Tips for Parents

For relevant tips and ideas just click on the time of year you are interested in.
Please feel free to leave a comment at the end of the post or ask a question.

In January 2011, Amy Chua, a Professor of Law at Yale University, published The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, where she espoused a philosophy of unrelenting pressure, drive, motivation, organization and planning from parents as the best way to help children achieve lofty goals....      [More ... ]

The biggest difficulty I have always had is simply getting involved. Like you I am sure, I find my own life to be very busy and there is not much time available to get involved in my children's schooling and it is so much easier just to leave it all up to the school. Also my children do not want me to be involved, they do not want to be picked out as having an interfering parent and would much sooner I just kept out of it! And of course I have chosen the school they attend because I believe it will do a good job for them so my tendency is to just let them get on with it.      [More ... ]

Holidays are over, it's as cold as it ever gets where you are and your children are back at school feeling like their holiday was too short, they've forgotten everything they learned last term and they are already behind in their work. Have I got it right?      [More ... ]

In the last couple of months your children will most probably have sat their mid-year exams, by now they will have got all the results back and as they are now looking down the road a bit to their end of year exams it might be a good time to go over those mid-year exam results:      [More ... ]

Your children have all sat their ‘mock’ exams (I think that is a terrible name for an important set of exams because what does to mock mean? And we wonder why they don’t take them seriously?) and I set out in my last blog how to process those results. Now your children are moving inexorably closer to their greatest challenge of the year, their final exams.      [More ... ]

Eight weeks until the major band of GCSE and IGCSE examinations, a bit longer for A Level and IB exams. Is it serious yet? Is the nervous tension starting to crackle a little around your house?      [More ... ]

By now your children will be seriously into their study, and will be starting to wind up for their first exam. If they haven't started serious study yet then either they are so brilliant that they can retain information perfectly after having heard it only once and consequently don't need to study, or they are procrastinating or they just don't care.      [More ... ]

Now is the time to build great holiday memories. Get away from home as much as you can. Create summer adventures for your children. What's the definition of an adventure? No fixed destination!      [More ... ]