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Parents have a big role in the education of young learners, most of the time children spend with their parents. Firstly, the home environment, in general, has a huge role, children copy everything that they see and hear at home. And of course, house rules and behavior that children bring with them to a classroom. I’ve heard a lot of parents concerned about child’s behavior “he/she is too naughty, too shy”, most of these parents don’t even bother that the child is right next to them and listening how their parent is putting “labels” on them which makes a situation even worse. It’s really difficult for children to understand and get used to a new environment, new rules, most of the young learners in Asia see a foreigner for the first time in their life, it is a very stressful situation for them. At this moment you need great communication between parents and a teacher, to make everything go smoothly. Parents have to explain to children at home and prepare them mentally for what is going to happen tomorrow/next week/next month when they go to a new school. Parents should as well stick to their own rules at home and give the children an idea of how things work, and why they should follow the rules, in this case, it’s going to be easier for a child to understand why they have to sit and listen to a teacher. The teacher spends a lot of time on the discipline at the beginning of a course, which allows you to work more productive after. Secondly, parents should all the time to encourage their kids. We all learn, we all make mistakes and that is ok, you don’t have to punish kids for a mistake. It is very difficult to get a kid out of this “afraid to make a mistake shell”. Thirdly, the education part itself. Repetition is how we learn and memorize at a very young age. Even in L1, how many times a parent should say “mama” before the first time a child repeats it? The same with L2, you have constantly review learned materials. Most of the time for very young learners it’s just an app where a child has to repeat after a machine and record the voice. But even then, teachers can hear “We were too busy”, “We don’t speak English”, “The Wi-Fi didn’t work”. There’s a significant difference in learning progress between children who do homework and review at home and those who don’t. That’s another habit that parents should give to children. And last but not least is creative ways of learning progress. Most of the teachers of very young learners have to be very active, creative and dramatic to keep the attention of 10 students for an hour and a half, try to raise the interest and curiosity of children in the learning of a new language. The same should try to achieve parents. I have seen homework videos of my students who were crying because they couldn’t produce a sentence and parents were shouting at them for that. And I saw very calm parents with tons of dolls and teddy bears around them, pretending to have an imaginary dinner to practice SP “what would you like for breakfast?”, or parents who take their children to a supermarket to practice fruit and vegetable vocab. All these little things in an “adult word” are very important and big in a world of little ones! Miracles are not real, you cannot send your child to a training center where they will go only twice a week and expect them to talk fluently in 6 months, it is a very complex way which requires hard work of teachers, parents, and children.
