Student's mission changes with different grades

December 28, 2010 12:00 PM Filed in: All Levels

Dear Dr. Fournier: I am a regular reader of your articles online. I am the mother of a 12-year-old daughter who is in the seventh grade. She has always been an "A" student who has not had to work hard for her grades. However, this year the story is a little different. So far, her actual grades have not been bad (As and Bs), but when we average her test scores, they end up being Cs and Ds. Luckily for her the classroom participation and completing homework assignments are figured into her grades.

My husband and I are helping her study each night but feel that our study methods may not be the most appropriate for her. Unfortunately, she seems rather uninterested in studying and unconcerned about her grades. I feel that since this is the first time she has really had to work hard for good grades, she is at a loss for how to handle the pressure. Gretchen G., Lexington, KY

The Assessment: When good students suddenly have difficulty in school, parents often assume that it's due to lack of motivation. While this may be true for some students it's certainly not the case with the majority for students I have worked with over the years. The real reason schoolwork becomes more difficult is that the curriculums expected of students as they make the transition from elementary school to middle school are more complex. The shift is one from convergent thinking to divergent thinking.

For this reason, parents and children must be aware that the purpose of education changes at certain grades. When the purpose changes, the method to achieve success must change too. Students cannot continue to use convergent tactics (like rote memorization) for a divergent curriculum and expect the same results that they had before the focus shifted.

In grades one through six, children are taught basic skills and given the opportunity to practice and repeat these skills until they master them. Basic skills is a catchall group that includes reading, writing and arithmetic, but also include decoding words and meanings, understanding the differences between facts and opinions, identifying the main ideas and supporting information, grammar, punctuation, and language formulation with logic and sequences, just to name a few.

Basic skills are learned through repetition. This is why, regardless of grade, most textbooks start with a review of what has been taught before. It takes all of elementary school for most children to practice these skills until they become automatic.

In grades seven and eight, the purpose of school changes. Basic skills are assumed to be in place. Now, students must use those skills to access information and demonstrate ownership of the information by "translating" it in a unique way. This is best thought of as the ability to paraphrase. Here, the premium shifts from the ability to memorize through repetition in a convergent way to a more divergent, abstract understanding of information that will ultimately lead the student to the creation of new knowledge.

Here are a few examples of how elementary and middle school differ:

In elementary school, students are asked to memorize a poem about a topic. In middle school students are asked to read the poem and interpret the message that the author intended for his readers.

In elementary school students are asked to memorize the dates of the American Revolution the major victories and who led the battles. In middle school the above is given, but the students are now also to compare and contrast the motivations for the Confederacy and the Union stances, and use them to explain why we had a Civil War.

In elementary school students are asked to write a book report. In middle school students are asked to identify with a certain character and explain why the character is important to the book.

Many children do well in elementary school because they develop basic skills quickly. Repetition works. However, the erroneous belief that repetition – having a good memory – remains the key to success as they move into middle school is a common downfall that is a major source of frustration.

What To Do: To find the best learning strategies for your child, begin by recognizing that the destination is different. Help your daughter develop the main skill she needs not for studying, but for learning:

Paraphrasing. Unless your child is able to read, write and do math through explanations of her own, you are ultimately headed for problems.

Instead of working with her to read and answer questions use the time together to discuss that she is learning. Make sure your daughter understands and can explain the cause-and-effect relationship of important events. Challenge her to ask “why?” and help her develop confidence in her own answers.
Middle school is a major transition for students and parents. As you adapt to the new requirements, remember one important rule: If you do something and it doesn't give you the desired results, doing more of the same will not yield different results. The mission must change.

<<Previous page

Tags: Strategies

Children cannot grow two feet taller overnight

December 21, 2010 12:00 PM Filed in: Elementary School

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

Safe school environment means bullying must end

December 07, 2010 12:00 PM Filed in: All Levels

Dear Dr. Fournier: My husband and I recently moved to a new city, and my son is a third grader who is now in his first year at a new school. He has had no problems with school in first and second grades, but this year we noticed that he was sadder, for lack of a better descriptive word. He has been complaining of not feeling well, so much so that I suspected that he was attempting to avoid school. This led to some tension in the house, and has gone on for some time. I was at the school one day to pick up my son, and one of his friends I spoke to mentioned in passing that my son was being bullied! I was horrified, and on the way home I asked my son about it. He literally broke down in the car and admitted that it was true. I am furious about this but I don’t know what I should do about it. What should be done in these situations? Stacy C., Nashville, TN

Dear Stacy: I am very sorry to hear this. Unfortunately, your case is not a unique one. I chose to respond to your question because it is not the only letter that has come in recently concerning the topic of bullying. This is an epidemic that has shown no signs of fading from schoolrooms, hallways, and lunchrooms; so much so that a campaign called “Take a Stand. Lend a Hand.” was created by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Maternal and Child Health Bureau (MCHB).

