How to Be a True Supporter of Your Child

In order to be a supporter of something, you need to understand what it is that you are supporting. If you have a favorite clothing store, it might be your favorite because you love their style and their designs. If you have a favorite sports team, you know the players on the team and you believe in certain players and their skills.

You can’t support your child properly if you don’t know your child. What does their day look like? What classes are they in? Who is their favorite teacher? What about that teacher makes them feel excited to learn new things and apply their skills in a meaningful way?

You need to 1) Understand who you are supporting and 2) support them!

1) Understand who you are supporting

Life is busy! How can you find the time to get to know your child?

The dinner table is a great answer! What you choose to do during that 30-40 minutes every day can make such a difference in your child’s life. Use this time to understand who you are supporting!

You are your child’s biggest fan, but why? Is it just because you raised them? Get to know them, be their friend, but maintain your position as their mentor.

Use this time to understand where their pain points are. Ask what they are struggling with and find out where they need extra support. Have you ever had a hard time getting them to answer the question “What did you learn today at school?”. If you know what their day looks like and what they are doing in school, you can ask better questions. You might ask, “What is Mr. M going over in history class?” You can’t ask a question like this if you don’t know that Mr. M is their history teacher. Dive into the details and get on the same page as your child so you can truly act as a support mechanism.

Dinner table time is not enough, you also need to create time!

How can you create time? The answer is, you can’t. Time is limited and it is up to you to prioritize it. Make time to do things as a family and create an environment that your child wants to be a part of.

- Play games as a family. Family trivia night can be a fun way to relax and also engage in activities that promote learning.

- Have a movie night. Relate things that happen in the movies you watch to current events that have happened in the world around you.

- Go outdoors. Make sure you are keeping your children active. It promotes better health and can even help them when they go off and try out for the school team!

- Laugh. Laughing is proven to be good for your health and your child wants to be immersed in a fun environment.

- Cook and build. Work with your child on life skills that can benefit them outside of the academic world. Does your child know how to fry and egg? What about change a tire?

The list goes on and on, but there is one goal.

Create a home environment that you wish you had when you were your child’s age. Use the time you already have together as a family and make sure to create more time to foster a supportive home environment.

2) Support them!

How can you provide essential support to your child?

After understanding who you are supporting and developing a relationship with your child, make sure you support them.

At a minimum you need to prioritize supporting their hobbies and academics.

To support their hobbies, make sure they are involved in certain clubs in the community and school or make sure they are participating on the school or local sports team of their interest. These hobbies allow your child to enhance their social skills and make their interests a priority in their lives.

To support them academically, you need to first understand what type of student they are. For simplicity, let’s consider two different types of students, the constant struggler and the top performer.

The Constant Struggler

The constant struggler often needs more academic support outside of the normal classroom setting.

1 on 1 academic support can provide your child with the proper environment to help them move from constant struggler to top performer.

Someone highly skilled in the areas that your child is struggling in could help your child get back on track and ultimately set them up for success.

A lot goes into the decision for choosing the best academic support, but top quality and affordability are major things to consider.

Connecting Concepts Tutoring is a leader in this space and provides tutoring for K-12 and SAT/ACT support.

The Top Performer

If your child is a top performer, the classroom might not be challenging your child enough. They could benefit from learning some more advanced topics or exploring other topics not traditionally taught in the standard curriculum. For example: robotics, computer science, medical related topics, environmental topics, engineering, and many other topics.

A select few companies offer ways to get your child connected to qualified individuals to support academic growth and challenge even the highest of performers.

Connecting Concepts Tutoring is a top provider of academic support for even the highest of performers.

We hope you enjoyed our blog post! Please share if you think it helps!

All the best,

Your friends at Connecting Concepts Tutoring

1-on-1 support is key to your child's success! K-12 and SAT/ACT