Family Matters

Posts Tagged ‘academic performance’

During my parenting workshops, I ask the parents to describe the challenges they have with their kids. Parents of teens often excuse all their challenges as the result of their kids reaching the “teen” stage. “You know how teens are”, they say.

During the workshops, we discuss many of our beliefs and how they affect our kids’ behavior and I hear myself saying to parents again and again that the image teens have is worse than their behavior. Teens are considered emotional, insensitive, subject to peer pressure, disrespectful, irresponsible and moody, but what they have is just a bad reputation!

I do not think it is a coincidence that all those teens have parents who are able to see beyond their hair color, their hairstyle, their piercing, their desire to be with friends, their rebellious behavior and their academic achievements. It is not a coincidence at all. It is a formula that works. If you can see beyond what is on the surface, you will raise happy teens and you will be a happy parent.

For a while, I have been thinking about this. What a shame! Do you know how many times I hear these stories that say to myself, “I wish everyone could hear it”? Sometimes, I hear shocking things and I think, “I’m fortunate, because people go through much tougher things than me in their life”. I have enough material for thousands of stories, and I mean real life stories, although some clients’ stories are so unreal they sound like fiction.

This week, it hit me big time. Some of the stories I heard from my clients made me cry – one made me cry of sadness and the other made me cry of joy. So I made up my mind to share with you some of those stories. I will write more about the joy and happiness and less about the sadness and I will keep my clients’ privacy, so the names, professions and even gender will not be their real ones, but the essence of the stories will remain powerful.

The first story is about how one of my clients helped her son pass his written driving test after 6 failures.

Mental health is a big concern in Australia, especially depression and particularly in young people. The Commonwealth Government recognizes this problem and has started, among other things, a program called Kids Matter, which guides schools in discovering, analyzing and solving any mental health problems.

Derek is a great believer in emotional intelligence, so Upper Mount Gravatt State School is getting the most out of working with Kids Matter. In fact, the school has done so well is has won awards for leadership in mental health for the past 2 years.

But Kids Matter only provides the framework and incentives for focusing on mental health. The school still has to choose good services and good providers to make real impact and Derek has chosen Ronit to run Happy Parents Raise Happy Kids and Happy Teachers – Happy Students.

In an interview with Derek Brady, he says, “Having a life coach attached to your school as a school partner has huge implications”.

I am sure you have heard a lot about troubled kids and troubled teens, but not much about troubled teachers. You have probably heard about learning difficulties, but not a lot about teaching difficulties. I think that many times when we do talk about kids’ difficulties, regardless of their age, the origin is some parenting or teaching difficulty.

Lately, I have had many requests for kids’ coaching from parents who were concerned about their kid’s behavior. When I asked them to tell me why they thought their child needed coaching, I discovered the most of these kids’ behavior “problems” were the result of teaching difficulties.

Teachers, as most people forget, are just human beings with a big task. If you hang around teachers long enough, you will find out teaching is not an easy profession. Teachers have the ability to make a huge difference in a kids’ life, but they can do it in a good way or in a bad way. They can instill passion, motivation and interest or kill them for life.

So what can we do about this as parents?

Scientists and researchers think the Sudoku puzzle is one of the easiest ways to improve brain function (other brain boosters are a high-protein diet, listening to classical music and rest). The same way physical activity produces healthy bodies, playing Sudoku is an effective way to stimulate the brain. Playing Sudoku keeps brain cells from dying and keeps the brain active and vital.

Some schools have introduced playing Sudoku as part of their daily routine after discovering that kids who played the game had higher IQs.

Although you may think you need mathematical abilities to play Sudoku (I insist on calling it a game), Sudoku requires good visual perception, hand-eye coordination, logic and focus. In fact, every kid who can recognize the numbers from 1 to 9 and the order of the numbers (just recognize, without even knowing their value), can play Sudoku.

Whether we pay for it through taxes or fees, the education system is a service to us parents. Most parents, even if they can afford to stay home and be their kids’ teacher, would rather go to work and do something else. Although parents are the most important educators of their own kids, being a teacher is a whole different skill that would be unfair to expect every parent to master.

When we send our kids to school, we share an important part of parenting with others. Our kids spend 12 to 13 years of their life in the education system with other people who pass on their knowledge, values and attitudes to them. Sometimes, we can afford to choose these people directly, but often, we are bound by financial or geographical circumstances and we do not have much of a choice.

The question “What’s an ideal child?” comes up many times in my parenting workshops. I find it fascinating to discover and re-discover that some parents have only a vague idea of what an ideal child should be like, yet they are disappointed with their own children for not being ideal.

Furthermore, much of these parents’ daily energy is spent on maximizing their kids’ academic achievements, but in their definition of the ideal child, there is no mention of academic achievement.

Our definition of the ideal child forms the framework of our parenting plan. Whether our definition is conscious or not, it still determines how we relate to our kids.

In this part of Top Parenting Bloggers Discuss, I asked each blogger to describe their ideal child. I find it interesting that each of them had a different definition of what it means to them.

The topic of repeating a year bothers many parents. Recently, I was asked by another parent for advice on this matter. I have chosen to present her story here and hope other parents will benefit from my advice.

She write: “Last night I read your comments to Repeating a School Year, which is our own situation. My boy was also born in May and he started school when he was 4 & half years old. We struggled throughout his school years. I felt exactly the same like Mama Fiona – I also found a huge maturity difference to his peers who are 1 year older in most cases. Academically he is sound but struggles to remain there, and keeping him focused is a constant battle. My gut is telling me he needs to repeat, more so for confidence and to help him settle better with kids his own age. School is resisting this as academically he is not well below.”

Kids are very gullible. They love colors and sounds and quickly catch on to new trends and new celebrities. Being young, unfortunately, they do not notice to the messages being delivered straight into their little brains in bright color and pleasant sound.

Our 8-year-old daughter Noff brings home a kids’ magazine called Just Kidding. The name is great and so is some of the content, offering riddles, jokes and general information our kids proudly quote for us. Alas, the good stuff spans about 11 pages out of 48. All the rest is advertising, some of which is cleverly disguised as articles.

Ronit and I were pretty happy about this magazine at first, because our kids like to read, seemed to enjoy the contents and even benefited from having something to talk about at dinner time.

However, through some weird coincidence, one particular magazine lost its cover page and the bare contents found their way to our office desk, where we had a chance to examine them more closely.

For over 24 years, I have been focusing on emotional strength and I believe this is the key to any type of success in life. I think rewarding kids for emotional stretches is the best way to praise them. As a special education teacher, working with kids who struggle and kids who are gifted, praising for effort was always one of my main tools. Remember, it is not the success that counts, but the emotional stretch. Although it may be a cliché, “Good try” has real power.

Research on emotional intelligence has found that persistence is a powerful ingredient in any success formula. So how do you teach persistence? My answer is “Reward every attempt and praise it, regardless of the outcome”. As I said, in special education, it is a major teaching tool and I have countless examples. Here is one from my own home that happened recently.