There are many ways to empower your child but one huge way to boost confidence is to give them a leg up in school. You don’t have to be a Tiger Mother to give your child a head start that can lead to a lifetime of confidence.
One of the best things that I ever did as a parent was make my kids do math sheets for homework starting in kindergarten. If they wanted to watch a program or have any computer time they had to do a math sheet first. When your kids are younger, they will not have any built in resistance to doing the extra work, it becomes their new normal. The beauty of it is you are also teaching good habits where your child knows that every day you do a little extra work, all year.
My kids were always a year ahead in math. We would do the extra work at home all year, and when the subject came up in class they were able to understand the topic on a much deeper level than if they were learning about it the first time.
I faced criticism for my children studying ahead of the curriculum, even from my own mother who is a teacher. She always said my kids would be bored in class, but it actually wasn’t the case at all.
You have to keep on top of math or you can fall behind
Math is one of those subjects that builds upon itself and if you don’t have the basics you just can’t keep up. You see it time and time again in elementary school where kids start thinking that they are stupid, when in reality all they need is more work on basic math drills.
There are children who go to expensive private schools whose parents were shocked to find out that they needed to help their kids at home with the basics like time tables. The parents thought because they were paying $20,000 a year for their child’s education, nothing extra beyond the schooling was needed, which wasn’t the case at all.
Parents can make timetables practise fun with timetable flash cards. Every time they get a number right they get to do a flip on the bed or similar.
I bought math books and we would work our way through the books every year. When we finished one book we would level up to the next book.
The other day I asked my son if people thought he was smart in math and he said they did, he was always considered the top of the class.
His class did timetable challenges where kids had to stand up and battle to see who could answer the question first. Whoever answered the timetable question with the correct answer fastest would remain standing. My son won the challenge over 30 kids.
My son was always viewed as one of the smart kids in his class. Sure, he’s smart, but I truly believe that every child is intelligent and has the capability, kids who get discipline and structure are more likely to master a subject. The thing that is even more important is that my son believed he was smart from this process, and it became a self-fulling prophecy where he believed it more and more and it helped him excel in all of his studies.
If you truly want to give your child a gift, give them some extra math homework. They may even thank you for it later.