THAT'S MEN:Interested parents make kids better pupils
WHO’LL BE doing the school run now that the summer hols are over? Mostly it will be mothers but increasingly fathers are waiting at the school gate.
Some of these men are unemployed or have lost their business. Others can build the school run into their work day.
What many men – and women – may not realise is that being there for the kids in this and other ways actually improves their educational achievements.
Whether the family is rich, poor or in-between, parental interest in a child’s schooling is tremendously powerful in itself. This has always been known of mothers, though perhaps not fully appreciated even by mothers themselves.
An old research study in the UK found that immigrant children did better at school if the mother took an interest in their homework and that this held true even if the mother could not speak English.
But the same is true of fathers, as shown by many more recent research projects in the US and the UK.
This influence can start at an early age. Children whose fathers often read to them at one or two years of age are more likely to be interested in books later.
In England, children whose fathers make the effort to be involved with them in primary school do better in examinations at second level. That interest can extend to talking to teachers, volunteering for school activities and so on.
Even if you haven’t two pennies to rub together, interesting yourself in your child’s education will have an important influence on how well that child does in the whole educational cycle.
One researcher has even suggested that helping kids with their homework and showing an interest in their schooling may be more important for their future success than their father’s income.
This makes a lot of sense to me. In the decades before the boom, a lot of people in this country did very well in the civil service, teaching and business – even though they had grown up in households with only a subsistence level of income. Crucially, what these children had were parents who fiercely believed in education as the road to advancement.
That burning interest drove the children forward and the exact same dynamic applies today for people of all income levels.
That’s what angers me about parents, whether fathers or mothers, who couldn’t care less about their children’s education. Some of these are people who have plenty of time on their hands but who stunt their children’s future through ignorance or selfishness.
By the way, children whose fathers live outside the home also benefit hugely in their future lives if the father is involved with them.
You can find a good summary of all this research on fatherhoodinstitute.org by clicking on “schools and learning” and scrolling down to the “research” box.
* Nexttime you're elbowed awake in the middle of the night with a "Stop snoring!" consider the possibility that your partner is jealous of the fact that you were asleep in the first place.
Silentnight, a bedding company and therefore totally impartial on such matters, asked 4,000 women about their sleeping habits.
It turns out that men fall asleep faster than women, but here’s the disturbing thing: a quarter of women were so envious of their husbands’ ability to nod off, they had at one time or another deliberately woken the poor chaps up. This was done by tossing and turning, a dig in the ribs, switching lights on, turning on the telly and so on.
As an added bonus, reader, while researching this item I discovered that a study by Travelodge, another unimpeachable source, finds that 35 per cent of UK adults take their teddy bear to bed with them. The report doesn’t say what proportion are men.
I think we should be told.
Padraig O’Morain (pomorain@ireland.com) is a counsellor accredited by the Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy. His book
Light Mind – Mindfulness for Daily Living
is published by Veritas. His monthly mindfulness newsletter is free by e-mail