Take Away Tips
Home and school—everyone shares the goal of helping children learn and feel successful. Research has proven that when parents and teachers work together, everyone benefits: students tend to earn higher grades, perform better on tests, attend school more regularly, have better behavior, and show more positive attitudes toward themselves and toward school.
How can parents support children with organization?
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Home and school—everyone shares the goal of helping children learn and feel successful. Research has proven that when parents and teachers work together, everyone benefits: students tend to earn higher grades, perform better on tests, attend school more regularly, have better behavior, and show more positive attitudes toward themselves and toward school.
How can parents support children with organization?
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Keep a family calendar. Track everyone's activities on a prominent and accessible calendar, encouraging your child to write her own entries and reference the calendar when making plans. You also might consider checking schedules and updating the calendar as a family over Sunday breakfast.
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Introduce checklists. Whether it's as simple as "3 Things To Do Before Bed" or "What To Take On Vacation," creating and referring to lists together will develop your child's ability to strategize tasks and organize his time.
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Assign chores that involve sorting or categorizing. Grocery shopping, emptying the dishwasher, sorting photos, cleaning out a closet, and other tasks that involve pre-planning, making lists, or arranging things are great choices.
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Get ready the night before. This one's always tough — for both of you — but it does work if you can get in the habit.
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Establish a homework routine. Help your child make a "study hour" schedule and set up a comfortable workspace -- Encourage them to stick to the schedule even when they doesn't have homework (They can read, review notes, or even do a crossword puzzle.)
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Cook together. Cooking teaches measuring, following directions, sorting ingredients, and managing time — all key elements in organization. Involve your child in meal planning too, challenging them to help you put together a shopping list.
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Cultivate an interest in collecting. If your child has a particular interest, encourage them to create and organize the collection. It can even be something free — such as rocks or cancelled stamps — that they can sort, classify, and arrange.
How can parents help with collaboration skills?
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Collaboration is increasingly important in today’s learning and working environments. What makes someone a team player? Someone who is collaborative gains cooperation, encourages teamwork, works toward solutions, and seeks to benefit all involved parties while participating in a group.
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Team opportunities. Sign your child up for team sports. Sports like Football, Hockey and Rugby (lots of local clubs in HK and popular with both boys and girls), as well as many others.
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Family Nights in. Board Games Family board games night each week.
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Family Night out. Movie, meal, take it in turns to have a choice.
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Family Council. Work towards achieving consensus rather than the majority rule in decision making.
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Social opportunities. Encourage volunteerism, face-to-face socializing, extended family visits and activities.
How can parents help with motivation?
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Hold high but realistic expectations for your child. Research has shown that expectations have a powerful effect on performance. If you act as though you expect your children to be motivated, hardworking, and interested, they are more likely to be so.
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Tell your child what they need to do to succeed. Give clear instruction and directions. Don't let your child struggle to figure out what is expected of them. Be clear and allow them to know exactly what they are striving for.
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Strengthen self-motivation. Avoid messages that reinforce your power Instead of saying, "I want," "you must," or "you should," stress "I think you will find. . . " or "Can you help me out?"
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Avoid creating intense competition among siblings and friends. Competition produces anxiety. Reduce tendencies to compare your children to one another. In addition, refrain from allowing other’s criticisms of your child’s performance. Steer your children away from comments or activities that pit children against each other. Show them they are individually valued.
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Work from your child’s strengths and interests. Find out what your children are interested in and support their learning about their own chosen topics. Bring it up in conversations, research it together or begin to collect items to do with it. Show them you are interested, too.
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Avoid using grades as threats. As McKeachie (1986) points out, the threat of low grades may prompt some students to work hard, but other students may resort to academic dishonesty, excuses for late work, and other counterproductive behavior.
How can parents help with resillance?
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​Resilience is that ineffable quality that allows some people to be knocked down by life and come back stronger than ever. Psychologists have identified some of the factors that make someone resilient, among them a positive attitude, optimism, the ability to regulate emotions, and the ability to see failure as a form of helpful feedback. Even after a misfortune, resilient people are blessed with such an outlook that they are able to change course and soldier on.
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Provide positive role models. Many people who are now well known from history were considered to be difficult to manage as children and many fictional and cartoon characters are energetic and unpredictable.
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Encourage fiction reading. This give opportunities to students to think of alternate solutions to difficult situations, and helps them see that others have dealt with problems and challenges in their lives, they are not alone.
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Create an atmosphere that is open and positive. A comfortable and safe environment is vital to creating resilience, it is somewhere they can think of and turn to (metaphorically) in times of strife.
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Hold a positive image of your child. You are the first person they will look to for reassurance of their own character. Think about how you can change how you think of negative labels and change them to positive attributes.
How can parents help with positive feedback?
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Think about using 5 positives for every negative - we need to build our children back up again after we knock them down and it takes effort. But here are some useful positive phrases to help you:-
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Brilliant job! (on anything from tidying up, to coming up with an idea)
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Outstanding work! (Re-define what you see as success.)
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This is truly above and beyond. (I like this one! Very sweet and will have exactly the effect we want!)
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This is superb!
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This is so great I think others could benefit from learning about it. (It’s always nice to share a good idea and show off good work as a reward!)
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Thank you! (A standard phrase - we sometimes forget) and Thanks for your help today. (Teach your child to respond with you’re welcome)
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Wonderful, this is more than I expected. (Especially if it is!)
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You consistently bring your all and I truly appreciate that.
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I am so proud/glad/lucky to have you. (Be proud of your children)
However mean it or skip it. It doesn’t work if it doesn’t sound genuine. Positive feedback makes us feel recognized and appreciated, it identifies what we have done right (and thus gives us a clue to what we should do more of), and it makes negative feedback and constructive criticism easier to accept and integrate.