How Can Parents Support Their Children’s Learning This School Year?
By Ed Finkel
As the school year gets into full swing, parents of bright young learners may be wondering how they can best help to scaffold their children’s talent development over the next several months.
Experts at CTD have some tips and tricks to offer on the optimal mindset to adopt in helping children reach their potential without adding to their stress levels; how to nurture interests and talents outside of school, especially those that might be overlooked because they don’t fit neatly into a school subject; and what to do if their child seems disengaged or bored.
Providing Challenge with Support
Parents need to find the right balance to be supportive, but without pushing too hard, advises Elliott Cady, manager of admissions, pathways advising and international partnerships. What leads to feeling pressured or stressed out “really depends on the kid, and what the kid can handle, and what they’re interested in, and how resilient they are to setbacks,” he says. “How well do they handle failure? Because different kids have different tolerances.”
Nick Kapling, coordinator of Advanced Enrichment programs, PreK-Grade 8, suggests that parents lean into what psychologist and author Carol Dweck has termed “the power of ‘yet.’ ” For example, when her toddler-aged daughter unsuccessfully attempts to tie her shoes and says, “I can’t do it,” she answers, “You can’t do it—yet.” She adds, “I’m establishing that idea that you’re going to be able to do this. ... And that’s one of the tenets of talent development, is that skillsets can be developed.”
To do this without creating added pressure or stress, Kapling suggests finding enrichment opportunities that are disconnected from grades or high-stakes testing, after school or on the weekends. “Find something they enjoy, or that you can enjoy with them, that is challenging — where they’re still going to have a level of rigor,” she says. “They need to have this world where it’s the process, it’s the journey, it’s the trying-it-out, that’s important.”
“Find something they enjoy, or that you can enjoy with them, that is challenging — where they’re still going to have a level of rigor,” she says. “They need to have this world where it’s the process, it’s the journey, it’s the trying-it-out, that’s important.” - Nick Kapling
Make sure that the child understands it’s about enrichment, Cady adds. “They’re not expected to get it all or understand it all immediately—they just need do the best they can with material that is likely more challenging than what they are used to at school,” he says. Too often, “kids are still hard-wired for, ‘I’ve got to get everything right.’ … It’s helping the kids to develop the mindset of an enrichment activity, where they can go in and do the best they can.”
Parents should congratulate their children on making the effort, working hard and doing their best, helping them to feel pride in trying something new that might have been difficult, Kapling says. “The point was to try it out to see if you liked it, and to be with kids who like the same thing as you do,” she says. “Instead of making a robot that worked.”
Nurturing Interests and Exploring Possible Pathways
The simplest way to nurture your child’s interests and talents outside of school—and one that does not require deep pockets—is to talk with them about their interests, Cady says.
One way to get there is to hop online and research a question the student asks that the parent can’t answer, Kapling says. “Maybe we should ask Alexa? Maybe we can go to the internet? Maybe we can go to the library and get a book on that?” she says.
"The simplest way to nurture your child’s interests and talents outside of school—and one that does not require deep pockets—is to talk with them about their interests." - Elliott Cady
Since parents are their children’s first role models, acknowledging their own wins and struggles in regular dinner conversation helps kids connect with their own experiences and builds self awareness of emotions as well as social skills—which dovetails with CTD’s tenets of talent development around building social-emotional abilities as they’re learning content, Kapling says. “No matter what domain they choose to be in, they’re going to be interacting with social networks,” she says. “They need to learn how to collaborate, self-advocate, be resilient and work with others.”
To encourage emerging talents that might otherwise be overlooked, Cady advises looking for enrichment offerings outside of typical academic classes. “Opportunities that are adjacent to what they’re interested in, or a component of that interest,” he says. “Because most things tie in to some subject matter, somewhere along the way.”
Kapling recommends frequently asking, “What was the thing today that excited you the most? What happened today that surprised you?” And then, “Was that a good surprise or bad surprise?” Those questions elicit more revealing answers than, “What did you do at school today?” she says. “You can say, ‘How did that make you feel?’ And you can follow up with something because you’re trying to get at where they’re excited.” Based on the answer, she adds, consider anything from a day trip to a museum, to signing them up for a weekend enrichment course.
Countering the "I'm Bored" Phenomenon
If your student is coming home from school saying they’re bored, and parents are inclined to advocate for more challenging work, keep in mind that a first step is understanding what bored really means. It can encompass many different things for a child—from truly not feeling the right level of challenge to not understanding what is expected or being unfamiliar with the learning environment. And navigating this idea of boredom “can be a sort of sticky situation, depending on the kid, the teacher, the district, [and] the school’s philosophy,” says Cady, who consults with parents on behalf of CTD.
Kapling suggests making sure your child is actually bored, per se, as opposed to feeling discomforted or overly challenged, perhaps because their executive functioning skills are hindering them. “That’s another reason to talk to the teacher, is just to get another dataset,” she says. “There could be a lot of different ways that your kid is experiencing the class that they can’t tell you or are scared to tell you for whatever reason, that you could glean with just a quick conversation with an educator.”
Whatever the specific situation and need, parents should indicate an understanding that their child’s teacher is busy and wants the best for all students. Still, it is reasonable to ask that a teacher develop a differentiated lesson for a group of kids—not just their own—and for parents to offer to volunteer in the class to help out, if they have the capacity, he says. “Partnering with the teacher is a lot different than saying, ‘Hey, I’m asking you from home what my kid needs you to do for them here at school, in addition to everything else you’re doing.’ ”
Kapling shares two thoughts that she thinks are equally important. The first, which she admits can be hard, is to find the right level of challenge for your student. “You’ve got to find that sweet spot of, ‘This is challenging, and I still can get it,’ that makes them excited to achieve,” she says, adding that above-level testing and weekend enrichment courses are designed to do just this.
Secondly, she recommends parents “reinvent game night at home,” substituting collaborative games for competitive ones, to help kids compromise, take turns and otherwise build social skills while working toward a common goal. “Because the kids who are super-advanced, and going through assignments quickly in their everyday lives, are the kids who aren’t getting chances to collaborate with others as much,” she says. “And collaboration is key.”
Elliott Cady is Manager of Admissions, Pathways Advising and International Partnerships at CTD with extensive experience as an educator, program manager, and educational consultant. Cady regularly consults with families about talent development programming and brings CTD's enrichment curriculum and approach to instruction to national and international clients.
Nick Kapling is Coordinator of Advanced Enrichment Programs for PreK-Grade 8 at CTD, leading the design and oversight of summer and weekend programs. Kapling brings to her role diverse experiences as an educator and educational program designer, and insights and experiences from the parent perspective.