7 Ways to Get Involved in Your Children's Education As a Single Parent

According to a study published in the American Educational Research Journal, parental involvement has been shown to influence children's achievement in language and mathematics, their academic persistence, and their behavioral problems.

As a single parent, parental involvement falls solely upon your shoulders. If doing this is a struggle for you, admit to it and ask a relative, a friend, your neighbor, or a pastor for help in keeping close tabs on how your children are doing and working with the school to implement an action plan for improvement.

However, if parent involvement is not a struggle for you, here are 7 ways to carry out your parental involvement effectively.

1. Establish and maintain an ongoing dialogue with your children's teachers. Learn how to make sense out of your children's report cards. Determine what type of question to ask at parent-teacher conferences. And, make sure you know what your child should be studying and the tests they are required to pass.

2. Set up regular time for homework completion. Establish appropriate routines at home like creating quiet time for homework as well as for recreational reading. Limit the amount of television they can watch.

3. Set a good example for your children. Let the children see that you value reading and lifetime learning by enrolling in classes yourself and taking part in study groups. Moreover, if you have younger children, read to them and with them.

4. Praise the child's effort. Instead of criticizing the child's mistakes, guide them into discovering the right answers through their own efforts. If you can't help them with their homework, keep a close enough eye on them to know if they're doing it themselves.

5. Establish a relationship with other like-minded parents and community groups to strive for excellence in the school.

6. Expose your children to a variety of learning experiences. Get up on Saturday mornings and take your children to the museums or the library. Help them to turn their favorite hobbies into enjoyable learning experience.

7. Volunteer, if possible, in the classroom and accompany your children's classrooms on field trips. Go to the PTA meetings and meet all the teachers.

The fact of the matter is that the active involvement of parents is the first step in creating a level educational playing field. 

Parental involvement in the school can turn it from a failure into one of excellence. 

You can influence the choice of the principal, the type of curriculum, the quality of teaching, the expectations of teachers, and the security and safety of the classrooms.


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Use These 10 Rules for Great Family Meetings

When communicating with your child breaks down, opening  lines of communication is often best be achieved by holding a family meeting. The family meetings allow all members of the family to talk about their feelings, problems, and concerns. It should be viewed as a safe forum for dialogue where truth is the goal through a release of honest feelings. It should not, however, be a time to yell or attack another person's vulnerabilities.

Ten Effective Ground Rules
For a family meeting to be productive, you need some ground rules.

Here are 10 that I hope you will find useful:
1. Let each person talk for at least three minutes. Try to keep the meetings, no less than fifteen minutes and no more than one hour.
2. Do not judge what the family any members says.
3. Have regularly scheduled meetings. Try to meet at least once a week.
4. Do not interrupt the person talking.
5. Try not to become defensive.
6. Don't criticize how feelings are expressed. Three negative remarks stop the meeting.
7. Really listen and follow the communication guidelines.
8. Ask if the other person would like feedback and perhaps help in problem solving.
9. Shut off the cell phones, don't answer the land lines, and don’t have visitors during the meeting.
10. One person should be facilitated to guide the meeting, track time, and mediate any angry comments.

Emphasize Happy Events
Alternate so that your child has a chance to be in charge.Remember that positive issues can also be discussed at these meetings. Use it as a time to talk about happy events where everyone can take part in giving encouragement and positive feedback. Consider occasionally presenting a “say something nice roundtable”. Each member would say something he likes about the other person, such as “I liked the way you took care of the back yard. You did a good job.” Or, I like the way you took the extra time to study after you finished your home work.”

All these skills work to promote a good about feeling about your family and home. These tools build secure and strong ties within your family.


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