Children cannot grow two feet taller overnight

December 21, 2010 12:00 PM

Dear Dr. Fournier: If a kindergartner is reading, writing and academically above kindergarten level, with great learning potential, would you recommend advancing him/her? I guess I’m looking for determining factors since such a move would surely impact the student’s remaining school academics and school years. Debbie, Tuscon, AZ

Dear Debbie: It is natural for a parent to shriek with delight when they are told that their child is performing above the level of his or her peers. When this happens, the tendency is for the parent to then seek to match the child’s level by either “accelerating” the pace of the curriculum, or “promoting” the child to the next grade level. Many parents are thrilled with this development, and they can then say with pride to other parents that their child is enrolled in an “accelerated” curriculum.

Be warned, however. The promise of the accelerated curriculum is a dangling carrot, hanging there to entice the parent into taking the bait. What is this bait you ask? The bait is to fall for the erroneous belief that your child can grow two feet taller by tomorrow; the idea that teaching our children enough quantity is better than ensuring that the quality of learning is acceptable, or that the material is being taught with the depth that goes beyond passing tests.

The Assessment: The poignant line in the film “Summer of ‘42” comes to mind whenever I have to make a major decision: “For everything you take with you, you leave something behind.”

While loving parents may want to advance their child, the real question is not, “What will we gain?” but “What will we give up?”

For a child to have success in school, I believe they must have at least three things:

1. Cognitive readiness to learn what is about to be taught.

2. Behavioral readiness to carry out the actions considered to be appropriate responses to tasks and social interaction; and

3. Emotional security to cope with new challenges without fear or humiliation or reprisals.

Your letter indicates that this kindergartner meets the first criteria and has something to gain by advancing a grade. But what will this child sacrifice, behaviorally and emotionally?

Until you can answer that question, you are not ready to make this decision that will affect long-term learning and personal development.

What To Do: Create an accurate scorecard of what your child will gain versus what he or she will lose in each category.

For example, despite potential gains, what will this child give up cognitively?

The calmness with which the child is learning now.
The time to explore other skills.
The possibility of turning above-average grades into an average or below-average performance at higher skill levels.

Behaviorally, the child may gain increased stress and may have to give up:

Family time due to increased homework and learning expectations
Time and opportunity to socialize with age-appropriate peers.
The opportunity for a 5-year-old to be treated like a 5-year-old – because, for the rest of the child’s life, he or she will be expected to learn, behave and demonstrate competency at the level of children one to two years older.

Emotionally, what will this child give up?

The opportunity to develop confidence, relish success, and fuel an inner desire to achieve continued success – all critical elements in what we call “motivation.”
The possibility of being a leader rather than a young follower.
The ability to learn how to connect with age appropriate peers without being overwhelmed or fearing rejection.

Decisions about school based solely on a child’s cognitive ability are what I call “off with their head” decisions – as if we guillotined them from the rest of their being.

The determining factor is what happens to a child’s heart. I have learned that the more we give our children, the greater our list of what we take away. As parents, we must make sure that anything we take away is to make their lives better – not more stressful and fearful.

<<Previous page

Tags: Strategies, Skills

Thinking; expression enhanced by the power of words

October 26, 2010 12:00 PM

Dear Dr. Fournier: My son has always scored low on vocabulary on his achievement tests. Although he doesn't make bad grades on what he writes, it's not anything all that great, either and the vocabulary is simple. When he has to read books for school, he is always asking what a word means. I make him look it up in the dictionary. He hates to use a dictionary. What can I do to help? Justin G., Raleigh, NC

Dear Justin:

In response to your question, I would like to give a simple example of how important word choices can be. Below I have collected a few translations of a classic haiku by the Japanese poet Basho to show how dramatically different the moods conveyed are by the word choices that were made by the translators:

Summer grasses – traces of dreams of ancient warriors
the summer grasses
all that remains
of fallen soldiers' dreams
The summer's grass!
All that's left of ancient warriors' dreams.
summer grasses - all that remains of warrior’s dreams.

Basho

Though the gist of all of these translations remains the same, chances are that there is one that you like above the others. The reason is the attention and thought that was given to the words that were used when translating this poem from its native Japanese.

