5 Guidelines to Being Your Child’s Best Tutor {Guest Post}
Guest Post By Maria Hills
Your involvement in your children’s education is really the most important thing, beyond any formal education role. Parental involvement will make the whole process of education more natural, as it should be. But not all parents can be involved in the educational process of their children. Some of them even become bad contributors because they tend to focus on the results of the study rather than the process itself. This article will explain to you about five guidelines to being your child’s best tutor. Here they are…
- Practice unconditional love
This is the first principle in education by parents to their children. All parents love their children unconditionally but it’s about showing it, and that means praising and supporting even when things don’t go quite as you would have hoped. If you do this then you will give them “security” because they will feel that education is not something that threatens their position as a child. When they realize that you love them unconditionally then they will be able to follow the educational process without fear. You must know that fear is a big enemy to every lesson.
- Prioritize character development
Remember that new intellectual intelligence is really useful if balanced with strong characters. Many examples show that weak characters tend to squander all the talents they have. You should encourage your children to attain a strong character or personality. If they already have a strong character then other good things will follow including intelligence, skills and initiative. This is one of the pillars in children’s education.
- Emphasize that doing the best is more valuable than being the best
The two phrases above are different in meaning. By encouraging your children to do their best, you encourage them to expel their best abilities without forcing them to over-exploit themselves or even others to achieve “pseudo-achievement”. This is the secret of super rich people in the world like Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Jack Ma and so forth. They just do the best and the various accomplishments follow.
- Proper integration
We know that the history of education in our country has reached hundreds of years; therefore we now have a formal education system that has advantages and also shortcomings in various aspects. Nothing is perfect, including the formal education system prevailing in our country. But it is important for you to integrate the positive values you give (to your children) with the prevailing education system so that a harmony can be achieved. For example, you can incorporate math values in informal education to your children daily. That way they will be able to absorb the values of formal education in a more familiar path.
- Try to be friends instead of being a teacher
If you always position yourself as a teacher then the education you give your children will run into a one-way dialogue. One-way dialogue does look “impressive and reasonable” but behind it all, your children may feel psychologically depressed. Psychological distress will mess up any of your plans and therefore, this should be avoided.
By doing the above five approaches you will sooner or later be accepted by your children as the best teachers. The best teacher is not the dreaded teacher but the teacher who is loved and respected.
More About the Author
Maria is part of the community outreach team at Edu Aid. Maria is passionate about ongoing education at all ages, and when isn’t learning new things is a keen walker and cyclist and can be found exploring.
