by Kimberly Due-Vacco

Created on: October 08, 2009

This article's focus is advocating for our children in a school setting, but the advice can carry over into other arenas as well. Navigating our way through the maze of public school bureaucracy can be a daunting task. Every parent worth his salt wants what is best for his child. What is best for a child, and what a child wants can be two very different things indeed. Being an effective advocate for our children means learning the difference between going to bat for them to foster success and giving in to the whims and wants of our children.

To be an advocate for our child does not mean always siding with our child. Sometimes we need to take a hard look at their behavior or performance of and be objective about things. For instance, if we have a fourth grader who has experienced conflict with every teacher since she/he was in kindergarten, we might need to evaluate the common denominator in the child's five years of school. Is it likely to be the fault of five different teachers?

Make no mistake, there are some bad teachers out there, but if everyone in the class is succeeding and our child is not, then there might be a problem with our child. It can be difficult to come to terms with the fact that our child has a deficit, but, to handle it early on and with the support of the teacher and school administration is best. Otherwise, we run the risk of our child encountering an enormous problem down the road. We don't want to make things worse for the child by failing to admit that there may be some trouble with our child if he/she is not seeing success in class.

When it comes to behavior problems, it is to our advantage to develop the attitude that 'every child is capable of everything'. This gives us the ability to be impartial when we receive information about our child's difficulty at school. We need not jump to the conclusion that the teacher is picking on our child, or feel that anyone thinks we are a bad parent because our child is not meeting expectations. There are myriad reasons for a child's failure, either behaviorally or academically, in the classroom. Why not discuss these reasons with the teacher? Perhaps we can work together to make sure the child feels successful in school. It is never in the best interest of a teacher to have children in her class who are falling behind. Most likely she/he is willing to work with us in order to foster a symbiotic relationship between school and home in order that the child reach her/his full potential.

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