Contents
The school year has begun. Children are again worried about tests and grades, because of relationships with the teacher and classmates. As parents, we care about our children. What can be done to send a child to school with a light heart? 7 recommendations given by doctors, psychologists and teachers.
1. Find out what is good about school
Anna Tikhomirova, head of the psychological service at Khoroshkoly
We always bring children to school with vague premonitions, worries and high expectations from a daughter or son. And what do we ourselves want from the learning process? Great grades? Knowledge for life? So that the children then enter the chosen university? To make them feel comfortable at school? So that they can find true friends there?
There are many options, consider them. Certainty will reduce both your anxiety and your child’s anxiety. Talk to him about the meaning of studying. Even if a person goes only to the first grade, it is already possible to discuss this, but it is simply necessary with a teenager.
What specific results would you like to achieve this academic year? Think with your daughter or son: you are about your goals, and he or she is about yours. Set interesting but doable tasks: speak English, learn to swim, prepare an interesting report… Share them with each other, write them down on pieces of paper, hang them in a prominent place.
Discuss how you will understand that you are moving towards your goals. Estimated? Some kind of achievement? Set up regular conversations about this topic. After all, it is important for us that the child’s education is meaningful. So that he takes responsibility for learning, and does not go to school just because his parents and teachers want him to.
2. Remember joyful events
Mikhail Cherkasov, creator of the Yellow Boat children’s travel club, teacher of the Start children’s art school
Surely your child had a bright, interesting, unforgettable vacation. He visited his grandmother, went with friends to the country, flew with you to the sea, spent a shift in a children’s camp. Any trip is a new experience, something that can be shared with friends, and not just described in the essay “How I Spent the Summer”.
These memories are important to keep. You can make travel diaries. My children paste photos, tickets from the Louvre, a dried butterfly, an olive branch, or drawings from a medieval castle into a sketchbook. Before each trip, I print out pictures of the places we plan to visit, and the children make small notes under them. They are so fun to read and revisit!
And you can also make a “board of achievements.” I have a corkboard hanging in my office, on which I hang my daughter’s works, her certificates and diplomas. And every year we do a small exhibition at the end of the summer. Drawings, notes, a couple of pebbles and shells from the sea, which she collected on the beach … These memories will warm her throughout the school year.
3. Talk about interesting things
Marina Novikova-Grund, Psycholinguist, Dean of the Faculty of Psychology, Moscow International University
We often tell children what they should, how it should be, what we would like, that is, we give them instructions. And as a result, we do not know what the child really needs and what is on his mind. These instructions may not include: “Don’t get up in the middle of class and don’t leave.” Or “Don’t be afraid of girls who are head and shoulders above you.” After all, the fact that he is afraid of them, you still need to guess!
The imperative must be used carefully. As well as verbs in the future or past tense. Children listen to stories on the topic “When I was little” with pleasure, but on the condition that they do not contain teachings: “… I always obeyed the elders.”
Often the past tense introduces a plot of reproach and defeat: “I told you that you can’t do this!” When the trouble has already happened, you can’t fix it, and confirming that everything is lost is unpedagogical.
Telling a child: “They will call you tomorrow, but you haven’t learned your lessons” is also pointless. After all, time flows differently for children. If for an adult it is obvious that the one who did not do his homework today will get a deuce tomorrow, then for a child “tomorrow” is “in the next life”. For him, the future is when in an hour he goes to bed, and that is not obvious.
Try to be silent sometimes so that the child speaks on his own. Perhaps at this moment he will begin to ask about what he is interested in. Or fantasize and with the most serious face to tell fables. Perhaps to be shy, and then you can ask: “What are you doing? What are you feeling now?”
Give him space to talk. Children who are “released” in this way look absolutely happy.
4.Explain the rules of the game
Anna Semenovich, neuropsychologist, professor at the Moscow Psychological and Pedagogical University
We know that we must greet our neighbors, wear one dress at home and another dress to the theater, that we must not put our feet on the table and tear books. But for many children today, this is not a “categorical imperative.” They can say “stupid” to the grandmother, and she will remain silent in response. Why then can’t the teacher be called a fool?
