With the new school year beginning, all parents are hoping this will be a great year! They’re hoping that their child will enjoy learning, grow in their skills and have positive social experiences. How can you help make that happen? There are lots of contributions you can make and none of them include doing your child’s homework!

First, you can help ensure success by creating a beneficial home environment. This means showing that you value the educational experience for the ways lessons can be applied to daily life…not just for grades. It also means having both schedules and routines. One of the key areas to apply this is making sure your child has sufficient sleep which is essential for learning. Bedtime and wake up time should be consistent. Include a bedtime routine which winds children down for sleep and provide an environment conducive to sleep. Make sure all electronics are out of the bedroom!

Another aspect of a beneficial home environment is setting limits and boundaries with predictable outcomes that you enforce. Respect for adult decisions begins at home and benefits children in the school setting. Also, be aware of the emotional tone of your household. Try to limit disharmony and stress caused by parenting issues, schedules, responsibilities and siblings. Make sure to establish a morning routine that provides a calm start to your child’s day. And arrive on time or early! Children can have a difficult start to their day when they need to join an ongoing classroom activity – they will have missed the directions and… everyone turns to look at them!

Take advantage of the start of the new year to promote good work habits. Establish homework routines including where and when homework will be done. Locate a fixed place where backpacks full of completed homework are ready to be taken to school the next day. Teach the logical sequencing of a task, breaking assignments into accomplishable parts, time management, list making and the use of a calendar for planning.

Another way to help your child succeed in school is to help self esteem and confidence to develop. One important measure is to set realistic expectations for each of your children – neither too high nor too low – so they can experience success. Take into account the strengths and weaknesses of each child. Don’t expect perfection and emphasize “best efforts” and “personal bests”. Confidence is also built by encouraging competency. Let your children do what they can for themselves – including homework! Be available only as a resource. Children need to learn how to problem solve, how to prevail through perseverance and how to survive and recover from failures.

Hopefully, with homework under control, children will have some FREE TIME! Gauge whether your child is a fast worker who has time for extracurricular activities or a slower worker for whom extra commitments create time pressure and stress. Remember that free, unstructured time WITHOUT SCREENS allows children to hone their imagination, initiative and creativity and learn to rely on their internal resources – all important for school success.

Social skills are another important ingredient for school success. Children who lack these skills tend to be preoccupied with social isolation or become victims of teasing and bullying. Help your child learn to read both the verbal and nonverbal cues from others and to respond appropriately. Teach empathy, compromise, negotiation and inclusion, rather than hostile competitiveness, bragging, bossiness and aggression. Make sure your child has experience with taking turns and is developing conversational skills. Provide playdates with classmates to encourage connections.

Finally, build a strong alliance with the school and the teachers. Be as involved as time allows. Make sure that you communicate to the teachers any changes at home that will effect your child’s classroom performance as well as any struggles with schoolwork. And, please, be open to and welcome any feedback about your child that the school provides. Potential problems can be averted or corrected by working jointly with the school on such issues.

HAPPY SCHOOL YEAR 2023-2024!