If your children are going to succeed in the world, they’re going to need a host of skills that will benefit them in school and in their eventual careers. Since academic success often translates into success in the working world, helping your kids to learn as much and as well as possible is essential to giving them the best start possible. The following are some solid skills to start with.
Concentration
Image via Flickr by apdk
The fact of the matter is, working is boring and school is mostly work. As bothersome as it is that school often involves dull subject matter relayed in the driest possible ways, learning basic academic skills is all about focus and concentration. Your child can’t learn math, reading, writing or any other important skill if he or she has fallen asleep, and solid concentration keeps that from happening under normal conditions. You can help your child learn to concentrate by having them work on difficult problems until they’re solved and only giving small hints when the child seems truly stuck.
Time Management
The ability to effectively control how your child uses his or her time is almost as important as the ability to concentrate. There comes a point at which everyone needs to choose how to spend a given time period, and it’s far too easy to get distracted with silly and unproductive things.
If your child falls prey to this and begins wasting a lot of time, he or she will start to fall behind. You can help your child learn to manage time well by loading down a few weeks of the child’s time with extracurricular activities. While this won’t be pleasant, your child will be forced to learn how to make every hour meaningful.
Effective Revision
Revising written work teaches so many valuable skills, it’s actually pretty incredible. The ability to rewrite something effectively teaches humility and improves your child’s communication skills by forcing him or her to think in different terms. Revising can even bring out a better understanding of the subject matter by getting your child to think more deeply about it. You can teach this by having your child explain every individual sentence of a report or paper — while this may seem tedious, it will ultimately result in your child becoming a far more effective communicator.
Reasoning Skills
Logic and reasoning are among the hallmarks of the adult world. When your child learns how to use reason to work through problems, worlds of potential open up. Without the ability to reason through a problem and solve it, your child will have to use pre-made, rote solutions that may end up unsuccessful. The best-compensated professionals and greatest students can reason their way through even the toughest situations.
Visual Expression
Art doesn’t get the respect it deserves in this society, but the ability to express oneself creatively nonetheless is very valuable. Through the arts, your child can better understand the world and his or her place in it.
The above are some crucial skills your child needs. Teach those skills, and your child will do far better in life. What other academic skills do you think should be emphasized in what you teach your child?
This is an excellent list. I think the most important one is time management. If you don’t manage your time properly you won’t be able to finish your school work within a reasonable amount of time. Kids today have far more expectations and are forced to learn a great amount of material in a school year.