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It’s easy to get overwhelmed or confused with what you can do to best support your child under normal circumstances.
These last few days especially, I’ve been hearing a lot of “what can I as a parent do to help my child right now?”
It’s easy to get overwhelmed or confused with what you can do to best support your child under normal circumstances. These last few days especially, I’ve been hearing a lot of “what can I as a parent do to help my child right now?” It’s easy to get overwhelmed or confused with what you can do to best support your child under normal circumstances. These last few days especially, I’ve been hearing a lot of “what can I as a parent do to support my child right now?”
I want to simplify the answer when it comes to school and learning. Helping your child tap in to their best self – the one who self-motivates and feels the joy of learning, who gets and stays organized and delights you by checking their calendar and doing what they need to get done without your prompting – involves two things:
1. Strategy
This is the #1 cause of school struggles. Kids are taught to in the classroom, they don’t learn how to learn on their own at home. OF COURSE there’s resistance and fights and anxiety – they’re expected to do something they don’t know how to do.If your child isn’t crystal clear on that HOW piece – how to manage their work, create a calendar, write an essay, manage their time, get and stay organized – they will NEVER feel or do their best. This is a fact that no amount of ‘trying’ – putting in effort WITHOUT step-by-step strategy – will overcome.
When we don’t know exactly how to do something we need to do, we are set up to fail.
We get frustrated. Our brains are quick to jump to negative self-talk – “I can’t / I’m just not smart enough / What’s wrong with me” – and/or start rationalizing to make ourselves feel better – “It’s not like I’m going to have to ever know this anyway / This is stupid, school is a waste of time..”
Meanwhile, NOTHING is wrong with them. Nothing other than they do not have the strategies they need to actually engage in their work. With these strategies, they can learn what they need, get it done and submitted properly and on time. The good feelings this brings to formerly struggling students (and their parents) can be life-changing. I’ve seen 1000’s of students begin to thrive in school, even if they’d been unmotivated for years, because they finally learned these strategies. The strategies that remove the guesswork of how to actually study and learn and feel GOOD as they get the grades they’re truly capable of.
The last few weeks alone I’ve seen this happen. 11 teens who are, for the first time, energized, about learning and doing their very best in school.
This keeps doors open for colleges and jobs that otherwise wouldn’t be there. This furthermore has incredibly positive ripple effects throughout the whole home and long after school is over.
2. Mindset
You can give your child the strategies but if they’re weighed down by limiting beliefs – that they’re not worthy or smart enough, that the strategies won’t work for THEM so why bother trying… failing will make them feel even worse – they won’t use them properly.
The negative self-talk and limiting beliefs that stem from so many years of trying to do something (school, learning) without REALLY knowing how, doesn’t go away on its own.
So what can you as a parent do?
First, stop thinking there is a “right time” to start helping your child strengthen healthier, more productive mindsets. It’s never too late and it’s not too early. They’ll always have too much on their plate or not enough. They want to try on their own. They’re not motivated etc. – there’s always a reason to wait. I promise you 99.9% are irrelevant when it comes to the heart of the matter: helping them feel better – smarter, happier, more confident, more engaged…sooner than later.
From there, the first step is to help your child identify that the way they feel – stupid, ‘over it’, whatever – is NOT some objective truth.
They don’t feel like this because it’s the way they are. It is a mindset that is reinforced by all the negative and often soul-crushing things that they’ve experienced in school. Be it bad grades, mean comments from peers or teachers, resenting work because they know they won’t need it, getting accommodations or taking hours and hours to get their work done.
Guiding them in dismantling the limiting beliefs that stem from this mindset. Replacing them with healthier and more empowering beliefs is key. Showing them step-by-step the strategies to succeed – can have them feeling more confident and engaged within a matter of days. My team and I witness this first hand every single week. Strategy and mindset are the two things that let you and your child create a happier, healthier normal. A normal where school and learning is at least moot (without conflict). At best a source of JOY, pride and excitement for the future they can build for themselves.
If you want help to make this happen once and for all, let’s chat and get a game plan together. I keep slots open every week to speak with parents who are sick and tired of the status quo. Parents who want change for their child. Book your 1:1 call here: https://go.oncehub.com/kelseykomo
We’ll get clear on:
- Where you are right now – whether worried about grades, self-esteem, resistance to homework and/or your help or something else entirely. Compared to where you want to be / where your child wants to be
- Specific, realistic goals for your child that they will actually WANT to achieve for themselves
- The next steps you can take to set your child up to learn (and eventually earn) to their potential
