Maths Problems

Australian schools are presiding over a DUMBING DOWN of our children in the area of Mathematics.

Each year since 1995, more and more Year 12 Mathematics students in Australia opt for studying lower levels of Mathematics than the students of the previous year.

By 2004:

• Only 34.3% of Year 12 students studied Mathematics at Intermediate or Advanced Levels. In other words, two thirds of our Year 12 students leave school with only rudimentary Maths skills.
• The proportion of students only studying at Elementary Level had climbed to 46%.
• And tragically, an incredible19.7% didn’t study Mathematics at all.

For the ten years 1995–2004, the changes in the numbers of students presenting for Year 12 mathematics in Australia can be summarised as follows:

• The proportion of students taking advanced mathematics dropped from 14.1% of the Year 12 student population in 1995 to 11.7% in 2004.
• The proportion of students taking intermediate mathematics (but not advanced mathematics) dropped from 27.2% of the Year 12 student population in 1995 to 22.6% in 2004.
• The proportion of students taking elementary mathematics (but not intermediate or advanced mathematics) rose from approximately 37% of the Year 12 student population in 1995 to approximately 46% in 2004.

(‘Participation in Year 12 mathematics across Australia 1995-2004′ by Frank Barrington for the International Centre of Excellence for Education in Mathematics and the Australian Mathematical Sciences Institute).

The Long-Term Impact of Poor Maths Skills

A friend of mine recently completed a Nursing Degree. Of the 185 students who started the course, only 35 completed it. Most of the 150 dropouts left because they didn’t know enough basic fraction and decimal skills to pass their drug calculations test.

And, one of our clients who was studying for a Nursing Degree was the only student in his class to get full marks in his drug calculation test – every other student in the course had to re-sit the exam.

This problem extends into most other degrees which don’t have Mathematics at Year 12 as a pre-requisite. When I studied Psychology many years ago, many students failed the compulsory Statistics subjects because of poor Maths skills. Most degrees at university level include subjects on Statistics.

What This Means For Your Child

Do you want your child to go to university if he/she chooses to?

Do you want your child to get the degree he/she studies for – or to drop out?

If you answered yes to both of these questions, I suggest the following:

• You make sure that your child is in the top 10% of his/her class in Maths (and Science) right through school. If the school does not give grades then make sure your child is operating well above average and is encountering no difficulties that you can’t fix.
• Your child’s Maths grades should never get below a B, and should preferably be an A every time.
• If you don’t know what to do to fix your child’s problem contact us and we will help you fix it.
• Do not delay doing something about the problem – people do not grow out of Maths problems.

To find out more about Our Mathematics Programs click here.

By Chris Brooks
Principal
High Performance Learning

Go back to Catalog of Articles

Rote Learning Maths Vs Understanding Maths

There are two basic approaches to teaching Maths:

• Getting students to repeat procedures over and over again until they are learnt like a parrot. This is the main technique used by most teachers and implied in most modern textbooks.
• Teaching students the language of Maths so they can understand the concepts and procedures and can apply them in various situations. Very few teachers use this approach and there are very few textbooks available any more that make it easy teaching this approach.

The first problem with learning things by rote is that unless they are practised regularly they will gradually be forgotten. In other words they do not stay in the long-term memory like understanding and language does – there are just too many patterns to learn and they often look similar to other patterns. Take addition, subtraction, multiplication and division of fractions and decimals for example. Despite learning how to do this for many years in Primary and High School, very few people can still do these operations by the end of their schooling. If you don’t believe me, make up a quick test of these skills and give it to anyone aged 10 or above and see how many they can do.

Another major problem with just learning Maths procedures by rote is that it is often difficult to determine which procedure to use if the problem is presented as a word problem – there is no point being able to remember how to add fractions if you can’t work out that you need to add fractions to solve a particular problem. This difficulty becomes very apparent from about Year/Grade 10 so it is not surprising that this is the time that many people drop Maths even though they may have been getting good grades in earlier years.

