Why Parent Involvement is Crucial to Proper Child Growth

As an educator I would have to say that parent involvement is extremely important. I have seen children’s lives literally changed when a parent decides to get involved more in their child’s life. Academically their grades and attention improve as well as their motivation to continue learning and growing. Parent involvement has also been linked with proper and healthy child development. This article will discuss some of the different areas of child development and why parent involvement is crucial to proper child growth and how you can be more involved in different aspects of your child’s development and life.

Forming and establishing healthy relationships

One of the most noticeable and important things for a child to learn while they are young is how to establish healthy relationships with other people; adults and children. Parent involvement is one of the ways to foster healthy relationships among children. Establishing healthy relationships is a crucial part of child development. If parents can foster healthy relationships among themselves and their children they are likely to continue developing healthy relationships among themselves and others. So how can you as a parent help foster healthy relationships?

•Communicate with your child effectively so that they learn to understand that throwing fits isn’t the best way to get what they want.
•Teach them how to properly manage their anger so that when they have disagreements with other children and peers they will know how to handle themselves appropriately.
•Arrange for your child to play with other children so they learn to get along nicely with other children and can begin to form healthy relationships with others.

Parent involvement in academic child growth

There has been extensive research done on the benefits of parent involvement and academic child growth and success. There is a direct correlation between good parent involvement and a child’s motivation and ability to achieve goals successfully. Parents can be involved either directly or indirectly with their schools in many different ways:

•Get involved with the PTA or the PTO. This way if you feel that being in the classroom will disrupt your child you can still get involved with helping the school out by indirectly involving yourself.

•Volunteering in the classroom is a great way to help let your child know that you care about their education and are willing to put in some extra time for them. It also helps out the teacher.

•Set aside a specific time for homework to get done every night. While children may not necessarily appreciate this right now they definitely will in the long run and so will their teachers. Taking the time to do homework assignments with your child lets them know that you’re taking their education seriously so they should also. Helping your child with homework also begins to instill within them some self discipline and work ethics that they will most definitely need one day.

Parent involvement in extra-curricular activities

Another form of parent involvement is through extra-curricular activities. Almost every parent will agree that extra-curricular activities can help children develop some very important character building skills and talents to help them later on in life. Here are some ways to get more involved with extra-curricular activities to help your child develop character and talent:

Get them involved in an activity they either really enjoy doing or want to learn more about. With children they will almost always pick something they are comfortable doing so you may need to teach them that choosing new activities can help them grow and develop.

Offer to run a class that is being offered by the school or the community. This shows your child that being active is important to you and that will rub off on them.

There are many ways that parent involvement is crucial to proper child growth. Building healthy relationships, education, and extra-curricular activities are just a few of them. Children need parent involvement to properly develop; to learn; to grow.