Is Children’s Education Related to Parental Involvement with School?

If you are a parent who is deeply involved in every aspect of your child’s life, including school, you are doing exactly what most parents feel obligated– even pressured – to do. But new research indicates that you may be doing more harm than good.

This week on my radio show, I was honored to have Drs. Angel Harris and Keith Robinson discuss their new book “The Broken Compass: Parental Involvement with Children’s Education.” Their research turns our traditional beliefs about the relationship between parental involvement and academic achievement right on its head: it suggests that parental involvement is not nearly as beneficial as we often assume.

When I started reading their book, I had quite a reaction to it. Their argument seemed to go against everything I’ve learned as a parent and as a therapist. In my experience, parental involvement is of the utmost importance! But then I saw the crucial distinction they make between parenting – that is, helping your child development socially and emotionally – and direct involvement in academic life. Drs. Harris and Robinson are not critiquing parents. Their work is not prescriptive; they are not providing advice as much as sparking a dialogue. Their research shows that more involvement is not always better. So it prompts us, as parents, to look at the quality of our interactions rather than the quantity.

The most important message that we as parents ought to take from this research is that there is no one-size-fits-all answer to helping your child succeed. Dr.’s Harris and Robinson monitored 60 different parental behaviors in different racial and socio-economic groups and got a wide range of results. For example, with whites, there was a positive correlation between parent’s participation in school events and academic success. For Mexican families, that correlation did not exist. This is not at all to say that Hispanic families should not join the PTO! This simply demonstrates that school systems affect some communities differently than others, so what might will help one child might hurt another.

One extremely compelling finding held up across all socio-economic backgrounds is that helping your child with her/his homework will not increase her/his achievement: in fact, it may lower it. On my radio show, we speculated as to why this is so. We discussed how we parents often lack the skills necessary to guide our children through their studies. Even if we do understand the material, we may not understand how to teach that material to our children effectively. This finding suggests that the stress that parents and children experience when battle over homework doesn’t necessarily pay off: it might strain not only on the parent-child relationship but also on the child’s ability to succeed.

Drs. Harris and Robinson measured how parents respond to a child’s poor performance by distinguishing between punitive and non-punitive reactions. Punitive reactions – taking away privileges, grounding, shaming – worsened academic performance. However, non-punitive responses – talking to the teachers, talking to the child, providing support and encouragement – increased achievement levels.

How can parents help children succeed in school? The answer is complex. It seems to be more important that we “set the stage” for our children, and then leave it. In other words, we need to provide a framework for success by sending the message that school is important. We need to help our children conceive of a future self and see how success in school builds a bridge to that future. We need to support them, through success and failure. And maybe we can leave the teaching to the teachers.

If you would like to contact Dr. Annie Abram please call (203) 299 0478 or visit her website www.DrAnnAbram.com