Iain McClintonIn a stressful, demanding school like BIPH, we have to reflect on the very nature of success and understand that a successful experience in school is not only about the final grades printed on report cards.
Grades are important, but ideally, your child will have been learning much more than the acquired knowledge lurking behind those subject grades. Your sons and daughters, regardless of the individual subjects they have been studying, will have been learning how to retain information, think independently, ask meaningful questions and develop an increasing sense of competence and confidence.
These transferable skills; skills that the student can carry with them regardless of the individual subjects being studied in high school, are vital for their future progress and development. We should remind ourselves of the successes that our sons and daughters have had in these areas even when at times an individual grade is not what we may have hoped for.
Here are some key values to help keep you focused on what’s most important for school success.
DOs
Focus on the process, not the product.
- Focus on the process they used to get that grade.
- Look forward, not back. Help your child set self-improvement goals.
Encourage your children to self-advocate.
- Children commit more energy and resources to activities that they feel they have chosen for themselves.
Keep a long-term perspective.
- Overemphasizing a current problem detracts from a future solution. Setting goals and focusing on the big picture provides more positivity than getting entangled in an immediate, current dilemma.
Help your child maintain a healthy sleep schedule.
- Difficult to achieve, but a healthy sleep schedule will vastly improve your child’s mental capacities.
Love the child you have, not the child you wish you had.
- Setting unattainable or never-ending expectations will detract from the present moment and make your child feel that parental love is something that can only be received in a far-flung future when all expectations have been met.
DON’Ts
Overschedule
- Children also need downtime in order to effectively assimilate new information
Worship grades.
- Keep report cards off social media and the refrigerator
Encourage helplessness.
- Don’t organize and do everything for your child. Let them make some decisions for themselves
Compare kids to one another.
- We all acquire knowledge and use our learnings in unique ways. Drawing comparisons with other children is ultimately stressful and destructive for your child
Education and parenting are both long-term endeavors, and improvements don’t happen on a daily basis. Remember, particularly at the end of a school year, to take a step back, get some perspective, and assess your child’s successes, remove focus from their failures and celebrate that start of the summer break.