We all want our children to thrive in school. While pushing them to be class valedictorian is not on most parents’ minds, we certainly want our children to thrive educationally and be successful in life. When you instill good habits and routines, you can put them on a path to success. Here are some tips to make sure your child does well in school.

Getting a Good Night’s Sleep

The sad fact is that most children don’t sleep enough. As an elementary school student, most children need 10-12 hours of sleep. When you factor in the number of hours that they need to be awake, hitting this benchmark is nearly impossible. You can, however, make sure that the sleep they are getting is the best possible. Make sure you get your child a good mattress. This is not an area to skimp on. Do your homework and read mattress reviews. Mattresses for children are often underrated. If the mattress is not supportive enough or in good shape, your child will not get the best restful night sleep. This will affect how they feel when they wake up and, ultimately, how they do in school. The Casper mattress, for instance is highly rated for kids.

Attend Parent Teacher Conferences

Most schools only give parents the chance to formally talk to their child’s teacher for 15 minutes, once or twice a year. Albeit short, this is a great opportunity to find out your child’s strengths and weaknesses from their teacher’s perspective.

It’s no surprise that most children act much different for their teacher than they do for their parents at home. Your kids also don’t tell you all that has taken place during a school day. By meeting with their teachers, you can get a clear picture about what your child’s overall educational experience is like. If you see that they are struggling with math or reading homework, parent teacher conferences are a good place to discuss whether your child needs some specialized testing or help.

If you child has an IEP or 504, meeting with your child’s teacher, more often than their annual review meeting, is a great way to keep on top of things that may be problematic or that have been recent strengths.

A Hungry Student is Not a Focused One

There is a reason that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. If you skip breakfast, the chances of losing focus before lunch time is likely. For children, this is all the more true.

Help your child to stay focused by providing them with a breakfast high in protein and low in sugar. If your child is not a morning person, and doesn’t eat a lot, make sure that you are sending in a healthy snack for those mind morning crashes. The last thing you want is your child to miss classroom time because they are going to the nurse with stomach pains from hunger.

Help Your Child to be Organized

Learning good organizational skills at a young age will set them up to be an organized adult. When a child is disorganized in class, it makes it hard to find work that is needed, bring home the right materials for homework, and keep their desk and backpack clutter free.

Help your child to understand the importance of prioritization and how to gauge what needs to be done versus what they would like to do.

If it helps, create a reward system around completing homework and chores in their proper order. The more that you can teach your children to be organized, the more you are empowering them to be organized adults.

Teach Your Child Proper Study Skills

Teaching children how to study is properly one of the most overlooked and under taught parts of the educational system. If they don’t know how to study, they won’t study, or won’t study effectively.

Teach your child to break down study time into small, manageable chunks. Show them how to find important information in their books or study material and how to highlight these areas. When they are doing their final review before a test, being able to go back to these highlighted areas will help them to see that studying is more about knowing the important facts rather than remembering the entire book.

There are so many ways that we can help our children to be better students and do well in school. These tips are just a few of the most important ways to accomplish this goal.