Help Your Child Advocate for Herself/Himself
Our summer camp located in the heart of the Midwest makes empowering our campers our number one priority. Culling from a recent article, we summarize a few tips on how to help empower your child to become a strong self-advocate. Minimizing your own involvement while helping your child be involved in her/his own education is key to helping them grow and be ready for life after they leave your home’s cozy confines. Bullets below, with the full Washington Post article at this link.
- Teach your kids how to advocate for themselves.
- From an early age, give your children a place to make decisions daily (i.e what to wear).
- Have your child help plan the dinner menu for the week.
- Encourage your children to talk to their teachers.
- Most teachers will be more open to helping if it comes from the child.
- Go through practice conversations with your child beforehand.
- If they miss a deadline, help them speak with the teacher about the consequences and how to make it up.
- Encourage your child to make and own mistakes.
- Having the ability to make mistakes early helps them overcome things like substance abuse later in life.
- Making mistakes is how your brain learns to avoid certain situations.
- When given autonomy early on children will learn to self-regulate foregoing the need for drugs or alcohol.
- Empower your child to own any academic issues:
- Help your child approach the teacher of the subject and ask for help.
- Remind your child that each person learns differently and nothing is “wrong” with them.
- Do get personally involved if the situation becomes one where your child’s learning is deeply affected.
- If your child has spoken with the teacher and grades are not improving.
- Try and keep your emotions in check when speaking with the teacher.
- Ask the teacher questions rather than giving “your answers.”
- Let your child’s venting be just that.
- No need to “fix” a problem that may not exist.
- Ask questions like “So how are you going to deal with that?”
- Have your child figure out a solution when a situation may not be as “fun” or “engaging” as they would like.
- Don’t use grade school as a means to an end (i.e. there’s no need to pressure your pre-teen regarding college or post-secondary school life).
- Help your child embrace all that each grade has to offer.
- Teach self-sufficiency early on, so when your child does leave home s/he is ready to deal by her/himself with issues that arise.
- Kids are kids only once; let that happen!