When your son writes papers, he is probably not expected to translate Japanese poetry, but what he can take from this example is an awareness of how words have subtly different meanings. Is ‘left’ a better choice than ‘remain;’ does ‘ancient’ work as well for effect as ‘fallen?’ Your son must understand for himself that there is tremendous power in the words we choose to use in both speaking and writing.

The Assessment: Struggling for words can be as frustrating, though not as life threatening, as struggling for air. Have you ever had a thought that you wanted to convey, and yet you felt paralyzed while searching for the perfect word? Or have you ever listened to someone else, unable to follow their thoughts because of their choice of words?

Words are important, and we all must develop a sense of "preciseness" that is best described as a sense of nuance. Words are the clothing of our thoughts, and our minds are like closets in which we carefully organize this wardrobe. Words allow us to “dress” in different ways appropriate to the occasion in all that we say, read or write.

Words expand our children’s thinking capacity beyond their current level when they read, hear, see, feel, smell and experience, in general, everything around them.

For this to happen, however, we have to know what makes each word unique. Although a dictionary can tell you a lot about a word’s meaning, it does not stimulate you to reflect immediately on the nuance that makes that word different from all the rest. Without this understanding, our children will not know how to arrange this “wardrobe” in their “closet.”

What To Do: Give your child an easy-to-use thesaurus and insist that he use it. By using a thesaurus, a child is able to accomplish the following:

• Quickly assess what makes the word slightly different from the others.

• Recognize the roots of words and word families.

• Associate words into a family of meanings as the child transitions from the elementary school skill of reading for a family of sounds.

Most of all, using a thesaurus helps our children learn the thinking skill of discernment. When children learn to discern between the message of one word and another, they also increase their thinking capacity. Mastery of this skill will allow your child, through his own choices of words, to show the world the unique person that he is. In this regard, there is no better tangible gift than a thesaurus and no better intangible gift than the skill of discernment.

<<Previous page

Tags: Strategies

Self-reliance: The key to understanding working capacity

August 17, 2010 05:34 PM

Dear Dr. Fournier: I read your very helpful article about using a timer to teach kids how long tasks take. I would like to try this with my 5th grade son. I especially like the idea of keeping the log showing the difference between the child's estimate and actual time it takes to do a task, however, I have a child who always underestimates how long things will take. What would you suggest for when the task takes longer than his estimate? How would you record this on the log? The timer won't help him keep track of the extra time it takes. Thank you for your interesting article. Lynne, Columbus, Ohio

Dear Lynne: School is about learning reading writing, arithmetic and much more. Yet all this learning is not enough for your child to be successful now or later. Along with the basic skills we must start early teaching our children the personal leadership skills that that with a firm knowledge base, will make them shine and be noticed. During the years of kindergarten through fourth grade, the focus of leadership is on developing responsibility.

Responsibility means your child knows that completing tasks and learning whenever these are due is not optional. Of course, we help our children learn responsibility, first by modeling and then slowly having them determine the steps they will take to be unstressed and responsible.

Once responsibility is firmly engrained, we are able to move on. The next leadership skill is self-reliance. Why? As our children grow older, they will increasingly be expected to make commitments. They must know how to judge a task, based on what they know about themselves: what are they able to do in how much time. Without this knowledge they may commit to complete tasks with the best of intentions. Yet we all know that good intentions are not always enough.

Self-reliance is about trust. Spell out the rule: In life, if you can’t trust yourself, why should anyone else trust you? Before accepting a commitment, make sure that you are capable of honoring your word. Honor and respect must be given to you by yourself first, before you can expect anyone else to do the same.

When making a commitment, your child must know how to do the task or be willing to learn, and must agree to having it done when it is due. Should he commit, he is saying, “I trust myself to get this done well as was requested.”

The Assessment: As our children go from grade to grade, both the amount and the complexity of what they will be asked to complete and learn will increase. That is why starting to learn how to judge the amount of time a task will take is vital to your son’s future success.

What To Do: Lynne, your son underestimates the time tasks will take. The danger of this underestimation is that he opens himself to procrastinating. Too often procrastination results in rushed, poor quality of work. For some it even means not having the work done at all when it was due.

Inability to estimate how much the time a task will take (working capacity) has additional potential negative consequences: the outward appearance of lack of responsibility often results in labels such as careless, disorganized, lazy, inattentive, unfocused, and unreliable. Even if your son responds with what he would consider “reasonable” excuses, he has set himself up to be a be considered a student that cannot be trusted.

