Working Parents Can Raise Smart Kids: The Time-Starved Parent's Guide to Helping Your Child Succeed in School

Working parents are very concerned about how their children perform in school. Parents believe they lack the time and expertise to make any meaningful contribution to their child's success. Surprisingly, the most effective ways working parents can help have very little to do with schoolwork and academics.

Working parents have limited time to spend with their children. This book shows parents how to interact with their children during the brief times they spend together to help develop important non-academic skills which are crucial to success in the classroom. Skills such as self-confidence, persistence, and responsibility are keys to success in school. Each chapter concludes with a summarizing list of how these skills relate directly to success in the classroom.

Parents are shown how to furnish their home in ways that will enhance and improve the learning that occurs in the classroom. They can contribute to their child's education even when they can't be with them.

Parents are taught how to handle homework so the child takes responsibility for the completion of their work. Included is a special chapter with simple tips for parents who must help their children with schoolwork. These two chapters can help eliminate the majority of school hassles encountered between parents and their children.

In a special chapter, parents are shown how to recognize and handle small problems before they become serious and serious problems if they should occur.

Parents will not be intimidated by this book. They need no expertise of any kind to do the things which are advocated. Put bluntly, they do not need to be a teacher or know anything about teaching or curriculum to make an enormous contribution to their child's schooling.

Parents don't have to read the entire book to get started. Each chapter is independent of the others, so they can choose any chapter to read and begin putting the practical advice to use.

Simple, effective ideas any "time-starved" parent can use to: make your child eager to accept school challenges, improve your child's test scores and grades, get your child to do homework with minimum hassles, help your child improve academic skills even when you can't be there and have a profound effect on non-academic skills critical to successful learning.

JOHN E. BEAULIEU, PH.D., has worked in the field of education for over 20 years. He has been both a regular and special education teacher. He has also done work in school psychology. John spent 10 years at Pacific Lutheran University as a Professor teaching pre-service teachers. He is currently President/CEO of Peer Tutor Press, a company which creates educational materials to help children and adults tutor other students. John lives with his wife Ann and his daughter Emily. Living with two full-time working parents, Emily graduated valedictorian of her class. She is currently a Junior majoring in International Studies in the honors college at the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington. ALEX GRANZIN PH.D., was born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana where he attended the University of New Orleans and graduated with a B.A. degree in mathematics in 1967. In 1975 he received a Ph.D. from the University of Oregon in curriculum and instruction. He has served as a consultant to a variety of school districts, conducted social science research, taught graduate and undergraduate classes at the University of Oregon, and served as a school psychologist in Springfield, Oregon for the past eighteen years. He is married and has a fourteen-year-old daughter who recently graduated from middle school with honors.