Ten Important Educational Practices for Parents

Five for the Primary Years and Five for the Secondary Ones

Raising children in today’s America can be difficult. We live in a society where how to raise our children is a choice instead of an instrument of culture. The amalgamation of customs brought from the multitude of immigrants who make up a majority of our ancestors has left our child rearing choices to choice, experience, and sometimes just because that's what our parents did.

There are some simple choices we can make in our children’s early lives to help set them up for a more successful experience with learning. Learning, by nature, is an accumulation of information, experiences, lessons learned from failures and successes. Because of the nature of learning, the more moments of learning appropriate skills, actions, and information we can provide as parents or caregivers, the more prepared our children will be.

With this in mind, I have put together five actions we can take as parents that have a positive effect on children in their educational journey. Along with a short explanation of the benefit of this action, I will include links to other articles and websites that go into a greater detail of benefits or actions. 

1. Read to them every day

Language is the first non-movement activity we learn to do when we are babies and toddlers. Human’s brains are hardwired for storytelling, so beginning to read to your children before they can speak will help them have a larger vocabulary, one of the most powerful tools a young learner can have.

When it becomes appropriate, share the responsibility of reading with your child. The better reader your daughters or sons are, the easier it will be for them to understand and assimilate information through text, audio, and visual formats on any given topic of interest.

2. Healthy foods really do matter

With our busy schedules and the rising cost of food, providing healthy food can be difficult. The nutrients we put into our children is the fuel for them to function properly, both physically and mentally. A good general rule is the less processed and the less steps from harvest to consumption the better.

Some nutrients are more important than others to young learning brain development. A list of vital nutrients in early brain development are: vitamins B6, B12, folate, and D, Choline, zinc, iron, and omega-3 fatty acids. The last on the list is usually the hardest to get directly from diet, but I would suggest a DHA supplement as early as your pediatrician recommends. Here is a list from Harvard of what foods you can consume to intake specific nutrients.

3. Lots of activities that give them the opportunity to practice both gross and fine motor skills

Being able to control your body is more important than you would think for an individual's overall educational journey. Beyond the ability to write, other tasks like cutting, glueing, coloring, as well as the ability to fit in physically with their peers helps an individual’s view of themselves in comparison to their cohort. 

Being able to accomplish these fine motor skills as well as being in control of their gross motor skills will allow your child to focus on the more academic aspects of their school lessons.

4. Invest in music/foreign language study/midline crossing exercises at an early age

Learning a musical instrument and learning to read music at an early age is one of the most positive choices you can make as a parent. Doing so doesn’t mean they will be a famous musician someday, but it pretty much guarantees that they will be better at math when they are older than they would have been if you didn’t.

Because of the early nature of learning language, there is a pocket range of four to eight where children can learn multiple languages rather easily when compared to trying to learn other languages later in life. There are great resources online to learn a foreign language at any age, and the benefits of growing up multilingual are too enormous to list.

Having your children do activities that involve both sides of their body is valuable. It helps to connect the two sides of your brain, and taking advantage of these benefits early is of course better than later. Simple exercises of tossing the ball up from one hand to the other at the simplest form. Some sports where you use booths ides of your body like soccer can simulate this same benefit.

5. Just talk to them.

Remember when we talked about language being the first non-motor skill we learn, well just talking to our children helps to improve their ability to learn. Learning and exploring language early is a positive thing. What and how you talk to them can be important. For example, asking your child questions while reading to them about the book or story helps teach them to interact with books and stories. 

You can ask a very young child about illustrations in the book, and more advanced questions with your older elementary aged children like why a character acted in a certain way, what their favorite part of the story was, or what they think would happen next if the story kept going as some examples.

When your daughter or son comes home from school, don’t ask them the classic question, “How was school?”. Instead, ask them open ended questions like, what their favorite part of school was, or what was something cool they learned. Extend the conversation, this teaches your child that what they learned is important as well as building oral and logical skills that will be useful later in life.

Teenage students

The World has changed drastically for those of us who grew up in the 1980s and 90s and either just entering that time of parenting a teenager or in the smack dab middle of it. This is a time where for some parents, the fear of what the future will hold and whether our daughters and sons will be prepared for what the world has in store for them, starts creeping in. For some of us, their homework starts getting more complex, and it's been twenty years since we took chemistry, calculus, and know nothing about coding or the likes.

