Do you want to learn how to get your child the best education? Every parent wants to give their kids the knowledge and skills they need to succeed in life. One of the best places where your kids can pick up and master these skills is in school.
Yet, the pandemic changed many things in the education systems around the globe. All around the world, schools for over 168 million children have closed for almost a whole year now. While many have gone to online schools, nothing beats the efficiency of a classroom setup.
In this guide, we’ll talk about how you can get the best education for your kids today. Keep reading to learn how to find the right schools for your kids. We’ve also included some tips to help your kid succeed in school and life.
1. Prepare Your Kids for Learning
The first step in giving your children the best education is to prepare them for it. Train them to follow an organized schedule. Show your kids the right way to take care of themselves, like training them to bathe and dress for school.
Another key step is to teach your kids the value of good nutrition. When your child goes to school and gets their lunch there, they may pick unhealthy options. If a child doesn’t learn to eat healthy foods early, it can lead to serious health problems later.
Don’t forget to impart the importance of staying hydrated to your children. Having enough sleep is another crucial aspect of finding academic success. We will tackle this topic in more depth below.
Develop focus and time management skills in your children. These are crucial skills children use for navigating school and, later, their careers. Start by using visual timers, plotting calendars, and finding a place for everything.
2. Connect With Your Child’s School to Ensure the Best Education
Make sure you aren’t a stranger to your child’s teachers, school staff, and educational system. Make time to speak with your child’s teacher. It will give you an idea of the teacher’s personality and help make communication between you easier.
Don’t miss out on parent-teacher conferences, even if they’re on virtual platforms like Zoom. These conferences are opportunities for you to learn about how your child is doing in school. You can pick up vital information from speaking with a teacher, like bullying or bad behavior.
Get to know the staff in the school. Knowing the administrators and staff lets you learn who handles your children. Find out who takes care of your children’s social, emotional, and academic growth.
Whether your child is in a public or private school, getting to know who you’re working with is essential. Are you looking for public schools that provide high-quality education to young children? Visit royaltx.org to learn more about their admissions in Texas.
3. Value the Process, Not the Product
Don’t let your parenting and handling of your child’s education become controlling. You don’t want to be the typical strict parent that helicopters over their children. In cases like these, children become rebellious and distant from their parents.
Rather than being a controlling figure, you want to take a guiding role. Let children learn from their mistakes and explore their opportunities. Praise them for good grades and for trying when they failed.
While it teaches kids to work hard, paying them to get A’s can remove their natural curiosity to learn. Avoid putting up their report cards on the fridge or social media. You can be proud of their grades, but doing these acts often can make it seem like you value their grades more.
Even the best schools for children today have stopped using letter-based grading systems. It’s important to note that grades are incomplete and flawed indicators of learning. You’d want to keep an eye on how your children study instead.
Are your child’s grades declining or going up? Are there study techniques that may work better for them? Let them explore new strategies and show them your interest in the learning process.
Share your experiences from your school days, but don’t beat yourself up over your failures. Your children may also do the same to themselves. Teach them to be positive and how mistakes are learning opportunities to do better next time.
4. Train Your Kids to Keep a Healthy Sleep Schedule
Sleep loss or deprivation can harm your child’s academic performance. When kids are sleeping during class, it’s harder for them to focus and absorb new information. Their creativity gets reduced, and their information processing is slower.
To avoid these things, make sure your child is getting enough sleep. The hours a child needs for proper sleep each night differ depending on their age. Younger kids need 9-11 hours of sleep each night, while teenagers must get 8-10 hours of sleep.
Don’t let your kids sacrifice good rest for more hours for studying or playing. Remember that sleep increases motivation, creativity, good mood, and focus. It also sharpens memory and boosts mental health.
5. Give Skills Your Child Needs to Succeed
You can send your child to the best schools in the country. However, without the right skills and training, there’s no guaranteeing his or her success. As with adults and their careers, your child also needs to develop a good work ethic and study habits.
Teach study skills that will work best for your child’s learning style.
One important study skill is to learn how to organize and follow a schedule. Create a study plan with your child. Discuss how much time they should spend studying, playing, and doing household chores.
Urge your children to be resourceful. Everything they need to succeed is at the tip of their fingertips. They only need to learn where they can find these resources and how to access them.
This doesn’t mean that they should forego library visits and book-reading. Libraries are ideal places for study and research. Plus, they hold information that the internet can’t always provide.
