With the start of school this week, parents might be breathing a big sigh of relief that they no longer need to juggle schedules or make expensive payments to daycare facilities and summer camps to provide weekday care for their growing kin.

Kids, on the other hand, are undoubtedly already dreaming of next June and another summer of carefree fun away from day-to-day school responsibilities, although we certainly hope that most of them are looking forward to being around friends and challenging their growing minds with another year of academics.

And although a vacation from the significant financial burden of daycare is a legitimate reason to celebrate, we hope that parents don’t view the start to school as an excuse to wholly disengage from their child’s lives for the next 180 week days.

While parents injecting themselves into the lives and academic experiences of their children has made headlines quite often in the past four years for everything from mask mandates to what books they’re being exposed to, we hope that less inflammatory engagements between parents and their school-going children are happening throughout the 2024/25 school year.

Fostering a love of education and learning is not something that teachers and school administrators alone should be responsible for, and in fact, a large part of generating that enthusiasm has to come from home. Parents showing interest in, and providing emotional support to students going through school is vital to reinforce a positive experience and help get to the bottom of any issues they may be having that they aren’t comfortable discussing outright.

The ideal relationship between parents, kids, and their school district should be one of active engagement, communication, and understanding.

Parents should engage their children to hear about what they’re learning, and any concerns they have. School districts should provide open and regular communication about any interesting events that are occurring that parents can be involved in, and always keep them in the loop about any issues happening in classrooms. And both parents and school professionals alike should foster an environment of mutual understanding with children everyone works as a team to get the best results out of each school day.

Too often in the past years, adults have taken an adversarial approach to their kids’ education, interacting with the district only when they have grievances. It benefits kids to know that not only will their parent go to battle for them when things are bad, but also that they will share in their successes and show genuine enthusiasm for when things are going well.-