There’s a difference between motivation and pressure. You can motivate your child to do well at school and be supportive. It’s a good thing to do as a parent. However, if you start to pressure your child to be top of the class or get perfect scores in exams, it’s a big problem.
Before you even talk to your child, you need to evaluate yourself. What’s your motivation for your action? If you want your child to be top in school and learn new things, you have to be motivating and inspiring. However, if your primary goal is to show off to other parents, you’re going in the wrong direction. Don’t let your pride affect your child’s ability to learn.
Learning should be fun and stress-free
When you continually tell your child to be at the top of the class and achieve high scores in tests, you’re stressing them out. Furthermore, constant comparisons and the imposition of competition can lead to the development of an anxiety disorder, significantly impacting the quality of their life. If their anxiety becomes severe, you may need to look for exclusive treatment centers for anxiety to help them overcome this challenge and live more freely. Keep in mind that ideally, you should take a preventative approach and not allow academic pressures to overshadow the joy of learning.
Moreover, topping the tests isn’t necessarily the best barometer for intelligence. It’s possible for your child to perform well on exams without fully understanding the concepts taught. This implies that your child memorized the lessons and received an A during the test. This approach is risky for students because they need to see the relevance of what they’re studying in their lives. If they’re studying merely to memorize things and eventually get a good grade, it renders learning futile.
Provide support at home
If you wish your child to have good grades, you can at least try to be supportive at home. It means that you need to give your time to let your child continue studying at home. It’s not enough to get angry and ask your child to read the books and answer the homework. You need to sit with your child and go through the process together; otherwise, your child won’t feel motivated to study at all. During the run up to the 11 plus exams, try to support your child and encourage their learning. There are various methods you could use. For example, you can sit and guide your children through past exam papers, helping them when they get stuck.
You can also use various apps and other educational tools to track and measure their progress. By taking a hands on approach with your children, you can identify any issues they may be facing.
Be happy with your child’s performance
Regardless of how your child performs at school, you need to show that you’re proud. You might think that the scores are still bad, but for your child, they’re the best outcome. If you show disappointment, they won’t find school a fun place to be anymore. Besides, apart from academic excellence, your child might be doing well in other areas, and you can also consider those achievements.
The reason why you want your child to do well isn’t that you want what’s best for your child. Instead, you want to have something to be proud of. It’s not the right mentality, and you need to change how you approach education. Your child will do better when you’re a supportive parent who focuses on the quality of learning rather than getting high test scores.