Have your son write his homework assignments in the order that makes the most sense for him to complete given the other responsibilities he has for the specific day. Next, have him write the time he will begin each assignment and the time he believes it will take. Once he has assessed the entire evenings work, have him use a timer for each assignment. For example, he will begin his social studies assignment at 5:30 pm and he expects the assignment will take 30 minutes. Once he begins the task the digital timer should be in a place he can see as he works. Should the timer go off, he should once again ask himself how much more time the task will take. He should start the timer again.
He may set it for 20 more minutes, yet he completes the task in ten more minutes. Now he knows that the next time he has a similar task (even if it is in science) he should budget 30 + 10 = 40 minutes.

As he sets criteria to judge each task your son will get better at judging his working capacity for any given task. The other benefit is that many children intuitively find better, more efficient strategies. Knowing that he is at 40 minutes sets the stage for him to decrease his time on a task by using his creativity to find more efficient methods.

Children who do not develop an intuitive knowledge of their own working capacity are setting themselves up for failure. This will be a source of stress because they will not trust themselves to do what is expected in school and later in life. If they cannot trust themselves, why should anyone else trust them?

After two weeks help your son identify the tasks that he severely underestimated. It could be reading a science section and answering the questions. He may read and understand quickly but the questions ask for many specifics and they must be written in full sentences. Analysis of why he underestimated could be that your son only gave himself time for the reading thinking that answering the questions would quick and easy. Instead the opposite was true. Conversely, also look for the assignments thought were overestimated. The math problems he thought would take an hour actually were done in in forty-five minutes. and will seem less daunting the next time it comes around.

Each time new he begins new assignments, have him go back to the log of similar assignments. Now he has a guideline for good decision-making through effective estimation.

As your child carries out the “research” phase on learning how long different task really takes he is going to be ready for future grade levels that will expect more done in less time. Knowing his personal working capacity work is a powerful tool to build trust in himself and be trusted by peers, teachers and parents.

<<Previous page

Tags: Responsibility

Grades show what is left for the child to learn

August 10, 2010 12:00 PM

Dear Dr. Fournier: My son, Sam, is in second grade. As bad as this may sound he has been tutored every summer and school year since junior kindergarten (which he went through twice). His teachers all believe he has an attention problem. He takes Focalin 10 mg. every day. Even with medication the teacher complained. His medication was increased only to end up with a child that lost his “funnies.” He lost his smile and everything sweet about him. We had to lower the medication to the 10 mg to get our child back. We even tried other medications but all of them had the same awful effect. Sam likes his friends at school but tells me, “I don’t ever raise my hand. And the teacher still calls on me!” This makes him angry because he feels the teacher is (and the other children are) making fun of him. He is only happy when he makes an A on one of his papers. At home he doesn’t even want to look at the other papers. He would rip them up if it were not because he has to take them back to school. We have worked on Sam’s attention problem only to end up with an angry and sad child. What do I do? Susan M., Naples, FL

Dear Susan: This eight year old child has already experienced the repeating of junior kindergarten, (which includes seeing his friends move on while he is left behind), testing, labeling, medication so he is able to learn, humiliation in class, no summer vacation in four years and goes to more school (tutoring) after school. I think this sums up the reasons this child is both angry and sad.

The Assessment: All the “help” Sam receives has taken away his joy. However, your letter does show some light at the end of the tunnel. The one thing your son seems to celebrate is making an A on his work. It is time to stop and attempt to see life through Sam’s eyes.

What To Do: Your question was “what should I do?” Let’s rephrase this question to “What have I not done?” Before you continue to look for faults in your son, give him a chance to let you know what he feels is right about him. You may be surprised to find that he may have already been telling you this for a long time.

Parents send children to school with the hope that they will perform well. Many parents say “Good bye,” in the morning and add, “Do a good job.” Sam knows he is not doing a good job because he uses the same measuring stick his teachers and society do to determine how well is doing. That measuring stick is called a grading scale, and the measurements are called grades. Unfortunately, many children as young as Sam do not know that the ground between an ‘A’ and an ‘F’ has gradations. Adults know this, but many children are not told exactly what this scale means, so they define the measure of their work on their own.