The Assessment: The answer to the question of what to do about bullying will vary wildly depending on whom you ask for advice. The one thing that I think everyone can more or less agree on is that it takes a group effort. You, your son, and school administrators will all need to be involved in order to effectively deal with this situation. At the bottom of this article, I have posted links to two sites that have a much more extensive look at this problem and solutions than I can offer in a single article. Please take the time to look through the information on them. Be sure to do this with your son, as there are plenty of useful tips, webisodes, and steps that are meant for him directly.

What To Do: Stacy, if your son is the target of verbal abuse from the bullies, one of the most important things he can do is to alert his teacher or teachers. If he has concern that this is “tattle-telling,” assure him that it is not, and is in fact the first step toward becoming part of the solution to help put an end to the bully’s behavior. Also, it is helpful to have a friend or two around. It is an easy thing for the wolf (the bully) to try and single out the member of the herd that he perceives as weak and or alone, so encourage your son to play or sit with a friend or two in the lunchrooms and on the playground. The other reason this is a good idea, though your son may not recognize this immediately, is that this prepares a witness. A bully is less likely to do what he does best if there is a witness that can add credibility to your son’s story if he goes to an administrator. That alone can be enough to deter a bully.

Catching an escalating situation before it has the opportunity to turn physical is the best way to handle it. I have heard from some martial arts people that “the best way to avoid an altercation is not to be there.” In this case, your son will have to settle for preemption. He can go about this in several ways. When dealing with a bully, I used to tell my son that an apple tree couldn’t produce a pear. What I meant by that was that (in the case of bullying) a person who is in pain feels that he must beget pain to make him or herself feel better. With most bullies, we are dealing with people who have a deep sense of guilt that has led to fear; that fear has led to anger, and that anger has led to the desire to expel the negativity via a scapegoat: either him or her self (self-inflicted harm) or another person (bullying, physical or verbal abuse.) When the target is another person, the bully will play the role of an intimidator, looking for someone to fill the role of the “poor me.” If your son has the presence of mind to not give the bully what he wants, it will confuse the cycle of intimidator to victim. He can respond with something as simple as “I see you are having a bad day, bye!” Or, “You are nice, but you are saying some really ugly things right now.” Then he can go tell the teacher if the behavior persists or the bully is intent on escalating the situation.

When faced with the question of physical bullying, most sources will tell your son not to fight back. The thinking behind this suggestion is that it may escalate the level of aggression in the situation, and will make matters worse in the long run. One of the chief problems with an “eye for an eye” type attitude to bullying is simply the typical consequence that comes from fighting. In many cases when children have fought back against their aggressors, both children are many times suspended for the event. This takes me back to the my point that the most effective solution is making others aware of the situation, and preemption by getting vocal to witnesses and or the bullies themselves. That said, there is nothing wrong with your child defending himself. When people hear the words “self-defense,” they typically think of cool moves one does to a bad guy who is assaulting them. However, good self-defense also includes general awareness (Here comes the bully looking for trouble, I can go play with my friend or move closer to the teacher) and the “shoe express,” (namely running.) I give this advice because I cannot advise a course of action in good conscience that may put your child in a more dangerous situation, or one that will jeopardize his standing with the school and with his academics by risking a suspension.

That said, you, or your son may feel better if he enrolls in a program that can teach him some self-defense tactics. However, if you elect to pursue this, do not be fooled. Serious martial artists will tell you that you cannot learn to defend yourself in “five easy lessons” or in an afternoon. You do not want your child to have a false sense of security and comfort in abilities that will not stand up to the test of a real world situation, and can even get the victim hurt even worse because he or she thought that they were prepared. So, if self-defense courses are ever one of the options you are considering, please take the above points into advisement, and be sure that your son understands that he will not become a superhero after one class, nor will it give him permission to use this training without just cause lest he become that which he seeks to protect himself from. Please keep me posted on how this situation evolves with your son, because this is a problem that deserves national attention for the sake of our children’s physical and emotional well-being.

http://www.stopbullyingnow.hrsa.gov/adults/default.aspx
http://www.ncpc.org/topics/bullying

<<Previous page

Tags: Strategies

What does it mean to be a Strategizer®?

