Your child’s behaviour at school may sometimes be good and other times, bad. To help your child, you need to understand them and make them your close friend so that they can always open up to you. With that, you will know how to help.
Here are 14 strategies to help improve your child’s behaviour at school:
1. Establish Regular Communication
If your child’s misbehavior is an isolated incident, monitor their progress for a few days to make sure it gets better.
However, if your child is getting in trouble at school often, it might be helpful to establish daily communication with their teacher or a school administrator.
2. Devise a Monitoring System
Contact your child’s teacher to discuss how you can work together to address your child’s behavior. This includes discussing how you can monitor your child’s behavior daily.
3. Decide How to Communicate
Teachers often have a preferred method for parent communication. You and your child’s teacher can decide how to communicate about your child’s behaviour.
4. Communicate Frequently
Ask your child’s teacher to send home behavior updates every day, not just on the days when your child misbehaves. Children feel good when they can show you they’ve done well at school. When they have days that don’t go well, you can work together to come up with ways to make the next day better.
5. Work As a Team
Let your child’s teacher know you want to support them. Staying flexible will help show them that you are keeping their needs in mind too.
6. Reward Desirable Behavior
Establish positive consequences to reinforce the behavior you want to see. For example, praise your child when you receive favorable reports from teachers. Celebrating these successes will motivate your child to continue working on their behaviour.
Don’t expect perfection, but do challenge your child to work hard.
7. Solve Problems With Your Child
On the days when your child has a hard time managing their behaviour, solve the problem with them about how they can do better the next day. For example, ask your child what happened at school and tell them you want to help them do better tomorrow.
Read also: Preparing Your Child For Preschool: 7 Fun Ways To Ease The Transition
8. Stay Calm
Calmly talk with your child and ask for their input about what would be helpful. Using a problem-solving approach can make them more willing to talk about how they feel.
9. Ask About What They’re Working On
Sometimes, children can clearly explain the reason for their behavior. For instance, your child might be disrupting class because they are bored. The solution might be asking your child’s teacher to provide them with more challenging assignments.
10. See If They Need Extra Support
Misbehavior can also stem from not knowing how to do the work. They might act out rather than ask for help to avoid being teased by school mates.
11. Encourage Them to Share Their Feelings
Give your child space to talk about how they feel and why—even if their statements don’t make sense or their thoughts are jumbled. The important thing is that they are expressing themselves.
12. Provide Reassurance
Once they are done sharing, reaffirm that it’s OK to feel upset, but reassure them that they are safe. You may want to share ideas on how you deal with stress and anxiety. Then, work together to find a solution that fits their needs.
13. Give Them Choices
Children become empowered when they feel like they have some control over their lives.
Be compassionate about the challenges your child is facing and find ways to give them some control in their lives, such as letting them decide what to pack in their lunch or which clothes to wear.
14. Avoid Pressure
If your child is not ready or willing to talk, don’t put pressure on them. Instead, the next time your child has a day that goes well, ask them what they did and how things went to help them become more aware of what worked.
This can give you both valuable insight that you can use to encourage your child on not-so-easy days.
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