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Apr 2009
Pat On The Back v. Helping
April 28, 2009 12:00 PM Filed in: All Levels
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Dear Dr. Fournier: I was just
reading your article in the Examiner on parenting
and I agree basically with your approach. With no
parenting qualifying degrees, me and my late
husband raised four offspring and are proud of
them as adults.
I have seen the problems and the problems are us parents and grandparents who don't have a clue that we should be in charge, and how to be in charge to achieve the outcome that is wholesome and produces productive adults in the end. I am currently volunteering on a project here in Little Rock with the "Children’s Defense Fund" to host a summit on the "Cradle to prison pipeline.” As we outline action plans, I want to do the parenting piece. I have been trying to find monies for one of the finest grassroots, systemic, world class parenting initiatives launched. What do you know of resources and or foundations that could be helpful |
The Assessment: First, congratulations on your achievement. As proud as you are, your success is the result of your capacity to parent by living through disappointments, fear, pain, joy and every other emotion imaginable that every parent knows too well.
A parent is the CEO of their child’s education. However, this is far easier for some parents to do than others facing barriers you don’t know because you have never faced them. For many families today the problem is that parents and grandparents do not know they should be, nor how they should be, these CEOs.
However, to say that your solutions to the parenting issues you faced are THE solution for all parents clearly indicates that that you have not yet had a true grassroots experience.
Grassroots movements know that we do not find answers in the grass – we find them in the roots.
You will never know what systemic changes must be made to help all parents be CEOs until you are willing to know what you don’t know about the roots that love as you do yet laws and regulations keep them from food, water and sunlight.
It is clear that to attempt systemic change you must know where the external systems fail and become barriers to parents so that they one day can say, “I did it! I raised my children to give and have hope,” as your children have.
What To Do: Look at your title. Is this a conference title that says to parents, “Come to a safe place to get the tools to parent your child to success?”
Who is your audience? Is it parents? If so, I would not go. I would know you have already pre-judged me and that you think you are saving my children from me! Is your audience the very political agents who must change the laws? If so, is this for self-serving reasons – let’s save ourselves from the evildoers?
First, I strongly recommend you train in grassroots participation and leadership. You cannot give people your shoes to walk in as the solution to all their ills. However, you could walk in theirs and find out why you were successful and they were not.
Ask yourself if you want a conference to have a platform to tell your success story or if you want a conference so more parents can have success stories. Organizations will be hard pressed to fund chatter sessions that make the righteous feel more righteous.
For funding organizations I suggest you research the William T. Grant Foundation and The Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation. In addition, refer to Education Week, on line edition, March 16, 2009, “Education Philanthropy Catching a Chill as Economy Cools Charitable Giving,” which includes a table of the nation’s 10 wealthiest foundations. By researching each of these you may find the one that funds what you are interested in: grassroots research and development, systemic change, and/or national conferences.
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Red-Shirting At Kindergarten Level
April 21, 2009 12:00 PM Filed in: Pre-School
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Dear Dr. Fournier: My daughter is contemplating keeping her 3 yr. old from starting kindergarten at age 5. She’s in a lottery-based, pre-K program for 4 yr. olds. If he doesn’t win entry into the pre-K program, he will then have 2 yrs. before kindergarten (starting at age 6, instead). This pre-K is extremely academic. Children are learning such things as the States, etc., and, it’s expensive. Do you have any advice on red-shirting boys for kindergarten? |
The Assessment: From beginnings in college sports, coaches red-shirted an athlete to keep the player from playing for a year, most notably to give the athlete time to gain physical and cognitive as well as emotional maturity.
The term has been pushed down to pre-schoolers whose parents must decide whether to put their children in kindergarten at the age of five or wait to give them a developmental advantage.
The reason a five-year-old would need a developmental advantage in kindergarten is because it’s no longer designed for five-year-olds.
It’s structured to please researchers and educators who think the solution to our educational system’s failure is to get to kids sooner. They have colluded in convincing parents that pre-school and kindergarten are the places to set firm foundations to prepare your child for college. What nonsense!
This concept has become so accepted as fact that even bright people with common sense are drones in the belief that if your child is not reading by kindergarten either you are a failure or something is wrong with your child.
You can see this in the volume of over-prescribed addictive medication and the proliferation of special education classes to correct what natural development and appropriate expectations would have done on their own. Had I not lived the reality of this myself many times over, I might have become a Stepford Wife to the “more, and sooner, is better” curriculum.
Can children sustain the pressure of a pushed-down curriculum? Yes, in the same way girls who have started their menstrual cycles at age 11 can tolerate a pregnancy at that age.
What To Do: Children have different ages: Chronological, physiological, psychological, emotional, education-learning ready, cognitive, social (with known children), socialization (with new adults and new children), experiential, language skills, spiritual, empathetic, sensorimotor, listening for directions, new challenges and more.
After visiting the classroom in which you plan to place your child, ask yourself whether you feel he/she is “age appropriate” in the majority of the categories above. If yes, just understand that your child is in development and will continue to develop. Once in school, indicate to the teacher any areas of concern but take care to do so in a positive way and not a negative one. The good thing about pre-school is that should you believe you have made a mistake, you can pull your child out at any time without it being in their record.
If you do not believe your child is ready in most of the categories, then your answer is clearly red-shirt.
By the way, placing a child in a school of any level without visiting it is like buying a gold mine off the promise there’s gold in those hills. You’d better inspect it first to make sure it’s not fool’s gold.
