Issues surrounding financial spending and saving have been dominating the news for months, and it doesn't look like they'll be disappearing any time soon. Yet explaining these issues to your child can often be difficult. … [Read more...] about Websites for Building Financial Knowledge
Social & Emotional
When Praise Goes Awry
Praise is a powerful tool that parents and teachers can use to motivate their children. Furthermore, children appear to thrive on praise. Yet both the research on the effects of praise and advice about praise can be confusing. Praise can have widely different impacts on different children; it can: … [Read more...] about When Praise Goes Awry
Pieces to Puzzling Behavior
Parents who have the determination will find hope and the tools to help their children in Understanding Your Child’s Puzzling Behavior: A Guide for Parents of Children with Behavioral, Social, and Learning Challenges, by Steven E. Curtis, Lifespan, 2008. This book is for parents who have the desire to take charge of their childrens’ social, emotional, and academic health; the stick-to-it attention needed to detail their childrens’ actions and reactions; and the ability for detached observation. … [Read more...] about Pieces to Puzzling Behavior
Giftedness: A Motivational Perspective
True or false? Some people are born gifted, and others are not. You can tell who will be gifted from early on. Gifted children should be labeled and praised for their brains and talent. All of these statements are accepted by many as true. However, as evidence has accumulated over the past decade, another view has been gaining credence that portrays giftedness as a more dynamic quality that can grow or stagnate. … [Read more...] about Giftedness: A Motivational Perspective
Nurture the Nature: Understanding and Supporting Your Child’s Unique Core Personality
Heraclitus wrote, “Our own nature hides from us, but wants to be found.” Do you remember moments in your life when you asked “Who am I?” Perhaps you were interacting in a social situation in which you realized you didn’t fit, reflecting near a river or in your place of faith, or talking to someone you love. The self was somewhere that you needed to discover, and you sensed a primal drive to find it. … [Read more...] about Nurture the Nature: Understanding and Supporting Your Child’s Unique Core Personality
Wakin’ Up is Hard to Do: The Challenge of Sleep in the Teen Years
For many teenagers, fitting all their activities into a 24-hour day and getting enough sleep is an impossible dream. For their parents, rousing their teens every morning so they get to school on time is a big challenge. … [Read more...] about Wakin’ Up is Hard to Do: The Challenge of Sleep in the Teen Years
Imagination
The study of gifted children's imagination was part of a larger investigation into their inner world as I described in "Mellow Out," They Say. If I Only Could: Intensities and Sensitivities of the Young and Bright. Gifted children were asked: What are your special kinds of daydreams and fantasies? How precisely can you visualize events, real or imaginary? With what sense or senses do you feel the most pleasure? … [Read more...] about Imagination
Formula for Social Emotional Disaster: I+S+O=SED Cubed: Intensity plus Sensitivity plus Overprotection equals Social Emotional Disaster
Parenting gifted children socially and emotionally presents a challenge and causes sane and balanced adults to squirm, wonder, pace, and otherwise exhibit anxiety. No one tells unsuspecting parents of gifted children that in order to raise their children there is an unwritten requirement that they function at a totally honest and authentic level of self-awareness. Our gifted offspring stretch us, the adults in the family, to look at aspects of ourselves that we’d prefer to keep hidden. This is … [Read more...] about Formula for Social Emotional Disaster: I+S+O=SED Cubed: Intensity plus Sensitivity plus Overprotection equals Social Emotional Disaster
Cyberbullying: The New Bathroom Wall
Remember the nasty note passed around at school or the mean graffiti scrawled on the bathroom wall? Bullies and mean girls are still in school classrooms, hallways, and playgrounds; they just can use new digital tools to be cruel now. Cyberbullying is the term most people use to describe bullying another person via e-mail, instant or text messaging, comments on webblogs or in online video games, or postings to Web sites or chat rooms. What’s different is that cyberbullying can be much crueler, … [Read more...] about Cyberbullying: The New Bathroom Wall
A Primer on Pediatric Neuropsychology
We talked with Paul Beljan about pediatric neuropsychology, how it differs from school and educational psychology, and how and when families can benefit from a practitioner’s expertise. … [Read more...] about A Primer on Pediatric Neuropsychology