Making The Most Of K-12

The Important School Years

Making The Most Of K-12

Over 75,000 kids will graduate from high school this year.  I have been to several of these events and it is one of the proudest moments in parenting.  After many years of late nights, homework, dating, school drama, reports cards and so much more, on this night it all seems to have been worth it.  For thirteen years you have tried to do everything just right so you could be among the proud parents watching their children graduate from high school.

Below is a little advice to help you be among the other proud parents on graduation night and make the most of the K-12 years.

• Allow your children to be different than you
• Keep talking and keep your kids talking
• Be consistent
• Trust your kids
• Pick your battles wisely
• Start young

I Dressed Myself

Allowing you children to be different may sound like a no-brainer but is something we all need to keep in mind.  How hard does the football coach try to make his own son love sports?  Is that son allowed to be in the speech and debate club instead of on the field with the team?  Or how about the girl who has been convinced since an early age that she will become a vet and somewhere during high schools falls in love with dancing and wants to do nothing else?  Will mom understand?  Allow your children to march to the beat of their own drums, for their sake.

Learn the importance of talking and the art of talking to a teenager.  It is all to easy to assume their short yes and no answers mean they do not want to talk.  If you say "how was math today" you will probably get an "OK" for an answer.  If you ask "did your teacher agree with the answer we came up with on that hard problem last night" you just might get a discussion.  Learn to ask interesting questions and then learn to listen, without the need to offer advice, criticize or solve problems.  It is amazing how much more a child will open up and talk if they know you are just their to listen, be a friend and not try to parent them every time they open their mouth.  Entire books have been written about the importance of keeping your children talking and how to do it.  It is an art well worth learning.

Be consistent in your parenting decisions.  Be consistent in your own decisions, morning and evening, at home, at work, relaxed and stressed.  Be consistent with the other parent whenever possible.  This concept gets very involved when divorce comes into play, or drugs, or alcohol or many other hard realities of life.  If raising motivated, intelligent kids is a priority you need to find a way to deal with the aspects of your life that would cause you to be inconsistent.

Do you trust your kids?  Trust is an important part of parenting and when that trust is broken, as it will be from time to time, you must work to get it back.  Trust involves checking up on your kids, knowing they are where they are supposed to be.  It also means trusting them when you can't check on them.

Do you pick your battles wisely or does everything have to be your way or no way at all?  Or is nothing your way and the teenager walks all over you.  Creativity and high self esteem are both enhanced in an atmosphere where a child feels their opinion is important and heard.  Children act like adults sooner and learn important decision making skills at an earlier age when they are a part of the decision making process. Start early with easy choices that you kids can make.  "Do you want to play with your friend this morning and we will go shopping this afternoon or do you want to get the shopping over with now so you can have all afternoon to play".  Allowing a five year old to make this kind of decision on their own is teaching them a lot.  If you do that often enough you just might raise a teen that is capable of discussing a situation with you and coming up with a workable solution on their own.

When do you start raising a child?  You should be hard at work, raising a child, before they ever show up on a sonogram.

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