Posts belonging to Category Parent Questions and Concerns

Parents, How Can You Best Reinforce Your Child’s Strengths?

In my entries about children’s positive attributes, you can find details about the kinds of strengths children seem to display at different ages and stages of their development. No two children are the same, of course, and each will gravitate to different interests at the same ages because different things excite different children, energize them, [...]

Hopes and Dreams for Parent-Teacher Conferences

Elementary school teachers using Responsive Classroom® practices take time at the beginning of the school year to have students identify their learning “hopes and dreams” for the academic year ahead. Many combine this activity with asking parents to identify one or two hopes and dreams that they have for their children in school.
The first parent—teacher [...]

Parent Page

It’s sort of a trial balloon to see if there’s enough interest to establish a dedicated parent page on the blog—one where we could have sections for various ages or topics of special interest to parents.
Here are some concerns parents often ask about. Are any of these ones you might want to explore with me [...]

Your Child in Sixth Grade

I recently started a series of posts talking about the normal developmental characteristics of children as discussed in my book Yardsticks: Children in the Classroom Ages 4-14.  In this post I’ll describe some of the characteristics of younger, on-age, and older sixth grade students.  As always, please feel free to leave your comments, impressions, and [...]

Your Child in Fifth Grade

I recently started a series of posts talking about the normal developmental characteristics of children as discussed in my book Yardsticks: Children in the Classroom Ages 4-14. In this post I’ll describe some of the characteristics of younger, on-age, and older fifth grade students.  As always, please feel free to leave your comments, impressions, and [...]

Your Child in Third Grade

I recently started a series of posts talking about the normal developmental characteristics of children as discussed in my book Yardsticks: Children in the Classroom Ages 4-14. In this post I’ll describe some of the characteristics of younger, on-age, and older third grade students.  As always, please feel free to leave your comments, impressions, and [...]

Your Child in Second Grade

Last week I started a series of posts talking about the normal developmental characteristics of children as discussed in my book Yardsticks: Children in the Classroom Ages 4-14. In this post I’ll describe some of the characteristics of younger, on-age, and older second grade students.  As before, please feel free to leave your comments, impressions, [...]

Your Child in First Grade

Earlier this week I wrote a little about the normal developmental characteristics of children in Kindergarten as discussed in my book Yardsticks: Children in the Classroom Ages 4-14. In this post I’ll describe some of the characteristics of younger, on-age, and older first grade students.  As before, please feel free to leave your comments, impressions, [...]

Your Children in Kindergarten

My book Yardsticks: Children in the Classroom, Ages 4-14 is addressed to parents and teachers. In the next few weeks this blog will highlight a few of the developmental patterns typically observed at each grade level. These are treated in much greater detail in the book.
I’d like to start a dialogue about some of the [...]

Observing Our Children at Home and in the Broader World

Perhaps the greatest joys of being parents are the small moments of watching and listening to what our children are doing and saying around the house when they are  playing with us, cooking with us, setting the table and doing other chores with us. Also, we delight watching them at soccer or dance, tackling an [...]