How do you keep your high schooler from getting overwhelmed?

Schoolchildren's overload is the hottest topic on forums and in parental disputes. According to research by the Scientific Center of Health, today only 3-4% of schoolchildren (one or two children per whole class!) leave the 11th grade as healthy children. Doctors diagnose all the rest with some health problems. And the reason for this is the many hours of school overload. How to protect a schoolchild from academic overload? And what is considered overload, and what is the usual norm, without which - nowhere?

Why do schoolchildren become overwhelmed?

How often do we see the following situation: a girl with a school bag slightly smaller than herself sits through 7 lessons, then runs to a music school, and from there to an English tutor. She also needs to have time to learn her lessons, because our school program is designed for future Einsteins and Newtons. And parents demand high grades and obedience from their children, and at parent-teacher meetings they demand: give us a couple more languages in the program, because the children have to go to college after school!

And they don’t even think that such overloads break the delicate and fragile nervous system of a child, up to 70% of whom suffer from obvious or hidden neuroses. School overloads are to blame.

What are educational standards?

Educational standards can be divided into the actual study and the conditions in which this study is performed. The actual study is how many lessons a student sits through, how many hours he spends on homework, how many hours he spends on physical activity and rest. It is no secret that in the modern school program, a student has absolutely no time left for rest - this time is "eaten up" by homework.

Conditions for learning are the room and classroom in which children study. A spacious room with modern equipment and bright, cheerful classrooms is the norm. An old school, where even in winter the heating does not reach 18 degrees, and children are forced to sit in warm jackets and blow on frozen fingers - this is, unfortunately, a real picture. Not universal, but very common.

It is important for parents and teachers to keep in mind that even if the conditions for a child's study are excellent and the surrounding environment is pleasing to the eye, the school workload in these bright, spacious classrooms should not be excessive.

What are the consequences of excessive school workload?

According to research by physiologists, up to 40% of primary school students (i.e. children in the most fragile age from 6 to 10 years) suffer from obvious or hidden neuroses due to school overload. The percentage of neurotics among middle-aged schoolchildren and teenagers is even higher – up to 70%. These studies, by the way, were conducted in model schools, where parents and teachers were supporters of the most intensive program – with the study of special subjects and numerous electives. The same statistics show that after finishing school, children’s illnesses acquired during excessive learning become chronic.

Thus, after finishing grades 9-11, children are registered with three times more chronic diseases than at school. Among these diseases, there are five times more children with poor vision than at school, and those who suffer from gastrointestinal diseases become three times more. It's simple: the body cannot cope with the loads and the course of diseases worsens. After all, none of them arises in a week, but develops over months or even years.

As for psychological deviations as a result of excessive workload at school, these problems arise in every fourth boy and girl.

Time stress

"I don't have time to do anything!" - the child screams desperately. And if he doesn't scream, he thinks - he's tired of screaming. This stress is the most common among schoolchildren. When a child is capricious in kindergarten, psychologists advise parents to leave 15-20 minutes for any preparation. This is good advice for parents of schoolchildren too. But it's not so easy to follow. The breaks between lessons are negligible. And the school workload is such that an extra 15-20 minutes is a huge luxury for a busy child. In the meantime, he is constantly being rushed: come on, come on, study, keep up.

As a result, throughout the entire considerable course of study – 9-11 years – the child is forced to maximally compact his schedule, constantly run somewhere, do homework in the shortest possible time, because on the horizon there are still tutors and at the end – dancing or a musical instrument. In pursuit of knowledge and prestigious admission, teachers and parents miss an important detail: with the same life expectancy of a person over the past fifty years, the school workload has increased 3 times.

If 30 years ago schoolchildren up to the third grade counted on sticks, today in the third grade they learn a lot of subjects that were previously introduced no earlier than the 6th or 7th grade. Meanwhile, the constant increase in workload at school is a direct violation of educational standards, which both teachers and especially parents turn a blind eye to. There is only one excuse: let him study, he will have no time to do stupid things...

What are reasonable standards for school workload?

Let's consider how much time a child should study without harming their health. The Ministry of Health, of course, strictly calculates the training standards for children of different ages. Parents will be very surprised if they learn these figures.

Up to the 5th grade – no six-day weeks and no more than 5-6 lessons per day. If the school does have a six-day week, fifth-graders should sit no more than 31 hours per week. This is no more than 5 lessons per day. Now remember when your fifth-grader received no more than 5 lessons per day?

