What are the common mistakes parents of first graders make?

The first grade is a seri­ous test for both par­ents and stu­dents. Some chil­dren quick­ly adapt to a new envi­ron­ment, while oth­ers miss their famil­iar home envi­ron­ment. In the lat­ter sit­u­a­tion, adults are most often to blame, who them­selves con­vey their mood to the child. 5 tv.ru tells what mis­takes par­ents of first graders should avoid.

Authoritarian approach to learning

Over­pro­tec­tive par­ents some­times wor­ry more about their child than they should. Sup­pos­ed­ly try­ing to make it eas­i­er for him to study in the 1st grade, they man­age to “drag” the child to all pos­si­ble tutors even before school. So by the begin­ning of the school year, the child may real­ly know more than his peers, but he has to study accord­ing to the same pro­gram, so he often gets bored. At home, he nev­er rests for a minute. If the child has done all the lessons, then the par­ent loads him with house­work so that he “does not relax”. How­ev­er, this is exact­ly what a child of his age real­ly needs — rest, games and com­mu­ni­ca­tion with peers. As a result, appeals in an imper­a­tive tone in the spir­it of “you must (a)” dis­cour­age the child from any moti­va­tion and inter­est in learn­ing — after all, knowl­edge of the world is now asso­ci­at­ed with “oblig­a­tion”. Because of the fear of caus­ing the anger and dis­ap­point­ment of the par­ent, the child devel­ops an “excel­lent stu­dent syn­drome”, which is often accom­pa­nied by aso­cial­i­ty. After all, instead of chas­ing the ball in the yard with friends, he is locked in a room for lessons.

Intervene in the child’s relationship with classmates

The worst thing a par­ent can do is con­trol a child’s rela­tion­ships with peers. Some­times the moth­er feels so one with the child that she allows her­self to dic­tate with whom to com­mu­ni­cate and with whom not. If a child is lazy to do home­work, then his desk mate is to blame, from whom he takes an exam­ple. More­over, most often he oper­ates with argu­ments from the posi­tion of ide­al­i­ty and exclu­siv­i­ty, as if his child does not have any vices at all and can­not him­self have a bad influ­ence on the envi­ron­ment. An adult tries to shield his child from the evil of the world, but for­gets that it is impor­tant for a child to acquire social inter­ac­tion skills and inde­pen­dent­ly resolve con­flict sit­u­a­tions. After all, not the whole world will be as loy­al to him as dad and mom. The only case when adults should inter­vene is a seri­ous fight or bul­ly­ing in the team. If this is an ordi­nary quar­rel, then you should not run to com­plain to teach­ers and call the par­ents of anoth­er child.

Take credit for your child’s accomplishments

It is very impor­tant to be able to prop­er­ly encour­age the child in the pur­suit of knowl­edge, cre­ativ­i­ty and sports. How­ev­er, it hap­pens that the par­ent, on the con­trary, is afraid to praise the child for the efforts, because sup­pos­ed­ly he will stop try­ing. At the same time, in the com­pa­ny of oth­er par­ents, they do not hes­i­tate to once again men­tion the suc­cess of the child. In fact, this behav­ior only irri­tates the par­ents of his class­mates — as a result, some kind of com­pe­ti­tion is cre­at­ed between adults, dur­ing which it will be nec­es­sary to find out whose child is bet­ter. Behind this par­ent­ing behav­ior is often a lack of self-con­fi­dence. It’s one thing to be proud of a child’s accom­plish­ments, and anoth­er to take cred­it for their accom­plish­ments.

Infect with anxiety

It depends on the par­ent how quick­ly the child adapts to the new team. It hap­pens that adults them­selves cre­ate a pre­mo­ni­tion of some­thing bad in a child. This can man­i­fest itself in dis­turb­ing ques­tions like “Did any­one hurt you? Why are your eyes sad? Is no one laugh­ing at you?” Ner­vous­ness is instant­ly trans­mit­ted to the child. Accord­ing­ly, at school, he will attract con­flict sit­u­a­tions and rush home to tell bad news. In this case, an adult should ask him­self why some­thing bad should hap­pen to their child. Per­haps this is some­how con­nect­ed with his per­son­al expe­ri­ence at school, which he extrap­o­lates to the child. Instead of esca­lat­ing, build the con­ver­sa­tion in a pos­i­tive way. Ask what inter­est­ing things hap­pened at school, with whom the child man­aged to make friends, whether he likes his school sup­plies, class, teacher, and so on. Be in the moment with the child — if some­thing real­ly hap­pened, care­ful­ly ask and lis­ten, and if every­thing is in order, then you do not need to pull out infor­ma­tion with “ter­ri­ble” ques­tions.

Criticize teachers

Adults who tend to express thoughts aloud often make a gross mis­take when crit­i­ciz­ing the teach­ing staff in the pres­ence of a child. Some­times the par­ent of a first-grad­er him­self treats the school as if he would have to fight with every­one and delib­er­ate­ly crit­i­cize the teach­ers, look­ing for short­com­ings. In fact, this attempt to reduce the impor­tance of the teacher in the eyes of the child may betray the author­i­tar­i­an par­en­t’s fear of los­ing con­trol over him. If an adult does not like the way a par­tic­u­lar teacher teach­es, it is bet­ter to change the class or school. Oth­er­wise, in the eyes of a first-grad­er, the teacher will grad­u­al­ly lose author­i­ty. The child may stop reck­on­ing with his remarks in the class­room, will argue out of busi­ness and vio­late dis­ci­pline in the class­room.