Parental Guidelines for Academic Achievement
- Children need to struggle to develop confidence and self esteem. Don’t worry about failure, worry about the chances your child misses when they don’t even try.
- Reward effort, not success. Overreactions to children’s successes and failures lead them to feel either intense pressure to succeed or to feel despair and discouragement when dealing with failure. As a result, children will not try or take risks, will give up quickly, and will worry about mistakes and failures.
- Parents should avoid confrontations with children unless they are sure they can control the outcome. This may require the patience to last that long.
- Children should learn pride in self and work, respect for other people and cultures, and to be positive about the effects of change.
- Understand the reasons why children may not follow directions and the various forms of resistance they use to avoid task completion.
- Take the time and effort to learn how to teach children behaviors that may be noxious to them but are important to master.
- Children feel more tension when they are worrying about their work as opposed to when they are actually doing their work.
- Children will continue to achieve and act appropriately if they usually see the relationship between the learning process and its outcomes, particularly if they have an effective model to imitate.
- Children develop confidence and an internal sense of control if power is given to them in gradually increasing increments as they show responsibility, maturity, and self regulation.
- Children are more likely to be achievers if their parents join together to give the same clear and positive message about effort and expectations.
- Communications about a child between adults dramatically affects children’s behaviors and self perceptions.
- Give children choices and more control as they have earned them rather than on demand. Earned factors include acting independently and responsibly with self regulation of their behavior.
- Ask children to set goals for themselves. These goals should surpass their previous accomplishments and be guided by internal values. Goals should be specific, realistic, challenging, and attainable.
- Children should be taught to solve problems, not just blame others.
- After perceiving the worst consequences, children should be encouraged to take risks confidently.
- Children should be encouraged to rehearse future events mentally and involve others in role playing in order to overcome obstacles in their lives.
- Children should learn the five academic skills most useful in work. They are computing skills, careful listening, logical thinking, careful reading, and correct writing.