Parental Feedback's Impact on Learning: A Guide for Effective Support

Most parents understand the importance of providing meaningful student feedback, but few know how to approach it. In the course of a busy day, it’s much easier to say “Good job!” rather than pause and reflect to offer feedback that’s meaningful, actionable and motivating. However, this is exactly what your child needs to be successful, and to improve in the areas where they’re struggling. Great feedback will strengthen your relationship with your child, and help them to become a better student.

In this article, we’ll outline why effective feedback matters, and give you helpful examples to model your feedback on. We’ll also discuss the difference between feedback and criticism, and point you to other helpful resources to improve your confidence in delivering feedback to your loved son or daughter.

The Role of Feedback in Learning

Feedback is critical for child development. Involved parenting improves outcomes in school, but feedback also allows your child to grow their self-esteem, perform chores and other responsibilities effectively, and successfully navigate conflict situations with peers and other adults. The importance of providing meaningful student feedback cannot be understated. In fact, one study found that when parents offered praise to preschool-aged children on tasks related to math and language skills, those children performed better on the tasks than a control group. This proves that having good feedback skills as a parent can’t wait until your kids are in their teen years! The best time to start building the feedback muscle is today.

Types of Effective Feedback

There are three main types of feedback: 1) Feedback about the task your child is performing; 2) Feedback about the process, or how they are performing the task; and 3) Feedback that helps them reflect on their own thinking and actions. All of these types can be effective or ineffective depending on how they’re delivered. But when done well, all of these types are critical to helping your child develop their skills. In fact, positive attention is the likeliest way to improve a child’s learning and skills, even if they are currently underperforming at a task. Validate what your kids are doing well, using statements that are specific and focus on the process, rather than the outcome. For example, you might say, “I appreciate how creative you were in picking the topic for your English essay. However, it looks like your teacher noted a lot of spelling and grammar errors. What do you think you can do to prevent that from happening next time?” This allows them to reflect and come up with a solution on their own. You can then provide further feedback on whether you think their proposed solution is adequate.

Positive feedback can also include answering your child’s questions thoroughly, confirming that they are doing the task correctly when they ask for assurance, and taking their learning beyond their present level of understanding by providing deeper information. This might look like saying, “You’re doing so well with your piano lessons! Next year, you’ll learn things like playing scales with both hands at the same time, and learning to play chords.” You can also bolster a child’s confidence by asking them to reflect on their own performance, and then validating their positive assessment of themselves. 

Common Mistakes in Providing Feedback

Giving your child feedback about the right way to do a task is usually much more effective than highlighting that they’re currently doing the task wrong. While it’s sometimes necessary to correct your child sharply if what they’re doing is dangerous or likely to hurt others, when it comes to their school performance, feedback that’s negative, vague or focuses too much on outcomes rather than on methods can be frustrating for your young learner. 

To prevent your feedback from being vague, ask yourself these three questions:

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Negative feedback can include statements like, “You have a bad attitude”, “You’re not working hard enough”, or “Don’t you dare bring home another bad report card!”. These statements, while potentially hurtful, also don’t tell your child what to do to improve, and what outcomes you’re looking for. To improve this feedback, consider saying, “It hurts my feelings when you shut me out. I’d like to talk about school with you when you feel ready”, “I’m concerned you’re not spending enough time revising when you write essays. Can we discuss how to edit your work in a better way?”, or “I’m worried about your future if you continue to get bad marks. It can affect your ability to get into the college or university program you’re interested in.” These statements are specific about the problem, and focus on the solution to the problem, or the consequence if the problem isn’t resolved.

Tips for Giving Constructive Feedback

When offering constructive feedback, remember that improvement is often a process. Be sure to focus on rewarding effort and signs of improvement along the way, rather than saving all your praise for the end result. 

To deliver constructive criticism to your child, you can rely on the same tools you'd use in a professional setting. This blog on effective employee feedback offers advice that parents can use at home, too. They include delivering feedback in private when possible, so that your child isn’t embarrassed in front of their peers or adults outside of the family. You should also ensure that feedback is a conversation, not a command. Especially as your child grows into adolescence, you want to ensure that they feel open to discussing issues with you. Keep a two-way flow of communication open when giving feedback to build trust and empathy. Finally, ensure your feedback is about what they do, not who they are. If you tell your child that they’re bossy, for example, that is a criticism of their personality that won’t help them learn better manners. But if you focus on the specific moment in which they were rude or pushy with you or with their peers, you set a boundary and guide them to understand why that behaviour isn’t acceptable.

Using these tips, you’ll not only give great feedback at home, but improve your ability to develop your employees and become a trusted advisor for your colleagues in the office, too!

Conclusion

Children crave meaningful feedback from their parents. More than just praise, feedback shows that you're paying attention. It gives your child a chance to improve their skills, and also gives them a chance to make you proud, which most children and teens want to do as often as possible. 

Using the tools we've outlined, you can become a master of good feedback and support your child’s learning journey. You know the importance of providing meaningful student feedback, but don't forget that in addition to your words, modelling the behaviour you want to see will also encourage your child to reflect on and modify their habits.

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