We all know reading helps develop a child’s intelligence and creativity. When a parent reads to a child early, the child develops speech and listening skills faster than average. More than the intellectual benefits, reading to your child also bring emotional benefits, such as the following:

• Reading to your childs builds an emotional bond between you and your child. The time spent on reading together gives your child a sense of intimacy and well-being.
• The sense of intimacy of reading to your child becomes a pleasurable experience to your child. It builds a positive attitude towards reading as your child grows up.
• Reading and listening to your voice calms your child, especially when he feels fretful and restless.
• Reading promotes increased communication between you and your child.

reading provides an excellent opportunity for one-on-one communication between parent and child. It also gives the child the attention he or she craves. Aside from attention, children also learn appropriate behavior when they are read to. They are exposed to new situations, making them more prepared when they encounter these situations in real life.

If parents choose to hire an in-home tutor for their children, then the in-home tutor should incorporate those methods used in academic coaching and mentoring. Instead of directing the child to the right answers, the in-home tutor teaches your child how to look for answers. For example, the in-home tutor teaches your child how to use a library or the Internet for research.

In addition to hiring an in-home tutor, the parents themselves should learn to apply mentoring and academic coaching to their children. These techniques make use of emotional support as motivation for the child to achieve his or her goals. Emotional support comes in many forms, such as understanding, patience, soft encouragement, and positive reinforcement.

An in-home tutor can act either as a parent or as an older sibling to build an emotional bond with the child, but this kind of relationship is often discouraged because it may become a liability in the future for both the in-home tutor and the child. The participation of the parents, therefore, is crucial in building a child’s confidence, interest in learning and motivation for excellence in every endeavor.

[re-syndicated from wsj.com]

By Sue Shellenbarger

Associated Press

Most times when I try to teach my children something – how to mow the lawn, do a budget or clean a toilet – I feel as if I have a positive or at least a neutral effect – with one big exception.

When I have tried to tutor my children in school, or simply help with homework, I often feel like Typhoid Mary. In most cases I have managed only to confuse them.

As the school year revs up, many parents are now trying to figure out how best to help their kids academically. More parents are trying to tutor their kids at ever-younger ages, as pressures mount for even the youngest children to perform well in school. Based on my e-mail, though, tutoring is no slam-dunk for parents; many puzzle over how they can wield deep professional skills at work, yet fail so completely at tutoring their children in related skills at home.

Studies on the value of parent tutoring for elementary-age children yield mixed results, as shown here and here.

For older students, say Duke University researchers Nancy Hill and Diana Tyson in a recently published study, parental tutoring is linked to worse performance in school. By middle school, the researchers say, students may see parents’ attempts to help as interference or pressure. Parents often confuse students by presenting material in different ways than teachers. Also, parents may not dive in to help until a student is already in trouble, and the students know that, reinforcing their discouragement.

Parents who are anxious about school or test performance can easily infect their kids with the same angst. One mother I interviewed, who started a professional tutoring service helping students prepare for the SAT and ACT, says she spends a lot of time undoing the anxiety and confusion caused by parents who try first to tutor their kids themselves.

If do-it-yourself tutoring is your only option, confer with teachers and brush up your skills before you begin, experts say. Don’t make the mistake I did – trying to figure out your kids’ homework while working side-by-side with them. Working with my stepdaughter on her algebra homework years ago, I found her assignments so baffling that I had to give up in frustration. And my son and I halted our junior-high algebra sessions years ago, after several meltdowns. He’s been doing great ever since – with no help whatsoever from me. I have watched in joy and relief as he has surpassed me in math, both in grades and the difficulty of his courses.

Readers, what has been your experience tutoring your own children? Have you found ways to make the sessions work?

One of the reasons why we started our tutoring program was that in many families in the United States, both parents work.  Often mom or dad will be gone until 6 or 7 p.m.  Instead of sitting around and watching television, it makes more sense to use the time constructively to work on homework.

We saw a really big need in communities nationwide for tutors to come in while parents were still at work and help students with their homework.  While we don’t require it, we usually recommend that at least one parent be present for the first 1-2 tutoring sessions to make sure they feel comfortable leaving their son or daughter alone with the tutor and that it is a good fit.  Another reason for a parent to be present is so that they can be more involved in goal setting and expectations for the student and tutor.

A lot of blogs talk about traditional learning centers like Huntington or Sylvan or about the relatively new industry of online tutoring; however, few blogs talk about in-home tutoring or what I like to call the “other” option for tutoring.

Traditional learning centers are great for students who are doing well in school and just want to focus on specific skills. It also helps if the parents have a lot of disposable income to invest in one of the programs they offer that tend to start around $800 per class. They do offer their own assessment tests which can help to identify problem areas; however, these areas of need are only in relation to the programs being offered at the learning center and do not necessarily address current school work and low grades which for many families are a larger concern.

What typically happens at Sylvan Learning Center for example is that a student is given an assessment test when they first come to the center. They are subsequently enrolled in a course which would typically be several weeks long. The student would be in a classroom type setting usually with 3 or more other students. The “teacher’s” role is more or less to provide handouts and worksheets for the students to use throughout the course. The worksheets are specifically geared towards helping each student pass the test at the end of the course created by Sylvan.

While this approach may be successful in teaching set skills, it does not typically help most students in real time, students who are failing their classes and not understanding the material and are continuing to fall further behind in school.

The learning center model can be self serving because a student is only “guaranteed” to pass the learning center class which logic would tell us should be an easily attainable goal when the entire course is geared around helping students pass the test at the end. The “guarantee” is that if a student does not pass the class then then can keep taking it until they do. The problem again, is that even if the student passes the class, they are still falling behind in school and not understanding their homework.

In addition to falling behind, the student is using their free time after school to attend the learning center classes and their parents (unless the student can drive) are having to drive them to and from classes at the learning center often several times per week.

One of the other options for tutoring which has become more or less a recent phenomenon with the advent of widespread broadband internet access, is online tutoring. Online tutoring usually takes a totally different approach to learning centers which is to work on current assignments only. Students are able to login and connect with a tutor 24 hours a day and get help in real time.

Online tutoring can be great for families on a budget because it is the cheapest option for getting help with school work. The timing is also quite flexible because a student can get help at anytime throughout the day.

The downside to online tutoring is that the tutor is in another city, often another country altogether which presents some issues for the student, mainly they are not in the same room together or they have a hard time understanding the tutor especially when the tutor lives in India.

This brings me to what I call the “other” option for tutoring which are private in-home tutoring services. In-home tutoring brings the best of both worlds and bridges the gap between the traditional learning center approach and the new resource which is online tutoring.

With in-home tutoring, students can get help in real time on current assignments. The tutor works with them one-on-one at home usually after school. The benefit of the tutor coming to a student’s home is that the parent does not need to drop them off and pick them up again later in the day. In addition, working one-on-one is hugely beneficial to the student being able to ask questions and get the tutor’s full and undivided attention.

An in-home tutor can work on only the subject areas that the parent or student wants help with. Often times a student needs help preparing for a specific standardized test like the ASVAB, THEA, or SAT and more often than not, the student only needs help with certain content areas of that particular test.

What in-home tutoring allows a student to do in this case, is instead of enrolling in an entire course to prepare for their test at a learning center, usually at a premium cost and spending hours at a time working on subject areas the student has already mastered, the student can focus their time on the areas they need the most help with.

Working with an in-home tutor, students only pay for the time they spend with the tutor and can get help right away. In-home tutoring costs less than a learning center course and slightly more than online tutoring, but is often the best option for families who need help in real time for current assignments and tests and who need flexible scheduling.