The primary approach you should take when you notice your child having a hard time with school is to observe and identify any issues that might be causing this. Children typically lose motivation and refuse to participate in school activities when they are going through a difficult time. 

Many factors might be causing your child to go through this. Some examples of these factors could include learning difficulties, emotional challenges or social challenges. These are all common factors. However, not all children show detectable symptoms of these struggles, and it’s your responsibility as the parent to observe and to help motivate your child. With this in mind, here’s a list of some things you can do to help your child in school:

1. Teach Your Child To Be An Active Learner 

Your child might be struggling as they are a passive learner. These types of learners absorb information quietly, typically in one-way communication type lessons, like lectures and seminars. Passive learners generally are less likely to engage in discussions and share opinions. 

Instead, passive learners merely internalize whatever information is discussed. This is normal, even if your child is exposed to creative classroom discussion. 

But the good thing is, you can do something about it. You can help your child to be more engaged with some of these passive learning strategies: 

  •  Give Your Child A Voice: This means fostering an environment where giving feedback and response is natural and encouraged. When you give your child a voice, you take into consideration your child’s preferred learning style. Utilizing your child’s preferred learning style gives way for building a foundation where you can enhance new skills and knowledge. 
  • Give Your Child A Chance To Demonstrate Skills: When you give your kid a chance to highlight their skills and knowledge, you’re also promoting practical thinking and problem-solving. Apart from that, it shows your child that you believe in their knowledge. Therefore, this encourages a sense of accountability in your child.  

2. Participate In Parent-Teacher Meetings 

Your child might perform better when they see you actively engaging in academic matters. This could be because your child will naturally feel more motivated when they see you getting involved. 

Apart from that, attending school events will also help you become acquainted with your child’s teachers and school staff, providing your child with a  good demonstration of socialisation. 

For instance, parent-teacher conferences and school-wide activities are a fun way to stay informed about your child. These activities allow you to converse with skilled educators about the possible ways you can help your child do better. 

Plus, being involved also ensures that you are aware of the classroom habits of your child. So you can actively monitor if your kid is showing progress.  

3. Build A Routine 

Another way to help your child is to build a routine. You should set a specific time in the day where your kids can do their homework. Make it a rule that when the clock hits a specific hour, it’s now time to do homework. 

Remember, it’s generally not suggested to do homework right after school. Perhaps it’s better to let your kids rest first after arriving from school before you start making them do homework. 

Also, make sure that your child gets regular breaks whilst doing their homework to prevent your child from becoming overtired. 

Most importantly, when you’ve decided on a specific schedule, make sure that you stick to that every day. 

4. Do Practice Tests 

Merely reviewing their work won’t be enough to ensure that your children will do well in exams. What you should do instead is encourage your children to practice active recall. 

That’s because active recall is one of the most effective ways to memorize information. To do this, you can quiz your child about the lesson. 

Or you can take this to the next level by having your child answer practice tests. Again, the secret formula to this is getting involved. Or you can take this to the next level and get premium practice tests today to get your child answer practice tests. Again, the secret formula to this is getting involved. 

5. Interact More 

Part of getting involved is to interact with your kids more often. Parents and children worldwide are struggling to find time in the day to sit down and chat about their child’s life. This has become a problem for a lot of parents because children have recently started being more inclined to use gadgets. 

But the good thing is, this is a problem that you can quickly solve. All you have to do is set a daily schedule where you and your child can have a casual conversation about school. 

Use this time to see if your kid is struggling in any way and let them know that you’re there to help. 

You can also ask about school, their classmates and friends. Talk to your kid about the things they like and dislike about the school. 

This allows your child to have an opportunity to voice out their feelings freely. And, when your child starts expressing, make sure that you keep an open ear, encourage their excitement and, more importantly, support their disappointments.   

6. Establish A Study Space 

Aside from establishing a schedule or routine, you must also establish a working space for your children. 

Having a designated area for studying is extremely important, especially with the pandemic affecting how children receive lessons. This lets your child effectively accomplish work in an environment that fosters productivity and learning. 

Establishing a workstation shouldn’t have to be that hard. If your house is short on space, you can place an extra table in the quietest spot in the house.  

If you can, you can totally spice up your kid’s desk by adding some decorations your kids like or, better yet, have your kids decorate the area. 

7. Instill A Positive Mindset Towards Failure 

Most importantly, it would be best if you taught your child that failure is not the end. Tell them that failure is certainly not a bad thing. 

Accepting failure might not come easy for a child. Children are most likely to feel bad when they feel like they are beginning to fail, which might discourage them even more. So you have to make sure that you teach your child a positive outlook about failure as part of teaching them positive behaviors. 

Let your child know that every master has once become a disaster. And that before you become excellent at something, you have to start from the bottom. 

Equip your child’s needs with the mental capacity to handle failure throughout their life.  

You can teach your child that failure can be a positive thing by helping them to understand that everyone learns through their mistakes, and failure means that they have the opportunity to try again with more experience and determination than the previous attempt.

Conclusion 

When you notice that your child is struggling academically, just know that there’s a learning curve in everything. Just because your child is struggling right now doesn’t imply that your child will struggle forever. 

It could just be that your kid’s still adjusting to the environment and will eventually surpass it all. So the best thing to do is to be patient and be supportive on their journey. 

Sometimes, your involvement is all they need.