Whether you’re returning to the workforce or looking for an extra pair of hands to help around the house, child care providers can help give you a break. But you may be overwhelmed by the variety of choices, from nannies and au pairs to mother’s helpers and family daycare centers. The good news: Whether you can spend a little or a lot and need full-time care or part-time assistance, there is a provider out there…
Read More »in Mathematics, Middle School, Parent-Child Advice, Teachers - 0 Comments
Is a dump truck a vehicle? What about a skateboard? An elevator? A hamster wheel? These are some of the questions math educator Christopher Danielson has asked — or been asked — while playing a reasoning game he calls “Is It or Not?” The game began with a debate between another math educator, Kassia Wedekind, and her six-year-old daughter, but Danielson has played it with children of all ages, including his own. “It was a…
Read More »in Elementary School, Mental Health, Parent-Child Advice - 0 Comments
When it comes to early childhood development, many parents focus on things like a healthy diet, regular exercise, and stimulating activities. Elementary school friendships are easily overlooked as something that has an influence on a child’s development, but they are more important than you may realize. Paul Schwartz, a professor of psychology and a child behavior expert, suggests that friendship contributes significantly to the development of a child’s social skills. Through friendships, children learn to…
Read More »It’s that time of year again—it’s back to school season, and about time to start off another school year! While a new outfit or set of school supplies can definitely help get you off to a good start, so can a fresh perspective. August is a great time for students to evaluate their performance from the previous year, explore new ways to overcome challenges, and come up with a plan to stay on track for…
Read More »Think about how crushed young teens can feel when a formerly close friend becomes distant or the shame that can follow disclosure of sensitive information to a mere acquaintance. Knowing what studies show—for example, that humans tend to have frenemies and we often confide intimacies in people we aren’t that close to—can assuage adolescents’ fear of being abnormal. Frank discussions about middle school friendships like these are important to have at school, since parents of…
Read More »The concept of timeouts was developed by a psychologist named Arthur Staats in the 1960s. It was created as an alternative to spanking and other forms of physical punishment, which were very popular at the time. The idea was that children would be briefly removed from a rewarding or stimulating environment when they showed a particular challenging behavior, like aggression. Timeout is short for a timeout from positive reinforcement. It is based on the behavioral…
Read More »in Elementary School, Middle School, Parent-Child Advice, Reading, Reading strategies, Teaching Your Child To Read, Whole-word reading - 0 Comments
When teachers familiarize themselves with students’ reading lives and histories, they may uncover reading trauma — moments when students had a negative experience with a peer, teacher or librarian that turned them off of reading. Students with reading trauma associate reading with painful feelings of shame or stress and doubt their reading abilities, said Boston-based educator Kimberly Parker in a recent webinar organized by the Texas A&M Collaborative for Teacher Education. Take reading logs, for…
Read More »in High School, Mental Health, Parent-Child Advice - 0 Comments
It’s normal for teenagers to be moody at times. But when are an adolescent’s mood swings a sign of something more like mental illness? Mental illness is more common in teens than you think, but many types of mental illness are treatable, and it’s just a matter of pinpointing the diagnosis. Teen mental health is often something that cannot be addressed without a parent’s help. Here are 6 facts about mental illness in teens that…
Read More »You try to fake it, but it limps out of your mouth, barely alive: “How was school?” You might use a slight variation like, “What’d you learn in school today?” but in a single sentence, all that is wrong with ‘school.’ First, the detachment–you literally have no idea what they’re learning or why. You leave that up to school because that’s what school’s for, right? Which means you know very little about what your children…
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