DANGER! Poor Maths Skills Severely Limit Your Child’s Career Choice

Poor Maths skills in Senior High School make it very difficult to learn Science subjects like Physics and Chemistry, so courses at University in Medicine, Science or Engineering are not an option for the student. Fixing the Maths skills at Senior High School level is much more difficult that fixing them in Primary or Junior High School, so proactive parents should have the learning approach of their children assessed so any weaknesses can be fixed as soon as possible.

Even if your child does not want to do Medicine, Science and Engineering courses, most other University and College courses contain a significant component of Maths! And the Maths part of the course is usually compulsory so failure in the Maths means failure in getting the qualification. Take Nursing for example, well over half the people who enroll in Nursing fail because they can’t pass their drug calculation test. The same thing happens in Psychology where students must learn very sophisticated Statistics and Research Methods. In fact, most University courses require students to understand and use complex Statistical skills.

‘I Was No Good at Maths Either’

It is common for parents to have low expectations for their child in Maths if they did not do well in Maths themselves. Such attitudes often become a self-fulfilling prophecy because they affect the child’s attitude to Maths and destroys his/her confidence.

Poor Mathematical ability is NOT hereditary – you cannot pass it on to your child by your genes!

Maths is the Easiest Subject to Learn – Provided Your Child Learns it the Right Way

There is a surprisingly small amount of content to learn in Mathematics so if it is learned using language and understanding so the child gets good long-term memory, Maths usually becomes the easiest and most enjoyable subject for the child.

When your child is able to learn and remember Maths skills the first time, he/she will not have to keep learning them over and over again, like most of the other students.

Maths Can Be Fun

One of the most enjoyable ways to practise and maintain Maths skills is to play Maths Games. We have games that teach and revise many of the concepts needed in Primary and High School.

We also provide our students with many practical activities which provide them with a much more concrete understanding of Maths concepts, and so make the concepts easier to understand and remember.

To find out more about Our Mathematics Programs click here.

By Chris Brooks
Principal
High Performance Learning

Go back to Catalog of Articles

In technologically advanced nations like Australia, UK and USA you would expect Mathematics education to be highly developed. You would also expect the vast majority of students would leave school with reasonable levels of Mathematics achievement.

Not so!

In 2008, a major study by the US Government’s National Mathematics Advisory Panel considered the US results in Mathematics Achievement showed that their Mathematics education system ‘is broken and must be fixed’.

The US National Mathematics Advisory Panel considers mathematics education needs a major overhaul – Australian student performance in Mathematics is below that of the USA.

This is what their report had to say in more detail:

This Panel, diverse in experience, expertise, and philosophy, agrees broadly that the delivery system in mathematics education—the system that translates mathematical knowledge into value and ability for the next generation—is broken and must be fixed. This is not a conclusion about any single element of the system. It is about how the many parts do not now work together to achieve a result worthy of this country’s values and ambitions. (Principal Messages, page xiii)

What This Means for Your Child

If your child has only average Maths skills then he/she will NOT do formal Mathematics in Year 12 – in Australia, less than one third of Year 12 students study Intermediate or Advanced Mathematics subjects.

In my experience, most high schools start the process of segregating the students who will do higher Maths in Year 12 from as early as Years 8 or 9 where students are moved into classes which ‘do the same curriculum but are given more help’. Yeah, right! These students almost never get back into the normal stream (unless they work with us at High Performance Learning).

Then comes the crunch at the end of Year 10 when many children are not allowed to choose to study Advanced Maths in Year 11 based on the marks in the end of year exam, even though they have been getting A’s and B’s in Maths up until that time, and you as a parent have been given no previous warning that there was a problem. (If this happens to you, contact us immediately so we can fix the problem straight away.)

The biggest crunch of all comes after the half-yearly exams in Year 11. It is not unusual for more than half the students in Advanced and Intermediate Level Maths classes to get ‘weeded out’ at this stage. (We can still help your child at this stage – but you are sure making our job even more difficult by not having acted sooner.)

More students drop out of Advanced and Intermediate Level Maths at the end of Year 11, and of course, not all those who keep going until the end of Year 12 get high enough marks to get into the course of their choice.