For example, a child I recently tested brought in samples of her graded work. She too was angry. As soon as she finished a task I asked her to complete, she would say, “I did bad on that.” I told her that none of the work she did would be graded. Despite this assurance, she graded herself anyway, and her grade was always indicative of failure by her use of the term “bad.” It did not take long for me to realize that in her mind her work was either good or bad, and only good or bad.

I asked her to go over her graded papers of the week before. Just like Sam she would be happy when she could say, “I made an A on that.” However, she did not want to look at or go over the papers with other grades. Finally, I stopped and wrote out a grading scale, and asked her to tell me what each grade letter meant. This is simply an example of how adults sometimes take for granted the idea that children intuitively understand their language. This child had been in school for three years, and no one had stopped to tell her what each grade meant. Here was her grading scale:

A meant Awesome
B meant Bad
C meant Cold
D meant Dead and
F meant Forbidden.

A grade is a marker to show what still needs to be learned. If Sam receives a score of 75 on a test, celebrate! He has learned seventy-five percent of the material that was covered. Now he has only twenty-five percent more to learn. Missed learning only becomes dangerous if it is material that is left unlearned, because it will create a deficiency in his foundation of basic skills and will continue to affect any subject matter he covers in later grades that is dependent on his mastery of these correlating basics.

The solution is fairly simple, but it may require you to reexamine the way you perceive a school grading scale as well. First, we will give Sam a new way of interpreting the letter grades he receives. Here is his new secret code:

A meant Awesome
B meant Best
C meant Courageous
D meant Daring
F meant Future, for this missed learning I will learn in the immediate future.

When parents and teachers get to the point where they feel that they have done everything and don’t know where to turn, the best thing to do is to listen to the child, who more than anything just wants love and acceptance. The only way a child will feel this is through the words and actions of those whom he wants to please the most, so it is extremely important for the child to feel that his parents see his or her strengths instead of focusing on and drawing too much attention to weaknesses.

<<Previous page

Simple instructions, sometimes not so simple

August 03, 2010 12:00 PM

Dear Dr. Fournier: I get so frustrated with my son. I tell him to do things and he starts and then forgets everything else. When I get angry, he says he can’t help it - he just can’t remember. He cries when I punish him. Even after he is punished, he still does this. He just doesn’t listen. Kerry, TX

Dear Kerry: It is easy to confuse hearing and listening. While your child may be hearing your instructions, that does not mean they have learned to add the mindfulness and attention required for listening.

The Assessment: Parents can help their children develop the mindfulness necessary to capture the message intended once we know hearing is not an issue.

Before trying to develop this skill in your child, begin by listening to yourself. Think of a typical set of instructions you give your child and count the individual steps required.

For example, you may give what you believe to be a simple instruction: “Bring me your laundry and make sure it’s ready to be washed before I get busy with dinner.” However, this command requires at least seven steps:

1. Go to your room
2. Get your dirty clothes
3. Take them to the laundry room
4. Separate them by color
5. Add them to the right stacks
6. Empty out all pockets
7. Do it before dinner.

Although parents view their instructions as simple and to the point, they are often quite complicated for children.

What To Do: Kerry, begin by giving your child an instruction that has no more than three parts. Once you have said the instructions, go over it again and teach your child to separate the tasks with you.

“Let’s see how many things you have to do. First, go upstairs,” you might say while holding up one finger. “Second, get your dirty laundry. Third, bring it to the laundry room.” Next, ask your son to find one word to represent each of his three fingers, such as

1. Upstairs
2. Laundry
3. Laundry room.

Now your instructions have been broken into individual tasks and clarified. By having your son give one-word summaries, you will also know that hearing has taken place.

Once he can complete three tasks with one instruction, move to four and then to five. By then, see if he can quantify and summarize (find key words and create a sequence from these: upstairs, laundry, laundry room, separate, group, and done!) on his own.

Your son's ears are responsible for hearing, and his mind is responsible for listening. Try not to confuse these two skills - one is innate, the other you must help to develop with practice and patience.

Mindful attention from our children begins with calculated and thorough teaching by parents.

<<Previous page

Tags: Skills, Strategies, Responsibility

Set rules to help child enjoy ‘homebody’ days

July 20, 2010 12:00 PM

Dear Dr. Fournier: I have tried to find activities for my ten-year-old son, but every time I suggest something, he says, “no.” He won’t go off to camp; he just wants to stay home.

