Personal Parents Assistant

School is not only a big challenge for children and teenagers: every parenting chat participant knows this. How to help your child fall in love with school subjects, find the time and energy to do them, and what to do if your child can't cope with their homework.

Remember, school is not the most important thing in life!

Many people think that school is the most important thing in a person's life from the age of 6 to 16 and that learning must be the best it can be. That's why some parents demand that their child sit through lessons "to the point" and "push" to get everything done (and perfect). Actually, the lessons are not the main thing: your relationship with your child, his or her psychological comfort and involvement in learning are much more important. That's why it's great that there are online services where you can find an expert to help your child with their homework. But how do you know if the online service you choose is scam or legit? Of course the reviews. Besides, life for most parents is already very busy - it's often not easy to find the strength after work to sit down with your child for lessons.

So to start with it is important for both you and your child to understand that unfinished work is not a tragedy or a disaster. Otherwise you will worry that you are a bad parent and your child is loved only for the results and grades; this will interfere with his or her life as an adult.

Help your child to overcome their fear of " homework".

A child may be confused at first about their homework and may not know how to approach it. In such a situation the task of the parents is to help organise the process, to show where to start, how to finish, how to properly format the answers in their notebooks. Explain why things need to be done in this order, say the whole sequence of actions out loud. When he gets the hang of it, encourage him to say these commands to himself (first out loud, then to himself). After a while he won't be confused or afraid of a blank page - and it will be much easier for him (and you too).

Explain to yourself why you want to do homework.

Many parents want homework to be a habit, but most children don't see why they should do things just because they have to. Telling a child "you have to" if he or she is doing maths every day in tears is a direct way of turning a curious and open-minded person into a closed and sad one who is distrustful of everything new.

On the one hand, a child should certainly understand that there are things in life that have to be done day by day, but they are useful and necessary - like brushing one's teeth. On the other hand, learning should by no means be monotonous "cramming": schoolchildren already find it difficult because of boring examples and monotonous tasks. You should not become a dictator, but a partner of your child. Think about what you can get him interested in. It could be games or your joint "creative projects" to explore the world - for example, you could draw history comics or do experiments together. It's best if your child treats the tasks as research, rather than as a set of facts to be learned.

In order to explain to your child why you should study and do homework in the first place (and even enjoy it), you have to figure out for yourself how they work and how you can use them to explore the world and gain new knowledge. You need to be able to explain this to yourself, and only then to your child.

Teach your child to make their own decisions.

Try to give your child more independence. Otherwise it might turn out that in first grade he can't make decisions, because he's too young, and in second, too, and by eighth grade he'll turn out to have no such experience and be completely inexperienced. Also, parents shouldn't replace the teacher, otherwise children won't listen to anything in class, hoping that you'll tell them everything later. This is especially common in children who lack parental attention: Doing their homework together is an excuse for them to spend time with their mum or dad. They end up wasting time at school and their parents do their homework instead of talking to them. It is much more important to spend this time doing things together that are not related to school (walking, playing board games, going to the movies, whatever).