If a child is not accustomed to the regimen (now we have breakfast, then we will draw …), to focus on business, to restraint, it is difficult for him to understand that from September 1 he needs to behave differently. At school, he will live as he used to at home, where no one limited his freedom.
But the rights of the child must not violate the rights of others. Therefore, it is useful to explain to him in advance that in any place, in any team there are rules of the game. That in the classroom they behave differently than on the beach or at the disco.
In an unfamiliar situation, our brain (even if we don’t notice it) first “scans”: “What are the rules of the game here? What is the charter of this monastery?” If you don’t know, it will be hard: you get deuces “in life”, because you were not taught to learn in the broadest sense of the word, they didn’t say that teachers shouldn’t be rude, and the one who (at least) wrote down homework gets fives. And if you know, you live and develop. Children who know the “rules of the school game” can be taught anything.
5.Make learning easier
There is a parable about a woodcutter who cuts a tree with effort with a blunt saw and answers the advice to sharpen it: “There is no time to sharpen. You have to drink.” This parable applies to teaching in a traditional school. There is also “no time to sharpen”, because the amount of knowledge that needs to be learned is large, but there is no time to improve thought processes.
Better assimilate new material those who have developed memory, attention, thinking. Therefore, it is logical that for successful learning it is necessary to train them. Help your child develop observation skills, come up with attention games for him: remember the location of objects in the room, describe a person, find seven differences.
It is useful to take courses in speed reading and calligraphy. This will save time and effort on completing tasks. It would be nice to introduce the child to mnemonics – techniques that facilitate memorization. Anyone who owns them will learn a poem in 20 minutes, not two hours. And then learning will not be tiring, but interesting!
6. Take care of your health
Olga Begasheva, neurologist, somnologist, doctor of the highest category
I remember an 8-year-old boy whose parents complained that he had problems with studies, attention, that he was hyperactive. And suddenly it turned out that one of his eyes practically did not see. Of course he had a hard time at school!
A child is ready for learning if he has a good memory, there are no behavioral and emotional disorders, if he is socially adapted. If you and your child go through a medical examination, you will know how he is doing with his health. The reason for failure is not only a lack of diligence, as we often think, but also impaired calcium metabolism, vitamin D or iodine deficiency, and thyroid disease.
It is hard to study for children who are often sick. It is necessary to find out if they have an immunodeficiency, to conduct a course of treatment for a chronic infection. It is useful to check the adenoids. Inflammation of the adenoids leads to chronic oxygen starvation. Because of this, children become hyperactive, irritable, get tired quickly, complain of headaches, sleep with their mouths open, snore, get up in the morning hard and in a bad mood.
There are problems with academic performance in children with gastritis and other diseases of the gastrointestinal tract, especially if gastritis with low acidity. Its main clinical manifestation is weakness, headaches and high fatigue. Any health problems take a lot of energy from children. If health is in order, then it will be easier for them to learn.
7. Follow the laws of the Moomins
Sergey Kazarnovsky, Honored Teacher of Russia, Director of the Class Center School
When General de Gaulle, the head of the French Republic, was little and came home from school, his mother never asked him: “How did you answer?” She always said, “What questions did you ask?”
This is a very important thing – to learn to ask questions correctly. After all, the more accurately you do this, the better you will understand and learn the material. And you also need to inspire the child that a mistake is not a problem. Every person has a right to it. And work on mistakes is not work on the past (“how bad I am”), but on the future – “how to do it right.”
And I would also advise now, while the load at school is not very serious, to re-read the stories about the Moomins. In them, parents and children will find calm and kind wisdom, a sense of love and security. Feeling at home, where the light is always on, loved ones are waiting for you, delicious food is ready and a warm bed.
The good advice of the Moomins will make your life better and happier. For example, this: “It is equally important to know two things: how to be alone and how to be with others.” Or: “In order to believe in something, it is not at all necessary to know whether it is true.” And: “Sometimes all you have to do to comfort someone is to remind them that you are there.”