During the school year, he has friends over some weekends and will play sometimes after school with a neighbor. But after a few days, he goes back to wanting to be alone. He doesn’t seem unhappy. He loves to tinker, loves art and builds incredible things with building sets. I know he also needs to be with other children. How do I get him out of the house? Linda M., Lexington, Kentucky

Dear Linda: In a fantasy life portrayed on television and in the movies, the happy family always includes a best friend – a pal, a playmate – for the kids.
For generations of TV children from Opie Taylor to the characters on the O.C., a best friend has always been close enough to share antics, adventures, and sleepovers. Beaver Cleaver could leave it to Whitey, and Angela Chase ran wild with Rayanne Graff. However, when it comes to the idea of Home Alone, the movies then tell us that a child must be left alone by accident, not by choice. Now for a message from reality: There is nothing wrong about wanting to be alone; or enjoying it!

The Assessment: As parents, it’s important to listen to our children’s messages about what is important to them. Many adults wait until middle age to learn that fulfilling the need for personal and private time – and space – is OK.

Having time alone allows us to indulge ourselves, and occasionally, to discover strengths we might not know that we possess. This is a time the mythologist Joseph Campbell, famed for his Power of Myth interviews with Bill Moyers, calls a period of “creative incubation.” It is a place where you can simply experience what you are and what you might become. Many people have to take steps to re-learn how to develop this side of themselves later in life, so if you see this as a quality your child already possesses, understand that it is a gift.

What To Do: Linda, whenever your son expresses the need to be alone, set down some rules as if he were having another child over to play. Start by talking about the things he enjoys while he is alone. If he simply wants to watch television, then that’s not enough. Help your child think of the fun things he likes to do, such as painting, building, collecting rocks, or sculpting from clay. Keep the list on the refrigerator door, and as your child has “homebody days,” he may think of other activities to add to the list. This list will be more for your benefit now than your son’s in the future. It will help you accomplish three things:

1) It will help you make suggestions as to what to do on “homebody days.”

2) It will help you know the types of supplies to keep in stock around the house, such as watercolors, a tool kit or clay. These items make great gifts for birthdays or special occasions.

3) It will help you remain calm about your “homebody.” You will know he is developing his creativity, and is doing exactly what makes him happy.

Learning to rely on ourselves in times of joy and sadness is a very important quality for both children and adults. Help your child use his time alone to learn self-reliance, trust, and decision-making that are unique to his own needs. If he can develop these now, he will not be faced with this predicament later in life.

<<Previous page

Tags: Homework

You answers to children’s questions will help in school

June 22, 2010 12:00 PM

Dear Dr. Fournier: We have twins going into the second grade this fall and they both made A’s and B’s this past school year. Even with this, the teacher wrote us a note that the girls should practice reading everyday this summer.

During the year, they were supposed to read to my husband and me every night for 15 minutes. It was a chore for both them and us. It just seemed to last forever. They were sleepy; we were tired, so many times we just let it go. We know we’ve got to do reading this summer. But is there some other way we could work on reading with girls without it being a torture? Susan S., Columbia, SC

Dear Susan: Although reading is essential for your children’s success in school and in the future, you and your husband should not feel guilty because the task seems like such a chore.

The Assessment: Reading can be broken into two main components. Mechanical reading, which is emphasized in the classroom is one and the other, easily assumed or often overlooked, is meaningful reading.

Knowing how to read means that you can read the words, tell someone what you read, and answer the questions someone else gives you. This is an example of mechanical reading.

Knowing how to read also means knowing what to read, why you want to read it, whether the reading fulfilled your purpose, and what the reading did for you or left undone. This is meaningful reading and it happens when you recognize how reading adds to or changes your life.

Most schools today emphasize mechanical reading, expecting the student to answer questions or retell the story in the teacher’s or the book’s language. Mechanical reading is important, but when it is taught in isolation of meaningful reading it becomes just another chore.

When you combine the two components, the task of reading suddenly comes to life. Children apply higher-level learning skills as they create their own questions or add their personal interpretations to a story.

What To Do: You have already supervised your children’s mechanical reading. During the summer, change your focus to meaningful reading and, as the meaning takes hold, you and your husband may see the mechanics come easier.

How do you begin a program of meaningful reading? Simply read when there is a reason for reading! This will serve two purposes. First, it will help your child develop a personal interest in reading. Second, it should decrease your feelings of guilt at not spending a certain amount of time on reading each day.

