{Part 2}
In addition to academic skills, there are life skills that parents need to develop in their children. Parents know they need to teach safety, hygiene, household chores, but there are other more nuanced skills that sometimes get lost. It's probably easier in the moment not to teach these skills and just take care of a situation ourselves instead. Guilty. But the students who possessed these traits were much more successful in school, personal relationships, and more prepared for the road ahead.
5. Parents should teach their kids to advocate for themselves.
On a couple occasions, I asked a student about
something (like, "Do you have your essay to turn in today?" or "How
about taking your make up quiz today during study hall?"), got a
one-word answer (like, "no" or "fine"), and then an hour later, found a
lengthy email in my in-box from the child's parent explaining the
situation and asking for some kind of exception or extension to save
their child from any kind of late penalty or bad quiz grade that they
claimed the child was panicking about. This is a more extreme example to illustrate the point that many parents are enabling their children. Their kids do not address problems
themselves, even when a teacher initiates a conversation and gives them an opportunity to discuss an issue. They do not know how to speak to adults in authority. They
have never had to. They know that a quick text or call to mom or dad
and like magic, poof! the situation is solved for them. The added
trouble is that often certain details are lost in translation...because
the student knows how to manipulate the parent and the teacher to get what they want. Not only is this usually
sneaky, it is not a good long-term set up. There will be situations
where students will have to explain themselves to a professor or ask for
something from a boss. The only way they are prepared for this is with
practice from the home training camp. Starting in middle school or
junior high, parents should listen to their student's issue, ask lots of
questions to make sure they know the whole story, then help the student
come up with what to say to the teacher the next day in order to solve
the problem. Maybe even engage in some role-play to help them practice. Of course if the student tries and the teacher truly seems unreasonable, then it's
good for the student to know they have the parent as an ally to go to
bat for them, but if they learn how to advocate for themselves, this skill will be invaluable in future relationships and work settings.
6. Parents should teach their kids online etiquette.
Kids today are internet "natives." They navigate the web and figure out devices with lightning speed while I'm still trying to figure out how to turn on my iPad. They will spend a lot of time online. But they're doing it largely without instruction, rules, or supervision. And if you think your parental controls are censoring the web sufficiently, I wouldn't be so sure. There are two big areas where kids need specific, direct instruction. One is email writing. When I was in school, I was taught how to write a business letter with a proper heading, salutation, etc. Now kids need to be taught how to write a business email. Shorthand in an email to a friend is fine, but I received many emails from students with no salutation, no punctuation, no capital letters, no signature (no kidding--I really did not know who these emails were from!). Another is online privacy--or lack thereof. Students at our school were about to riot when they learned that several students were being suspended for underage drinking based on evidence from Facebook photos that mysteriously ended up on the principal's desk. Kids don't realize that the web is a public space, that anything they post is out there, fair game, and viewable by parents, teachers, employers, friends, and enemies. Caution is suggested. Even privacy settings aren't a foolproof safeguard because you can't control what other people post about you. (This can be a great teaching moment to discuss the importance of integrity, too.)
7. Parents should give their kids opportunities to problem solve.
I already see this struggle. Poor Will is about to flip head over heels as he is reaching for a ball that rolled underneath a chair. I am sitting a foot away, watching, restraining myself even though I desperately want to reach over and get the darn thing for him. He might hurt himself, he might not be able to reach it after all, but I'm trying to give him the chance to problem solve. And after he contorted himself into a strange version of downward dog, he got the ball. It's not easy. And it only gets harder. But watching your child face a problem and not solving it for them yields self-confidence, healthy self-esteem, creativity, and a willingness to accept challenges--traits that most parents want to see their children possess. Frustration isn't a bad thing. Frustration is a sign that a child is trying something new...that a child is learning. Don't fight it. And if they fail, well, help them out, but let them know that you're proud of them for trying.
8. Parents should insist on honesty.
One of our classic family stories is about a time when I was three years old and I took three Oreo cookies out of an open package on the supermarket shelf. I must have known that this was not okay, because I stashed them in my pocket until we got to the car...and didn't realize that my mother had a rear-view mirror which allowed her to easily see the evidence all over my face. We drove home where she made me take out three nickels from my piggy bank (one nickel for each cookie) and then we drove back to the supermarket and I confessed to the manager and paid for the cookies I had stolen. My mom did not tolerate lying in any form. And let me tell you: I never shoplifted again. Honesty starts with little things. "White lies" seem to be acceptable in our culture. Many kids see their parents telling white lies when they tell a friend they aren't feeling well enough to get together and then go shopping instead. This translates to lying, stealing, and cheating. When I took polls, most of my students did not think cheating was wrong. This belief no doubt fuels some of the corruption we see in Washington and on Wall Street today. How to we change it? Parents model honesty and insist on honesty from their children.
I'm not a psychologist...and I'm still a rookie parent. I was a teacher for eight years and I took mental notes along the way.
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