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Take 2 minutes to help your parents help you
The thing that helps you be happier and do better in school might be something you hate: your parents asking “How was school?”
The 2-minute script
Yep. When a parent asks about your day, you tend to do better in school. So ask them to ask. Pick who you’re asking and how, then copy it.
Hey Mom, kind of a random ask: can you start asking me how my school day went? Like, every day. An education nonprofit I trust says research shows it helps kids do better in school.
It doesn’t have to be anything deep, and some days I’ll probably just say “fine.” Ask anyway. When you know a little about how I’m doing, I care a little more about school. And doing well there (even if that just means I’m less angry all day) will help me after I graduate. ❤️
Awkward? A little. But most parents have been dying to know more about your day, and you just told them the one question to ask. If you want them even more involved, reach out and we’ll share some resources.
Give them better questions
“How was school?” gets “fine.” These get actual answers. Deal yourself a few, or send them the whole list right after the script.
1 / 16What was the best part of your day?
See the whole list
- What was the best part of your day?
- What made you laugh today?
- Who did you sit with at lunch?
- What’s one thing you learned today that I probably don’t know?
- What was the hardest part of today?
- Which class is going best right now? Which one is going worst?
- Did anything happen today that felt unfair?
- Is anyone being mean to you, or to someone else?
- Which teacher do you actually like? Why?
- What’s due this week that you’re worried about?
- Rate today from 1 to 10. Why not one higher?
- Did you help anyone today? Did anyone help you?
- If you could change one thing about your school, what would it be?
- What are you looking forward to this week?
- What would make tomorrow better?
- Is there anything you want me to do, or just listen?
Why it works
The way you see school shapes how well you do there. If you hate it, you’ll probably do worse (that’s the research and, honestly, common sense). A parent who asks keeps school from being a place you just survive alone.
When researchers looked across 50 studies of middle schoolers, the kind of parent involvement most linked to better grades wasn’t helping with homework (that sometimes went the other way). It was talking: about school, about what you’re learning, and about where it could take you.
And when researchers actually changed what parents knew, students did better:
A one-sentence weekly message to parents
Students who didn’t earn the course credit, in a summer credit-recovery program. That’s 41% fewer, mostly because fewer dropped out. Kraft & Rogers, 2015.Letters telling parents how many days their kid had missed
Chronically absent students for every 100 without letters, across 28,080 Philadelphia students: about 10% fewer. Most parents had no idea how much school their kid was missing. Rogers & Feller, 2018.Trust matters too. In a three-year study of 2,381 students, being suspended for something minor predicted lower grades one and two years later, partly because those students came to see their school as unfair. Students who stop trusting school tend to pull away from it. A parent who knows what’s going on can help you get back on track before it gets that far.
None of this guarantees your grades go up. But it’s cheap, it takes two minutes, and it’s one of the best bets you’ve got.
Your half of the deal
They don’t need to know everything. They don’t have to know how many classes you’ve been cutting. But even knowing a little lets them help, and a heads-up early beats a surprise on report card day.
Week 3
chem is kind of kicking my butt
Want to email your teacher together? Or find a tutor?
ok yeah maybe
Report card day
WHAT IS THIS D??
it’s not that bad
PHONE. NOW.
- Give one real detail.“Fine” ends it. “Chem was rough, we had a pop quiz” starts a conversation.
- Pick your moment.Car rides, cooking, walking the dog. Side by side is easier than face to face across the table.
- Say what you need.“Can you just listen?” and “Can you help me fix this?” are different asks. Tell them which one it is.
- Ask them back.“How was work?” They’ll keep asking if it feels like a conversation, not an interview.
If it can’t be your parents
Not everyone has a parent who can do this. Maybe they work nights, maybe you don’t live with them, maybe it just wouldn’t go well. The script works on any adult who cares about you: a grandparent, an aunt or uncle, an older sibling, a coach, a mentor. Pick “Someone else” above and type their name.
Sources
- Hill & Tyson (2009), Parental involvement in middle school: a meta-analytic assessment of the strategies that promote achievement, Developmental Psychology.
- Kraft & Rogers (2015), The underutilized potential of teacher-to-parent communication: evidence from a field experiment, Economics of Education Review.
- Rogers & Feller (2018), Reducing student absences at scale by targeting parents’ misbeliefs, Nature Human Behaviour. A similar trial with younger students: Robinson et al. (2018), Reducing student absenteeism in the early grades by targeting parental beliefs, American Educational Research Journal.
- Del Toro & Wang (2021), The roles of suspensions for minor infractions and school climate in predicting academic performance among adolescents, American Psychologist.