Make your children realize that how they study is important. Show them some examples. Send your children to a person who is studying-conscious and make your children ask why he or she studies so much. Tell them about the days of your childhood at school and explain how challenging and fun it was to study.
Your child’s pencil has to move. His or her brain needs to engage. Your child’s bottom needs to be in the chair. It is your child’s report card that he or she brings home.
Too many parents see homework as their own problem. So they create ultimatums, scream and shout, threaten, bribe, scold, and withhold privileges. Have you noticed that most of these tactics don’t work?
Keep a Relationship with your Kids that is Open
Stay on your kids’ team, don’t play against them. This will allow you to be more influential with them, which is your most important parenting tool. Punishing, preaching, threatening and manipulating will get you nowhere and will be detrimental to your relationship and to their ultimate motivation. Your feelings of anxiety, frustration and fear are normal and Understandable.
But reacting to your kids out of these emotions will be ineffective. Remember, your child is not behaving this way on purpose to make your life miserable or because they are lazy good-for-nothings. When you feel yourself getting worked up, try saying to yourself, “My child is just not there yet.” Remember, your job is to help them learn how to be responsible. If you get negative and make this a moral issue, then your child might become defiant, reacting to you instead of thinking through things himself.
If your child is not studying and his grades are dropping, you’re invited on whether he wants you or there or not. Again, you’re there to help set up a structure that he is not able to create for himself. The structure might include scheduled study times, having the computer out in a public place in your home, and saying, “No video games or TV until after homework is done.”
You might decide that he must spend a certain amount of hours devoted to study them. During this time, no electronics or other distractions are allowed. You might make the rule that even if he finishes all his homework, he must complete study time by reviewing, reading, or editing.
You might make the rule that he devotes an hour-and-a-half to quiet time, no electronics, and just doing his work. Understand that it’s not meant as punishment; rather, this is helping him develop a good work ethic and to focus on his school subjects. Some kids do better listening to music while they study, but no other electronics or multi-tasking is recommended.