The pressure is on – for parents, for teachers, and for schools but the pressure on children does the most damage. Just look at the vocabulary commonly in use today regarding learning. We’re told that children need to be “evaluated” during the early childhood years. Moreover, teachers and schools need to be “evaluated” more than […]
There are few things more important to producing secure children than healthy self-esteem. Healthy self-esteem is what enables children to try new things, to meet all the challenges that they face, to have the courage to try, to risk and even to fail. And it starts from the very beginning as your first smiles beam […]
Why do some children have larger vocabularies when they start school than others? This is an important question considering that a significant predictor of success in school is a child’s vocabulary. When we say “vocabulary,” we mean an understanding and use of words. But before being able to use words, how does your child let […]
Children watch TV and other screen media today more than ever before. Why? What role does it play in their lives and in their family life? TV Watching Among Young Children On an average day, 88% of 2 to 3 year olds spend time on screen media (30% spend 1 to 2 hours a day, […]
What!? There’s a problem with English? How could this wonderful language with so many words, probably more words than in any other language, be a problem? It’s the spelling. (See my last blog article, “Why is Learning to Read English So ‘Tuff’”?) Unfortunately, this leads to difficulties in learning to read. In fact, it takes […]
We all know children who found learning to read English difficult. They may be our own children. They may be other children in our family. They may be a friend’s children or classmates of our children. The strange thing is that when I speak to people from other countries about the difficulty many English speaking […]
Is this what we want for our children: “Anxiety and stress levels among youths [in the US] are at an all-time high; they are bogged down with homework, over scheduled with extracurricular activities, deprived of free play and faced with the pressures of getting into a top college”? (Peter Gray, interviewed at www.alternet.org/education/real-problem-education). Think there’s […]