The Good News: The US National Mathematics Advisory Panel Recommendations

The US National Mathematics Advisory Panel didn’t offer a solution to the problem of a broken system but they did highlight the key indicators of future success in Mathematics.

They recommend:

Primary School students should be proficient in fractions, and before that with whole numbers, geometry and measurement:

‘A major goal for K–8 mathematics education should be proficiency with fractions (including decimals, percent, and negative fractions), for such proficiency is foundational for algebra and, at the present time, seems to be severely underdeveloped. Proficiency with whole numbers is a necessary precursor for the study of fractions, as are aspects of measurement and geometry. These three areas—whole numbers, fractions, and particular aspects of geometry and measurement—are the Critical Foundations of Algebra.’ (Curricular Content, point 4, page xvii)

Junior High School Students should be proficient in Algebra:

‘All school districts should ensure that all prepared students have access to an authentic algebra course—and should prepare more students than at present to enroll in such a course by Grade 8.’ (Curricular Content, point 6, page xviii)

‘To prepare students for Algebra, the curriculum must simultaneously develop conceptual understanding, computational fluency, and problem solving skills. Debates regarding the relative importance of these aspects of mathematical knowledge are misguided. These capabilities are mutually supportive, each facilitating learning of the others. Teachers should emphasize these interrelations; taken together, conceptual understanding of mathematical operations, fluent execution of procedures, and fast access to number combinations jointly support effective and efficient problem solving.’ (Learning Processes, point 10, page xix)

When to Act if Your Child Is Struggling with Maths

NOW!

If you can’t help your child yourself then you need outside help:

1. Do NOT blame your child for being lazy and berate him/her to work harder – your child does not know what to do.
2. Do NOT rely on the school – if they let the problem develop in the first place they are unlikely to be able to fix it once it has become serious.
3. Do NOT get a tutor who just goes over the school work or who gets your child to do a lot of repetitious work – there is no point repeating the mistakes that were already made in the teaching of Maths at the school.
4. YOU NEED to find someone who will diagnose the cause of the problem by assessing your child’s thinking, learning, literacy and maths skills. And you need to be sure they have a detailed program which is different from what happened at school to fix the underlying causes of your child’s Maths problems. Not surprisingly, this is what we do at High Performance Learning, and we can work with your child anywhere in the world. You can contact us here.
5. DO NOT GIVE UP ON YOUR CHILD. Maths is the easiest subject at school if your child has been taught to do it in the correct way.

To find out more about Our Mathematics Programs click here.

By Chris Brooks
Principal
High Performance Learning

Go back to Catalog of Articles

Why is it that technologically advanced countries like Australia, UK and the USA need to import so many highly skilled migrants when many of the people already living in those countries do not have a job?

The answer is simple, the standards of Maths and Science in the schools are so low that not enough of the children in advanced countries have the skills needed to pursue technological careers.

The 2007 TIMSS International Study of Achievement in School Mathematics found that Australian students at Year 8 level (average score 496) are below average (average of all countries was 500) in a group of 49 countries. Australia was marginally behind the United States (av. 508), which was behind the United Kingdom (av. 513), and these three countries and many others were way behind the leaders: Chinese Taipei (av. 598), South Korea (av. 597), Singapore (av. 593), Hong Kong (av. 572), and Japan (av. 570).

Similar results were obtained for Mathematics achievement in Year 4. Results for Science achievement in Australia were similarly disappointing.

The US Government’s National Mathematics Advisory Panel considers mathematics education needs a major overhaul (Australian student performance in Mathematics is below that of the USA)

In 2008, a major study by the US National Mathematics Advisory Panel considered the US results showed that their Mathematics education system ‘is broken and must be fixed’. This is what their report had to say in detail:

This Panel, diverse in experience, expertise, and philosophy, agrees broadly that the delivery system in mathematics education—the system that translates mathematical knowledge into value and ability for the next generation—is broken and must be fixed. This is not a conclusion about any single element of the system. It is about how the many parts do not now work together to achieve a result worthy of this country’s values and ambitions. (Principal Messages, page xiii)

Teaching Methods Are to Blame for Poor Results

Educators have been aware of the problems with Mathematics Education for many decades and so have tried a series of different approaches in the schools:

1. New Maths (with a focus on understanding through set theory),
2. Back-to-Basics (a return to rote learning of number facts),
3. Problem Solving (with an emphasis on application and reasoning),
4. Constructivism (where the teacher does less teaching and encourages the students to work the Maths facts out for themselves).

