As a parent of a middle or high school student, you naturally want to do everything possible to help your child succeed academically.
The challenge is in knowing what is truly most helpful.
Over the years, we have worked with many hundreds of students and families and havegathered insights from psychologists, educators, parents, and students across our community.
While every child is different, there are common themes among the students who most succeed academically.
Based on our learnings, here are the 5 most important things parents can do to best help their children succeed in school.
1. Make strong academic performance the norm
Students who consistently perform well academically often grow up in households where education is clearly valued. Academic performance is treated as a normal and important part of life.
Talk openly about the importance of learning and academic growth. Encourage curiosity and emphasize that school is an incredible learning opportunity and a stepping stone for success in life.
It can also help to expose your child to students who are a few years ahead of them and attending top universities. Seeing older students succeed academically normalizes these outcomes.
When strong academics are part of the household culture, students are far more likely to adopt the same mindset.
2. Establish a Consistent Study Routine
One of the strongest predictors of academic success is consistent study habits.
Students perform far better when studying becomes a regular part of their routine.
Parents can help encourage this routine in a few simple ways:
• Encourage children to set aside dedicated study time each day after school
• Create a quiet, distraction-free study environment
• Make it a rule to complete work before the use of phones / social media / devices
Many of the highest performing students we work with follow structured study routines throughout the week. Over time, this consistency translates into all dimensions of their lives.
3. Reinforce effort, not results
Effort is one of the few controllable elements in each student’s academic journey.
Despite this, many parents unintentionally praise intelligence over effort. When children hear things like “You are so smart,” they tend to believe success comes from natural ability rather than hard work – which reinforces the wrong attitude.
Psychologist Carol Dweck’s research on growth mindset details how students who believe they can improve through their own consistent effort (i.e., having a growth mindset) tend to outperform those that do not (i.e., having a fixed mindset) – Link: Developing a Growth Mindset with Carol Dweck
In practice, parents can reinforce a growth mindset by praising effort and discipline:
• “You studied really hard. I am proud of you.”
• “You were very organized and on top of things this term. That is a great accomplishment.”
• “I am proud of how disciplined you have been.”
This type of reinforcement helps students understand that effort (which is within their control) leads to improvement, not purely intelligence.
4. Provide guidance while encouraging independence
This is one of the most nuanced parts of supporting your child academically.
Leaving your child completely on their own is rarely helpful. At the same time, doing everything for them prevents them from developing independence, which is a core life skill that must be developed earlier in life. So what is the right approach?
As with all things in life, we have found that a balanced approach works best.
Parents can provide the structure and general frameworks for success – but avoid taking responsibility for their tasks. For example, teach your child how to organize assignments or use a planner and encourage them to use it. But, don’t actually do the planning for them.
Additionally, allow your child to experience the consequences of mistakes directly. If your child forgets an assignment or fails to prepare for a test, it can be tempting to step in and fix the problem. While it may be helpful in the short term, the most valuable long term lessons come from experiencing small (non-critical) failures and self-learning how to correct them.
5. Seek extra academic support when needed
Even with strong habits and support at home, some students benefit significantly from additional academic guidance.
Specifically, 1-on-1 academic support programs can provide personalized instruction that students often do not receive in a traditional classroom (1 teacher to many students)
This includes the full range of students – from high achievers to those that are struggling. We always find that parents are shocked to learn that about 50% of our students at Insights are high achieving students (top of their class, valedictorians, etc.) who use academic support to stay ahead or deepen their understanding of challenging subjects.
Tutoring simply provides a more personalized learning experience than what is available in the traditional 1 to many classroom.
Speak to an expert and / or complete a complimentary trial & diagnostic to determine if it’s the right fit for your family.
Summary
Helping your child succeed academically is much more about building the right systems and environment for success than anything else.
Parents can be most helpful by ‘managing’ their children effectively. That is, providing enough guidance and setting the right priorities, but letting their children ultimately deliver the work and fail / learn independently.
Sometimes additional support can be an effective strategy, where personalized academic guidance can help students catch up, stay ahead, or push beyond what is possible in a traditional classroom. For this, it’s best to contact an educational specialist to determine if it’s the right fit for your child.