6th grade – if a five-day school week is provided, there should be a maximum of 6 lessons per day, and not every day, because in total the Ministry of Health allows no more than 29 lessons per week for schoolchildren of this age. If the school week for sixth-graders is six days, they are allowed no more than 5 lessons per day and 6 lessons once a week. Because the school week for schoolchildren of this age should contain no more than 32 lessons.

The workload of lessons is also regulated by the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Health. The most difficult should be the 2nd and 3rd lessons - mathematics, physics, chemistry, language learning. Tuesday and Wednesday should be the days when the most difficult lessons are planned, Thursday and Friday - less stressful. Have you seen a school that meets these requirements?

How much time should you devote to homework?

As for homework, for fifth-graders it can be no more than 3 hours. That is, the child must manage to do all the lessons during this time, taking into account that every hour he needs to rest for 10-15 minutes. Giving a child more than he can do in 3 hours is not allowed by sanitary standards! And what do we see in reality? The little sufferer does not tear himself away from his textbooks for the rest of the day, and his parents also punish him for every mistake. How can neurosis not develop here?

The homework norm for 6th grade children is the same as for 5th graders, and not a minute more. Parents and teachers should draw conclusions.

It turns out that the time for starting and finishing homework is also regulated by sanitary and hygienic norms. Perhaps parents will be surprised, but this time is by no means one or two in the morning, as is often the case. Homework should begin at 15:00 and be finished no later than 17:00. How is that? But you can often see a picture of a child sitting over textbooks until 22:00 and later, and even in poor lighting.

Meanwhile, doctors strictly forbid sitting over homework after 19:00, especially for primary school students. This causes many chronic diseases, including vision problems, posture problems, and chronic fatigue syndrome.

How much sleep and play time is a schoolchild supposed to have?

Sleep and physical activity for schoolchildren are also regulated. To protect a child from school overload, he needs to get at least 8-10 hours of sleep. To give a school-age child a normal physical load, he needs to be given the opportunity to walk, run and jump up to 7 km per day, and half of them - at school. Moreover, a school-age child should be outdoors for at least three hours. And how much time does your child spend outside?

Symptoms of School Overload

Yes, there are. And they are not at all connected with the fact that your child is naturally capricious and disobedient. Parents need to pay attention to the signals that the child’s body, exhausted by school overload, is intensively sending. Otherwise, it may be too late – constant visits to the hospital may not reveal the true reason why your baby is getting sick more and more often. And this reason is trivially simple – the academic load is extremely high.

1. So, the first indicator of school overload is the child's weight. If a schoolchild has started to lose weight rapidly, the body needs more rest and properly organized nutrition. To control the child's weight, it is necessary to put him on the scales at least once a month.
2. The second indicator of a schoolchild’s overwork is his consistently bad mood and signs of depression: increased fatigue, weakness, loss of interest in activities that previously evoked the child’s active participation.
3. The third important indicator is a decrease in appetite. If a child ignores his mother's previously beloved pies and is indifferent to the previously adored cakes, things are bad. It is worth paying attention to how many hours a day the schoolchild devotes to lessons and whether he walks in the fresh air enough.
4. The fourth indicator of a child's health is his movements. The bad habit of constantly biting nails is not a child's whim, but the first sign of a stressful state. Grinding teeth in sleep, nightmares, bruises under the eyes, twitching of the eyelid, slight stuttering belong to the same category. To begin with, you need to reduce the child's school workload, scold him less and let him get enough sleep. If it does not help, take your schoolchild to a psychologist - such visits are never in vain.
5. The fifth important indicator of a son or daughter's failing health is their behavior in class. If the child does not listen to the teacher well, bullies classmates, answers questions inappropriately, or, on the contrary, shows no interest in classes, is sluggish and lacking initiative, sound the alarm. This may be banal overwork, and not at all a desire to spite oneself by spoiling the report card results.
6. And finally, pay attention to the child's blood pressure. This is an important symptom of whether the body is in order. Normal pressure for an adult is considered to be 120x80. For a child, these indicators are too high. The upper pressure of a child is normal - 100-80. If the upper indicator of blood pressure of a schoolchild under 14 years is "only" 5 units higher and is 115 mm Hg, this can be a serious signal of school overload.

How can you protect a schoolchild from academic overload? The solution to this issue directly depends on the sensitivity and attentiveness of parents. A timely response to changes in the child's health can save him from many dangers in the future.