If you are the parent of a high school or college student, you’ve probably spent more than a few sleepless nights worrying whether your student is achieving the most possible in his or her classes. You’ve probably watched your student struggle to write an essay, and you probably wondered whether there is anything you can do is to help your child achieve more on each essay. The good news is that there are many things you can do to help your student succeed with their essay writing. In this article, we’ll take a look at a few tips and tricks parents can use to help their kids succeed at writing essays.
- Show your support for your student. One of the most important ways you can help your student is simply to be there for your child. Showing that you are available and that you care about their work and how well they are doing in school will help your child to be more open to asking for help and more likely to strive to do better. Students who feel like their parents care about them are more likely to want to meet their parents’ high expectations and to work harder to do better. They are also more likely to turn to the people who care about them to share their fears and concerns so you can help guide them toward solutions. You want your student to feel comfortable coming to you when they have problems, so be sure to never criticize your student for seeking help.
- Encourage your kids to practice writing. From a young age, it’s important to encourage your kids to write. When you encourage writing, it helps students to become more comfortable with the writing process. Try to make writing fun for younger kids by asking them to tell stories about pictures or to write about their feelings or activities they’ve completed. Read these together with your student and praise them for what they have done well. The more comfortable students are with writing, the less anxiety they will have when they are older and need to write essays.
- Make research into a family activity. Show your child how important research is by demonstrating that you do research when you need answers, too. By showing your student from a young age how you use research to find and develop answers to important questions, you will set them up to see research as a part of everyday life rather than an unpleasant task associated with essay writing. When your student has difficulty with essay research, you can offer to help the student find and evaluate sources as well. Just be sure that you are working to assist and guide rather than do the work for them.
- Serve as a proofreader and editor. One of the hardest parts of essay writing is the editing, revising, and proofreading process. This is especially a challenge for students who are less comfortable with writing or have less experience with writing. You can help your student by offering to review their essay with them and suggest edits, changes, and revisions to help improve the quality of their essays. It’s often easier for someone who didn’t write the essay to see the errors, but rather than correct each mistake and hand the paper back, discuss the types of errors that you identified and talk about how they can be avoided so that your student will be less likely to make the same mistakes again in the future.
- Hire an essay writing service. When all else fails and your busy student needs a little extra boost, you can always buy essays online from professional writers. Many parents might feel uncomfortable about hiring a professional to write essays for your student, but when you have a professional write an essay, your student can see exactly how an expert would approach your student’s topic and to understand how best they can approach their own essays. Reading professional essays can give your student an edge by providing a model they can use to write their own papers.
Parents can sometimes feel powerless because they can’t simply do their kids’ homework for them. But with our simple tips to help, you can give your student a strong start toward great essay writing.
