Repeating a class; how to help your child cope

At the end of last term, your child came home with a report card that was suggesting that they repeat class. The marks on the report justified the reason why they have to repeat. How do you help them deal with this hard reality? Asks Sarah Tumwebaze

Every parent desires to be the parent of an intelligent, gifted, bright, smart and active child. We want that even if our child is good at sports, dancing or singing, he must perform exceptionally well at school.

Parents are desperate to do anything to help their child stand first in class. For many parents, when a child gets a bad report, they cannot imagine that they have to pay hefty amounts of money for the same lessons for another year.

But then many parents realise that not all children are able to excel at the first try and accept that letting them go through the same class for another year will make a difference in their life.
In such a case, a child needs a lot of support.

Mr Patrick Mwase a psychologist at Makerere University says parents have to play a major role of helping their children deal with having to repeat class.

He says the decision of letting your child go through the same class for another year is a challenging one which some parents decide to take while others might fail and transfer their child to another school where they will be promoted even with bad grades.

But for those that follow the advice of the class teacher on their child’s report card. Mr Mwase warns , “Letting your child repeat class is a tough decision for both the parent and the child and it requires a lot of support towards the child. It can affect the child either negatively or positively because parents cannot predict the outcomes.”

The psychologist therefore says it’s necessary that parents sit down with the child and come up with various options. “But this will only be effective if you have enough information about the child’s character at school and also the cause of their poor performance which can be obtained by talking to one of your child’ s teachers, especially the class teacher.”

Depending on what the teacher has told you, Mr Mwase suggests that you can talk to your child accordingly and also give them good reasons as to why they should repeat class.

With the major one being that it will help them perform better in the classes ahead. But the psychologist emphasizes that, “you should not let your child talk you into letting them go to another class because chances are things might get tough for them ahead.”

Still during the time of discussing, you can also talk about the school issue. Some children might not want to go back to the old school because they are afraid of what their peers will say about them.

“Most peers associate having to repeat class with being a failure and because no child wants to be called a failure, they might not want to be in a school where anyone knows them. So if the child agrees to repeat class in another school, you should consider that. Forcing them to repeat from the same school is unfair and it might traumatize the child because they will be stigmatised by their colleagues.”

When the new term opens, Mr Mwase advises that you help your child set goals for that term and also come up with ways of achieving those goals. “This can be done by revising with your child during the week when you have time and over the weekend.”

He adds that parents should encourage children to have discussion groups because children can easily learn from one another than it is when they are in class. You also need to act as a good role model to the child. Mr Mwase says that you have to come up with constructive social and educational values that will lead to the good performance of the child.

“As a parent you have to help the child follow their time table by ensuring that at the time when they are supposed to be reading at home, the television is off so that they can focus.”
However, while doing all this, the psychologist advises that you reassure your child that, “repeating class is not the end of the world and it’s not a bad thing to do. It actually helps you improve on your grades.”

Therefore, although the decision of making a child repeat class is a tough one, you have to take it because if you don’t, “the child might end up moving from one school to another every year because you have failed to let them learn things they felt to learn in the lower classes.”