Category Archives: education

When (and when not) to Talk to Your Kids About Sex

Q. While listening to one of your insightful podcasts, “Mom, When Can I Start Watching Porn?”, I heard you say “that the best time to start introducing your children to the mechanics of sex and how babies are made and born is between 4 and 6, before it becomes embarrassing, shocking and awkward. If you are saving “the talk” until kids ask, you may wait forever.” I have two daughters, ages 5 and 1. I always answer their questions as honestly as possible except when she was three and I was pregnant. She asked: “Mom, how did my baby sister get in there?” Not prepared, I froze. What, when and how do I share the answers to her future sex ed questions before she is too embarrassed to ask me?

A. Don’t wait for the questions. They may never come. Sometime, ask her, “Do you remember when I was pregnant with your sister, and you asked me how she got inside me? I didn’t think you were old enough to understand then but now I think you are. Would you Read more…

Are You Looking at School Success the Wrong Way?

Do you teach your children that their school performance is for you? That’s one way to diminish school motivation.

All parents want their children to love school and learn lots. For too many children, the school years are a prison sentence to be endured. School often falls short of its intended role to encourage and motivate children’s natural love of learning and instead has become rules and curriculum to satisfy a set of statistics. School must be handed over to our children. They must know they have their parents support in doing the best they can. Some kids flounder. There are many possibilities s to why.

When a child thinks he must perform for a parent or a teacher, motivation drops. When he believes he is not meeting your expectations, it drops even more. To have intrinsic motivation to learn, children must feel good about themselves. That should be the number one goal of education. That means adjustment within the system to suit each child’s manner of learning. Hard to do. Much is left up to parents.

Never lose sight Read more…

How to Talk to Your Kids About the Hard Stuff

After the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary, I wrote an article called Look for the Helpers inspired by Fred Rogers. I am redoing it with the same basic
message—sadly because so much more has happened. Not only has gun violence increased, but our democracy and our climate are threatened. Whatever side of the political spectrum you fall, the recent overturn of Roe vs. Wade by the Supreme Court requires discussions with your children. How do you assure their safety at school? How do you tell them that the highest court in our nation has undermined the liberty of women?

My son just gave the commencement address at the high school where he teaches.
He too was inspired by Fred Rogers’ words:

“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother
would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are
helping.’ To this day, especially in times of disaster, I remember my
mother’s words and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still
so many helpers—so Read more…

How to Ready Your Kids for Financial Success from the Beginning

As parents, our goal is to prepare our children for adult life, independence, and successful living. A key component of this is ensuring they have the best understanding of personal finance as possible. However, this can be a daunting task, especially if we, as parents, may not be modeling the best behaviors when it comes to our wallets. Here are some helpful ways to set an example and educate your children on the importance of understanding their finances.

Examine Your Own Relationship with Money through the Eyes of Your Children

As we know, children mirror us, watching everything we do and imitating both our best and worst behaviors. Extensive research done on this topic shows that kids copy us all on their own, and that these behaviors become part of their personalities. This extends to watching parents and caregivers navigate their relationships with money. Think about how you act when you take your kids shopping.

Do you make expensive purchases to relieve stress? If so, your kids will likely follow suit, creating a pattern early on of emotional spending.
Do

What are the activities that help with the development of children’s skills?

“PLAY! When children play, they are in fact learning. This is true for adults too. For infants, parent-guided play is great for eye tracking, voice and face recognition. These can all be done by holding, talking and singing to a baby or moving an object left and right so they can follow it with their eyes. The PlanToys PlayGym is great for infants. As they get older, they will work on fine and gross motor skills. Pulling our Rainbow Alligator or moving beers from one hive to another with our Beehive set. My favorite

We live in a school culture within a parenting culture that expects its children to fit in and embrace that culture.

For many children acculturation happens seamlessly. But for at least 1 in 5 children*, it requires giving up oneself, shifting off base, and surrendering to a non-nurturing authority. In other words, understanding that you are wrong and the other is right. Parents are expected to take on the role of enforcer using consequences, threats, punishment, withdrawal of what is most cherished—coercive tactics to manipulate children into being who they are expected to be.

These are the children we see as defiant and oppositional. The square pegs society tries to fit into its round holes. And if they don’t adjust enough, they become the troublemakers, the problems, the ones we fear our children will grow up to be. These are the children who are tough to raise and who cause problems in classrooms.

At home, they fight the rules and argue every direction given. Parents complain they never listen, won’t do as they’re told and refuse to comply. At school Read more…

12 Ways to Encourage School Motivation

As this school year it’s entering it final months, parents are thinking about how to help their kids finish up with a flourish. Here’s 12 ways to encourage school motivation.

Parents typically and unintentionally teach their children that their school performance is for the parent and the teacher—not for themselves.

Parents place so much value on grades and performance that the message to the child is, I care more about how you do than what you do. For too many children, school is a prison sentence to endure, and if they don’t do well, they are a huge disappointment to the most important people in their lives. We need to hand over education to our children and let them know they have our support in doing the best they can but not our disapproval if they don’t.

Jacquelynne Eccles, professor of psychology and research scientist at the University of Michigan, has said, “… motivation and engagement in school on average drops as they move from the elementary school into the secondary school system. You see it in attendance, in Read more…