Make Success Easy

American marketing is some of the best in the world. American merchants know how to make it easy to buy their products. They create advertising that associates their offerings with pleasant experiences. They carry credit card capability. They'll ship almost anything to your doorstep. Parents and teachers would do well to imitate them.

First of all, make learning pleasant. Spend time every day learning with your child. Frequently explore your home, yard, and community together, constantly naming and explaining what you find there. Field manuals and sources of local history can add to the excitement of discovery Extend classroom knowledge by practicing counting forward, backward (for subtraction), and skip counting (for multiplication). Make a little game out of spelling words with patterns being studied in class. Read a section of the newspaper together every night and discuss what you read. The positive parent attention that the child receives during these activities makes learning very rewarding for the student. Students who enjoy learning at home look forward to learning in the classroom. As an added bonus, all of this positive adult attention builds strong family relationships.

As I'm writing this I can hear the objections now. "We don't have time", some might say. The suggested activities or others like them only take a few minutes a day. The oral exercises can be done in the car with just a little extra effort. This small amount of time and effort on a daily basis pays big dividends in the long run. It's a small investment with a large return.

As the merchants do with credit cards, make it easy for your student to pay the price of learning, namely spending the necessary time and effort on a daily basis. Provide a study time on the day before every school day. During study time all entertainment screens and telephones remain silent. There are no visitors or other interruptions allowed. Adults in the family read, write, and study during this time themselves and remain available to help the student when needed. This study time habit can be difficult to establish, but it can make the difference between failure and success in school. As long as a child even thinks that videos or computer games may be available, the child is likely to whine and cry about doing homework. When the student knows for sure that homework is the only possibility during that time, there is far less resistance. Establishing a regular study time makes it easy for students to pay the time and effort price that learning costs.

Merchants also make buying easy by providing goods locally or shipping your purchases to your home. Likewise, make needed resources readily available to your student. If your student has to look up words in a dictionary, get an on-line dictionary that eliminates tedious page-turning. Giving your student a little "day planner" calendar in which to record test and project due dates makes it possible to track those important events. Make the Internet available for research projects. Of course, parental controls are vital to protect your home from unwanted websites. The best "parental control" is the presence of a parent in the room where the accessing computer is being used. When your student needs help in understanding a problem make sure that help is available. If you can't explain well enough, find someone who can. Many parents can't help with upper level math these days because the words and teaching methods are so different from what they used to be. Don't let the student fall behind and get discouraged. Get help as soon as the difficulty appears.

Sometimes it seems that we can't afford the time it takes to make learning pleasant, to set aside study time, or to provide study resources. But, in child rearing a small investment yields great dividends. In the end, can we afford not to?

by Mary Sue Laing, M. Ed., New Skill, Inc. Academic Tutor