By Laurie Hollman, Ph.D. 

When children reach their teen years, they’d like to believe that they no longer need any instruction or advice from their parents. Yet they continue to need the same loving care, but in new ways that respect their growing autonomy. 

Central to teenagers’ needs is the ability of their parents to listen to them and to respect their ideas, points of view, feelings and intentions. This requires that parents learn to listen nonjudgmentally without interrupting, correcting or blaming. When a teen feels heard, she feels respected and forms a good relationship with her parents.

How do parents effectively listen to their teens? 

It’s important that parents take the time needed to have both casual and serious discussions with their teens. Beginning with casual discussions opens the door to conversations about more serious issues. Hanging out with your teen, talking together in the car, doing chores together and setting rules and boundaries together all allow teens to feel confident that their parents care and respect them. Respect is key to having your adolescent want to talk with you often and openly.  [Read more…]

Your child is growing and learning. This growth involves more than just their bodily size. Their brain function, their understanding and their physical traits are growing too. Everything in their lives can impact how they grow.

Your child learns through interaction He or she knows hot from cold through experience, and develops an understanding of good and bad from your guidance. They are constantly picking off and absorbing information from all sides and learning. Psychologists say that this period, particularly below five years old, is where they are at their most impressionable. [Read more…]

Over the decade’s talents in children have come into focus, but new parents may have a hard time going about finding it and encouraging the same. Before dismissing your child as void of talent because they don’t do anything you deem special, some talents include critical thinking and listening. Don’t assume that being an athlete or a musician is all there is when talking about talent. Educate yourself on the types of talents that there are to be able to spot them.

Parents and those around the child, including teachers, should have the ability to nurture talents. Even if you’re unsure, there are specific skills children have that make them stand out. Once you notice those, place them in contexts where they can sharpen those skills. Doing so at an early age makes them equipped to carry forward those abilities into their future careers. It also makes the selection process of their career path more natural as they will likely gravitate to those jobs where they can utilize their strong suits. It opens their minds their minds to aspire to be SABS Ontario professions or working to be in a state university school board. [Read more…]

Emotional intelligence has been and will be around for years. The importance of the same is increasingly coming into public awareness. The narrative insists on how crucial it is to teach a child the same at a young age if they are to become emotionally healthy. Babies in their early stages of life learn through observation, but there are things that, when they are much older, parents can do to further their children’s emotional vocabulary. While these ideas are not exhaustive, it sets the foundation for further reading.

Reading emotions

Our faces tend to react in the same way across the ranges of human emotions. The way then is to show children various facial expressions and ask them to guess the feeling. There are materials, and yourself too, that display the range. You can also use different shows on television. It does not have to be cartoons, even a men’s barber shop Toronto show will work. When done enough times, they will be able to read other people’s emotions better. [Read more…]

By Kate Snow

Kids’ sloppy mistakes in math driving you up the wall? Learn 4 simple steps you can take to improve their neatness and accuracy in math!

Some kids seem to be born with the desire to write neatly…while others need a whole lot of convincing. (And I know, because I have one of each!) While messy handwriting can make it hard for kids to express their ideas in any subject, it’s especially a problem in math. That’s because every single number matters. If you mistake a 6 for a 0, or a 2 for a 7, you’re going to get the problem wrong.

My son Henry has never been a big fan of pencils, and I did a lot of scribing for him when he was younger. But now that he’s in third grade, his fine motor skills are much stronger, and he’s developed much greater stamina in writing. Sloppy mistakes have been starting to prevent him from showing what he knows on his math assignments, so I decided recently it was time to take some action. Here’s what I did. [Read more…]

As parents, it’s natural to want the best for our children. But sometimes, the way we go about parenting them may bring more harm than good. While there is no set rulebook on how to parent a child, it is imperative that we are considerate of our actions since they have the power to either positively or negatively affect them.

