Talk: Parents Participation in Child's Success

Research has shown that parental involvement is the most important factor in a student’s success in school. These days the academic year, most schools invite parents to come in for regular parent-teacher conferences. Such conferences have become standards for many schools. Its an effort to forge a strong partnership with parents to build a child’s career.

For many parents, however, that involvement is limited to attendance at parent-teacher conferences. Participation is usually missing. Its important for parents to understand that a teacher alone cannot find ways to ensure your child’s success.

Understandably, some parents feel nervous, intimidated, or frustrated as they wonder what to expect, and what is expected of them with such meets. Its mere an an opportunity to work together as a team in order to help a child. Both, parents and teachers have an important perspective to share — and a child’s personality, habits, strengths, and weaknesses only a parent can share. The teacher, on the other hand, is a trained professional who can devise in the best methods of teaching as per a student’s needs.

Parents want kids to succeed and do well but when they get overly involved they lose sight of the negative impact it has on a child.

The child gets stressed out and when that’s the case, the capacity for learning is drastically reduced. Then, study is about survival, not creativity or self-actualization. The perceived “disaster” effects a child’s thought patterns and even hampers his/her daily activities like eating, sleeping, and relationships. It is therefore vital that parents-teachers work out ways to help them cope and reduce their anxiety.

Such a meet was co-hosted myFM and IPER today wherein parents and teachers from different schools /colleges participated in a discussion held at IPER campus. Expert panel of counsellors, psychologist of the city discussed underlying issues that cause stress – for example, low self-esteem and shared their insights into ways of coping with them to create a relaxing learning environment and relationship.  Parents queries on various issues related to their child’s academic well-being were addressed by the expert-panel. This conference aimed to offer professional wisdom and experience in dealing with student stress. Panel opined that teachers should adopt the mentor ship approach to ensure a great classroom environment and help the students to feel that everyone is on their side.