Q: My children say, "I don't like school." I can't say, "Yes you do." How do I balance validating their feelings with respecting the teacher and with helping my son and daughter to find a solution to a real problem?
A: Your children saying that they don't like school gives you a perfect opportunity to remind them of how fortunate they are to have the opportunity to learn and to determine how you can help them make school more positive. If you can respond to their statement with something like, "That's too bad because you're a very lucky child to be able to learn in school. There are many children around the world that don't have these opportunities, and therefore they don't know how to read, write or do math. Nor will they ever be likely to have interesting jobs or make a good living. Furthermore, the more schooling you receive, the more likely you are to earn a good living and have an interesting and creative career. Let's see if we can figure out how you can learn and at least like school a little bit more."
Hopefully by listening to your children's complaints, you'll get some hints as to whether they need easier or harder work, feel too smart or too dumb, are having social problems, or would just prefer to sit around and watch TV. Sometimes "not liking school" is just the cool thing for kids to say, particularly right before vacation when they'd like a break. If anything they say suggests that an evaluation by a psychologist would give you further insight into possible learning disabilities or gifted abilities, you could proceed with that.
If social issues are related to their problems, counseling may also be helpful to your children.
Either way, reminding your children of the important purposes for their learning in school can help to motivate them and assure them that you respect their teachers and their school. As you listen to their concerns about school, search carefully for their interests and strengths. Finding such areas, and ways to apply themselves in those areas at school, can often help them generalize their diligence to other parts of school. Remind them that school won't be perfect, but we can always make the school experience better.
Part of inspiring children to appreciate school revolves around how much effort they're willing to put into the enterprise of learning. The more initiative they take, the more they're likely to enjoy the learning process. Remember that the smarter they are, the harder they'll work. And the harder they work, the smarter they'll become.
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Dr. Sylvia B. Rimm is the director of the Family Achievement Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio, a clinical professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, and the author of many books on parenting. More information on raising kids is available at www.sylviarimm.com. Please send questions to: Sylvia B. Rimm on Raising Kids, P.O. Box 32, Watertown, WI 53094 or srimm@sylviarimm.com. To read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.
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