Keep reading below to learn the five ways how your habits are negatively affecting your kids:

1. Acting hypocritically: if you don’t follow your own rules, your child will do the same

Don’t tell your child not to do something and then do it yourself! This contradictory action confuses them with understanding what is acceptable versus what is not. If you’re a hypocrite, a child will be unable to perceive consequences for actions. For example, warning your child about the addictive qualities of alcohol but simultaneously choosing to drink it with every meal is counterproductive. No matter what you say, your child will ultimately reflect your behavior since you are the leading example in their lives.

2. Being a helicopter parent: invading too much of their personal space

We don’t need to know what our child are doing every second of the day – especially our teenagers. What children want most is the space to understand themselves and experience the world around them on their own terms. If you’re constantly acting as a helicopter parent to your child, you’re going to make them feel emotionally “suffocated” and anxious with every action they do, which is a recipe for turning your child into a rebel, liar, or both. They will compare the parenting style of their friends’ parents to yours, which will, in turn, make them question both your authority and credibility and cause them to feel more inclined to do things behind your back. [Read more…]

By Faith Collins

As a parent of a preschooler, I know how easy it can be to feel that you’re “putting your life on hold” while your children are little. Or conversely, it can feel like you’re trying to live two lives at once — one with your children, and the other while they’re cared for by someone else. Many parents struggle with how to integrate their conflicting roles and learn to love the life they live with children.

This quandary is one that parents can work to resolve. It is possible to embrace the early parenting years and also live a full, satisfying life. Use these creative approaches for enjoying the moment and learning how to find fulfillment during this extraordinary time of life:

1. Teach your children to be enjoyable human beings.We all want our children to be happy, but contrary to popular belief, letting them be in charge doesn’t lead to increased happiness — for us orfor them. The same skills that make children enjoyable to be around, such as good manners, patience, and dealing with frustration, are also the skills that promote future success in their schooling, relationships and careers. Realizing that it’s not avoiding disappointment that keeps children happy, but learning how to recover quickly and move on, enables you to minimize the power struggles.

[Read more…]

By Faith Collins

We know from decades of parenting research that children do best when adults act from a place of loving authority (high expectations paired with high warmth). However, as anyone who is a parent can tell you, sometimes this is more easily said than done. If staying calm is a challenge for you, rest assured that you’re not alone in this struggle. Children bring out the best and the worst in all of us, and being a parent is difficult in ways people don’t understand until they experience it. In addition, many of us were on the receiving end of anger from our own parents, and even if we vowed “never to do that,” we tend to revert to what we grew up with when under stress.

Despite the fact that anger gets triggered so often in parenting, working to control our own behavior is vital if we want the best outcomes for our children. If you’re striving for a mutually responsive relationship, but anger keeps getting in your way of responding kindly and consistently, use these four tips for maintaining self-control.

1. Don’t wait until your patience runs out. If you wait until you’re at the end of your rope before setting boundaries, the possibility for explosive interactions is significantly higher. Instead, work on setting those boundaries as soon as that first spike of annoyance hits. Setting boundaries before you’re fed up allows you to respond to a child’s likely disappointment with compassion rather than annoyance.

2. Start over. When your interactions with your child slip beyond annoyance into anger, this is the crucial moment when things are still salvageable. If you suddenly notice yourself yelling, an easy way to change directions is simply to stop mid-sentence, take a deep breath and say, “I don’t want to yell. Let’s start over again.” This can feel awkward the first few times you do it, but it can be surprisingly effective. Truly, it’s possible for the interaction to turn on a dime and go from confrontation to connection in a moment. Perhaps your child will need a hug, a snuggle or a silly song to reconnect. Then you can move forward again on the same team.  [Read more…]

By Dr. Susan Bartell

October is often when parents seek help for a struggling child because by this time, teachers and parents are becoming aware of a child’s academic, social and emotional struggles. It is important to seek help promptly in order to avoid a child falling even further behind in the challenging area.

It can be confusing to try to figure the exact problem(s) affecting your child’s success because in some situations different underlying concerns can produce similar academic or emotional responses. It is important to find the true underlying cause of your child’s struggles as soon as possible so you can provide the best intervention as soon as possible. Therefore, I offer you a roadmap so that you will know which steps to take based upon the observed difficulties.

[Read more…]