After a relaxed summer life, it’s hard for kids to get used to school routines. Suddenly they must get up in the morning and remember homework afterward. How can you help your child get emotionally involved in the new school year when you are co-parents? Let’s figure out what will make it easier for your daughter or son to adapt to everyday school life with these 4 tips.
Ask 10 magic questions
Children are just developing the skill of consciously summarizing their experiences. Unlike adults, they don’t set out to sit down and thoughtfully analyze their past lives.
Eventually, they struggle to formulate a question, which becomes a co-parent’s job. Co-parents should help their child recapture memories of the best things he or she experienced last school year. Ask and ask a lot of questions.
These 10 questions will help the child summarize the previous school year and rearrange from summer mode to an active September:
- What good things happened in your last school year?
- What dream of yours came true?
- Can you tell us about some funny incidents in your class?
- What was your favorite class?
- What interesting things did you learn from books and lessons?
- What did you learn from your last year of school?
- Who in your class did you become friends with?
- What challenges did you successfully overcome?
- Which teachers were your favorites and why?
- What was your accomplishment in the previous year of school?
Express empathy, surprise, or delight: so the child will “read” your face for concern and support. Being emotionally included in children’s stories is very valuable for co-parents. The opinion of significant adults helps the child to form an idea of himself, his value, skills, and traits.
Find 10 reasons to love school together
This assignment aims to get your child in a positive mood about returning to school. After all, returning to where you know why you feel good is nicer. A school is where a child learns and finds friends, mentors, new hobbies, and practices social skills. At school, children learn how to interact with others. They fight and make peace, form teams, learn to build relationships as equals, and choose leaders. In the classroom, children meet friends or learn to draw with the help of their peers.
Before the new school year, work with your daughter or son to find 10 reasons why they love school. Let them be their reasons. Try not to criticize or promote your position. Let the children think about what makes their school, their classmates, their school acquaintances, their teachers, and their time in school special.
Perhaps it will be for reasons far removed from learning. It’s perfectly normal for your son to say he loves school because of his best friend and for your daughter to say he loves school because of selfies with her classmates. School, after all, is where kids socialize.
Encourage children to think and count at least 10 different reasons. And if they draw them on a post-it notebook and hang them in their room, it will be another source of motivation during school.
Keep subjects interesting in creative ways
Generate interest in what your child will learn in his or her favorite subjects in the new school year. For example, a son or daughter loves biology. Then co-parents quest, where you come up with tasks or questions and leave them in different parts of the house, and your child searches for answers on his or her own, will help.
The questions should address future biology lesson topics. You can use Studocu to ask questions or propose interesting learning materials for your child. Points are awarded for each correct answer. You can even play this game for a few days. Or you can hide a few questions or problems already studied. As a result, the child is rewarded for his or her efforts, and he or she has a connection with school again.
Nobody has forbidden experiments that can be safely implemented at home. Sprouting beans and mixing paints will do. Anything-anything that will be new to a child. You may want pre-made kits for young explorers with the elements you need to experiment and learn new things together.
Create a party every month
The months of school will be more joyful if something fun is regularly planned at home. You can write down ideas on pieces of paper, roll them up and put them in a box, and then take turns pulling them out and forming a final list. For example:
- September – to go to a new cartoon and pizza place
- October – to go to a quest room
- November – to do movie night at home with popcorn
- December – to go skiing
Little shared traditions inspire and fill us with pleasant anticipation. So the best thing is if you write joint rewards for at least the next four months: September through December. That way, what pleasant things await your child each last day of the month will be clear.
Conclusion
Working together with your ex is no easy task — particularly if they seem unwilling to give it a chance. However, co-parents need to figure out a way to cooperate for their children’s development and education.
