When to Get a Tutor
Hiring Someone to Help When Your Child is Struggling in School
Are you trying to decide if you should find a tutor for your child? There are several factors to consider that will help in your decision process.
When trying to decide whether or not to hire a tutor for your child, you should consider your child's current grades, your expectations for your child and the importance of a passing score. Much of the decision process is a judgement call and each parent needs to make a decision that works for his child even if it is different than the decision another parent makes for another child.
Bad Grades on Report Card
If your child’s grades are struggling, perhaps it is time to find a tutor. Tutors can provide homework help, work on teach test taking strategies, and help strengthen any weak areas, all of which will help improve your child’s grades.
Did your child bring home a bad report card out of the blue? If your child has never gotten bad grades before, or has shown that he is not trying and thus failing, then perhaps getting a tutor will provide enough motivation for your child to bring up those grades. This type of strategy, although costly, can provide a great incentive for your child to get his act together and bring his grades up so that the afternoon or evening spent with a tutor can instead be spent doing something more enjoyable.
Does your child do his homework and seem to understand everything, but bomb each test as it comes along? Perhaps understanding the concept is not the issue, but rather your child may require help to know how to better take tests. Getting a tutor to help your child in this area can benefit not only your child’s report card, but also your child’s self-esteem, allowing him to see his hard work pay off in better grades.
If you sit with your child every evening after school and together struggle through homework, having a tutor may benefit your. Sometimes it just takes an extra person to sit down and patiently explain the concept again for your child to understand it. Often there are weak areas that a tutor can help provide extra help in that will allow your child to better understand.
For example, if your child is having trouble multiplying fractions, perhaps your child never quite understood what a fraction was, and thus cannot grasp the concept of multiplying fractions. Or for example, if your child doesn’t seem to be able to answer the easiest questions about something she read, maybe she is focusing so closely on the words that she is missing the meaning behind the words. With additional help to improve her reading, her comprehension can fall into place.
Parent Expectations for Child
Another important reason many parents choose to get a tutor for their child is that the child is not meeting expectations. If you have a bright child who is doing average in school, a tutor can help that child show his true potential and bring average grades up above average.
Often children that are very bright do badly in school because they are bored. A tutor can help stimulate that child and provide challenges that will enable your child to continue to learn and improve his grades in the process. Also, if your child simply dislikes a subject, a tutor can help him find the subject more enjoyable by teaching to his learning style.
Important Tests to Pass
The last reason to find a tutor is to help you or your child pass an important test. Sometimes getting the extra help before a test such as the SAT, GRE, or GED can make a world of difference in the ability to pass the test.
Once you have thought through these issues, and decided that it is indeed worth the money to find and hire a tutor for your child, it is time to start the process of finding the right tutor. Know that just as the decision to hire a tutor is a personal one, so is the choice of tutor. Whether you hire a private tutor, have your child join an after school review group, or start attending a comercial learning center, the decision needs to be thought through with your child in mind.