November 09, 2010 12:00 PM Filed in: All Levels

Dear Dr. Fournier: In a recent article, you mentioned the Strategizer®, which as best I can tell is a day planner that you developed. However, you also called it an “anticipation” tool. What does that mean? How is it any different from an organizer I can get from any local office supply store? I have tried getting my daughter to use a planner for years, but after being gung ho for a week or so, she always reverts to the way she was doing things before. Can the Strategizer® help? Michelle S., Houston, TX

Dear Michelle: This is a very common question I have been asked over the years by parents when I start their children on the Strategizer®. We are so used to seeing common variants on the same sort of planners and organizers that we question what could possibly be in this one that enables “anticipation.”

The Assessment: The Strategizer® is best thought of as a collection of instructions that I have found work to help children of all ages to address all the intangibles that they are expected to apply daily at school, yet were either partially taught, or not taught at all. This unfortunate reality belongs to no one in particular, as many times both parents and the school system assume that it is the other’s responsibility to teach the fundamental life responsibility skills.

The reason I make the claim that the Strategizer® is superior to calendars, planners and organizers is because the Strategizer is constructed in such a way as to actually teach the user. A traditional calendar or planner assumes that you already know how to effectively use it. However, I have found that this is rarely the case. I call traditional calendars and planners “parking lots,” because they are places where assignments and appointments end up without any plan whatsoever for the completion or the meeting of the requirements the student has written down. There is no anticipation of how to prepare for assignments, prioritize work so that a student will manage his daily work list effectively, break long-term work into manageable (and doable) chunks, or provide instruction in a way that forces the students to answer questions about the way they approach their work.

I have different versions of the Strategizer® that I give to students depending on their age and grade that are meant to develop responsibility, self-reliance, entrepreneurship and visioning, preferably in that order. This gave me the liberty to give older students the pre-college skills they need, while leaving the elementary and middle school versions to ensure that the appropriate foundation is laid so that transitions in the levels of classroom work will be manageable for students by developing the habits required to be responsible and self-reliant.

This may seem like a lot, and it can be. However, the five strategies that I consider to be universal – or core strategies – are present in all levels of the Strategizer®. Each student needs to learn to:

• Prioritize assignments by expected outcome
• Anticipate for the long term with flexible planning
• Break long-term assignments into doable chunks
• Organize tests and papers effectively
• Develop a Home Workplan™

What To Do: Michelle, hopefully this answers some of the questions that you and other parents out there sent to me over the last week about the Strategizer® concepts. I feel that it is a truly unique approach to common problems that will ease parent/child conflicts in the home, decrease stress, teach the intangibles, and lay the foundation for success in both school and in life.

Most of the children I have seen during the last thirty years are more than capable of taking on school’s challenges. To do so, however, they need to know how to take these challenges on. Giving them a step-by-step solution to today’s challenge does not prepare them to know how to face and overcome the next one. So many parents feel they have tried to help their children, only to see their great ideas fail. Children need to learn how to take on their own problems. Different solutions will apply for different children; after all, they are all unique. Telling them what to do is no longer adequate for twenty-first century students who will be expected to take on and solve twenty-first century problems.

I am sending you a complimentary Self-reliance Strategizer kit for your daughter. Please feel free to send me both of your comments and observations as she progresses in learning to be a Strategizer! I wish the best of luck to both of you.

<<Previous page

Tags: Strategies

Learning each day eliminates necessity to cram

November 02, 2010 12:00 PM Filed in: All Levels

Dear Dr. Fournier: You continue to refer to a concept that puts my son and me at odds. He said he didn't have to study for his final exams because you said so. I read the article and tried to explain to him that what you meant was that you need to learn the material as you go along, But my son hadn't. I think you had better explain yourself further. Heather M., Brooklyn, NY

Dear Heather: You are both correct. Your son is referring to my “studying is not allowed” policy. You are referring to the idea that learned material is only in need of a brief review if it has already been learned. You are both correct, but “studying is not allowed” is only effective as a policy if the learning has already taken place each day, and there are no major chunks (like missed learning from previous tests) that have not since been mastered. To clarity the message: There are only two moments to learn something: now or later.