I hear you asking: ‘What is the result of all these experiments?’

The answer is: There has been a steady decline in the number of students studying advanced Maths at Year 12 level, year after year.

High Performance In Mathematics

Year after year, all the students who get Maths tutoring here at High Performance Learning get outstanding results because our curriculum teaches HOW TO LEARN MATHS, as well as teaching the content.

Our programs incorporate the best parts of the four approaches to teaching Maths detailed above, PLUS we teach our students:

• The psychology of thinking and learning (including Game Theory),
• The use of concrete materials to develop abstract concepts,
• A heavy emphasis on learning the language of Mathematics,
• The use of in-depth reading, comprehension and understanding skills to support long-term memory,
• Careful setting out strategies,
• The importance of mastering each level of Mathematics before moving on to the next one.

If you look through your child’s Maths textbook you will see little or no mention of these things. If your child’s Maths teacher is using these techniques effectively then all the children in the class would be getting high marks.

To find out how you can access our Maths Programs and tutoring contact us by email here or phone us in Australia on (08) 8370 0110.

To find out more about Our Mathematics Programs click here.

By Chris Brooks
Principal
High Performance Learning

Go back to Catalog of Articles

Because of generally poor levels of literacy among school students despite many years at school, governments of all the major English-speaking countries (including USA, UK, Canada and Australia) have recently conducted major studies into the best ways of teaching basic reading skills.

ALL THESE STUDIES CONCLUDED THE SAME THING:

The best way to teach basic reading skills is to teach the spelling rules for each of the 44 sounds in English – this is called Phonics.

For example, using the Synthetic Phonics Method students would be taught to work out the sounds in the word ‘third’ by breaking it up into three groups of letters:

• The group of letters ‘th’ which has the /th/ sound as in ‘three’.
• The group of letters ‘ir’ which has the /er/ sound as in ‘germ’ and ‘girl’.
• The letter ‘d’ which has the /d/ sound as in ‘dog’.

If you would like to go into more detail, the Australian Government Report from 2005 called ‘Teaching Reading’ is well written and relatively easy to understand if you refer to the glossary which will give you the meanings of the technical words. It also has references to many of the reports from other countries.

Not All Phonics Instruction is the Same

Not only do all the reports recommend the teaching of Phonics, more specifically they recommended teaching a particular type of Phonics called Synthetic Phonics (see the example above). Evidence shows the other four or five ways of teaching Phonics are not nearly as effective as Synthetic Phonics.

In 2011, the UK Government Education Department added another criteria – systematic. In other words, teachers need to follow a system so that all the letter-sound rules are taught. They have set out their criteria for assuring high-quality phonic work in detail here.

In summary the UK Government recommends:

• Synthetic Phonics should be the prime approach to decoding print.
• Children should be taught a formal program of Phonics from the age of 5.
• The Phonics program should be broken into discrete daily sessions, progressing from simple to more complex rules as time goes on.
• Enable children’s progress to be assessed.
• Use a multi-sensory approach integrating visual, auditory and kinaesthetic activities.
• Teach blending of sounds right through the word from left to right.
• Teach spelling by teaching sound-to-letter rules.
• Ensure that Phonics is the first approach a child uses when reading a word.
• Ensure children are taught how to read irregular words.
• Give children the opportunity to read texts at their level of understanding of Phonic rules – in other words – give them the opportunity to read graded readers.

