All families live by their own rules, which were created not a day, not two, or even not one month. A cell of society in which there are school-age children is a group of people with an established way of life. By the time the child begins to study, parents have already developed their own algorithm for influencing the child.
How their method is effective and efficient, the school will show. It will become a litmus test, which will demonstrate whether parents are doing everything right, raising their older baby. But if they are already wondering how to help the child learn better, that means they have missed something somewhere. There may be several reasons for poor academic performance, and not all of them are the result of children's shortcomings.
Rule number 1
Do not know how to help your child learn better, be more responsible, independent, strong-willed? Release him, give him freedom and the right to choose! Yes, at first he will make a million and one more mistake, he will get a deuce for the reporting test, he will go for a walk in the jacket out of season, freeze and possibly get sick, he will someday remain hungry and lose his pocket money. All this will cause him to learn to survive on his own.
If he does not go through all these stages in childhood, when the psyche is flexible, and the child is able to adequately respond to problems, he will have to cope with all this in a difficult puberty period, or even be an adult.
Whose problem is: mom, dad or baby?
Before proceeding with the solution of a problem, it is important in principle to determine it. Therefore, you do not always need to look for ways to help your child study better at school, you need to understand who needs it at all. Find out whether the child really does not have time with the development of the educational process, or so it only seems to his parents.
The current educational program is very different from the one that moms and dads studied, and even more so, the grandparents of modern schoolchildren. The approaches to explaining the material, the method of supplying the material, and most importantly, the assessment system, have changed. It is important for parents to understand this before requiring the child to have exceptionally high scores in all subjects. In addition, they simply must find out for themselves: who needs good grades - for them or a child, for whom it will become a matter of pride, proof of success, a “ticket to the future”? Perhaps it is more comfortable for their son or daughter to be at the level of a solid, good, but, driving him (her) into the ranks of excellent students, parents make their own child unhappy, haggard and limp?
Briefly about the main thing
When a student really needs outside help, it’s important to learn how to help your child learn better. Tips for solving this problem we will provide in the form of a list, also below we will analyze some points in more detail:
- improving self-reliance skills;
- organization of the correct daily routine;
- creation of personal space;
- good nutrition;
- filling in educational gaps;
- moral support and psychological assistance if necessary.
Having provided the child with these necessary conditions, parents are unlikely to return again to the question of how to help the child study well at school. Children who can, without the help of adults, solve their own problems and do not remain alone with real difficulties, grow up self-sufficient and purposeful, able to cope with feasible loads, which in principle depends on their parents.
Find out the cause of failure
If parents do not know how to help their child learn well and easily, they need to first determine the reasons for their poor grades. This is far from always laziness or disobedience. In the case when the mother provided her baby with everything necessary, but his grades at school still remain at an average level, or even completely confidently strive for unsatisfactory, she needs to think about why this happens.
Perhaps the reason lies in the problems with friends, classmates, a teacher. Finding out this is quite simple: if the child is silent and does not give an exhaustive answer to the questions posed, you can go to the class teacher and talk with relevant teachers. The problem can be quite everyday and imperceptible to the close circle - family troubles (divorce of parents or just tense situation between them, other relatives), fatigue, illness and even misunderstanding of one of the objects, which entails self-doubt. But how to help your child study well in all these cases? We’ll find out now.
When you need real help in studying
Failure can unsettle any adult, what to speak of children, with their though flexible, but rather fragile psyche. After graduating from the relatively simple junior classes, the child is faced with many new difficulties and trials. The cabinet in which he studies, the class teacher is changing, unfamiliar subjects appear, each of which is led by a separate teacher. How to help a child learn better if for him all these innovations have become an obstacle and test?
You can give him something to class with him that connects him with the simpler and more prosperous time of elementary school. During this period, it is especially important to monitor the progress of the child. The slightest gap in his knowledge, arising as a result of a misunderstanding of one topic, will entail problems with the study of material in the future.
Here is a very good recommendation on how to help your child study well at school - you need to "tighten up" his level of knowledge where he is inadequate. Each mother herself will decide how to do this - on her own or with the help of a tutor.
Learning effortlessly
A reliable way to help your child learn better is to turn a boring educational process into a game, at least in part. Of course, it will be difficult for parents who are not educators in their specialty and sincere calling to turn the solution of each problem into a spectacular action, and writing a dictation into an amazing fabulous journey, but they can increase the level of knowledge of their child in a playful way and in a familiar home environment. What do I need to do?
- to recall word games, cities, a spoiled telephone, familiar from childhood, they perfectly stimulate memory, logic, speech;
- acquire good board games like Scrubble, Scrabble, Monopoly, Understand Me;
- to conduct elementary lessons in chemistry, physics, biology, as well as demonstrate simple but visual experiments (visualization of the diffusion process using water and potassium permanganate, growing crystals from ordinary salt, identifying cells on onion scales will convince any child that science can be interesting) .
