We are all familiar with great personalities like President Barack Obama, Elon Musk, Thomas Edison, Ben Carson, Omotola Jalade-Ekeinde, and Fela Anikulapo. You may want to do a quick search if you don’t. These individuals achieved great success in their chosen paths and are global icons today.
However, many may not know that these individuals had parents who took an active interest and participation in their lives; their mothers or fathers were hands-on in their academic, social, and spiritual lives.
“What is best in me, I owe to her,” President Obama said about his mum. The president said his mum gave him great education and self-confidence. According to Obama, his mother would often wake him up by 4am “to give him private lessons before school.”
Thomas Edison, who today is considered one of the greatest inventors not only in America but globally, was once labelled as “addled”. Some have even suggested he may have suffered from Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), a mental condition described by the National Institute of Mental Health as “a developmental disorder characterized by an ongoing pattern of one or more of the following types of symptoms: Inattention, such as having difficulty paying attention, keeping on task, or staying organized; hyperactivity, such as often moving around (including during inappropriate times), feeling restless, or talking excessively; impulsivity, such as interrupting, intruding on others, or having trouble waiting one’s turn. In spite of these shortcomings, Edison’s mother took the challenge to teach her child reading, writing, and arithmetic. Omotola Jalade-Ekeinde’s mum didn’t remarry when she lost Omotola’s father to enable her to raise her children, including Omotola, well. Omotola revealed that she could easily have gone into prostitution when she lost her dad at age 12.
A pioneer in neurosurgery, Carson and his brother had academic challenges in their formative years until their mother stepped in, and all that changed.
Hands-on fathers have also been known to have a great impact on the academic and career success of their children. A study spearheaded by the University of Leeds discovered that primary school children performed better in school when their fathers got actively involved with them in their daily activities, including their school work. The most interesting part of the research is the fact that the results were similar regardless of the child’s race, age, school, or income level of the father. In effect, rich or poor, black or white, pricey or government-run schools, the results were the same. The study showed that “dads who regularly drew, played and read with their three-year-olds helped their children do better at school by age five. Dads being involved at age five also helped improve scores in seven-year-olds’ Key Stage Assessments.”
“Mothers still tend to assume the primary carer role and therefore tend to do the most childcare, but if fathers actively engage in childcare too, it significantly increases the likelihood of children getting better grades in primary school. This is why encouraging and supporting fathers to share childcare with the mother, from an early stage in the child’s life, is critical,” said Dr Helen Norman, the Research Fellow at Leeds University Business School who led the research.
A substantial body of studies has shown that parental, father or mother, or both, involvement in a child’s education significantly leads to academic success.
Conversely, the absence of parental involvement in a child’s life has been shown by numerous studies to have immediate and long-lasting effects on the social, mental, physical, and educational development of such a child.
These researches on parental participation in a child’s life and the life-long positive effect informed some of the aspects of the recently launched SparkXplorer. The platform, through its unique reward systems, which include Leaderboard Competitions,
Intrinsic Motivation, and most importantly the Parents Rewards, essentially seeks to incentivize parents to take an active interest and part in their children’s education. The long-term effect of such parental rewards is that it could potentially save parents thousands of dollars in school fees and other monetary outlays down the road as they try to give quality education to their children. So, it all has a domino effect. Participate now in your child’s education through encouragement and financial rewards thus helping the child to become dedicated to learning. A dedicated child is likely to perform well and attract scholarships to colleges, which will then reduce the financial burden on the parents.
And away from Spark Xplorer, this is the mindset and attitude parents need to adopt this year. Today’s parents are far too busy in search of financial comfort that we sometimes forget the important things in our lives and the family, one of which is raising educational sound, and successful children, tomorrow’s leaders, and our legacy.
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