The Assessment: The major reason I say “studying is not allowed,” because I choose to use the term “learn” and not “study.” Mastery of learning is the ultimate destination, and differing methods of studying are simply routes to that destination. Unfortunately, studying the night before the test has become the bitter medicine students must swallow to try and make up for the fact that:

• They have not been learning their daily work

• They have not gone back after tests and quizzes to ensure that they learned the information that they missed.

In either case, this leads to cramming – the path for short-term retention. While it may get them through tomorrow’s quiz, the information hastily memorized through rote repetition will not be retained for the long-term, and will be evident when their final exam grade is poor.

The question is: When do I begin the journey to learning? Every student faces that choice.

• NOW is the independent choice.

The student chooses to anticipate when the test will be, and learn the material as it is presented, or as quickly as possible. This student faces that choice.

• LATER is the robot choice.

The student waits for the teacher to say when the test will be and to suggest what material will be covered. This student waits until the last minute to start the journey - and heaven forbid there should be any obstacles!

Students may be able to get by as a "robot," but that does not prepare them to make independent choices later in life or emerge as an independent adult who is able to succeed in a collaborative workforce.

What To Do: Heather, NOW is the best time to become an independent student focused on long-term goals. You will need planning tools, such as a month-at-a-glance calendar, or my Strategizer that is congruent with your son’s grade level. If you are not familiar with the Strategizer, it is an all-in-one planning, organizing, and anticipating tool that I developed to help children deal with questions such as the one you have, and to help them develop the responsibility, self-reliance, entrepreneurship and visioning skills to take full control of their lives. That said, any planner, calendar or organizer could be used, provided your son understands how to use it properly. As he develops new patterns for learning, here are a few questions he needs to ask himself:

• “What will I need to learn this semester in each class?” If you have trouble taking this broad overview of learning requirements, make an appointment with your teacher and ask for help.

• “How long will it take me to complete each section and be tested?” On a calendar, write the day you believe you must be prepared, Once you have anticipated your “Due Dates for Success,” you can work backward to figure out when to learn sections of material.

• “Did I do all I could today to be ready for the day the learning is due?” Each day, assess your progress.

• “If I had a pop quiz tomorrow, could I make a grade I could live with?” Never finish an assignment without asking yourself this question!

For students who choose to learn now rather than later, last-minute studying is not only “not-allowed,” it is not necessary.

<<Previous page

Tags: Strategies

Thinking; expression enhanced by the power of words

October 26, 2010 12:00 PM Filed in: Elementary School

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

Time management must be learned

October 19, 2010 12:00 PM Filed in: All Levels

Dear Dr. Fournier: Help! My son is having trouble prioritizing and managing responsibilities. He says he feels overwhelmed, has too much work to do and he doesn’t know where to begin. What do you do with the children you work with to address this sort of problem? Sarah M., Nashville, TN

Dear Sarah: "I feel overwhelmed. I have so much work to do, I just don't know where to start," is a line I have heard time and time again.

What adult hasn't felt this way when the "To Do" list at work and at home keeps getting longer? Unfortunately, this feeling of being overwhelmed by work is now experienced by schoolchildren at younger and younger ages.

Beginning as early as kindergarten and first grade, children are overwhelmed not only by homework, but by classwork they were unable to finish. These children’s feelings of panic and dread spread to their parents who are forced to spend hours with their child every night to get through the school workload.

How many hours of family calmness, bonding and togetherness have instead turned into hours of family squabbles over schoolwork?

The Assessment: As adults, most of us fight our feelings of being overwhelmed by work as we schedule our tasks with appropriate completion time:

• I'll do it tonight; it won't take more than half an hour.
• I'll have to do this over the weekend when I will be able to work on it all afternoon.
• I have many errands to run, so I’d better make a list so that I use my time efficiently.

Individuals who understand their personal working capacity can make effective time judgment calls. These individuals have developed the prized skill that involves estimating how long a task will take to complete. Children are not born knowing this skill, and even many adults have yet to develop it.