In addition, children are better off not having the same toys like cars and dolls. Puzzles, kits for creativity and needlework will bring him much more benefit.
Time management is a non-child concept useful for a child
No ways how to help your child learn better will not be effective in practice if the day of the student is overloaded with tasks, and the time of his studies, additional classes, hobbies, leisure and idleness is not agreed upon. In the children's routine for all things you need to find the right time:
- rise and morning exercise;
- study;
- recreation;
- circles, sections, hobbies;
- homework;
- evening activities, communication with parents, games;
- going to bed.
These points can be adjusted according to the personal regime of a specific child, but it is important that this regime is in principle established. The lack of a daily routine and chaos in life tire children, as a result, they cannot concentrate on studying, do not do their homework and begin to lag behind more organized peers in the school curriculum.
The negative impact is not only the excessive employment of the baby, but also an excess of free time. In the first case, the baby just has to experience tremendous loads that drain him mentally and physically, and in the second case, he has to deal with the fact that the child begins to invent things on his own. Of course, children need to be given several hours in a day, which they will spend only at their discretion, but when they have to spend all day in this way, it rarely ends with something good.
The path to successful study through the stomach
The fact that a growing body needs to eat rationally and variably will not be a secret to anyone. If a child does not receive any trace elements, is malnourished, he not only does not gain weight - his brain directly suffers.
Therefore, before helping the child to study well with the help of various pedagogical methods, moralizing, punishment or encouragement, you need to feed him well. Many have heard that fast carbohydrates help improve brain function, but they give a short-term positive result.
Chocolates and sweets will not give children a mind, but they will “present” significant health problems. The diet should include foods enriched with vitamins of group B (dark bread, greens), also the menu must include cereals, milk, chicken, fish, beef liver, fresh vegetables and fruits, nuts.
The organization of space is important
Considering tips on how to help your child study better at school, it is impossible to ignore the problem of normalizing children's life. What does it mean? And the fact that it should be easy for him to study, relax and sleep. Parents should worry about the conditions in which their child lives: on which bed he sleeps, how high-quality lighting in the room where he reads and writes, whether the work table and chair correspond to his height.
A healthy sleep allows the child’s body to rest, which means it gives the child the opportunity to gain strength for the normal assimilation of new information, moreover, during the night's rest, the skills acquired during the past day are systematized. Children's bedroom - not a place for the TV and family gatherings.
Motivation and demotivation
Does the child have to pay for good grades? Well, which of the parents did not ask himself a similar question? The problem of monetizing good grades at school is currently very acute in many families. Some parents believe that this is a great way out of the situation, explaining their point of view by the fact that the child, wanting to get more pocket money, will study well. To others, such an impact seems one-sided, they say, what to take from a schoolchild if he does not try well enough? After all, just not giving him money is not an effective punishment.
Is this motivational method good at all, and what if it no longer works? How to help your child study well? The advice of psychologists in this regard is quite straightforward - buying a child’s grades initially does not make sense. This does not instill in him a healthy ambition, on the contrary, he will sow in his soul an unhealthy interest in money, and he will perceive a normal education not as a means of achieving future life goals and plans, but as an obligation for which he should be paid. And what will happen when parents cannot allocate the necessary amount from their own budget for such a “salary”?
The role of the school in the educational process
Teachers often complain that children absolutely do not want to learn. They are restless, masterful, often hyperactive, and parents do not want or cannot influence their offspring.
In the modern education system, the teacher has ceased to be a teacher and mentor, he is perceived only as a person called to present a subject to a student. The role of the school as an instrument of pedagogical influence was almost leveled, this is largely the fault of the mothers and fathers themselves, who zealously protect children from punishment and criticism from teachers. Only the parent meeting can clarify what is permitted. How to help the child study well, both the class teacher and other teachers will tell you, because they see all the children in action, notice their mistakes and shortcomings.
No matter how many parents complained about school, their child is more likely to blame for their poor grades. Of course, alas, it is impossible to completely eliminate the teacher’s unfair and biased attitude towards the student, but in the vast majority of cases, teachers are interested in their ward mastering the studied material to the maximum.
Not action to guide, but cause for thought
Finally, we give readers the opinion of an experienced family psychologist who has proven in practice the thoroughness and rationality of his approach to both children and their parents in solving a variety of problems, including with school. His name is Mikhail Labkovsky.
"How to help your child study well?" - This is a question that Mikhail has to answer almost daily. In his opinion, the child just needs to stop being controlled and patronized, to give him the opportunity to choose his own path, even if he will be fundamentally wrong and harmful (from the point of view of adults).
Labkovsky believes that the main thing is the child’s happiness and self-realization, and not how he learns; that good grades are often the desire of the parents, but not of the children themselves; that babies should not be executive and obedient, because this testifies to their depressed psyche. The best punishment, from his point of view, would be the temporary seizure of gadgets - a phone, tablet, game box and other toys that do not carry practically anything useful, being just a way of entertainment. He is also convinced that modern children should be more engaged in active collective games.