Helping with homework has become difficult, and for some of us, impossible. So how can we help support our teenage daughters and sons? Here are five sometimes simple and sometimes complex practices we can do as parents of teenagers to support their academic growth.

1. Continue to talk to them.

Talk to them about everything because their friends are talking to them about everything. When we don’t talk to our kids, then they take information from others, and oftentimes from peers who know just as little as they do. They are learning how to be adults, and need to be led by adults, not other adolescents.

What we choose to talk to them about shows them what we feel is important. So if we only talk to them about chores, or sporting events, or television shows, that is what we are telling them is important. When we ask them about their school day, talk to them about society, and current events.

Teachers, other adults, and their peers are talking to them about these things. This is your opportunity to influence and get to know your children even better. Again, the emphasis is not yes or no questions, but open-ended questions that share with them that you care about not just them but what they care about, which will catapult their effort and growth in those areas. Don’t just ask questions, have a discussion.

2. Support their interests while pushing new experiences.

Whatever your daughter or son is interested in, if you don’t support it, they will feel like you don’t support them, as an individual, and their growth will diminish, not just in that area, but in all areas of learning. People are learning all the time and showing them, as an adult, you can learn something new, will show them that there is value in being a lifelong learner.

This is also your opportunity to share your passions and knowledge with them, to introduce them to your past times and your opportunity to experience new things together. This whole process shows them that life is ever changing and accepting new information is a positive process. That is how we learn. Modeling by experiencing new things together shows your daughters and sons that learning is a lifelong process they should focus on.

3. It’s never too early to start thinking about the future.

Your daughter and son will be moving on with their lives sooner than later. This might mean going to college, heading to a trade school, entering the military, or any number of other options. Whatever their interests, there are things they can do to start preparing for that next step.

That could be practicing or studying a skill, preparing for college entry exams, starting an apprenticeship, or learning a foreign language. The important role you have here, is they usually don’t know what that next step is or how to take it. You might not know either, but you are more equipped to find out than your daughter or son is. By doing the research and giving them support in their choice you are modeling for them how to reach their goals.

Include them in all of these processes as possible. If you are researching the best art schools or local carpenters to apprentice under, bring the list to your daughter or son, help them expand it or eliminate some of the choices. You are teaching them how to make decisions and choices, a very academic process.

4. Let them teach you.

In education we say that if a student has learned something, they can teach it to someone else. That is complete understanding. In the conversations you have with your daughter or son, ask them to teach you what they've learned, whether you already know it or not. They will learn important skills in sharing information, they will grow in self-confidence, and they will use that confidence to grow more as individuals.

It does not have to be educational. Let them teach you what they are interested in and what they know. Push them to teach you things they are unsure of, so you can learn together when information is not there. By turning over the power of leadership to your child, they will be empowered to lead in other places, creating more learning opportunities.

5. Remember those basic life necessities.

Remember a few paragraphs ago when we talked about your daughter or son moving along soon, well education is not just reading, writing, and arithmetic. Sometimes we take the simple things for granted. It might have been easier and faster to just make their bed when they were younger, but now they are sixteen and don’t know how to make their bed or properly wash laundry.

In these last few years, your children are still living at home, it is your job to prepare them to not live at home. How to pay bills, manage money, keep a house, argue respectfully, speak to police officers, manage time, cook meals, and the list can seem extremely long depending on what you have already taught them, but these are wonderful lessons that will bring you and your children closer together.

You might think, wait, this post was about supporting our children’s education and a lot of it sounded like social skill building, and you are right. By supporting our children socially and emotionally, we are supporting their education. When our children feel good, are fed well, and feel comfortable in who they are, they will be more inquisitive, interested, and open to learning.

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is something educators talk about. If a person's personal needs are not being met, they don’t care what the square root of 144 is or who led what battle during the civil war. The most basic and important action we can take as parents is making sure their needs are met, then showing interest in their interests and supporting them by modeling adult behavior and discussions.

I hope this hasn’t been overwhelming, and if you need more guidance or want to talk all of this through, remember, there is always help out there.