Looking ahead at your child’s next phase or grade is important; when you consider where your child is now in his or her education, what comes to mind? Where do you see your child headed?
Before we discuss the importance of looking ahead, it is essential to evaluate the present. If we, as parents, aren’t aware of how our children are doing in the present, we set them up for continued stressors. This applies to their emotional, social, mental, and academic well-being.
But how does looking ahead work when you don’t want to jump too quickly into the next phase but you want to be prepared? Here are 7 simple steps:
1. Start where your child is now.
This means taking stock of how your child is doing mentally, emotionally, socially and academically. Our game of This or That below may help, but it’s essentially paying attention to the spoken and unspoken cues your child provides.
Looking at Now through This or That
Does your child exhibit one of these behaviors or attitudes more consistently than the other? Take note of your choice in each bullet point, which will indicate where your child is currently situated on the educational map.
- Enjoyment of learning or barriers and roadblocks?
- Friendship with peers or lack of social life (or too much social life)?
- Consistently engaged in learning or consistently disengaged?
- Intrinsically motivated or needs external prompts and rewards?
- Fear and anxiety or confidence and drive?
- Solid emotional coping skills or weak emotional coping skills?
- Connects learning to some of his or her interests or compartmentalizes learning as merely an obligation?
These are in no way meant to “grade” a child on his or her natural tendencies; in fact, some of these that sound negative may just be developmentally appropriate for your child’s journey, age or stage.
But knowing where you are is important before looking ahead to where you’re headed.
Looking Ahead for Clues about Your Child, Your Family’s Journey and Educational Best Practices
2. Make a list of what your child naturally gravitates toward and where attitudes toward education may have fallen, and then put them in priority order from most important to least.
This can be a simple list that lets you know what your child’s strengths are and where attitudes are lagging. It could be that your child’s developmental stage lends itself to a dip in perspective. It’s good to recognize where this is true so that you, as a parent, don’t course correct too sharply.
Sometimes as parents, we want what is best for our children, and we can try to change our children’s education too drastically. Recognizing what is most important to you alongside your child’s developmental stage can help you not make rash decisions.
Switching curricula often, changing schools too many times, or even jumping a grade can impact the overall educational journey and cause gaps in learning. We don’t advise these kinds of decisions without thorough investigation and involving other family members, your child, and a community that supports your family’s well-being.
3. Encourage your child’s strengths and how hard he or she works.
This can be hard to do if your child’s natural wiring doesn’t align with educational endeavors. But it’s important to help your child make connections between things she likes to do, what she’s good at and where these may come into play later in life. One example is a child who isn’t especially avid at any one subject, but she is caring, empathetic, and her friends tend to turn to her when they have problems.
You might encourage her by communicating what a good listener she is and how dependable she is for her friends. See if there are ways you can help her connect fields like psychology and mental health to subjects she is learning about (or will soon be learning about) in school.
It’s easy to overlook a more abstract skill set, and that’s exactly why nurturing these strengths is important. It’s also important to tell your child when you see him or her working hard, whether it’s something they naturally excel in or not.
Studies show that commending a child’s natural abilities is good, but encouraging their perseverance and work ethic is even better. This kind of encouragement takes the process into account, not just the outcome. Students need to see that they are capable and that even failure doesn’t diminish their efforts.
4. Involve your child in looking ahead.
Ask your child where he sees himself in the next grade or the next phase of his schooling.
- Does he enjoy smaller groups?
- Does he tend to thrive in hands-on learning environments?
- Does she do better academically when she has one-on-one attention?
- Which projects did he or she enjoy last year?
- What interests her?
- How does she interact with friends in various settings?
- Does her friendship interaction shift with certain types of friends, and if so, how?
- Does his interaction with family members cause him stress or anxiety in any way?
Inviting your child into the process not only gives him agency and ownership, but it encourages him to reflect on where he’s been and how God has designed him.
Learnwell uses reflection as a learning tool at every grade level because it’s so effective in helping students recognize where they’re doing well.
5. Notice what your child can almost do, and let him or her try it multiple times.
Children’s counselor Sissy Goff recommends parents let their child begin to do something before they’re 100% ready. Not only does this give your child confidence that he or she can do it, but it also helps anyone struggling with anxiety overcome a fear of not doing it perfectly.
When looking ahead, we tend to wonder how our child will get from Point A to Point C. Parents have an active role to play in this journey. If we’re too busy holding onto them, seeing only what they’ve mastered, we may actually be holding them back.
Maybe your child can almost make his lunch by himself, or perhaps she can get the mail after school, sort it, and put bills in one area. If you have a teen, it is worthwhile to go that extra mile and teach her how to pay bills, recognize what you have room for in the budget, and make critical financial decisions.
If she’s still zooming in after school while you lay out her soccer gear and grab her a snack before practice, and she’s 8 or older, she can do that! Even if you think she’ll forget something, let her try it. You won’t know what she is capable of (and neither will she) until you let her try.
6. Continue to give your child household roles, responsibilities and chores.
Notice the word “continue” here. We assume you’ve already been doing this, but if not, it is never too late to start. If your child learns to match his socks at age 4, he can dump the laundry into a basket from the dryer, too.
Group associated tasks for your children so they build on that confidence that they can contribute too, especially when they’re young.
It can be tough to get older children or teens to buy into household essential tasks even if, a few years ago, they did them without complaint. That’s when matching your child’s wiring to his or her chores is important.
Looking ahead doesn’t just involve academics. It also includes getting life ready as your child gets closer to high school and beyond.
7. Decide what’s important to your family.
Many times, when we’re considering how to help our children on their academic or educational journey, we talk to people in our community first. This isn’t necessarily a bad idea, but we recommend talking to your spouse and your children first.
A set of shared family values necessitates a plan that works for the entire family. While it is helpful to factor in your child’s preferences, it’s also important not to let your child’s opinion be the driving factor in educational decisions. Looking at his or her wiring, where he or she excels, and what the trajectory of his or her academic, social-emotional, and mental health would be in different learning environments is essential to making decisions before it’s time.
Children and teens are shortsighted by developmental makeup, so it’s important that you’re looking ahead together. Once you’ve set aside what is most valuable to you as a family, it’s okay to see what others in your community are choosing for their children. Remember that you are only responsible for raising your child and that all children thrive in different environments.
Talking to your child’s teachers from year to year can also give you perspective about how your child excels when you’re not there. As you gather information, looking ahead can become a cyclical process of reflection, remembering what matters to you and your family, and deciding what’s best at the next stage.
If you are looking for an environment suited to your child’s overall well-being — including excellent academics and mental, emotional and social health — we’d love to meet you. At Learnwell, we take the whole child into account and allow for individualized learning as much as possible. Whether that’s through our parent support and 100% homeschooling option (Navigator Program) or our hybrid school, we love to help parents find the best for each of their children.
Join us at our next parent preview night, Discover Learnwell, or find out more about our Navigator Program here.