Welcome to part 3 of our sneak peek posts into Doctor Hammond’s soon to be titled book on raising emotionally healthy children. This week we’re talking about advocating for your kids in school. Let’s dive right in.
According to Merriam-Webster, an advocate is a person who argues for or supports a cause or policy. Ergo, you being an advocate for your child in school means you are supporting your child in school. Being an advocate means you are giving them a voice and a support system and the best chance for success. Here are just a few reasons why you must advocate for your kids in school:
- The first and most important reason you need to advocate for your kids is someone has to. This is especially true when they are in their younger grades. While they are young they don’t have the ability to speak up for themselves when something isn’t right or when everything’s going perfectly well either.
- You see things that others may be missing. In other words, you know your kids better than anyone. You see their quirks, their strengths, their weaknesses and where they might be having trouble in school. This puts you in a prime spot to be able to share these things with teachers and administrators so they can give your child the tools they may need to succeed.
- You can devote time and resources that others can’t. Let’s face it. Schools with their overcrowding generally do not allow for lots of time and energy to be given to any one student at any given time. It may not be ideal, but it’s a sad fact of the public school system that most classrooms have too many students assigned to one teacher. How can anyone expect that overworked teacher to give the necessary time to each kid? That’s where you come in!
- It shows your children you care. When you take the time to help them do well in school, you are sending a strong message that you want what is best for them and will do what it takes to give them the tools to make success not just a possibility, but a reality.
Stay tuned for more updates weekly on Doctor Hammond’s book. Next time we’ll be chatting about literacy and it’s a post you’ll definitely want to READ! As always, we invite you to chime in with a comment below about our updates and sneak peaks! We’d love your feedback!