Students must be taught how to develop a sense of personal working capacity and an understanding of what time is all about. Parents must focus on the long-term issue of finishing school work each night.

What To Do: Discuss with your child’s teacher how you plan to shift your focus from simply finishing homework to teaching your child how to develop a sense of working capacity. Ask if your child can be graded only on the homework he or she completes until you have made progress in teaching how to judge and use time wisely.

At home, you will need a digital timer of some sort that counts down without making noise. It should be placed where your child is working to assure that he or she can see it at all times.

Begin each task by having your child estimate to you how much time he or she believes it will take. Write this time estimate in two places - at the top of the page your child is working on, and on a separate tally sheet with four headings:

1.Subject
2.Time I Think it will take
3.Time It Took
4.The Difference

Regardless of what estimate your child gives, write it down without discussion. If your child estimates three hours for a task you know should take 10 minutes, write down three hours. This tells you how overwhelmed your child is by each task.

Next, have your child set the timer and place it right in front of him. Make sure your child is the one to set the timer not you - because as you teach your child to take control of time, it is important for him or her to take physical control as well. Have your child start the timer and begin the task.

Once it is completed, have your child stop the timer and write the number of minutes left on the timer. You may need to help younger children calculate the time it took and the difference between actual time and the estimate. Have your child record these numbers on the tally sheet, and review the results together. Sometimes, your child may see that a task takes longer than anticipated.

Slowly, you will be able to celebrate with your child when the "guess" becomes closer and closer to the time it actually takes to complete the work. If your child masters this skill, it is a skill learned for a lifetime - not just for one night of homework.

<<Previous page

Tags: Homework, Strategies

New school year means lots to get used to

August 31, 2010 12:00 PM Filed in: All Levels

Dear Dr. Fournier: My daughter just began her third grade year. In both first and second grade, she did very well, but this year her grades have already slipped. The teacher marked that she needs to pay better attention and that she is having trouble working independently. I thought everything was all right. Some people may think I am crazy to get upset, but I don’t want this to turn into the beginning of something worse. Am I overreacting? Martha M., Huntsville, Ala.

Dear Martha: Your daughter is making a transition to a new work environment, which can be a scary situation even for adults beginning a new job.

The Assessment: Let’s take the analogy a step further, Mark. When Jane Doe starts a new job, she has to:

• Get used to a new boss with new expectations and new surroundings.
• Learn the names of twenty-five new people, and get over missing the people she used to work with last year.
• Learn new materials.
• Read the rules everyone has to go by, remember them and figure out how to follow them – plus all the “unwritten rules” – so she doesn’t get reprimanded. It would be terrible if she made mistakes and was labeled as lazy, unmotivated, or was failing to live up to her potential.

Jane Doe does receive some help, however. At her new place of work, she can go to courses on listening, time-management, organization and collaboration with peers as an orientation.

As parents and teachers, we need to give our children the same “breaking in” time some adults get in the workplace.

What To Do: For many children, a successful transition does not happen overnight. When the first six weeks have passed – and report cards have come home – it’s not too late to teach your child how to cope with changing expectations of one or many teachers.
Have your child think of last year. On a sheet of paper, write the topics: Teacher, Students, Classroom (Surroundings), Rules and Anything Else. Talk with your child about the things she misses from last year, and write each item under the appropriate category. For example, this thinking assignment could lead to the following list.

TEACHER:
My teacher used to let us get something to do if we finished ahead of the other students.
She liked pink, just like me.
She read us stories every day after recess.

STUDENTS:
My best friend was in my class. We used to play fun games at recess, and now we don’t have enough time.

CLASSROOM:
There was a bulletin board where the teacher let us take turns putting something up that we liked. It was fun.

ANYTHING ELSE:
We didn’t have to copy much from the board. Everybody read together, and now we have groups and we have to be quiet and work when it’s not our turn.

Slowly, you will begin to see the transitions your child is making all by herself without knowing how to cope with them. Unfortunately, many children cope by becoming sad, withdrawn, or by daydreaming about what they lost and how it used to be.

Now have your child do the same “thinking” exercise about her new environment. Don’t be surprised if this takes at least a week. Your child has been busy missing the past rather than seeing the present.

Once both lists are ready, ask her which items from last year she is ready to let go of because she can see what she has this year. For the items that are left, do one of two things: First, figure out something your daughter can do, like ask the teacher about her favorite colors; or, second, for the things she cannot change put the list in her baby album as memories to share with others.

