When Parental Help is Not Helpful
November marks several important milestones for students, whether they’re in K-12 or college. For elementary through high school students, it’s the end of the first quarter and report cards will soon be issued. For college students Thanksgiving break is coming up, which also may be their first visit home. It is natural for parents to want to step in and help when we see unexpected grades in school or hear of unexpected struggles in college. But when is parental help not helpful?
Build Resilience
We sometimes fall into the pattern of measuring our success as parents through our children’s academic success. What we sometimes don’t see as clearly is that our children are also trying to live up to the expectations we’ve laid out for them. And if they’re struggling to do so, stepping in and taking over (no matter how tempting) won’t help them build resilience when things go wrong. So what strategies are helpful? EEG Founder Kathy Essig offers the following suggestions:
Help your children to see you as fallible. Use anecdotes from your life to let them know that you aren’t perfect, and that learning is about the ups and downs.
Choose your words carefully. Once you have said something, it’s very hard to take it back.
Teach Them to Fish
We all know the proverb, “Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” One of the most helpful things a parent can do is teach their student to map out a plan to recover from setbacks, rather than taking over. Kathy recommends:
If they are willing, go over graded work with them and make a plan on how they will study differently next time. Teachers are smart, but not always creative. Once you have seen how they assess work, you have a good idea about the format of future assessments and can help your children accordingly.
Keep Emotion Out of Teacher Meetings
When meeting with teachers about grades, avoid placing blame or becoming emotional. And bear in mind, while parental involvement is important at the K-12 level, it is never appropriate for a parent to be directly involved with your child’s college professor. Instead, model appropriate interaction for your child while you can, and if possible and appropriate, involve them in the meeting.
Come to grade discussions as if you are in the boardroom. Keep the focus on developing strategies to move forward for success.
Support your child in communicating directly with their teacher. Whether attending an in-person meeting with them and coaching them on how to respectfully advocate for themselves or ask for additional help or helping your child with clarity and tone for email correspondence, building these skills will form the foundation of being able to confidently approach a college professor to have productive discussions about grades and assignments.