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par-enting program called Parents on Board by Drs. Michael Popkin, Bettie Youngs, and Jane Healy.¹³ The overall purpose of this program is to help you to be positively involved in your child’s education.

Nutrition

• Avoid junk food.

• Study food package labels for caloric content.

• Balance menus from the basic food groups.

• Make breakfast, lunch, and dinner the core of your family’s healthy diet.

• Don’t force your child to eat.

• Make mealtimes as relaxed and pleasant as possible.

Exercise

• Put your children in charge of their own fi tness.

• Be a role model by exercising yourself.

• Make exercise a family value by participating in sports and physical fi tness activities together.

• Coach a sports team on which your child plays.

• Find activities that your child enjoys doing.

• Help your children focus on improving their personal best rather than winning or losing or comparing themselves to others.

• Encourage enrollment in community sports programs.

• Help your children develop and use a wall chart or other system to monitor progress.

• Limit TV, videogame, and computer time.

Sleep

Most experts recommend 8 to 10 hours of sleep a night for children.

You can check out your child’s sleep requirements by becoming sensi-tive to signs of sleep deprivation. Rethink your bedtime rules if your child:

• Has trouble concentrating on studies and other mental tasks for more than a short period of time

• Moves around and fi dgets more than usual

• Becomes easily frustrated

• Is irritable

• Falls asleep on the couch, at the dinner table, or at her desk at school

• Has great diffi culty waking up in the morning

• Has dark circles under her eyes Provide Structure

A home environment that supports education also provides struc-ture. Here are some structuring suggestions:

• Set a regular dinner time.

• Develop a bedtime routine.

• Set a weekly morning routine.

• Plan some weekend and holiday activities.

• Hold a weekly family meeting.

• Help your child organize her room.

Homework

A home environment that supports education supports children in doing their homework. You can:

• Help your child develop a work area.

• Agree on a regular time for studying.

• Provide as quiet an environment for studying as possible.

The educators and psychologists who created Parents on Board also turned their attention to the matter of how parents should see their overall role in supporting their children’s formal education. In doing

so, they raised the question of what an employer in the computerized workplace of the 21st century would want from an employee. They contend that the modern employer still wants personnel who have mastered the basic skills that are needed to communicate with others and with computers. Such skills include being able to read, write, and do math, and to reason about important ideas and practical solutions.

They see learning through rote memorization playing a role in develop-ing some of these basic skills, but a rather limited role.¹⁵

They contend that a different type of learning is needed to better prepare and relate to what today’s employers see as being just as im-portant as possessing the basic skills mentioned here. They refer to the learning that is needed to gain the additional skills as conceptual learn-ing, which involves understandlearn-ing, seeing relationships with other ar-eas and forms of learning, and building on a foundation of meaning.

This type of learning is more likely to lead to children’s developing a broader set of abilities that modern employer’s value. They contend that the 21st-century employer will want someone

• To be a highly motivated “self-starter”

• To solve new types of problems

• To come up with original ideas

• To communicate effectively—both orally and in writing

• To work well in groups

• To analyze, organize, and prioritize information

• To read, think critically, and draw conclusions from a given set of facts and opinions

• To “retool” and learn new ways of learning¹⁶

They further observed that traditional academic subjects can pro-vide a foundation for these abilities and for the development of adult intelligence, rather than rote memorization, if the subjects are taught so as to develop thinking and active curiosity about interesting ideas.¹⁷

Become an Academic Coach

Based on this solid and contemporary thinking, the authors go on to talk about an approach and orientation that parents can assume at home to further this kind of valuable independent thinking: the Parent as Academic Coach. As we will see when their coaching ideas are re-viewed, these psychologists and educators are major advocates of the Encouragement Approach that we learned about in the fi rst guideline.

