PARENT LIKE A COACH ON THE SIDELINES

Whereas sports and athletic skills are important for your children to be involved in and develop, make sure they realize school comes first. You can use an analogy of a sports team to help your athletic-loving kids understand their need to be responsible for putting effort into their schooling.

The coach of the football team, along with assistant coaches and the athletic trainer all have to work together both behind the scenes and in front of the players in order to win the upcoming game. Similarly, parents along with a child’s teacher and the school administration team together both behind the scenes and in front of the student in order to help their child find success.  But when it comes right down to it, there is only so much support the coaches and trainer can do, and if the player chooses to not give his or her best performance, the chances of winning are slim. Likewise, there is only so much support parents and teachers can do, and if the student chooses to not give his or her best efforts, the chances of learning a lot and gaining knowledge and skills are slim.           

You – as your child’s parent – and the teachers and school administration need to team together, but parents must remind themselves that at the end of the day, it’s their child’s test score and at the end of the semester it’s their child’s report card grade; it is not the parents’ score or grade. Thus, the coaching parents do when it comes to teaming together is not to co-complete homework assignments or co-take tests with their children, but primarily to support and encourage. Just as an athletic coach remains on the sidelines and does not enter the field while his or her athletes are executing the plays, so too does a parent need to stay on the sidelines and let his or her child be the student who executes the school work and homework tasks.

In my time as principal, I saw parents who would take on a poor report card as a reflection on them, and they would think teaming meant to exceedingly help their child do their homework so the grades would improve. This motivation for better grades often had to do with the parents satisfying their own egos that they had a kid who scored well in school. It would manifest itself with parents literally answering the math homework problems themselves or writing paragraphs on the term paper themselves. This would have been equivalent to the football coach stepping onto the field during a game to huddle up the team and then having the ball hiked to him so he could run with it. 

With the child’s job to be the student, the parent’s job is to be a supporter and encourager. This can be demonstrated in various ways, none of which involve rolling up your sleeves and doing the actual work. First, check with your child after school to see what the assignments are. Then ask your child what his/her plan is for completing this homework: 

• Will he/she finish it all before then getting to go out and play or getting to have screen time with the computer or TV?
• Or will he/she go play first as a breather from school and then start on homework right after dinner?
• Or sometimes it works better for a child to break up the late afternoon and evening by doing 25 minutes of homework, at which time a timer goes off signaling a 5-minute break to snack or play, and then another timer announces time to go back to another 25 minutes of homework, with this cycle repeating until the homework is completed.

The key point here is there is a homework-execution plan that you as parents agree to.

Continuing on, if your child asks for help with an assignment, you should first try to re-state the directions to him or her instead of just jumping right into helping find the answer. For example, if it’s a math story problem, don’t grab the pencil and solve the problem, but first read the problem a couple of times to make sure your child understands what is trying to be solved, and if necessary, create a practice problem with simpler numbers to solve together and then have your child tackle the original problem.  If your child still doesn’t understand how to come up with the answer or if it’s another subject matter and your child doesn’t understand how to answer a question or write an essay answer, then you may go a little further with your assistance as long as you remember that the teacher doesn’t need to give you a score – you already passed that grade level. In other words, don’t get too much of your fingerprints on your child’s work.

If your child seems to be taking too much time to complete homework on a given night and has gone way past the average allotted time his or her grade level suggests for spending on homework, there are a few questions to ask first:

• Was the time taken for homework concentrated time, or was it interrupted with goofing off, catching glimpses of TV, or responding to friends’ texts on the cell phone?
• Did your child have music blaring during work time (which is fine for some kids but too distracting for others)?
• Was homework attempted in a busy room, such as the kitchen or near a sibling who is watching TV or playing a video game, which for some kids is too distracting?

If your child still works way past the allotted time and isn’t finished with homework, it’s okay to give permission to call it a night. Send in a note to the teacher the next morning explaining how long your child worked and that you gave him or her permission to quit for the evening.  This will tell the teacher one of two things. If the teacher sees this happening from several parents, he or she will realize the homework given that evening was too much, and improvements will be made next time. If the teacher sees this re-occurring only with your child, the teacher will realize a conference is necessary to discuss strategies and if extra support/tutoring is needed.

When it comes to the end of the night and homework is finally finished, parents should not be the one to make sure the sheet of spelling word sentences and the completed science report make it into the homework folder and school backpack. The football coach doesn’t tie the player’s shoes, and the parent shouldn’t put the finished homework in the backpack. It may seem like a small point, but I’ve seen many students whose parents did this final act of the school night for their kids, and these ended up always being the kids who struggled to develop academic responsibility in future years. The student is not going to learn if the parent himself or herself is the one each night who finds the child’s completed spelling word sentences or completed science report and inserts it in the homework folder, and then inserts the folder in the backpack.

