As a teacher for the past seven years, I’ve seen a rapid decline in the productivity of students, which as led me to pose a few tips on how to properly raise your child. You might disagree, and I suppose that’s fair, but take it from me, these steps will put your child leaps and bounds above other children.
1) Encourage your child to read. While you might share no interest in reading, your child should be involved in it as soon as possible. For one, it increases their vocabulary, which is an important skill as we witness the dumbing down of America. Other benefits are skills like reading comprehension, mental development. If you don’t encourage your child to read, then they’ll be far behind the rest of their peers.
2) Never home school your child. I get it, schools are dangerous with drugs and rampant gangs and bullying right? Well, your child probably will have some sort of social media network, and if you choose to home school your child, you’re depriving them of needed social interaction. My students seem to have forgotten how to properly communicate with themselves, let alone adults. If you home school your child, be sure he/she has proper socialization.
3) Pick one sport. In the world of modern sports stars, we all want our child to grow up to make millions. The reality is that very few will, and yet we continue to make them join multiple leagues with multiple sports. Let me put it this way…if your child has sports activities four to five days a week, then where is the time for education? Exactly, it’s not there, and if it is, then the children aren’t devoting their time to it because, like you, they only care about all the sports. I’m an avid sports fan, but I can’t stand watching these kids with no free time to experience culturally relevant events grow up to think they’ll be the next NFL QB. Sorry kid, but you live in the burbs; you’re going to be an accountant.
4) Allow your child freedom of expression. My favorite thing about the modern student is that they’ll gladly come in claiming “all Muslims are terrorists.” Really? Even the Muslim child sitting next to you who you’ve worked with all year on projects? My point here is that regardless of what you believe, it’s unfair to force it upon your child, and when you do, you raise children with little understanding of what it truly means. So many kids will gladly espouse their parents beliefs, but have nothing to back it up other than a response that says “My daddy told me so.” When that’s your argument, you come off ignorant, and then you’re crushed when things don’t turn out the way you expected…so let your kids have some choice.
There’s many more tips up my sleeve, but for now, these are the ones I think most people are ignoring nowadays, for whatever reason. So please, do yourself, and your child, a favor, and use the above tips.