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, [...]

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 [...]

The Whole Child Goes to School

As every parent knows, the whole child goes to school. Every boo-boo, band-aid, bad dream, forgotten homework, lunch, band instrument, sneakers. Children come to school every day full of hopes and dreams, a remembered list of spelling words, equations, places and dates, ideas for class projects and skits. Children check in about these things and [...]