As a parent, do you trust your child or their teacher more?

By: Natasha Archary

Building a strong relationship with your child’s teacher is important to ensure your child has a conducive environment to thrive in.

Having a good rapport between parent, teacher and child should be established from the foundation phase of their academic years and built upon as your child progresses onto the next grade.

Studies show that healthy parental involvement with your child’s teacher is the key to child’s success throughout their school career.

As a parent, it’s equally important to show trust in your child and give them the benefit of the doubt.

However, as one parent shared with Kaya Drive, it’s advisable to leave some room for disappointment, because your child/ren will let you down too.

Try as you may to instil good values in your child, you’ll learn as you navigate parenthood that your kids will test your boundaries.

From a little white lie such as, “I don’t have any homework,” to more serious grey areas with regards to the truth, there will be times you don’t quite have faith in your child.

Bunking school or starting a fight with their peers, are some of the more common issues parents report experiencing as their child grows.

Granted these behaviour patterns cannot fall on the teacher alone, and parents need to be open to criticism about their children.

Listen to the conversation on Kaya Drive:

Build a relationship of trust with your child’s teacher

Communicate

As with any relationship, communication is key to building a trusting relationship with your child’s teacher. Touch base with the teacher at the start of the school year and enquire about the best way to stay updated about your child’s progress or areas of concern.

Most schools offer a communication booklet where teachers and parents can send notes to each other to stay informed about developmental hurdles, areas of focus and problem areas.

More serious issues will be communicated in writing from the school or teacher, but it’s important to establish an open line of communication with your child’s teacher.

Keep track of your child’s patterns

Your job as a parent doesn’t end when you drop your child off at school or when they’re in the hands of their teacher. As much as you trust your child to go to school, if you remember what you were like in school, you’d know that kids are equally as curious and experimental.

Granted you wouldn’t want your child to get up to the same things as you, building trust with their teacher is not going to work if you believe your child is completely innocent.

Kids learn from their peers

While you show trust in your child, remember that kids learn from their peers too.

When parenting teenagers remember just one thing. Independence. They want to be given an opportunity to figure things out for themselves.

Parents on the other hand who have made their fair share of mistakes in their teen lives, project this onto their kids and in turn, it only alienates your child. A teen who is attempting something difficult (read: outrageous) or impossible in your eyes, needs support more than judgement.

Also read: Kutlwano Tshatiwa (17) developed an app that diagnoses pneumonia and skin cancer

Written by: Natasha

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