Preparing Your Child for Middle School

You can help prepare your child for middle school in areas other than academics. While academics are crucial, this time is also significant for your child both personally and interpersonally. Students who enter middle school with a strong sense of who they are as individuals will generally be more successful than those who are unsure of their values and standards. By imparting the values of your family and discussing those values with your adolescent, you are able to give your child a strong sense of security and identity that is needed during the middle school years. Students who have strong values and standards in place are free to concentrate on their academic pursuits, rather than struggling with these issues as they are confronted with pressures and values that may contradict those at home.

If your child is not academically prepared for middle school, it is imperative that you secure tutoring for him/her. Middle school academics have a significant amount of content, homework, and require higher-level thinking skills. If your child is struggling to read at grade level, has poor comprehension skills, or has not mastered basic addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, they will experience a great deal of frustration throughout the school year.