PARENT HELP

Today was my first time doing parent help at my son's intermediate school for their Top Team Canterbury Sports. When I arrived went to reception to find out where I was supposed to be and was told to sign in. I was like "What do you mean sign in?" I had to use a tablet, type in my name and my reason for being there which was Parent Help. Once done a ticket was printed, a reminder to return and sign out before I left.

Parent help at primary school is very different to intermediate, the primary kids are better behaved than the intermediate. I guess it's an age thing when intermediate kids are going through puberty and controlled by their hormones.  My station was a water one and some kids got silly and threw water over each other. The morning was year 8 and afternoon year 7 and the year 7 kids misbehaved more think cos it was the afternoon and they were all tired, compared to year 8 who did their Top Team in the morning, start of day with lots of energy.

With morning session I had to keep buckets full of water so had a hose in my hand most of the time and since I couldn't move I had the kids demonstrate what to do, as another helper said "I was multi-tasking". In arvo session some kids got out of hand being silly wasting water pouring it over each other and jumping in the buckets full of water thankfully a teacher saw this came over to me and got me to swap. I was grateful they took notice and helped me out of it.

I had some kids that worked well in their teams doing what the instructions said and others let their team down just not doing it at all. One boy tried to argue with me, thankfully at the end to move on to the next one I just said "Don't argue" wrote their score and ignored him. My experience parenting a now 13 year old has taught me if kids don't listen I won't argue and ignore them. For my own sons they have screen time so for any naughty behaviour they lose some screen time, this has been working well, even better for me to not argue with them saves my voice (in the past I've actually lost my voice from shouting way too much). It's called 'Drop the Rope' for any parent who has done a parenting course they'll know what this means.

To sum up my experience with parent help intermediate school it definately had it's moments, I enjoyed it anyway and when I needed help with the kids that got out of hand it was noticed and taken care of, great to have support when needed.