Purposeful Parents: Are you helping or hurting your teen’s efforts in school?

Purposeful Parents: Are you helping or hurting your teen’s efforts in school?

By Towanna B. Freeman

     Your teenager is in high school now and the most important thing is that you want your child to succeed in school. But are your actions and behaviors towards your child’s schooling helping or hurting them. You most definitely have the best of intentions for your child. But you may think you are helping them when what you are really doing is hurting their efforts in school.

     If your teen has come to you for help with their homework, think about how you have reacted in the past. Have you sat down with him and explained how to do it or did you suddenly find yourself with a pen in your hand doing the work for him. If your answer was that you did the work for him that was a definite hurt. You were not helping him at all. In order to have helped, you should have explained it to him so that way he knows how to do it next time. By doing it for him, he will not know what to do next time around.

     Your teen may not value school because of negative influences they had as a child. Think of the TV shows or movies that talk about a classroom like it is prison. In order to help your teen’s efforts in school, you need to communicate to them that learning is an experience that will help enrich their lives.

     Your role is not to micromanage every part of your teen’s life but to effectively communicate to them that they are in control of their school work. They can either do the work and get good grades or they can choose not to do the work and take what ever consequences they are given.  The choices and their outcomes are theirs and theirs alone.

     Towanna B. Freeman is the founder of BlackLifeCoaches.net. She is also a mother of two, community mentor, inspirational speaker, and author of Purposeful Action, 7 Steps to Fulfillment.