How to Prepare Your Child for Distance Learning

How to prepare your child for distance learning

As a parent, it is likely that 2020 has been one of the most challenging on record. Economic hardship and a medical disaster leaving many people uncertain of their futures have crippled the world. Many countries are suffering, unable to break the cycle of losing money and lives due to the COVID-19 outbreak. As a parent, you might have gotten used to seeing your children more due to work and school closures. Many schools, though, are moving towards a (temporary) distance learning system.

How, then, can you help to prepare your children for this essential part of their education?

This is likely a medium-term solution until a COVID-19 treatment can be developed. With that in mind, we recommend that you look to prepare your child for distance learning. What, then, matters the most?

Create a comfortable learning space.

You should first look to build some learning space for them, either in a spare room or their bedroom. This should keep them free from distraction while allowing them to work on their schoolwork without interference.

Unless you are lucky or in a specific field, you have likely worked from home at some stage in 2020. You will know how hard it can be to work at 100% if you have distractions around you. With that in mind, we recommend creating a more comfortable learning space for your child.

This means they can learn and work on their projects without needless distractions, improving the results of their learning. It also allows them to focus on the topic, free from distractions.

Work with your school.

The next step is to ensure you have a complete line of communication with the school itself. This is essential as it allows you to judge the most useful for your children. As a parent, you must be ready to step in and make calls if you feel a decision will impact your child negatively.

Find out where they are most limited in their education, and try to find ways to work with your child on these subjects in particular. The more help you can give them when they are at home, the more effective they will be in the future when it comes to dealing with a similar situation themselves.

We recommend that you parlay with their school to determine what can be done to make their lives easier.

Don’t try to step in as a teacher.

While you might clearly understand a subject, don’t try and become a surrogate teacher. Let your child follow the curriculum, and come to you when they need help. The moment you always try and step in to become a teacher, you are expected to fulfill the fundamental role of a teacher!

Try to make sure that your child still has to solve problems and commit to finding solutions to the issues at hand on their own. The more you can do this, the more likely you will grow into a great little problem solver. Initiative and independent thought are the kinds of things that you will take from a child if you continue to do the work for them.

By all means, offer support, but ensure they are still learning independently for their benefit.

Find educational supporting tools.

From online websites and apps on their smart devices, you have ample opportunity to help amplify learning for your child. We recommend that you find 3-5 different apps and websites they can use after school hours to try and help them gain knowledge of a certain subject matter.

This is extremely useful if you want to help your child become a sponge, soaking up information throughout life. Try and put them in a situation where they can learn after hours, using tools that are perhaps more informative and interactive than a textbook or a webinar with their teacher.

Supporting tools can go a long way to help your child become more confident in any subject while giving them a means of learning an issue their textbooks cannot provide.

Prepare for technological burdens.

Whether it comes down to one teacher preferring App A or App B, or you have an internet connection that can be inconsistent, you need to be ready for technological burdens. Even if your internet regularly cuts out, pre-preparing learning material in open internet tabs can help you overcome that issue.

Sit down with your child and prepare everything they would need for the day’s lessons on their internet tabs. The more they have open before the classes begin, the more work they can do – even if the internet goes down, they can stay informed and keep reading about the topics.

Technological problems will become a significant issue and something that you need to be ready to work around without your child losing valuable learning time.

Don’t lose the social touch.

Lastly, one of the most common problems during the learning process for your children is the social factor. Being unable to play with classmates and spend time with friends on breaks can become a major issue. As such, find ways to compensate for your children not having social interaction during school hours by finding a compromise.

From Zoom calls with friends at night to some virtual gaming or similar, you should find ways to help your children retain that social enjoyment. After all, a massive part of school comes from social development as much as academic learning!