And, if you pull a child out, ask yourself if maybe you had excessive expectations before you look to a problem with the child. Should your child do well, that’s great for you and the child. If not, don’t get discouraged. Some of the world’s great leaders and thinkers were late bloomers, even failures before great success (President Abraham Lincoln).
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Confront Unexpected Without Crisis Mode
April 14, 2009 12:00 PM Filed in: All Levels
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Dear Dr. Fournier: My son is a seventh grader doing well until he got a 48 on a major test in a subject he had an A. Next, another teacher calls saying he is missing a homework assignment that will bring his B down to D if it is not turned in. Other than that, I have a really good kid, no behavior problems. I have punished him, taken everything away and he says he is sorry. When is he going to grow up and be responsible? |
The Assessment: Let’s start with the end of your letter about when your child will grow up.
Even though the world may call your son a teenager, he is still a child, in the rehearsal years of school when grades do not count for life.
Whatever happens later will depend on what you do now.
From your actions toward him on this issue, he is learning how to handle problems with others when he is an adult. The way you are confronting him now is teaching him how to confront others now and later: with fear and irrationality. This is how he will act as a husband, a father and an adult in the workplace.
School alerts parents of work habits a child is struggling with. With societal pressure for more education biting at their necks, teachers are being harassed to teach more content. Rather than teach good work habits, schools expect children to already have them. That means teaching work habits (also called work ethic) is up to you.
What To Do: A child with an A usually does not have a problem learning content. So, find out what it was about this test that made a difference. You will not be able to know that without seeing the test and your son’s responses. Here are reasons I have found:
As for missing homework, a child with an A usually does not knowingly self-sabotage. Here’s one example I discovered with a child: A teacher at her school asked the student to run an errand and while she was out of the classroom, gave assignments verbally. When she returned, no one told her the assignment, not even the teacher! Solution: Talk with your child and with the teacher about missing homework and make sure this is an oversight the teacher will not do again.
With calmness, analysis and reasoning, each of your issues is easily dealt with. Even if your child makes all A’s, learning to confront the unexpected without a crisis mode will last a lot longer than the content he leans. Basic skills and work ethic are forever. Content changes and so will what your child must know from now to when he is 25 and older.
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Stop Medicalization of Education
April 07, 2009 12:00 PM Filed in: All Levels
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Dear Dr. Fournier: You recently advised parents to seek treatment for their ADD/ADHD children “only if absolutely needed.” ADD/ADHD is not just “a cluster of behaviors” or an “educational difficulty.” It is a neurological disorder. Is it possible that you may be marginalizing ADD/ADHD by way of wrong medical advice? |
The Assessment: Many books and print articles present studies funded by the pharmaceutical companies as “scientific” evidence. This often traps readers with one-sided arguments that cause them, sadly, to become biased crusaders for what amounts to speculations or hypotheses. They do not continue their search for the reliable scientific proof that many of these studies claim to uphold.
Equally available are many studies, which challenge the reasonableness of diagnosing ADD/ADHD unerringly, ubiquitously, and uncritically. The outcome of a study begins and ends in its author’s unpublished assumptions. Those held about ADD/ADHD by pharmaceutical concerns invariably advocate medication for a condition that has no exact method of diagnosis.
This is why, when a child is being “tested,” teachers and parents fill in questionnaires referring to three behaviors: inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsiveness. When parents’ and/or teachers’ scores, added up, reach a certain number, the responses suggest that the child has behaviors, which are “above the norm levels.”
My husband and I have worked as a team for over 20 years. He is a developmental pediatrician and I am not just an educator, I am also a pharmacist.
When a child is referred to us, we each conduct a careful assessment of that child for ADD/ADHD. Our goal is to keep both teachers and parents from diagnosing. It is for the physician to rule diagnoses in or out, and for the educator to prescribe educational strategies that prepare the child to rein in his/her impulses, avoid distractions, and control levels of activity.
ADD/ADHD is not about choosing “to try medication.” Should amphetamines, psychologically addictive drugs, etc…, be “tried?”
What To Do: I start at the opposite end: what not to do. Do not give medication to a child assuming this is “the” solution to behaviors the teacher considers disruptive and/or a hindrance to the child’s learning.
First, trained educational counselors at our office implement an educational retooling program. The child’s homework is used for content. He/she develops new habits that gradually help them cope with distractions while still attending to teacher instructions or to the work at hand. Should the educational approach not have the desired effect within the time frame that the teacher and parent deem acceptable, medication may be prescribed.
Medicines offer a window of opportunity to grasp the child’s maximum attention and improve his/her ways of dealing with school tasks and the expected behaviors. That window begins to close the moment the child starts on medication. Why? Because we would like to avoid an increase in dosage before change starts. This strategy works with almost all children whose parents have the courage to try it. Unfortunately, some are too scared by “what the teacher will say or do if she knows my child is not on medication” because the system, equally beholden to the dogmatic assertion that ADD/ADHD is a neurological – implying organic rather than functional – disorder, at times does retaliate against the parent.
This country believes we must mend our weaknesses, thus we need “coping crutches.” When the crutch is an addictive drug whose long-term “collateral damage” has not been checked out by research, then I say, since developmental/educational treatment has a chance of working, try that first.
If you disagree, at least read why Canada has banned Adderall® and why marketing of ADD/ADHD drugs must include warnings of the potential for increased suicidal tendencies. Gain awareness of “the other side of the story.” Understand that whether ADD/ADHD is organic or functional, the initial treatment should tame the symptoms at a safe cost, that of causing minimal side effects.
And while we’re at it, let’s reject the medicalization of education.
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