3 Positive Parenting Tips to Help Guide Your Child or Teenager to Choose to Go to School

Why is it important for every good parent to send their children to school? I know, I know, it’s a generic answer, which, is to offer our children a better life. So, is it important for them to go to school or important for you to have them go to school? Interesting question, isn’t it?

I believe that good parents send their children to school in order to offer them a better chance to succeed in life. In wanting what is best, good parenting today usually means to force a child or teenager to go to school using idle threats, dictational punishment, and associational guilt parenting skills that set the child up for failure now and in their future. This is disturbing!

Many parents ask their children questions like “Why don’t you want to go to school?” or “Do you want to be a dummy for the rest of your life?” as if the child knows what those questions really mean; they don’t. It is also a common parenting mistake to demean the child, tween or teenager by belittling what is important to them. The child says, “I don’t want to go to school!” And the parent comes back with, “I don’t care what you want!” And then the teenager gets deemed with a poor attitude .

Good parenting gets lost with outdated punishment techniques, like time-outs, spankings and removing privileges. Parents who are using punishment, as a default, in an attempt to have their child behave are creating everything their child is producing. Read on for positive parenting tips that will help you help your child choose to go to school, in a way that empowers them!

3 Positive Parenting Tips to Help You Guide Your Child or Teenager to Choose to Go to School

It is important to be aware that children operate with different thoughts than parents do. The ability to think abstract does not develop until after the child has reached the age of 13. “I don’t want to go to school” can mean a number of things like “I don’t like my hair” “Someone at school is picking on me.” Or “I have a test today.” Good parenting is understanding the language their child speaks and will speak in a way that the child will understand.

Empower your child or teenager with the ability to make good choices. You can help guide your child to choose to go to school by asking them strategic questions. On the day your child wakes up and decides they are not going to go to school anymore, instead of dictating, “You have to go to school” ask the child or teenager a question, “Little Timmy, what should we be doing right now?” He will answer, “Getting ready for school.” Then you can praise him/her, “Ah, look how smart you are. What do we have to do to get ready?” “We have to brush our teeth, eat our breakfast and get dressed.” “Perfect! Little Timmy, you always know the right answers. You are so smart, look at you! When you get that done in the next 10 minutes, we will have time to stop for hot chocolate on the way.”

Make sure to always pay attention to what is important to your child or teenager. You can show your child this by always acknowledge what they tell you is important and say, “Yes, I want you to do that, have that or be that, too. That is called a goal!”

There is always a way to say yes, and to guide your child or teenager to the outcome you seek. It is either an opportunity to teach your child a life skill by showing guiding their behaviour with love. By understanding the different languages, empowering your child with the correct questions (not abstract ones) and guiding them with love, you will put an end to the parent child power struggle forever!