The role of a father is extensive, in the sense that it encompasses various responsibilities and in turn these are modified as our children grow older.

One of the responsibilities that parents must face in fulfilling their role is to help their children with academic activities. Therefore, many parents tend to ask themselves the question how can I help my child to study properly?

Helping Your Children Study

In this article we will see a series of tips that can be very useful when preparing to do homework with your children, so that you can make them learn in the best way and develop their full academic potential.

1. Meet regularly with your children’s teachers

The second place where our children spend most of their time is in school , together with their classmates and their teachers. That is why, in order to answer the question “how can I help my child to study”, we must be concerned about having a good relationship with our children’s authority figures at their school and not do their homework or save them the effort they must make to learn.

Communication with our children’s teachers is of great importance for our collaboration with them at home, bearing in mind that it is the teachers who will tell us which areas need to be strengthened in our child’s knowledge at home.

Apart from the teachers’ meetings proposed by the institution, try to meet with the teachers to talk about your child’s performance and behaviour in class . This can be when you go to look for your child at school; before you leave, from time to time, talk to the teachers for a few moments.

Just as the teacher will let us know what our child’s strengths are, so that we can enhance them even more from the family nucleus.

2. Attend all meetings set up by the school

Attending parent-representative meetings will allow you to meet not only your child’s teachers and other staff, but also other representatives, which is important to get a sense of your child’s classmates.

3. Find out how your child is doing in the subjects

Apart from the attention that teachers give to your child, it is important that you also take care to encourage your child’s academic performance . Remember that parental figures are the most significant for the child and it is from them that he or she gets motivation and self-esteem.

The more you know about your child’s performance on his or her course, the better you will know about his or her personal abilities, so that you can take care of reinforcing his or her skills and preventing his or her difficulties from limiting them.

4. Take private lessons

If necessary, you may want to enroll him in some private classes with the intention of him overcoming some specific academic limitations he may be experiencing at school.

The personal attention of a private tutor is a great help for your children to study better, but even if you take this step you should not ignore their progress ; their success is still partly your responsibility.

5. Reviews her notebooks daily

This habit is good to have a clear follow up of how regular our children are during the weeks of study at school, and also to be able to see first hand which are the subjects that are most complicated for them .

6. Help your child find his or her study method

Knowing that no two people learn in the same way, it is important to find out, together with your children, what the best study method is for them at home.

Help them prepare for the tests and see which techniques are more efficient than others. This way, after a while, you can decide which ones to keep and which ones to discard.

Some of the most useful study resources are the Youtube outreach videos, the creation of outlines and summaries (by your son or daughter), and the alternation of rest times, study times and testing times .

7. Become actively involved in school activities

Parenting activities at school help your child understand your commitment to his or her learning, as well as being an effective method of keeping in touch with school staff.

This also refers to contact through social networks or any other means the school may use to stay close to the representatives, find out if there are any WhatsApp groups that may be of interest to you and ask to join them (although, of course, you should only ask for their time for really important questions that you think are meaningful in helping your child study).

Bibliographic references:

  • Pashler, H.; McDonald, M.; Rohrer, D.; Bjork, R. (2009). Learning Styles: Concepts and Evidence. Psychological Science in the Public Interest. 9 (3): 105 – 119.
  • Winch, C. and Gingell, J. (2008). Philosophy of Education: The Key Concepts (2nd edition). London: Routledge.