The High Performance Learning Approach to Phonics

High Performance Learning has been teaching Systematic Synthetic Phonics for more than 35 years, long before it was fashionable in schools anywhere in the world. I wrote the first version of the Phonics Program in 1975 and have been using it successfully ever since. The version we use today includes multimedia text that is colour-coded for the rules of English, and readers can click on individual letters in words to hear the sounds they represent. Our Phonics Program satisfies ALL the guidelines just put out by the UK government, and more. Read more here: Learning Basic Reading Skills Using Phonics.

You can get a taste of our multimedia materials by clicking here.

To find out how you can access our Systematic Synthetic Phonics Program contact us by email here or phone us in Australia on (08) 8370 0110.

By Chris Brooks
Principal
High Performance Learning

Go back to Catalog of Articles

It is not that these people cannot read, but reading more than a page or two is not a relaxing experience. This is because most English-speaking people have not been taught to read using systematic synthetic phonics which enables them to decode words at high speed, by understanding the rules of the English Language. Instead, they are forced to remember whole words which is a much more labourious, and often inaccurate method of reading.

As I said, everybody loves stories – so people who do not read much fiction must rely on movies and TV to get access to stories. The trouble is that movies and TV programs cannot provide the secret ingredient that novels contain.

Novels Contain a Secret Ingredient

Novels enable the reader to get inside someone else’s mind whereas movies only enable the viewer to see what the person does. In a novel we can hear another person thinking and so we get insights into people that we cannot get in any other way – not even by talking with others, because people do not generally share their exact thoughts, instead they modify them to suit their audience.

But Novels Are Made Up

The most common reason people give for not reading novels is not that they find them difficult to read, but that they are made up and so are not true – and so are not as important to read as non-fiction. This attitude misses the point of reading fiction – so if this is how you feel about it then I challenge you to listen to some audio books with your child so you both learn to appreciate that writers of fiction are desperate to tell you important things about having a better life – they just hide their messages in stories so they can attract you to read them.

Developing a Love of Reading Fiction

While teaching a person to read it is important to give them access to stories and novels that will engage and inspire them. If they haven’t yet mastered enough reading skills to read these books, then the use of audio books is a great way to get them started. If you also have the printed book then you could give them the opportunity to follow the text as they listen.

Getting Started – For Free

With millions of books to read, where should you start? The easiest place to start is with the classics – read novels people have loved through the generations.

Groups of people around the world who understand the importance of reading fiction have used the Internet to give people easy access to the text and audio of novels that are out of copyright. The easiest place to start is www.librivox.org which provides audio downloads of thousands of good books. Librivox also provides links for each novel to www.wikipedia.org for background on the book and the author, and to www.gutenberg.org for the text in various formats for electronic devices. Once you get the text onto your computer you can print it on paper if you want.

How To Do It

• Step 1

  Pick an appropriate book. I have provided information about six books below so try one of these if you don’t have one in mind. If you find a good book that others might enjoy, share the details with us in the box below.

• Step 2

  Download all the material and get it ready to use.

• Step 3

  Meet with the others you are going to share the book with and set a time to get started. It is good to pick a regular time – say after dinner or just before bed. If you do a lot of driving you could listen in the car.

• Step 4

  Prepare for the first session by reading the background on the author and the book from the Wikipedia articles and making a summary to tell the others. You could cut and paste bits from the articles into your word processor and read them out. Then set up the audio player and get the text so it can be read from the screen or from paper.

• Step 5

  The First Session – Introduce the author and the book then listen to the book reading. Anyone who wants to can follow the text at the same time.

• Step 6

  Organise the times for the next sessions.

Books to Read and Listen To

Below are details of, and links to, six books that you might enjoy. If you have something else in mind then search the Internet using a search engine, or search the Librivox collection here: Search Librivox Collection or browse the complete catalog in alphabetical order here: Librivox Complete Catalog.

• Anna Sewell – Black Beauty: The Autobiography of a Horse

  Get the audio files and links to the E-book on Gutenberg.org and to articles in Wikipedia.org here: Black Beauty by Anna Sewell.