They also caution strongly about not turning coaching opportunities into a family battlefi eld. Here are seven principles for being a positive academic coach for children:¹⁸

Be Available

After a hard day of work, the last thing that many of us feel like doing is expending more effort—reading to a 4-year-old, going to the library, working on math facts with an elementary student, or proof-reading a teenager’s science report. Nevertheless, your child needs to have you around, even if it is only for moral support. What’s more, your child needs your attention as well as your physical presence. No matter how exciting a TV show is, you need to interrupt it if your child needs help preparing for a quiz. Although grown-up time for yourself is very important, try to arrange those much-needed breaks when your child is sleeping or otherwise engaged, and make yourself available during homework time.

Offer Support, Not Criticism

If you want your child to share his learning with you, keep these goals in mind:

• Always fi nd something positive to say before pointing out errors.

• Make your remarks honest and sincere.

• Never attack the child personally.

Focus on Effort and Improvement Instead of Grades

This rule is one of the most important to follow, but also one of the most diffi cult. Schools and parents have traditionally used grades as the main standard for judging children’s progress, but current research shows clearly that:

• Although parents who have high expectations for their children produce better students, too much emphasis on grades alone lowers students’ motivation to work.

• To be a successful leader or even an employee in a rapidly changing technological age, your child will need to feel that learning itself—not necessarily the grade he receives—is the important thing.

• School grades are very bad predictors of how successful people will be in the real world.

Although a certain emphasis on grades is necessary and inevitable for those who wish to attend a competitive college, many top colleges are now looking less at students’ GPAs than at their interest and moti-vation to learn, their skill and involvement in nonacademic areas (e.g., music, drama, community service, debate), and their skills in working with other people. The best advice is not to ignore grades, but at the same time, to place a stronger emphasis on the child’s personal quali-ties, effort, and improvement.

You Don’t Have to Be an Expert

Parents on Board further contends that

It is the school’s job to teach your child. If you fi nd yourself constantly having to introduce or explain new learning, it’s time for a conference at the school.¹⁹

Nevertheless, there will undoubtedly be times when you must work with concepts or skills with which you are not familiar. The important rule here is: Don’t be afraid to say, “I don’t know.” It’s a big mistake to blunder along, pretending you understand something and probably confusing your child even further.

Many of us are somewhat boggled by today’s new and different ways of presenting math concepts, for example. In such cases, your job is to show your child that you, too, are still a learner and don’t know everything. Perhaps you could fi nd a reference source or a page in a textbook that would help you learn more about a topic, or go online with your child to fi nd out more. If both of you are confused, however, you should probably turn that responsibility back to the student and the teacher.

Don’t Expect Perfection

Regarding this pointer, the authors shared the following: A 4th-grade teacher lost patience one day with her class. “How can you be so childish?” she demanded. As the children looked innocently up at her, she confessed that she had to laugh at herself.²⁰

Children need to know that you care about their achievements,

but remember that they are, after all, just kids. Setting your standards too high is a sure prescription for a sullen, turned-off youngster or for one who is so nervous, anxious, and perfectionistic that she makes her life—and everyone else’s—miserable. Research shows that good students tend to come from homes free from unrealistic restrictions or pressures.

It is also a mistake to expect equally expert performance in every subject or skill. Many outstanding mathematicians are terrible spellers, and some excellent readers have diffi culty in gym class. Since your child probably inherited some of his talents (and liabilities) from you, try to understand and help him set realistic goals for improvement, not perfection.

Turn the Thinking Over to the Child

A common parental trap is to end up doing the work for the child, which is often easier than struggling to help her understand it herself.

You can avoid this pitfall if you keep asking yourself, “Whose job/re-sponsibility/problem is this?”

Enjoy!

The Parents on Board authors brought this lesson to a close by indicating:

Our brains learn best when we are excited about what we are learning, when we feel safe and secure and when some enjoyment, humor or novelty is part of the experience. Even routine drill assignments, such as memoriz-ing the multiplication tables, will stick better if some fun is attached (for ex-ample, you can make up silly stories, songs or drawings for number com-binations). The more fun you and your child can have learning together, the better the lifetime habits you are teaching. This teaching job is perhaps a parent’s most important one: Learning is fun, interesting and worth the effort it takes. If you convey these attitudes to your children, you are equip-ping them for success in life beyond the school doors.²¹