How To Effectively Manage Your Child’s Education

Managing your child’s education is one of the most important jobs that you, as a parent, have. While there are hundreds of tips and tricks that could be of use to you, there really are only three major things to remember to keep your child on track to receive the best education available – communication, repetition, and critical thinking. If you focus your efforts in these three places and incorporate them into everything you do, your child will be ahead of the game.

Communication
It may seem a bit like a no-brainer, but communication is the absolute key to making sure your child is making the most out of the available educational opportunities. This means being on a first name basis with your child’s teacher(s) and knowing exactly what the lesson plans are going to be so you can be ready to field any questions your child may have. It’s also important to keep the communication lines with your child open. When you show interest in what your child is doing, it validates the importance of their work. Not only will you be validating the work, but you’ll also be able to point real-world examples out and show your child that what is being taught in school really is vitally important.

Repetition
In addition to great communication, repetition is key to student success. Sure, having seen something in class once and discussed it may work for some students, but the majority don’t pick up on things this instantaneously. This is where you, as a parent, have an opportunity to help your child learn. You can take the lessons being taught and create additional materials that reinforce these lessons. While this isn’t an overarching management technique, it absolutely makes a difference. The more often that a child does something, hears something or reads something, the more likely it is to be remembered.
The biggest challenge with repetition is having the time to come up with activities for your child to do. This is where the help of an experienced tutor is invaluable. When you simply don’t have the time you’d like to dedicate to your child’s education, a tutoring program is the best way to get the repetition and extra practice that is necessary for your child to excel.

Critical Thinking
While children in kindergarten aren’t quite ready to dive directly into a full-scale critical thinking session, it’s never too early to start asking them to come up with their own explanations for things. Asking your child what he or she thinks before giving them the answer makes them think about all of the possible answers first. Learning how to reason from the question to the answer is an essential skill for dealing with problems all through life. When you are managing your child’s education, the ability to reason should be at the top of the list.
Managing your child’s education isn’t difficult, but it is something that many parents fail to do effectively. By remembering the three main facets of a good education – communication, repetition, and critical thinking – you’ll be well on your way to making sure your child gets the most out of the education experience.