  Black Beauty is Anna Sewell’s first and only novel. The story is told in the “first person” (or first horse) as an autobiographical memoir of a highbred horse named Black Beauty, from his carefree days as a foal on an English farm, to his difficult life pulling cabs in London, to his happy retirement in the country. Along the way, he meets with many hardships and recounts many tales of cruelty and kindness. Each short chapter recounts an incident in Black Beauty’s life containing a lesson or moral typically related to the kindness, sympathy, and understanding treatment of horses.

• Daniel Defoe – Robinson Crusoe

  Get the audio files and links to the E-book on Gutenberg.org and to articles in Wikipedia.org here: Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe.

  Daniel Defoe’s The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe of York, Mariner (1719) is considered by many the first English novel. Based on the real-life experiences of the castaway Alexander Selkirk, the book has had a perennial appeal among readers of all ages-–especially the young adult reading public–-who continue to find inspiration in the inventive resourcefulness of its hero, sole survivor of a shipwreck who is marooned on an uninhabited island. Especially poignant, after more than two decades of unbroken solitude, is the affection that Robinson develops for Friday, another survivor fleeing certain death at the hands of enemy tribesmen from the South American continent.

• Robert Louis Stevenson – Treasure Island

  Get the audio files and links to the E-book on Gutenberg.org and to articles in Wikipedia.org here: Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson.

  Treasure Island is an adventure novel, a thrilling tale of “buccaneers and buried gold.” Traditionally considered a coming of age story, it is an adventure tale of superb atmosphere, character and action, and also a wry commentary on the ambiguity of morality—as seen in Long John Silver—unusual for children’s literature then and now.

• Mark Twain – The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

  Get the audio files and links to the E-book on Gutenberg.org and to articles in Wikipedia.org here: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain.

  The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (published 1876) is a very well-known and popular story concerning American youth. Mark Twain’s lively tale of the scrapes and adventures of boyhood is set in St. Petersburg, Missouri, where Tom Sawyer and his friend Huckleberry Finn have the kinds of adventures many boys can imagine: racing bugs during class, impressing girls, especially Becky Thatcher, with fights and stunts in the schoolyard, getting lost in a cave, and playing pirates on the Mississippi River. One of the most famous incidents in the book describes how Tom persuades his friends to do a boring, hateful chore for him: whitewashing (i.e., painting) a fence. This was the first novel to be written on a typewriter.

• Jules Verne – A Journey to the Centre of the Earth

  Get the audio files and links to the E-book on Gutenberg.org and to articles in Wikipedia.org here: A Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Jules Verne.

  Journey to the Interior of the Earth is an 1864 science fiction novel by Jules Verne (published in the original French as Voyage au centre de la Terre). The story involves a professor who leads his nephew and hired guide down a volcano in Iceland to the “center of the Earth”. They encounter many adventures, including prehistoric animals and natural hazards, eventually coming to the surface again in southern Italy.

• H.G. Wells – The Time Machine

  Get the audio files and links to the E-book on Gutenberg.org and to articles in Wikipedia.org here: The Time Machine by H.G. Wells.

  The Time Machine is a novel by H. G. Wells, first published in 1895, later made into two films of the same title. This novel is generally credited with the popularization of the concept of time travel using a vehicle that allows an operator to travel purposefully and selectively.

Share

If you find a good book that others might enjoy, share the details with us in the box below.

Go back to Catalog of Articles

Make parenting a win-win situation for
you and your child.

Many parents, especially with their first child, are reluctant to start educating their child until their child starts school. This is because they do not feel they have the expertise or are scared that what they do may conflict with what is taught at school.

Little do they realise that the school is relying on the parents to have taught their child quite a number of skills before sending their child to school.

This does not mean that as a parent you should have taught your child to read before getting to school, although that is not a bad thing if you know what you are doing – but certainly you should have made a start teaching pre-reading skills so that your child will be ready to learn more formally when she/he reaches school.

Getting Your Child Ready to Learn

Learning is a social activity requiring meaningful interaction between people – and this requires good communication skills – especially listening, talking and comprehension skills.