The first six weeks of school are all too often viewed as the easy six weeks, but they can be a time when children grieve over what they had the year before and cannot get back. Help your child learn how to make a transition into the future without giving up the treasures of the past.

<<Previous page

Tags: Skills, Strategies

Prepare your child for grade-level transition

September 07, 2010 12:00 PM Filed in: All Levels

Dear Dr. Fournier: My child has just finished kindergarten. He did satisfactory across the board, but with lots of work, tears and struggle. That includes me. My child got homework every night. And if that's not enough, he also had to bring home what he did not get done at school. I know there were children in my child 's class who seemed to be able to sit and do the work, but there were a lot who couldn't. Still, each time one of us met with the teacher, she kept telling us that it was just our child Why has kindergarten turned into so much work, and what can I expect as my child enters first grade?

For parents, the start of a new school year can signal only more work and tears, due to a mentality of desire in this country for bigger, better, sooner and more when it comes to education. This has led to upper level curriculums being pushed down and forced onto children who are not developmentally ready to cope with what they are being asked to do.

The Assessment: Today's schools have made common the practice of teaching "older children skills" to younger children and our kids are the ones to pay the price. They are no longer allowed to develop the skills of attention, planning and task completion because they are developmentally ready to understand their own work capacity. They are expected to have these skills in place due to the fact that teachers must increase the amount of time spent on content. For example, take these characteristics from an actual report card:

• Can work independently
• Can work with a group
• Completes work carefully and neatly
• Completes work in a reasonable time
• Seeks help when needed
• Assumes responsibility
• Is able to express ideas

These are but a few of the behaviors expected of a child in a four-year kindergarten, and yet these are characteristics that many adults have yet to develop. Imagine giving a 4-year-old a "Needs Improvement" rating on attention span. What needs "fixing" here: the child or the expectations?

Unfortunately, parents and students face ever-increasing expectations as the child moves from one grade to the next. Even for children who have the developmental readiness to cope with curriculum challenges, some school transitions are harder than others because of increased expectations.

What To Do: Your child will be making one of the toughest transitions this year: from kindergarten to first grade. However, there are other equally tough moves ahead, particularly as children reach the middle school years and transition from sixth to seventh grade, or from eighth to ninth.

Here is a checklist of just a few of the expectations you may encounter:

Kindergarten to first grade: kindergarten is already teaching content we knew in the first and second grades, but there is also teaching of "school skills," such as how to stay seated and how to stay on task. As the kindergarten student moves into first grade, those behaviors are expected to be in place.

Sixth to seventh grade: Middle school is the transition from learning basic skills to learning how to interpret information. Students entering the seventh grade have a major transition as they move into third-level abstractions. For example, sixth-graders study fractions, which they can visualize as "pieces of pie," but in seventh grade they move on to more abstract decimals and percentages.

Eighth to ninth grade: High school students now transition from interpreting to creating, analyzing and synthesizing information. Moving into the ninth grade usually means entering a huge high school building and reporting to six different "bosses." Work is totally departmentalized, and students must manage a multiplicity of criteria.

Each of these transitions signals a new situation in which a student's performance is not based solely on his or her track record. Simply being a year older doesn't mean the student knows how to do the work or meet the increased expectation.

If you have reason to believe your child will have difficulty with any grade-level transition, go to the teacher - before school begins, if possible – and discuss your child's individual strengths and weaknesses. Work to find ways to use your child's strengths in creative ways to deflate some is the inflated expectation.

<<Previous page

Tags: Strategies

Simple instructions, sometimes not so simple

August 03, 2010 12:00 PM Filed in: Elementary School

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

You answers to children’s questions will help in school

June 22, 2010 12:00 PM Filed in: Elementary School

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

Don't cram facts, use context to develop learning

June 29, 2010 12:00 PM Filed in: All Levels

Dear Dr. Fournier: Today was the day for my son’s checkup to see if he is ready for kindergarten. I assumed his hearing and eyes were going to be checked. Instead, he was given a pre-skills test for public school and kindergarten. After about two hours of testing, I was given a list of things my son needs to work on the rest of this summer, including his ABCs, learning numbers through 10, colors, shapes, body parts, directions, motor skills, and his name, address and phone number.

