Growing With Your Child

Let the Wind Blow Through You

Mo — Thu, 16 May 2013 21:25:21 +0000

I recently came across this story for the first time in many years. It had a profound impact on me when I first read it, and I believe this story can help others as well. It’s part of the introduction from The Lakota Way: Stories & Lessons for Living, by Joseph M. Marshall III, and [...]

13 Discipline Tricks from Teachers

Mo — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 17:01:26 +0000

Disciplining children is tricky business, and parents often find it helpful to integrate tips from teachers who have been around the block. Although parents and classroom teachers work with kids in different contexts, the same behavior management techniques can be used to great effect. The following is an article from parenting.com, and offers helpful ideas [...]

5 Activities that Strengthen Children’s Bodily-Kinesthetic Intelligence

Mo — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 23:03:02 +0000

Does your child enjoy learning more when it involves physical activity? Body-smart learners enjoy hands-on activities that incorporate movement. In my experience, this includes every student I’ve ever worked with! In the last post of this series about Dr. Howard Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences, we learned how to identify characteristics of the bodily-kinesthetic intelligence. [...]

Friday Funny: a Shoutout to Snow!

Mo — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 06:30:00 +0000

~ Bill Watterson I love this one. Fresh, new, a world full of possibilities waiting to be explored… What a great way to meet each day. May everyone in the path of the east coast blizzard be warm, safe & with people you love!

The Cognitive Benefits of Play: Effects on the Learning Brain

Mo — Sun, 03 Feb 2013 06:30:04 +0000

Biological anthropologist Gwen Dewar, Ph.D., wrote an excellent article for parents about the cognitive benefits of play in children that I’ve got to share. It is clear, well-articulated, and based on solid and fully-referenced scientific evidence. To cut to the chase, here is what Dr. Dewar found: Play is crucial to the healthy development of [...]

Friday Funny: Academic Survival

Mo — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 14:11:22 +0000

~ Bill Watterson For some students, academic survival is exactly as Calvin portrays it here: Keep other people’s expectations low so it’s easier to impress your parents when you do well, and easier to avoid confrontation or consequences when you come home with a C. If you think about it, I’m sure you’ll come up [...]

A Parent’s Guide to Social-Emotional Learning

Mo — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 06:30:54 +0000

What is social-emotional learning (SEL)? Although it may sound like bliggity-blah jargon, social-emotional learning can help you help your children (and your self) in significant ways. There’s a great deal of overlap between social-emotional learning and mindfulness: they are both about paying attention. SEL is a process of learning life skills, including: –> Emotional regulation [...]

The Bodily-Kinesthetic Intelligence: How to Identify Body-Smart Learners

Mo — Mon, 28 Jan 2013 06:30:34 +0000

In this installment of my series on Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences, we’re going to look at what the bodily-kinesthetic intelligence is and how to identify it. Body-smart learners are action-oriented people who love to move and are very engaged with their bodies. They tend to have excellent hand-eye coordination and balance, and ideally learn [...]

Most Parents Lie to Their Children

Mo — Sun, 27 Jan 2013 06:30:45 +0000

“Most parents tell lies to their children as a tactic to change their behavior, suggests a study of families in the United States and China. The most frequent example was parents threatening to leave children alone in public unless they behaved. Persuasion ranged from invoking the support of the tooth fairy to telling children they [...]

Friday Funny: When You’re All Grown Up…

Mo — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 19:05:40 +0000

*Thinks every mother ever* Infants are utterly helpless and dependent on you. They have no ability to self-sooth, no self-control, can’t modulate what they feel; it’s not easy for babies. Life is an ocean of sensory information that comes in continually; infants’ minds are working overtime to help them categorize, sort and interpret all of [...]