4 Core Skills Of A Good Parent Tutor

Mrs Tan (not her real name) is a stay-at-home mum. She does household chores and fetches her two kids from school everyday. Her older child is in P4 and her younger child is in P1 this year.

I met her at the playground and we started to talk about how difficult it is now to meet good private tutors. She already changed three tutors and she was thinking of teaching her children herself.

However, her children would not listen to her. They have difficulty focusing on their work.

She asked me if my children were like that.

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Now, I post the question to you, "Are your children like that?"

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I strongly believe that parents are the best teachers, provided that they know what they are doing. They need to upgrade their teaching skills accordingly.

When I first started teaching as a teacher, I observed countless lessons. I wanted to see what makes an excellent lesson. I wanted to learn the secrets of this trade.

My conclusion:

An excellent teacher delivers excellent lessons.

It may sound absurd but it is true. Normal people just could not deliver excellent lessons. A normal carpenter cannot produce exquisite furniture.

I have seen very good lesson plans carried out by normal teachers. The effect was not even 10% of the original lesson. The person doing the lesson is very important. So much so that the person is even more important than the lesson itself.

Hence, it is not a formula. You cannot walk into a bookstore, buy an assessment book, follow its steps and hope your child enjoy the lesson.

It is simply not so easy.

So now, the golden question:

What makes an excellent teacher?

Those who know me personally would know that I was in the sales line before. I was a good salesman. I discovered that my selling skills was directly linked to my teaching skills.


An excellent teacher possesses the following:

1. Deep content knowledge (Product Knowledge)
2. Good rapport building skills (Rapport)
3. Delivery skills (Presentation Skills)
4. Situational sensitivity (Situational Awareness)



Deep Content Knowledge

This is the first thing the child looks at when you start to teach him. If by standards, you are lower level than the child, the child will despise you. Without respect, it is impossible to deliver any lessons.

Let me give you an example.

Can you list the six characteristics of living things? 

If you can't, how are you going to convince your child to learn it from you (when you don't possess the knowledge in the first place?)

This is the first area you should master if you are serious in helping your child. Do his assessment books before you assign the work to him.


Good Rapport Skills

This is not the same as 'making your child like you'. Many parents establish the fact that if you are a friend to your child, it is more probable that he learns from you.

I beg to differ.

The position you should have is an expert co-learner. You are expert, but you are also learning with him.

To establish rapport, you have to empathise with your child. Let him share his feelings of fear of failure with you. Let him share his feelings of success with you. Let him share his struggles with you.

What you want is not to remove the obstacles, but to provide a real life example on how you have conquered your own obstacles in the past.

Share your past learning experiences in school with him. Share how you struggled with your studies. Share how you planned your revision.


Delivery Skills

This is the part where you make the lesson fun.

Convert the boring lesson into an activity. Look up the Internet for resources and ideas.

In short, change the pen and paper lesson into something more interesting.

However, not all lessons can be converted into activities. For some lessons, an introductory video should be sufficient to kickstart the work.

For this section, the Internet is your friend.


Situational Sensitivity

This is the part where effortless teaching occurs.

Your child looked at a plant dying. Seize the situation to teach 'All living things grow old and die."

He looked at a word 'cries'. Seize the situation to teach 'Verbs and Simple Present Tense."

He noticed that his mana decreased by 14 points when he cast a spell in a game. Seize the situation to teach 'Subtraction'.

This is intricately linked to Content Knowledge. Only when you have a very good grasp on the content, then you can seize the teachable moment.

All the small teachable moments add up to a big boost to your child's understanding. And more importantly, this is the missing link. 

It links what your child is learning to the world around him.

These are the four core skills you should have if you are teaching your own children.

We can only help our children excel when we achieve excellence first.

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