Your Daughter. Girls’ Association Schools

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СКАЧАТЬ family’s evenings and weekends? Bearing in mind that perhaps your daughter may have a long journey to school, she needs to eat and have time for other interests and the opportunity to ‘flop’ – and there are family commitments that need to be fitted in. How can you make homework work for both her and you?

      As with many situations as a parent, you need to perform a balancing act – to be supportive but not to interfere! Here are some tips to help keep you on track:

      • Remember, each of us works differently. Some like to get work out of the way and then relax, others work better if they’ve relaxed first. If your daughter is one of the latter, no amount of nagging will get her to work efficiently before she’s had a chance to relax.

      • Ensure she has an appropriate place to work – and, yes, curled up on the sofa with the television on in the background may be fine for some work, as may an MP3 player.

      • Ensure she has some time each evening to relax, and time during the week for other activities apart from homework.

      • Show an interest and offer to help if she wants you to.

      • Don’t insist on checking her work and giving unasked-for advice on improving it.

      • Don’t do it for her. If she’s really struggling, it’s better to discuss with her when she can see the relevant teacher, preferably before the deadline to hand it in.

      Be particularly careful with work for public examinations. Exam boards will penalise a candidate severely if they think the work is not their own.

      Try to prevent homework becoming a battleground, as this might ultimately harm the relationship between you and your daughter. If you find that your daughter really isn’t coping with homework, then talk to the school. As much as you, they want her to be able to achieve her best, and homework is an integral part of that.

       Thoughts from a Head — stop bashing parents . . .

      Being a parent has to be the hardest job in the world. A Head Teacher was struck by a comment from a parent who pointed out that when you are at work, you have regular feedback about the job you’re doing — a review with a line manager, a pat on the back for a task well done, even a bonus in the good old days. But a parent gets very little in terms of positive reinforcement, and listening to the news can suggest that all of society’s ills can be laid at the parents’ door.

      While it can be the hardest job in the world, it can also be one of the most joyful and rewarding. Parenting can certainly be made easier if schools and parents work together in the best interests of the children, and this is something at which many schools are adept.

      It is the dual responsibility of parents and schools to ensure that children are properly prepared for life, encouraged to achieve their best inside the classroom and outside it and taught to develop a healthy sense of social responsibility. This will involve instilling in young people a conviction that they should do the right thing because it is the right thing, rather than in hope of reward or out of fear of punishment. We want our children to aim for a life well lived, involving sensitivity to and care for others (rather than a pure focus on self), speaking out against bullying in all its forms and showing disapproval of blatant injustice or prejudice.

      There are many ways in which schools and parents can work in concert to ensure that the children at the heart of this relationship receive the support and guidance they need to be their best, during their years at school and in their lives beyond. Good schools and responsible parents provide young people with a secure framework within which to make their own choices and decisions, as well as their own mistakes. We know we cannot live children’s lives for them. We cannot prevent them from occasionally getting it wrong, and it can be disheartening for parents to see their children making the same mistakes that they themselves made. But these are their mistakes to make, painful though that might be, and a loving parent has to help their offspring deal with the disappointment of such experiences and move forward. Parents cannot be held responsible for the unwise choices their children may sometimes make.

      A school governor suggested that, in a sense, we erect scaffolding around our children, but, as they grow older, we need to begin to dismantle it. By the time they are 18 and about to leave home for university or join the world of work, they should be standing tall and secure without the degree of structured support they may have needed when they were younger. They may find that they are now living independently and caring for themselves without parents on hand and without the monitoring and guidance they will have received at school. They will need to be sufficiently organised, motivated and self-disciplined so that they can pace their work and get the balance right. Some may be tempted to work too hard; more will be tempted not to work hard enough. By this stage, schools and parents together should have equipped them with the skills they will need not only to survive, but also to flourish in their new state of independence.

      So how can we work together to provide the framework and to give the girls and boys in our schools the tools they need to do the job? Firstly, we need recognition that education, in its widest sense, is the job of all of us. It is naive and misleading to suggest that schools educate academically and parents instil moral values. It is impossible to see education in a narrow sense as somehow divorced from moral values. Schools and parents need to work together to ensure these young people live well, achieving their best within the classroom and outside it and developing a healthy sense of social responsibility.

      Secondly, parents need to ensure that their children are able to take responsibility, including for those things they get wrong. If your son or daughter is in trouble at school, leaping to their defence isn’t necessarily in their best interests, however comforting it might feel. If a child has made an unwise choice, working with the school to give clear messages and to ensure that your son or daughter knows where the parameters are (and which boundaries they have crossed) will help them far more than being ‘in their corner’. With a truculent teenager at home, it seems like too good an opportunity to miss being on their side against the perceived common enemy at school. A Deputy Head reported an incident of dealing with a girl who was suspected of being responsible for writing graffiti in a school toilet. The father waded in, outraged that his daughter would ever be accused of doing such a thing. It took the wind out of his sails somewhat when the Deputy Head told him that she had openly admitted she had done it before he arrived.

      Returning to the comment of the parent who yearned for positive feedback on her parenting, this is something that Heads quite frequently offer. When we sit down together to discuss a particular issue, especially if the parent is trying to set boundaries and meeting resistance, Heads will quite often say, ‘You are doing the right things.’ It is important to tell parents not to apologise for caring about and worrying about their children, even when this occasionally makes them overly passionate. Parents are encouraged to be strong, to appreciate that, despite the resistance, children do want and need boundaries, as boundaries reassure them that they are loved. And, of great importance — Heads try very hard not to bash the parents. We are all on the same side — which is, of course, the children’s.

       Family Q&A

       Fraught families – keep talking . . .

      Q: My 12-year-old daughter had a terrible row with my mother-in-law (her grandmother) a month ago and said some terrible things, calling her names, etc. She is going through a bad time: her father and I have recently separated and she had some friendship issues at school. Her grandmother now doesn’t want anything to do with her and has written a letter criticising my parenting. What should I do — just let the dust settle or write back?

      A: It’s important to keep communicating, even when relationships are not going smoothly. Try writing to your mother-in-law, СКАЧАТЬ