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How can you help your child succeed in school?

We’d all like to help our children succeed in school. Succeeding in school is important. That’s something we all know and have instilled in our brains. But how’s it done? And how can you help your child succeed in school? These are questions that have haunted lots of students and their parents for ages.

Why do we want to succeed in school?

Beyond the better grades and the recognition of getting good grades, what’s the purpose we have for succeeding in school? It’s important to identify the reasons behind our desire for success rather than the actions we want to perform. Identifying the reasons instead of the actions gives our actions purpose and meaning. The actions we perform to succeed in school are only the vehicles that take us to our destination.

Some of the benefits of succeeding in school are:

1.    Developing your thinking ability. Ideally, the school work you perform should be guiding you toward developing your thinking ability and your thinking structure. Doing well in school is directly related to how well you’re developing those skills your classes are trying to develop. A well developed thinking structure is a key element to succeeding in school.
2.    Building character. Being able to start from nothing (or some general knowledge) and go toward achieving something builds your character. Succeeding in school allows you to see first hand how you can achieve what you set your mind to.
3.    Advancing in your academic studies. Succeeding in school allows you access to the opportunities most others don’t have. For example, being placed in an advanced class where you could learn more and hone your thinking ability even further. Another example is being awarded scholarships and grants that will pay for your continued education.

There are many more benefits to succeeding in school and I’m sure you have many personal reasons why you’d like to succeed in school, but now that we have some we can explore what it takes to succeed in school.

What it takes to succeed in school

Nobody likes failing. The reason you’re reading this is probably because either you or your child have met some failures and you’re looking to get back on the right track fast. The best thing about those failures though is that they can be your greatest asset for succeeding in school and making your short-term misfortune do a complete 180.

Succeed In School

The Failure Road Map and How To Succeed In School

1. Analyze your assignments and tests.

Go through each problem or question and take note of what you got wrong and what the correct answers were. Believe it or not, most students don’t review their tests at all. Once they get their grade, they tuck their test away and continue down the same path they’ve been on. To succeed in school it helps to know what you did wrong in order to find out what you have to do, to do well.

2. Find out why you answered incorrectly on those assignments and tests.

Ask yourself whether you understood the question at the time. Also take note of whether you even knew the answer at all. If you didn’t know the answer, go back to your textbook or notes and find where the answer was presented. If it’s a technique or formula you should have known, find the formula or technique and study it, learn it, then do a few examples using that formula or technique. This kind of review is vital to succeed in school in the long term.

3. Ask yourself how much time you spent on those assignments or tests.

A lot of times unfortunately we just don’t invest the right amount of time to studying. People often say something like, “I was too busy to study” and 9 times out of 10 that’s just not the case. Unless you’re hard at work trying to keep the lights on, or taking care of little children, or designing the next NASA space shuttle, a lack of time isn’t an excuse. Quite possibly a lack of motivation is the culprit in this scenario. Keeping yourself motivated makes your ability to succeed in school feel like it takes no effort at all.

4. Go over the correct answers of those assignments or tests.

Review those correct answers and compare them to your incorrect answers. Understand why your answers are incorrect and learn why the correct answers are right. Just because the test is over doesn’t mean that you don’t need to learn the subject matter any more. In fact, one of the easiest ways to fail in school is to allow a subject or section of material to go by without fully understanding it. That creates holes in your learning that will return to haunt you in the future. To succeed in school you need to fill in all the gaps and holes in your learning.

5. Then ask yourself how much study time would it have taken for you to get those incorrect questions right.

As students we have the most valuable commodity at our disposal, which is ‘time’. The more time we invest in our studies, studying the right way, the more we’ll succeed in school. The beautiful thing about this is that succeeding in school doesn’t require an immense amount of time. We’ve all seen movies where “smart people” spend hours and days locked away in a room, studying and drilling away at material all in the name of succeeding in school. In reality that couldn’t be further from the truth. A few hours a day studying the right way could do wonders to just how successful you are in school.

What can parent to do to help their child succeed?

If you’re child has had a few failures, then help them taste the fruits of success. Perform their homework with them and review their assignments and exams with them also. If you don’t know the material then that would make for a perfect opportunity to explore the material together. Your child will be less intimidated by you if you actually don’t know the material. It’ll make for a fun environment for both of you to explore the answers and find the solutions to the questions of an assignment or an exam. If you do know the material then try to lead your child through the learning process, rather than answering every question they have outright. Find the answers with them in their books or notes even if you know the answer off the top of your head. Always remember the goal is for your child to succeed in school and pay close attention to their methods of answering question in order to provide further guidance.

Don’t allow an opportunity to bond with your child go to waste by throwing all of the blame and putting even more pressure on them rather than giving them a helping hand. Believe it or not, success is a learned habit and unfortunately so is failure. So help them along and let them taste the fruits of success. Once they do taste the fruits of success, stack on the rewards! You want the first time they taste that success to be the greatest thing that ever happened to them. Why? Because they’ll work even harder for their next opportunity to succeed in school.

You can use this method to also understand your child’s learning style. Mastering your own learning style is the key to getting better grades (click the link to learn about mastering learning styles), but you first have to understand your learning style before you try to master any one of them. Everyone has a learning style so don’t worry if you don’t know what yours is. The more you use your primary and secondary learning style to your advantage, the easier it will be to succeed in school.

Talk to your child’s teacher to find out what your child needs to succeed in school

It’s important to be proactive in your child’s education. First, talk to your child’s teacher and find out from them if they could provide additional help to your child and if they can’t you want to also ask them if the school provides any programs that could help your child. You also want to ask them what they believe is stopping your child from succeeding in school.

A teacher spends more quality time with a student in relation to a subject or class than you do, so having their insight as to what’s keeping your child from succeeding in school is valuable information. Be sure to let the teacher know that you’re going to do whatever it takes to get your child back on the right track. It’s also recommended that you approach the teacher in a manner that’s not blaming them. That could actually have a negative effect to helping your child succeed in school.

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Best of luck with all your efforts to succeed in school

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