Parental Experience

Good learning and personal experience to share. Especially to all those Animated parents while supporting the kids in their studies.

Ananya is in class 9 and the annual exams got over in Mid Feb’19 and marks was shared this week, also the class 10 started this week.

Till class 8, I used to teach all subjects except French and give her weekly test and evaluate the test. During exam times it will be stressful for both Me and Ananya as she has to answer or solve the questions picked at random. Once the exam time table is out we both will chart out plans to cover portions and after exam on the same day walk through of question paper to evaluate her performance and provide a rough marks.

All the above routine was followed in class 9 only for the first month exam, later on from July 2018 all got vanished.I decided to take a risk of not helping her in studies and told her she has to learn on her own, evaluate and plan for exams on her own and can come to me for doubts after exposing all options including Mr.Google.

Both Prathiba and Ananya was surprised by this move and Prathiba would have requested several times to support her in preparation which was gently declined by me.

During exam times I made a point not to know the time table and all I will do is wish her All the best for the exam. No walk through of question paper post exam.The risk is to not only to evaluate her independency but to boost the morale and confidence.

Performance and outcome of subsequent 2 exams went down and the marks made a nose dive compared to her class 8. During every PT meeting the teacher used to raise this and I never heeded those comments and asked Ananya to improve.

It started to improve from Half yearly followed by pre annual finally she exceeded her class 8 average marks in the annual exam. During this week PT meeting I shared my plan with teacher in the absence of Ananya and asked her feedback considering my plan. Not only she appreciated Ananya but I could see the surprise element in her face.

This approach helped in many ways

1. Provided confidence to Ananya that she can stand on her legs
2. Apart from Independency it helped me to evaluate her based on the kind of questions / doubts she raised.
3. Doubts and questions raised helped to understand her knowledge level, though marks made a dip but the kind of questions she asked gave me a confidence that she will soon reach where she belonged earlier. Since I strongly believe both knowledge and marks need not be directly proportional.

My humble suggestion to all those enthusiastic and excited parents is to give it a try and take a risk. Worth venturing this risk and definitely both the kid and parents will feel accomplished at the end.