Parents As Tutors


Should you tutor your own child?  You as a parent may think that there is nothing wrong with that but others may disagree. There is absolutely nothing wrong with helping your child with their homework but when it comes down to helping your child with a certain problem that they have been having it may not be such a great idea. No one knows your child’s strengths and weaknesses like you do but parents in these instances prove not to be the best tutors.
Parents want to see their child exceed at everything they do and their academics are no different. A parent’s experience in certain subjects may be very limited. For example, would a parent be able to help their child with algebra or trigonometry? Most likely not, unless the parents are teachers in these subjects. Parents may also have an issue with pushing their kids too hard. Parents in these situations may think their child is lazy and not in the need of help that they truly need. So they push their kids to pay attention and kids get frustrated and then they end up learning nothing and the parent child relationship is strained.

As a parent you want to help your child in any way possible but by becoming their tutor you may be doing more harm than good. There is nothing to say that when your child gets a tutor that you cannot sit in on the sessions and learn along with your child so that you can help them when the tutors are not there. That would be an additional bonus in helping your child. If your child is getting help with science or social studies then you can aid in that help by getting some information off of the web.

You have to ask yourself as a parent, Can I contribute to my child’s education? Will they learn from anything I teach them? By helping them in English, Science and Social Studies the answers would be yes because the information available on the web is outstanding but in subjects like math, can you really be an asset? Unless you are a math teacher in algebra or higher math education, then probably not. You want the best for your child then get them the tutorial help that they need. You can be apart of that learning process as well.

Maybe not in a direct manner as in actually teaching your child but as far as additional help that   is never frowned upon. If you believe that you can help your child, then to be fair give it one week. Try to assist your child in the area that they need help in. If they are benefiting from your help then continue but if at the end of the week, they are not learning anything or understanding any better the topic at hand then get them the help they need.


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Tutoring Article courtesy of http://www.tutoring-services.org/