6. Make Sure Your Kid Gets Homework Done
The best way to reaching a long-term goal is to take small steps that lead to it. Your child also needs to understand this. In schooling and education, those small steps include finishing homework.
These small daily tasks will amount to helping your child reach his or her greater goal. However, it won’t work if you’re not there to guide your child. Each day, you must make sure that your kid finishes the homework given to him or her.
If your kid’s having trouble, help him or her out. Don’t give the answers or do the homework for your kid. Instead, teach your child how to do the problem or reread the instructions. Remember, teaching is one of the best ways to preserve learned information.
Even if you don’t know the subject well enough, show your child that you’re interested. You can also get help from others to tutor or help your child with homework. Constant reminders about doing their homework will help your child form good habits.
7. Provide a Good Environment for Studying
Good education doesn’t only occur in the classroom but also in the home. The design of a classroom is to create a good studying environment to optimize learning. Your home must have the same atmosphere, as well.
Studies show that a room optimized for studying helps children concentrate better. It leads them to preserve more information and produce high-quality work.
Now, how do you create a stable and optimal environment for studying at home?
Set a studying space for your child where they have the least distractions. The room should be comfortable, free from noise, and organized. Your child also needs to be in a room that has natural and ample lighting.
If your child concentrates best under natural lighting, following a study schedule helps. In most homes, there will also be times when the house is quiet or noisy. Your child must plan his study time when the home is distraction-free and noise-free.
8. Remember That Play Is Healthy for Academic Development
When you’re researching “how to get my child the best education,” don’t focus only on the tips on improving academics. You must also remember that “play” is everything for a child. It is where learning starts.
Play helps build a child’s intellectual, social, emotional, and physical development. They pick up executive function skills and creative thinking from play. In socializing, kids learn to share ideas and express feelings.
In social play, your child will feel emotions, like frustration and anticipation. They’ll learn how to self-regulate their emotions and make decisions on when to lead or to follow. Finally, play encourages good physical development, like coordination, muscle control, and strength.
If you want your children to do well in their education, help them learn to balance “work” or studying and play. Play-based learning at home occurs best when your child has time to play without gadgets.
You can also introduce playdough, paint, and other similar materials they can manipulate. Don’t be afraid to play with them, too. When you do, follow their lead and let playtime be child-directed.
For teens, let them invent, design, and build things. Encourage them to take up sports or join jam sessions. Games like Dungeons & Dragons are great for boosting problem-based learning and social skills.
9. Encourage Reading for Studies and Pleasure
There’s a decline in the consumption of books among teens and children. One cause of this is the wide availability and access to digital tools. Even states and schools are encouraging the incorporation of technology in the classroom.
There’s no doubt of the many benefits of integrating technology and education. However, it also creates some drawbacks, especially in children’s and teen literature. Electronic and digital gadgets are distracting kids from reading for study and pleasure.
Pleasure reading helps students improve their critical thinking and reading comprehension skills. Reading self-selected literature also helps improve a child’s academic performance. As they become adults, these skills get honed and serve them in adulthood and at the workplace.
Teens who don’t read may have low-level vocabulary development and writing skills. They may also have poor performances in science, math, and history. However, the decline of pleasure reading only affects these areas in part.
Try to get your kid interested in books from an early age. Read stories at bedtime to spark your child’s interest and curiosity. As they grow older, your kids will pick up books without your prompting.
10. Inspire Independent and Active Learning
Kids also need to learn how to be responsible and independent in their studies. Train your kid to always learn how to look for answers, support, or solutions on their own. You won’t always be there to help your children when they’re having difficulties learning.
How do you promote active learning in children? When they speak or express their ideas, listen to them. Don’t brush them aside, as this can affect their self-confidence and independence.
Create a give-and-take relationship of ideas and solutions at home. Let your child express his or her opinions, but don’t ignore or reject them.
Instead, ask them what makes them think that way. You can learn a lot about your child’s perspective from doing this.
Give Your Child a Bright Future
These are the steps you can take as a parent to provide the best education for your children. We hope you enjoyed reading about these steps and tips. These are a few key actions you need to take as a parent to ensure a good future for your children.
Did you like reading about the various ways of boosting a child’s academic, emotional, and mental strengths? Do you want to read more on what you can do to improve these areas in child growth? Check out our other guides on education and child development for more content like this.