As you enjoy summer together, listen for your children’s questions or statements. For example:

• “Mommy, can we drive to Hawaii this summer?”
- The easy answer is “no,” but the response to make that will help them with reading is, “Let’s find out.” Take them to the library and get a book on islands or on Hawaii. Establishing this habit helps your children learn that reading can help answer questions or concerns.

• “Mommy, I miss Grandma. I wish she hadn’t gone away.”
- Reading a poem or scripture can tell your children their feelings are valued and let them go on in spite of the hurt.

• “Mommy, I can’t sleep. I’m afraid of lightening.”
- Reading from a book that explains a physical phenomenon such as weather can help calm their fears.

As your children practice meaningful reading such as the examples listed above, they will also learn that reading is not confined to books. A second-grader can enjoy magazines, newspapers, and even reading from a cereal box, street sign or elevator buttons. As they bring their imagination to reading, children will lift some of the arbitrary limits that mechanical reading creates for them.

There is reading for giggling, for which joke books are great. There is reading for snoring, for which bedtime stories are good. There is reading for any purpose, just fill in the blank.

Just make sure you avoid reading for struggling or reading for guilt by putting the meaning back in its place.

<<Previous page

Tags: Strategies

Insignificant for you is opposite for child

April 27, 2010 12:00 PM

Dear Dr. Fournier: My child called from school for the first time frantic about a playground incident that he thought was killing him, yet when I arrived, it was a simple misunderstanding with the teacher about a kickball rule. How can I get my child to understand things like this are not a life and death issue? Martina M., Ocean Springs, MS

Dear Martina: Is there a parent who doesn’t drop everything and run to school after receiving such a message? Most parents would do exactly what you did.

Your child had become upset when he felt a game was played unfairly. Upset about the teacher’s call, your son called out to his classmate, “You cheat!”

Other children in the class reported his unsportsmanlike conduct to the teacher, who without question gave him one check mark for poor behavior. But by allowing students to be the judge, the teacher unwittingly allowed these children to feel in control, and they took the punishment further.

Once out of the class, the empowered children continued to deride your son who was left defenseless.

The Assessment: When you arrived at school, you had to step back and question, “For this I left my office?” The entire incident seemed petty, but you said that this was the first time in six years of school that he had called with a voice of despair.

Naturally, you had many questions to consider: Why did such a small incident loom so large? How should I treat it? Was there something to be learned from the situation?

The answer came from your son’s original plea: “I’m humiliated!” The issue was not the incident itself, but the fact that the child felt humiliated.

Hurt is legitimate, no matter what others think about its cause. And hurt is not to be judged by its size, but by its very presence. It just hurts! When asked why he was humiliated, your son replied, “The teacher just punished me and didn’t even talk to me. Everyone tells children to say what they feel. I did it, and now everyone hates me!”

You and your son discussed this incident with the teacher, who explained to him the purpose of the process. But you want him to learn more than just how to cope with this one situation.

This child also needs personal strategies for coping with the hurt of peer humiliation rather than allowing it to accumulate from incident to incident, not knowing how to let go of the pain.

What To Do: As we listen to our children relate “stories” from school, we must remember that perception is reality. In other words, it does not really matter if our child’s side of the story is right; what matters is how our child perceives his role in that story.

For example, children are often wounded by name-calling. To adults, the answer seems simple: Don’t listen to the names. We tell children to “let them roll off your back.” But we must remember that the way the child perceives this name-calling is by feeling hurt and humiliated. That hurt is very real, and we should not minimize our child’s feelings by dismissing the event as petty and unimportant.

In our discussions, we need to help our children understand that all pain has a message. It is our choice to listen to the message or to disregard it and only hold on to the pain. To minimize the message, however, is to minimize the feeling.

Legitimize your child’s pain by recognizing that feelings are, in a way, our body’s barometer of how we cope with the challenges of life. As much as we want our children to have good feelings and to be happy, we must help our children recognize hurt feelings so they can take on life with strength rather than fear it to avoid pain.

Once you have shown acceptance of your child’s feelings, then try to help him separate and understand the message: What really happened here? In learning to cope with different situations, children need to understand that there may not be a “right” or “wrong” answer. Many people can view the same situation differently, and by legitimizing our child’s views we also help him expand his capacity to deal with disagreement.

<<Previous page

Tags: Strategies