Instead, I instructed parents of children who struggled to remember to put their completed homework in their backpack most nights that they needed to verbally remind and physically observe their child being the one to find the papers, insert them in the folder, and insert the folder in the backpack, but the parents’ hands should literally be stuffed in their own pockets during all this, less they give in and perform the action for their procrastinating, forgetful, or sluggish child.

Yes, the parent doing it himself/herself is easier, faster, and creates less arguing. But mom and dad will just need to pray to the Holy Spirit for the gifts of patience, wisdom, and persistence, to be enabled to persevere for the many weeks or months it will take before the child finally makes this a habit.  

As for consequences for not finishing homework, one fundamental family rule should be that there is no going over to a friend’s house on Saturday or traveling to a weekend athletic competition if there is still outstanding homework from earlier in the week that by Friday night still wasn’t completed. It’s okay to put off Friday-assigned homework until as late as Sunday evening, but if there were Monday through Thursday-assigned homework assignments that are still incomplete by the time the weekend starts, that should signal a type of grounded-punishment that keeps your child at home on Saturday (and possibly Sunday too, except for Mass attendance) until the assignments are all caught up.

If you want to focus on incentives to do the schoolwork and not solely focus on consequences for after the fact when the work isn’t completed, I would suggest food treats and cash not be part of the incentives.  Instead, provide an incentive such as, “If you finish all your homework before dinner time, then you get control of the TV-remote after dinner to watch your chosen show.” Or better yet, “If you finish all your homework before dinner time, then you and I can play a board game together or go outside and play catch together immediately after dinner.” 

Finally, let’s return to the earlier analogy about coaches working together to help an athlete and parents and teachers working together to help a student.  The poorest performing sports teams are those where there is discontent in the locker room and on the sideline because players don’t like their coaches and/or because not all the coaching staff is on the same page. Parents need to make sure they never criticize their child’s teacher in front of their child, such as when their kid is complaining about what is going on in the classroom or the parent doesn’t agree with the grade given on a paper.  Joining your children in complaining will encourage them to blame the teachers for their problems and to stop being accountable for their own schoolwork. 

Regarding a child’s complaint about a teacher, if the teacher’s actions that your kid is complaining about was not witnessed by you, you need to realize kids often get no more than 50% of the story correct when giving their perspective of what transpired at school. This half-right figure is typically due to a child’s immaturity, inattention to detail, or their attempt to magnify and exaggerate a situation. So, whatever the issue is your child is complaining about, cut it in half, and if the issue at 50% strength isn’t such a big deal, you don’t have to march down to the school.

Plus, if a student doesn’t like the teacher, and the parent fuels that dislike, the flames of discontent will just grow higher. Furthermore, what better way to prepare your child for future, tougher teachers in high school or college and to prepare your child for life when he or she doesn’t like the boss, than to learn the lesson that sometimes you will feel you aren’t treated fairly or that people are too tough on you, but you have to develop the grit to persevere. 

Now, if the complaint about the teacher is serious even after considering the kid’s story might be only 50% accurate, or if the complaint isn’t coming from the child, but was witnessed by mom or dad or comes on good (adult) authority, then the parents do need to march down to the school. This would most likely be a case of knowing the teacher is performing his or her job poorly, such as by careless grading and monitoring, poorly prepared curricula, or actual indoctrination of his or her class with detectable political leanings. However, when parents march down to the school to question and possibly criticize, they should attempt to initially do this without their child knowing, in case the parents jumped to conclusions or in case the situation gets immediately resolved after the one meeting. In this way, the parents will avoid their child perceiving mom, dad, and teacher not being on the same page.   

I would often have parents who instead of bringing a teacher-critique or a classroom-concern to their child’s teacher, would instead want to meet initially and only with me, the principal. My standard process was that the best lines of communication are with the source first, so I would typically not meet with a parent if the parent hadn’t first talked to the teacher. But I would tell the parent that if their meeting with the teacher didn’t appear to bring any resolution, by all means come to me next. 

A key to helping your child succeed in their job of being a student is to be involved in their schooling as much as possible, realizing this means to monitor your kids’ homework but not do it for them and to listen to their problems with the teacher but not automatically believe everything is the teacher’s fault. Partner with your child’s teacher in a positive manner for best results. The majority of teachers work hard and have your child’s best interest at heart.

But if you happen to come across a poor teacher, or worse, a politically-motivated teacher who is pushing a liberal agenda in his or her classroom, make a lot of noise for your children’s sake, and if no one hears you, be ready to change schools. It may sound like a drastic move to make, but we’re only talking about your child’s educational future and spiritual soul.