Yet

Short and powerful, the word “yet” gives you an effective tool for helping children work through frustration. Here’s how you can use it, based on suggestions from the book Choice Words. If your child tells you, “I can’t!” and shows signs of distress or anger, use the phrase, “Not yet.”  Seems almost too good to […]

Homework

We work with a range of clients on a continuum of school experiences–public, private, homeschool–some involving homework, some not. Recently, we’ve been receiving requests for help in managing the homework process. In our home, we witness the miracle of a 10-year-old who gets a snack, followed by careful focus until she completes her work. For […]

Cycles

Our class fish, Sky, died a week ago. The picture shows him on his first day with us, a light purple flash swimming near the green plant. Even though we’d all experienced the death of pets before, the moment still shook us up. One of our students, age nine, who found our fish floating, said […]

Stumble

“This thing we call failure is not the falling down but the staying down.” –Mary Pickford Last night, the clock on the stove read 12:27 a.m. when the first real chance to post a blog yesterday happened. Shoot! My goal with this blog was to do 40 consecutive days. After a great start, I ran […]

Artplay

Artplay. OK, I made that word up just now. Perfect for this topic. Just like my hands made up this design of color tiles last week. Even if we’re not “natural” artists, allowing ourselves some time to create each month is key to recharging our batteries, stimulating problem-solving in other areas of our lives, and just […]

Overgeneralization

You may want to call an “Excessive Use of New Skill” penalty when your little adventurers branch out into new arenas. Exhibit A: our preschool doctor in this photo from last week—“Excessive Treatment of Microscopic Wounds!” As children explore the range of uses for their new skills and tools, overgeneralizing is a natural step in […]

Wall

As parents, we want to know about our children’s lives at school. And those questions, for many kids, are dreaded ones. So sometimes they yank our chains, or shrug, or mumble. What about that one-word answer? Or the surly “I don’t know what I did!” And some other times, what they think is cool they […]

Celebrate

One night at dusk my son and I missed his sister, who’d just returned to her mother’s house for a few days because we share her custody equally.  The house felt empty. As he rummaged around in the kitchen drawers, he kept asking and asking for her, making the emptiness more pronounced. When he stumbled […]

Laughter

One day last week, after a gazillion challenges in getting out the door with our curious three-year-old, we finally made it to school. “It’s like a big sticker,” I heard him say to himself. “It’s for mamas to use. I’m just going to stick it right here on my leg.” What does he have now? I […]

Purple

“Ms. Weis, Ms. Weis, the big kids won’t let me on the swings!” the student said. Supervising our students, my colleague and I knew that playground time was when all the serious social trouble happened. In asking the boy to say more, we found out that he hadn’t actually asked to use the swings. Ms. […]