As a parent, you’re easily among the most important influences in a child’s life, especially in the early years. They take their cues and learn their earliest developmental habits directly from you, and there’s no avoiding how large an imprint you’ll leave on them in their formative years.
At Smart Kids Development Center, we believe that this connection between parents and children should extend to early child care and education. We are committed to offering your children the highest quality preschool and after school care, but we know that for this process to optimally reach children, parents need to be involved and active.
What are some of the benefits of parental involvement in the early learning process?
Parents who are actively involved in their child’s education set expectations that are ingrained in them from the beginning. Many children are conveniently allowed to separate their home and school life – they might have one set of standards at home, and vice versa. With proper parental involvement, this sort of potentially damaging separation is limited or even eliminated.
What this creates is an environment much more conducive to early learning and development. You children are exposed to a learning culture that’s consistent rather than intermittent, a huge difference for many kids. Bad habits down these lines are cut out before they become too deep-seeded to do anything about.
Kids with parents involved in their learning tend to show positive results. They have better attitudes toward school, a huge consideration as kids get older and have to be more and more responsible for their own learning and development. They also tend to show higher self-esteem later in life.
Parental involvement won’t only benefit children, but their teachers and child care specialists as well. More direct communication allows them to understand you and your children better, and helps with consistency in approach. Just as importantly, childhood education can be a taxing pursuit – the knowledge that helpful and supportive parents are available can be very helpful for educators during stressful moments.
Being involved can benefit you as a parent, too. It’s a built-in way to converse more with your children, particularly on topics it might be tough to get them to talk about otherwise. It can help you grow more confident as a parent, and even in many parent-child social settings.
You’ll also get an up-close look at what sort of things your money is paying for at school, and you can connect with teachers in a way that likely isn’t possible otherwise. Studies have found that parents who are involved in their child’s education tend to parent with more affection and fewer punishments or bits of negative reinforcement.
At Smart Kids Development centers, we both welcome and encourage parental involvement in all our programs. To learn more, speak with one of our professional educators today.
