world confidently as well. Striking the right balance does sound ideal, but how to achieve that?

Below we have discussed the various ways in which you could involve in your child’s educational process paving way for their overall development.

DO’S

Consider the following few good points for taking the right steps towards getting actively involved in your child’s progress.

1. Help them with their homework. 
2. Interact with them in a very collaborative way since communication is always the key to having a great bond with your kids. 
3. Develop a great bond with their teachers as well to enable them to understand the shortcomings of your child if any, so that might help the teacher make the necessary changes while addressing to your child’s issues.
4. Get them involved in many hobbies and participating in them equally.
5. Help them with their conflict management and even finding effective solutions to basic problems, however meager they might appear.
6. Help them with more creative tasks and encourage them all the more to pursue them.
7. Monitor their performance level in studies, extracurricular activities and thus enable them to determine their strengths and weaknesses.
8. Ensure that you participate in all of the school events where your child is involved. But however, as a working parent, it might be a little difficult for you to make it sometimes. Never mind, you can always ensure it by informing your child well in advance about the absence and why it is important.
9. As a parent, you also need to make them aware of the real world problems, especially if they connected to their area of study.
10. Help them reinforce their decision-making abilities by bolstering them through proper guidance, which they might need starting at an earlier stage in life, which might thereafter lead to increased self-esteem of the children.
11. Volunteer and participate in any of the school activities as organized by the school.
12. Make their learning a fun process, discovering their learning style, in order to build on the same.
13. Read for your kids at least 15 minutes a day. Or you can also incorporate the habit of a family reading time where everyone reads for a given period of time.
14. Children being always inquisitive, make sure you address all of their queries in a constructive manner helping them find the right solutions so that they will be prepared to make informed decisions for their future.

DON’Ts

1. While helping out your kids with their homework, school projects or any other activity, make sure you DON’T DO IT FOR THEM. Make them do it and explain the things that they don’t understand.
2. Sometimes, as parents, you might get involved in competing with fellow parents as a result of comparisons, or running after maintaining the status-quo. As a responsible parent, you should definitely avoid it.
3. Don’t address any issue or complaint against your child in a negative way or an aggressive manner. Perhaps you could deal with better communication with their teachers and themselves, making them aware of the situations in a very constructive manner, thus making them aware of their mistake at the same time.

You would always be a role model for your kid being a parent. You will certainly have to look after your ways of dealing with things, your decision making, your positive attitude and collaborative approach for things which need your attention – all these things really MATTER!

As a parent make sure that you have fun yourself while engaging with your children, which would really do wonders giving an impetus for your child’s futuristic development coupled with their academic excellence, and a more improved social sense and responsibility.