I thought he was supposed to learn these things in kindergarten, not before he gets there. My older son, who is 14, did not have to know this for kindergarten. He is going to be a freshman in high school this fall and so far, he has done very well in school.

How can I teach my younger son what he needs to know without cramming all this down his throat in a month and a half? Kellye P., Huntsville, AL

Dear Kellye: With increased pressure from society to teach more and teach it sooner, schools are changing so rapidly that it’s no longer a simple comparison between the education of our generation and of our children’s. It’s not even a simple comparison between your older son and younger one!
In the span of just one generation, what is expected of one child may be quite different from what was expected of older siblings. A common bond for all of us, however, is moving from the context of school to the context of life.

The Assessment: In our parent’s generation, the Horatio Alger rags-to-riches stories told of poor, uneducated boys who persevered to become presidents of their own companies. In my generation, having a high school degree was sufficient to enter the workforce and success hinged on personal innovation with emerging technology. In today’s children’s futures, education is no longer a choice; it is a necessity.

Does this mean that, as adults, our children will be judged on whether they can name the nape of their neck before entering kindergarten? Will their prospective employer worry whether they can hop on one foot at age five? In the context of school maybe, they can but certainly not in the context of life.

In the real world, education cannot be cut into tidy little pieces. It cannot be force-fed. It is not a list. It is not schooling. Education is the lifelong pursuit of learning by applying knowledge with personal thought, innovation and creativity.

To attempt to cram a list of items into your child, regardless of whether he is developmentally ready for the learning that is required, makes education a goal rather than a means.

What To Do: As a parent, our responsibility is to help our children develop an awareness of learning in the context of life, not to teach a list of facts in the context of school.

To help your child develop an awareness of letters, numbers, shapes, colors and other items that will be required in school, use real life situations to help him understand the purpose behind these concepts.

I have often read instructions to parents indicating how to help teach concepts such as have your child put his foot ‘in’ and ‘out’ of a garbage bag to teach direction and count out the chocolate chips before putting them into the cookie dough. Mostly, these are cute but contrived activities.

But who really steps in garbage bags and counts out cookie pieces? So, rather than spending time on unnatural lesson plans, simply incorporate the language of these concepts into your daily speech. For example:

• Did you wash the nape of your neck when you took a bath?
• Why don’t you wear your favorite blue shirt today?
• Get your blue socks to match and put them over your feet.
• Don’t leave your shoes under the bed.

It is important to speak naturally to your child and when necessary, to demonstrate your words (such as pointing to the nape of his neck before he takes a bath and pointing underneath the bed as you speak about your requests).

Stay focused on the context of life and what is important to your child in the world and you will discover many ways to incorporate and demonstrate the real purpose of lifelong learning.

No matter what activity you share with your child, your primary role is to be a responsible and loving parent, not to act as a surrogate teacher.

<<Previous page

Tags: Strategies

Time is life: Calendars develop responsibility

June 08, 2010 12:00 PM Filed in: All Levels

Dear Dr. Fournier: During the past school year, my daughter has made great strides toward being responsible when it came to her daily schoolwork, but she fell behind every time there was a long-term assignment such as a book report or science project.

We’re barely into the summer break and I can already see her just living from moment to moment. While I do want her to have a chance to relax, I also want her to understand that we can’t always live for just the moment. What can I do this summer to help her develop her long-range planning skills? Treena B., Alexandria, LA

Dear Treena: Every adult has memories of the last day of school. We all ran out of the building for the final time that year with only one thought: Freedom! Our imaginations went wild with the anticipation of doing all of the things that we were not allowed to do while school was in session, like sleeping in and staying up late. Yet most of us learned pretty soon thereafter that our parents envisioned a different vacation for us. For a child, chores and responsibilities can make a long summer seem very short – so it is a great time to learn how to manage time and develop responsibility while still leaving plenty of time for summer fun.

The Assessment: During the school year, children are constantly being reminded of the importance of time, not just in finishing tasks at school but also in their home life. So, it is not uncommon for them to relax as soon as school is out for the summer.

Parents often prod their children with remarks such as:
• Hurry up and brush your teeth, it’s time for bed.
• Get in the car or you’ll be late for school.
• You’re not dressed and church starts in half an hour.

