How To Improve Your Child’s Education And Development As They Get Older

As your child gets older, their education and development become more prevalent, especially as they start to become more independent and distracted by everything that goes on outside of the classroom.

For any parent, it’s imperative that you’re doing everything possible within and around the home environment to keep an eye on their behaviors and their efforts toward education.

With that being said, if you’re looking to improve your child’s education and development as they get older, here are a few ways in which you can improve that.

1. Teach your child that failure is a learning opportunity

Failure has long been communicated as something that is negative. Whether you fail a particular subject in school or you fail to achieve a promotion in the workplace. These failures are often considered to be negative and a step back, when in fact they’re something to learn from.

You see, we need failures to understand where we went wrong in the path that was taken. Sometimes, the failure was inevitable, or it was likely going to happen regardless. With that being said, it’s important to teach your child that failure is a learning opportunity rather than something to be upset about.

Of course, any failure can feel like a dampener and a setback, but it’s good to take the positives from the situation and use it as an opportunity to learn something new from it all.

2. Allow your child to follow their passion

It’s important to remember that your child has their own life to build and lead. Regardless of what you’ve done with your own, it’s often the case that some parents will try to live vicariously through their children.

While this might feel like something you want to do, it’s good to allow your children to explore their own passions and wants in life. It’s their life and therefore their chance to do what they want with it.

As a parent, you’re responsible for guiding them as best as you can, using the skills and knowledge you’ve gained in life. They may choose to take that advice and guidance, or instead make their own decisions.

When they’re young, a lot of the decisions they make might not be something they can fully go out and do until they reach an age at which they can do it. However, as a parent, you can certainly give them a few opportunities to work on those passions or things they want to do until they’re at the point where they can do them independently.

3. Make use of both online and offline learning

Thankfully, we’re at a point in the world’s development of technology where we have so much available at our fingertips than ever before. In regard to education, the world of learning is definitely more vast and expansive than many generations past would have had the accessibility to.

As such, there’s a lot that your child could be learning both online and offline. Online, you’ve got courses and extra learning resources that can turn children into historians to teaching materials that help them to catch up on work, and subjects that they might not entirely grasp in the short bursts of time that they have during their school hours.

Making use of any online and offline learning opportunities is great for your child’s development, especially as there are some gaps or topics that they may struggle with and need extra help on to boost their education in the classroom.

4. Motivate your child by being their cheerleader in life

Your child is going to face a lot in their childhood and development. Therefore, it’s important that you become their number one cheerleader. This is mainly due to the fact that they only really have themselves in the world. Yes, they may have friends and other family members, but often the parents are the real influence during their childhood.

Whether your child needs help with improving their grades or they’re struggling to get past a certain development milestone, as a parent, motivating your child is the best way to help them.

Look at what you could be doing more of in order to help them progress through this important chapter of their life and to be at their side through what you can to help them thrive.

5. Allow your child safe access to the internet

The internet is a wonderful thing, but it’s something that should be given in relatively small doses, especially when they’re young and more impressionable. The challenge for any modern-day, digital parent is that the internet and technology are encompassing. It’s everywhere, which then makes it hard to control or restrict as and when it’s needed.

With that being said, be mindful of what you do offer to them in the way of internet usage and try to ensure that everything that they’re accessing is as safe as possible from harm’s way.

While there’s a lot of good on the internet, there’s also a lot of bad, which is why it’s important to ensure they have safety when using the internet and not let loose on an internet that has no filters set up. At the same time, you should try, where possible, to keep a limit on how much internet time they have to use.

6. Give them the space they need

Every child needs nurturing and attention. Then there are times when they need their own space in order to explore and to learn life lessons themselves without the watchful eye of their parent observing every step.

Giving them space is certainly important. While it might feel alien to do so as a parent, it is something that truly helps them to learn, but also to know when to ask for your help and guidance.

Some parents can be on either side of this balance, whether it’s giving them too much freedom too soon or suffocating them with protection that sends them into a frenzy. It’s hard to get the balance right, but it’s a balance that’s worth the time you spend on perfecting.

7. Equip your child with the tools to look after their mental health

There’s a lot within a child’s education and development that needs covering, and as a parent, you can only do the best you can when it comes to giving your child everything they need to thrive in life.

One thing, though, that often doesn’t get enough discussion is mental health, and it’s something that is vital to introduce and talk about to your child from as early on as possible. The reason is that they’re going to go through, what is for them, a lot of stress.

The challenges they face in school, not just in their education but within friendships and relationships with peers, are likely to be testing.

That’s why it’s important to try and equip your child with the tools they need to look after their mental health at all times. Even if they’re unable to come to you about it, you can at least be assured in the knowledge that if they need the help, they’ll ask for it from someone that they feel confident or trust enough.

Giving your child this lesson in life is one that can often change the course of their life for the better, if and when it’s needed.

8. Make learning something your child loves

Learning should be fun, it should be enjoyable. However, for many kids, they become disenfranchised with learning because its importance is drilled into them by parents and teachers throughout their childhood.

While it is important to have an education and a privilege as such to have one, it shouldn’t be forgotten that learning should be something a child loves to do. They should be excited about learning, and once you take the fun or excitement out of learning, children will simply switch off.

9. Don’t use punishment for subjects they simply don’t enjoy or excel at

Punishment is often used as a way to teach individuals a lesson for something that they didn’t do right, or in the person’s eyes, who is doing the punishing, a wrongful decision or act.

However, it’s important to acknowledge that for kids, not everything they study is going to be something they enjoy or even excel at. If that were the case, then there would be no individuality in the world.

Instead of resorting to any negative reaction, be understanding that your child might not like the subject in particular that they’re not doing so well at. Will they really need to know Algebra to get by in life? Not really.

10. Allow them to learn lessons they’ll need outside the classroom

It’s always good to try and expand the knowledge of your children beyond just the subjects learnt in a classroom. There are, for example, plenty of life lessons outside the classroom that they’ll need to learn, like the birds and the bees, to being wary of strangers. These are all lessons you can teach your children as they grow up.

Hopefully, with these tips, you too will have a better opportunity in improving your child’s education and development as they grow and get older.