How to Help Your Child Earn a Good Education
This can be where a student attains success or receives failure in his or her scholastic life. The decisions each person makes in life as a student and the responsibilities they have are the things that they must be held accountable for.
If a student does good, many say they are smart or lucky. Others say they have a good background or are in a good neighborhood. This is not so.
Studies have shown that background, wealth or location has little to do with how a person does in school. Motivation and personal initiative has so much more to do with success at school that it can be seen today in how people are going about their lives.
The sons and daughters of people that are held accountable for themselves are going to be better educated because they
strive to better themselves and show their children that they too should try to do better in life.
If parents show their children they have to be accountable for their actions then they will work harder at what they do. This goes hand in hand with parents that have been hard workers and have tried their best for what they have worked for.
When you work for what you get, you earn it. When you make your children work for what they get, they earn the rewards that come after the work. If your child wants to watch TV or play on a video game, they have to earn the fun things in life by working for it.
If they work at chores or school, they get the reward of playing whatever they want to when the work gets done. But if you give children rewards and do not make them work for it they get no sense of responsibility and they do not grow up.
Yes, I said they do not grow up as individuals. If people get older and do not have a sense of responsibility they are not adults able to take care of themselves. You can see it all the time in our society. People suing others just to get money so they do not have to earn a living. Is this what we have worked so hard for our children to grow up as.
We want our children to grow up and be able to take care of themselves, to do well for themselves and better themselves and then we can be proud of them. We have to show them how to be responsible for their actions and how to earn what they get in life. No one is going to hand them what they want. They have to earn it.
I know that people say they were born into poverty and can’t get anywhere but that is not true. People all the time with the correct attitude get the education they need. A movie just recently came out that shows what I am referring to.
Coach Carter shows how a coach of a poor neighborhood basketball team strived to help his students earn not a basketball scholarship but an education. One line in particular in the movie hit home for me. The principal told the coach that their senior year in high school as a popular athlete was going to be the highlight of that child’s life.
This is so untrue, if that is all those kids have to look forward to in life then what is the point in working for anything. If you work hard, you can get things in life. If children see that with hard work they can better themselves in life, they will work hard to get what ever they want.
If all they have to look forward to is the thing you give them freely, then there is no point in working anyway.
Give them set rules of schoolwork and they will understand what they have to do to get the rewards that they want. You have to do this all the time, not just for school and during the school year. All year round from the time kids start to toddle around they have to be taught that there are things they have to do to live in your house.
They should be putting toys away after play and be responsible for cleaning up after themselves. Later on when they are older they will learn that when they put toys away they know where to look for them when they want to play with them. That is the reward for putting things away.
Then when they clean their room or do another chore you can reward them in other ways. This is a continuing process. When your child does his housework, or schoolwork he or she gets a reward. Play time or TV time or whatever it is that he or she likes to do for fun.
When they do not do the work or refuse, then the play or fun does not happen. There can be no middle ground here. The work gets done first, then the fun can happen, not the other way around. You can’t give in and let them get the fun with promises of doing the work later.
Does your boss give you your paycheck for work your going to do next month or next year. That is not how life is and you should be teaching your child that from early on. If they understand from the beginning that there is a reward for doing the things you want them to do, then they will understand the reason you are asking them to do the work.
If your child is not doing well in school and you suddenly tell them you are going to take away something like video games from them, they should be told the reason. Tell them that they will get the reward of their video game if they start doing better at school. Let them know what the reward will be for their progress and they will know what they have to do.
Do not just tell them what will happen if they eventually donÃ?¯Ã?¿Ã?½t do the schoolwork, show them. For instance if your child is not doing work in school and you want them to start, talk to them. Tell them that they will be rewarded with the thing they enjoy doing after the work is done. If they don’t do the work and refuse, take whatever it is away from them till they do the work.
If it’s TV or a vide game, remove it so they can see you are serious. Let them know that you want them to do what they are supposed to do and they will get the reward if they do their part. If they refuse you should actually physically remove their reward from their possession. If that means taking the TV out and locking it in the closet or garage, then so be it.
Then when the schoolwork is done, they can have their reward. When they do the work, they get the reward that they know they have been working toward. If they don’t do the work, they don’t get the reward.
I have been seeing this so often on television on shows about families and their kids. There are a couple of shows that are quite popular called the Nanny and another one. The main theme of the shows is that children are not held accountable for their actions and they do not do things they are told.
When the person comes in form outside the family and gives the children the choice of doing the work and getting the reward or not getting the reward, the kids see the light. After they are shown that they have no choice but to do the work to receive the reward.
That’s what work is, you do something that has a reward at the end. When children see this, they understand that they have to work at the things they do and they will be rewarded later for it. If people grow up and do not have these kinds of ethics and morals, they cannot better themselves or their lot in life except by pure luck.
All the advice about setting hours of study and a special space to study are goods ideas. There should be a free time after school for your young ones to unwind after the day at school. Let them come home and have a snack and sit for a little while. But they do not get to watch TV or whatever else is their fun things.
They can and should have a space for them to do homework that is uncluttered by distractions. They should have the chance to use a computer to help them and have set times for their study and homework but these are all aids in how to study, not how to help them earn a good education.
If children grow up and have work and reward for that work they will be better off in life. They will grow up to achieve more, be better able to handle their own problems and make things happen in their own life that they thought were not possible.
If you don’t think this is true then just think about this. The unemployment rate for 2002 was 8.4 percent for adults 25 years and older for those who did not have a high school diploma. For those with a high school diploma it was 5.3 percent and for those with a bachelor’s degree or more it was 2.9 percent.
Education is important in life. To help your child get that education, he or she needs to work. You can help by making them work and giving them the rewards they deserve for that work. They will get the rewards in life that they deserve for the work that they put into their education.
