Parent Tips Academic Challenges Teach your children how to succeed in school. That means recognizing the importance of school attendance, actively supporting the goals of school, and encouraging/requiring school attendance. It sounds easy, but sometimes parents send mixed messages.
Ask yourself the following questions: -What kind of example do we set for our children at home and work? -Do we arrive on time? -Do we keep appointments? -Are we responsible for completing assignments? -Are we respectful of those in positions of importance? -Do we work as team members? -Do we strive for excellence in our work and try to improve? -If we were to receive grades for effort, achievement and attitude, would we be proud enough to post them on the refrigerator door? -Would we receive the award for perfect attendance?
At home, you can help your child in many ways: -Talk about your child’s learning challenges and accept them. -Try to refer to challenges as learning differences; your child is smart, he/she just learns differently from other students. -Foster your child’s strengths, talents and interests. Give lots of praise and support your child’s efforts. -Middle and high school years are not the time for parents to keep an arm’s length. Know what is going on in school and due dates concerning homework, projects, and other learning tasks. -Talk with their teachers for guidance on ways to assist your child with storing information. -Set a good example and turn off the television, computer or iPod, put down the phone—and read or write. -Monitor your teen’s progress and organize information relating to your child’s education and possible learning challenges, including samples of your child’s schoolwork, those where his/her learning challenge is evident and ones which show his/her strengths and successes.
PARENT TIPS Bullying As a parent, you can certainly lobby for anti-bullying efforts in your children's schools. But it may be even more effective to begin at home with some education about emotions and behaviors your kids will experience when you are not around to protect them.
Understand, acknowledge, and stand up to bullying behavior in the family. -Understand the emotional dynamics of teasing and bullying, how it makes us feel, and why it is almost unavoidable can be an important part of emotional intelligence training for children that begins as soon as they are talking. -They will need words to describe the "bad" feeling of shame that happens. Recognizing and labeling the feeling and the behavior causing the feeling is the first step in figuring out an effective way to respond, rather than just reacting to your feelings, which often leads to the urge to retaliate.
Teach your children resilience skills. -Understanding the feelings and developing choices about how to respond to feelings gives us all more flexibility. Shame makes us hide, surrender, and want revenge. We can be creative and resourceful in developing other responses when we understand what is happening. Children can be enormously resilient. The more they are encouraged and supported in developing creative responses to life's challenges, the more resilient they can be.
Encourage your children to stand up to bullying when they witness it. -Choosing not to be a passive observer is one way of taking a stand. Befriending the target of bullying is a way of standing with the targeted one rather than standing with the bully. -Reporting or helping to report bullying is another way of standing up. Children may ask, "What if standing up to bullying makes you a target?" The fact is that fearing the bully already makes you a target, and there is no guarantee that hiding will protect you. Figuring out the safest ways to stand up to bullying is the best way to avoid becoming a victim.