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The best days of your life?
By Helena Rogers
THE BEST DAYS OF YOUR LIFE?
Five ways you can prepare your five year old child to get the best from their school days
As a retired head teacher who has spent a lot of time recently helping children learn to read in schools on a voluntary basis, I cannot avoid comparing children in school nowadays with children in schools of forty or even fifty years ago. And while I might be expected to complain that ‘it isn't like it used to be in the old days...' I must say that although some things are very different, they are not necessarily worse than in previous decades.
Parents can make an enormous contribution to the happiness of their child at school, and to their academic success. I would therefore like to make five suggestions of how parents can help their children start a new term - or for five-year-olds, a new life at school, with confidence and optimism. And, as with so many things in life, they are things which seem obvious but are easily overlooked.
1. Be sure your child knows that you love him/her.
I notice today that many children see very little of their parents, compared with fifty years ago. Then, mothers at least, were more often at home before the child left for school and were there when the child came home. Today things are different, because there may be only one parent in the home, or both parents need to work to keep a roof over their heads. That's the way life is, so we can't do much about that, but the one thing that goes a long way to counteracting the negative effects of absent parents is that both parents - whether within the home or not - should make sure the child knows that you love them. This does not translate to buying them things to make up for not being there. Love is not necessarily giving things. Love is felt. A heartfelt hug counts more than a bar of chocolate. Never turn away with a ‘that's nice, dear,' when your child shows you the picture they've drawn. Look at it with interest. It's important to the child. Don't say ‘you'll be all right in a minute,' when the child has bumped his knee. Kiss it better! The child needs to know that he is important to you and that you love him for his own sake. He will never achieve his potential if he does not experience love in his home.
2. Build in your child a respect for authority. Authority is not there in order to curtail enjoyment, but to ensure that everyone can enjoy what they are doing in a happy environment.
Teachers today might be surprised to learn that when I began my teaching career in 1961, I had forty-two children in what is now called ‘Year 2' (six of them were called ‘Stephen'! ) and classroom assistants had not even been thought of! Discipline had to be good in those days if the teacher was to ensure that each child achieved the maximum of which they were capable. This may sound as though we were stern disciplinarians, but in fact my own class discipline depended on the class wanting to obey me because they respected my motives and enjoyed what I was teaching them. However, even with this positive outlook, discipline in schools depended then, and still today, on a joint effort between teachers and the children's parents.
The Senior Primary Education Tutor at my training college said something I have never forgotten: ‘the children in your class should be able to learn - not because they are forced to, but because they love their teacher.' Yes, she actually said, ‘love'. Here it is again. A child's life should be surrounded by love, first of all from their parents from whom they learn to love (or not, as the case may be) and that love should be extended to the teacher with whom they spend a large part of every day. Of course, it can only extend to a teacher who loves and respects her pupils in return.
Children are so much more astute than we think. They know when they have the respect of their teacher (or, in fact, their parents) and they respond to it. If a child has no respect for his teacher, then he cannot and will not learn. But although in ‘the old days' parents generally brought up their children to have a healthy respect for authority of all kinds, one of the worse things these days is that this doesn't always happen. It seems that there are more parents now who have no respect for authority themselves and engender the same attitude in their children. Maybe they have had very bad experiences themselves and, perhaps understandably, have lost respect for authority. However, I urge all parents to try to put aside their own feelings and remember that whoever a child loves and respects, that is from whom he will learn most.
3. Prepare your child for independence.
One of the not-so-good things about children in school today is that, strangely, more of them are unable to look after their personal needs than children of years ago. I hear far more incidents of children who are unable to dress themselves, go to the toilet alone or even eat for themselves these days. Perhaps mothers are not able to spend time waiting for a child to struggle with his buttons - it's much quicker to do it for him! It's difficult in today's world, I know, but each child will be at a disadvantage if he or she cannot manage these personal tasks. Teachers are not nurses or personal carers. They need to spend the day giving their children a good education and, believe me, it takes ages to dress a class full of five-year-olds after P.E! I can remember being eternally grateful to the parents of the children who could dress themselves!
Any child who cannot look after his basic care will be considered ‘babyish' by his peers who can look after themselves and this feeling can last on into adulthood with a child who becomes under-confident, or who may turn out to expect others to do everything for him. If mum has to get off to work early, I suggest that she gets her child to bed earlier so that they can both be up early enough for her to spend time helping her child, but not doing it for him. With a little help and a lot of patience, she will help her child build up his self-esteem and independence.
4. Make sure your child has enough sleep.
Getting a child to bed in good time is no easy job, I know! Children seem to have an innate ability to wring the last minute out of every day! It is very difficult for a child who has not had enough sleep to concentrate on school work. They become listless and disinterested and if the condition continues, they will fall behind and may never catch up. I have noticed that as the week goes on, the child gets more and more tired, until by Friday, they are hardly able to function at all.
The number of hours sleep each child needs depends on lots of things, but a good indication that they are not getting enough sleep is if you have to wake your child to get them up in the morning. Parents need to have a firm ‘bedtime policy' and stick to it. If bedtime is fixed right from the start - with nothing other than very unusual circumstances to stop it - then children get used to knowing that when you say it's time for bed, you mean what you say and will accept no arguments. Of course, there are nice ways to ensure the child enjoys going to bed. One of these is to read him or her a story. This not only has a calming effect and prepares the child for sleep, but also engenders a love of stories and books - which leads me to the next point:
5. Introduce your child to books and read them to him or her
A bedtime story is of great advantage - I might even say, ‘vital' to the well-being of every child. In the first place it achieves one of the results mentioned in number 1 above: it lets the child know that you love him enough to spend time with him at the end of your busy day. Secondly, it shows him that, since you are so busy, but are prepared to read a book to him, then books (and he, himself!) must be important. He learns the delights of books: they tell stories, both fact and fiction; they hold a multitude of knowledge and thirdly, it fosters the need for him to read them for himself.
When he starts school, a sound upbringing with books will mean that he will recognise the importance not only of the books themselves, but he will have the enthusiasm to want to learn to read. All of this helps the teacher a great deal, for a disillusioned child is an apathetic one who will fail, not only in reading, but probably in every other subject as well.
The adults in a child's life provide the bedrock for his knowledge, his character and his future life. School days should be an exhilarating and stimulating time for children, and these five simple elements will without doubt make all the difference.