Build good comprehension and communication skills requires you to spend a lot of active time with your young child – putting in the time in the first five years will help your child learn how to become independent of you. Failure to set aside regular time to do simple activities, games, craft, singing and so on, will cost you dearly later on as your child will not be ready or able to learn quickly at school.

Skills to develop in the first five years include skills like these:

• Good speech skills
• No baby talk
• Proper use of pronouns (Say, ‘I want you to …’ rather than, ‘Mummy wants Robbie to …’)
• Able to follow instructions. First just one instruction at a time, then try two instructions like, ‘Put your pyjamas on then clean your teeth.’
• Prepared to follow instructions that you give (Don’t make requests like, ‘Will you please clean your teeth now Rob.’ as you are not really saying what you mean. Instead give clear instructions like, ‘Go and clean you teeth now Rob.’
• Gradually develop longer and longer conversations with your child. This is much easier if you are sharing an activity together like reading a book, preparing food together, going shopping and so on.
• Help your child master speaking in sentences – do this gradually.
• Develop fine motor skills by doing craft work with modelling clay, folding and cutting paper, drawing with pencils and so on.
• Develop gross motor coordination skills and build core strength by walking, going to the park, throwing and kicking balls and so on.
• Logic skills can be developed with games and learning to count. Simple board games teach a lot of skills at the same time, including emotional and social skills.
• Emotional resilience is a critical skill to develop before your child reaches school otherwise she/he will have a lot of difficulty adjusting to the school environment. Your child needs experience being looked after by other people, and good communication skills like all those listed above.

What About Technology?

Watching TV and DVDs, or playing games on computers and mobile phones need to be kept to a minimum not just with very young children, but right through school. Just being good at using your thumbs, or being able to recite a video word-for-word after watching it many times are not useful skills at school and beyond if they are at the expense of a more well-rounded education.

Too many parents use technology as a babysitting device so they can get on with their busy lives – or so they can have a rest from their busy lives. I understand completely how you feel but the little benefit you get in the short term will be more than negated by the pain you will experience later on. Remember that children are social beings who crave interaction – if you don’t give them lots of chances for positive interaction then they will get your attention eventually by using negative behaviour. Once they get into the habit of controlling you through negative behaviour you will find it very difficult to break out of the negative cycle.

My recommendation is no more than 30 minutes of technology per day, or 3-4 hours a week total! Don’t say I didn’t warn you if you go over that amount. Everything in moderation.

What About You?

Having a child will be a very rewarding experience if you feel that you have been successful at building an independent person. If your child does not manage to do well at school and other activities, both you and your child will be under a lot of stress and your lives will not be enjoyable.

Life is complicated and challenging without children, but it is ten times more challenging and complicated with them. If you have children then I’m sure you would agree.

This means that you need to learn a lot of skills and strategies to be able to manage all your responsibilities to your child, your relationship, AND, to yourself. The best parents are not the parents that worry a lot about their child, but those who are a good role model, those who demonstrate good coping skills and those who are independent enough to have a bit of life for themselves that does not involve family – that just might mean going to the gym every afternoon, or to a book club once a month, or doing voluntary work once a week, whatever you want.

Make Parenting a Win-Win Situation for You and Your Child

A positive mind set will go a long way to making your job as a parent easier. Do things that will kill two birds with the one stone.

For example, rather than plonking your child in front of a DVD while you cook dinner, keep your child in the kitchen with you and give him/her jobs or activities to do. Teach simple cooking tasks, sing simple songs while you work, listen to recordings of stories or tell stories yourself, get all the saucepans out and let your child play with them.

There is lot’s more I could say on the issue of making sure you look after yourself but I will save it for another article.

Just remember – if you are not in good shape, you will not be in a good position to help your child.

By Chris Brooks
Principal
High Performance Learning

Getting Help or Helping Others

If you have any comments or questions, leave them below and I will try and answer them. If you have been there and done that as far as parenting is concerned, leave some of your pearls of wisdom for the rest of us.

Find Out How We Can Help You With Tutoring

You can find out about the services we offer parents of young children by clicking here.

Go back to Catalog of Articles