Back to School Parenting Tips from an Elementary School Teacher

As an elementary teacher with 17 years experience in grades 2 through 4, parents often ask me how they can help their child as a learner.

Elementary children develop as learners in many ways. I approach child development holistically, looking at the social, emotional, moral, and academic arenas as equally important and essential.

Here are my 12 tips for helping your child to develop socially, emotionally, morally, and academically:

1. Model kind and respectful behavior for your child, including respectful expression of feelings and resolution of conflicts in the home. Make sure that your child sees you treating others with respect in your daily life. Being polite and thanking the cashier at Starbucks may seem like a small thing, but remember that you are modeling expected behavior for your child.

2. Read to your child and with your child from birth and through the elementary years. The development of a strong vocabulary and a love of literature are critical elements to school success and to a lifelong love of learning.

3. Encourage your child to find and pursue a non-academic passion, such as art, music, sports, dance, model making, etc. You may need to give a slight push to get some kids to try out new activities. Expect your child to stick with it for a season or a class, but then allow the child to let you know if it is his or her thing.

4. Allow your child to have unscheduled time in the week for imaginative play. The overscheduled child has difficulty learning how to make good personal choices and develop their own creative endeavors.

5. Help your child develop a sense of fair play and healthy competition by playing games just for the fun of it. If your child participates in youth sports leagues, always model good sportsmanship and emphasize the joy of sports and the development of skills over winning.

6. Limit screen time of all kinds: video games, computers, TV, and DVDs. Expect chores and homework to be completed before any screen time.

7. Limit exposure to violence in movies, video games and toys, especially for kids under 8 years old. The world becomes a better place when children are taught to abhor violence in all forms and use their words to solve problems.

8. Be sure your child is getting adequate sleep and a healthy breakfast and morning snack. And, yes, a good night's sleep is more important that finishing homework.

9. Understand and respect your child's temperament and learning style. A great source for learning more about temperament is Mary Sheedy Kurcinka's book Raising Your Spirited Child: A Guide for Parents Whose Child Is More Intense, Sensitive, Perceptive, Persistent, Energetic. Her description of personality traits is excellent, especially the chapter discussing introverts and extraverts.

10. Always try to provide clear behavioral limits in a warm, loving way. If you teach your child that no means no, then he or she will have a much easier time as a learner in the classroom. The website Positive Discipline is a great starting point for learning the parenting skills to accomplish this.

11. Model honesty and ethical behavior.

12. Let your child see that you make mistakes and that you apologize with humility when necessary.

Source:

Raising Your Spirited Child: A Guide for Parents Whose Child Is More Intense, Sensitive, Perceptive, Persistent, Energetic by Mary Sheedy Kurcinka, Harper Paperbacks, 1998.

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