What Makes A Good Parent When It Comes To Supporting Your Child’s Learning?

Published 30th June 2025

Introduction

We’ve all been there. Your child is struggling with primary school homework, or their GCSE Maths revision, or God forbid, their A-level revision. They look about ready to explode or cry or hit something because they just can’t do it.

You’re fluttering around the kitchen, watching them. You feel awful – it’s bringing back less than pleasant memories of your own school days. The impending doom when the homework was set. The deepening terror when you sat all alone and tried to complete the thing.

You should help your child, so they don’t have to suffer like you did. Shouldn’t you?

But does helping them make you a good parent? How much support is actually a hindrance? How much struggling is good for them, and how much will hurt their fragile confidence?

How Much Support?

Of course, there’s no one-size-fits-all approach. The answer will depend on your child’s age, maturity and academic ability. So, let’s go on a journey to consider what level of help might be helpful and appropriate at different levels of their education, so you can feel like a good parent when supporting your child through their education.

Primary Age

At primary level, most pupils are unlikely to be independent learners, and if they are struggling, they may well need your assistance. Helping with homework at this age should set expectations and work routines.

1. Decide whether it’s more appropriate for your household to set up a desk in their bedroom (if it tends to be very noisy in the shared areas of the house) or whether a spot at the kitchen table will work just as well.

   The benefit of a shared area is that you can busy yourself doing other things when they’re plodding on with their school work but that you’re there for any questions they have. This is the perfect balance to build up study skills they’ll need later.

2. Start a routine – this should consist of daily reading (either independent or shared) and homework as often as their school requires. It’s a good idea to have set days/times for homework so that it’s a habit by the time they get to high school.

3. At primary age, keep homework short and snappy. Most ten-year-olds will struggle with hours and hours of work. (Of course, there are always outliers to every rule!)

   If they are struggling with a subject, concept or the length of time it’s taking to complete the task they have been set, talk to their teacher to see if the homework is appropriate to their ability level. After all, homework should help children build confidence, not smash it down.

Secondary School

Much of the advice above about being a good parent when assisting your child still applies at secondary level – set routines, create a workspace, and seek help from school.

However, by this age, most students should be more independent in their learning. That doesn’t mean they will be – these kids don’t always follow the rulebook!

But when your tween or teen is stuck, you may want to take the accelerator off your parental helicopter. Let them spin around a little on their own because if they don’t know how to fail, they won’t learn how to save themselves later.

Try this approach to build study skills:

1. Check whether they understand the task they’ve been given. Sometimes, merely having an adult help them unpick what they must do is enough to get them scribbling.
2. If that’s not enough, brainstorm some ideas with them about how they could tackle the homework OR show them how to research the answer (ideally without showing them how to cheat!)
3. You should only consider giving them further help when you have given them the tools to complete the task alone.

GCSE and A-level

You’d think by this age, they would be perfectly capable of completing their homework unassisted. Some students definitely are. (And some are definitely playing you if they pretend they aren’t!)

However, as always, their ability to work alone will depend on their literacy and numeracy levels and how much practice they have had at independent study. Much of their work at this age should be done alone, and you might feel more confident about them working in their rooms to encourage this independence.

What If You Don’t Know How To Help Them?

Tricky. Very, very tricky. This issue becomes more likely as the topics they study become more complex. After all, you probably don’t remember all of the details of Hitler’s rise to power or the difference between eukaryotic and prokaryotic cells.

There are a plethora of online experts who may be able to help. See some of our blog posts on specific subjects for websites that might help your child when they (and you) are in a pickle:

• A-level Maths
• A-level Further Maths
• A-level Psychology
• BTEC Applied Science
• GCSE English Language
• GCSE English Literature
• A-level English Language
• A-level English Literature

However, be cautious about overhelping… At this point, you might be doing more harm than good by assisting your child with their homework.

For example, when you set up a different strategy for answering Maths questions than the one that they do in school, you might just be making their lives harder rather than easier.

If you don’t feel up to the task of assisting your child, and the revision books aren’t shedding any light on the subject, it might be time to employ a tutor. Professional teachers will know the most up-to-date methods for completing work.

The Verdict

How can you be a good parent when you’re trying to assist your child?

When they look like they might launch their books across the room, it may well be time to step in. However, teaching our young people strategies that will help them complete homework independently and revise effectively is probably more important than the quality of the finished project for their year eight Religious Studies.

If you can show them how to find the answers themselves, it will be like that old proverb:

Give a man a fish kid the answer to his Biology homework, and you feed set him up for a day. Teach a man to fish kid some study skills, and you feed set him up for a lifetime.

See what I did there?