Time hassles children not just in the present, but also in the past tense. On report cards, it’s the category called “Uses Time Wisely.” At home, it’s likely to be an argument that brings on guilt, frustration and anger. Then, these children hear remarks such as:
• You had six weeks to do this project and you’re just telling me now?
• Why didn’t you tell me sooner that you were failing?
• What do you mean you forgot you had a test?

The emphasis on time can be confusing for both children and adults. Although children are expected to finish short-term and long-term assignments on time, many adults have to turn to seminars on time management to learn to do the same things in their daily lives.

“Time” is a difficult concept, but we can use the easy living of summer to teach our children that time is the opportunity of a lifetime.

What To Do: Get a month-at-a-glance calendar and cut out the summer months. Tape them together in a sequence so the entire summer is visible. Make sure to include the month when school starts again so your child learns to manage the transition.

Set a “time” to sit with your child and talk about the calendar. In your conversation, include these two basic points:

1) Time is all you were born with. When you’ve used it all up, you’re gone! So time doesn’t belong to the clock, it belongs to you.
2)Time is your life and a calendar is a picture of your life. Use it to show what is important to you.

Next, have your child make a list of things she plans to do during the summer. The list should include daily events, such as: “I want to sleep late, watch cartoons from 3 to 4 every afternoon and play outside with my friends before dinner.” The list should also include summer projects, such as: “I want to build a skateboard and make a dress for my doll.”

Then help your child add things you know she will have to do that she might not think of, such as: “feed the dog, go to the dentist, get a haircut, and make a card for grandmother’s birthday.”

Now ask your child to fill in her life (her calendar) in the spaces. Have her do it in pencil so each day she can change her life if she needs to. Here is where your child learns that much of her life (her time) is under her control. Finally, have your child write a title on top of the calendar so that you know what to call this later on, something like “A Picture of My Life.”

Each evening, make sure your child crosses out the day gone by so she understands that no matter how she uses her time, that opportunity will never come back again. Have your child assess the next day and make any changes needed in “her life.” Take a long look at the future and focus on the long-term by reminding her, “only eight days left until the fourth of July.”

As summer goes by and your child can see how she can be in charge, you can set her up to take charge of her life when school starts again because now she plans on it!

<<Previous page

Tags: Strategies

Let children resolve boredom alone

July 06, 2010 12:00 PM Filed in: All Levels

Dear Dr. Fournier: I look forward to summer even more than my children. The reason is simple. We “both” get out of school! Yet summers have their own challenges. I plan ahead to make sure my children (ages 5, 9 and12) are signed for as many activities as I can reasonably drive to and still have family time. Sounds like a great plan but I am always faced, no matter how much I try with “I’m bored. What are we going to do now?” When I do not have an answer, the children act as if they are miserable. How do I fill in their “misery” time? Gretchen C., Albany, New Hampshire

Dear Gretchen: Children are trained by school to have decisions about what to do next mapped out for them. This includes time spent at home, because it is often taken up by a homework regimen. Deciding what to do with time is a luxury children do not have, and this can include weekends as well.

Because of these circumstances, it is difficult for children who are trained to “follow the leader” (the teacher) for at least ten months out of the year to know how to do for themselves what they have little experience doing. The freedom to choose what to do is not a skill schools tend to include in their curriculums.

The Assessment: In order to answer the question of your child’s boredom, we must first ask another question: Are parents responsible for quelling boredom by scheduling away free time with activities? Many parents believe the answer is ‘yes.’

Over the years as an educational consultant, I have heard several recurring statements that are what I have come to call the “natural language” of parenting. One of these “natural” statements is ‘I just want my child to be happy.’

Though statements like this are harmless enough, they tend to lead to a Greeting Card Syndrome. In greeting cards, we read cheerful notes such as “May today’s happiness be with you forever!” This is a pleasant thought, but it is a wish for the impossible. The Greeting Card Syndrome is the belief that this is what we can expect from life all the time, and we are shocked and bewildered when this expectation is not met. All of us go through bad times, and life merely asks that we cope with the situations, not meet them with a smile.

For parents, the Greeting Card Syndrome can cause the belief that happiness is a daily vitamin requirement to be given, and then fall victim to the erroneous thought that they are supposed to supply this happiness vitamin to their children.

Gretchen, you are asking that your children learn how to figure out for themselves what to do about boredom and how to do it. Rather than view this as a problem, view it an extraordinary opportunity.

What To Do: Regardless of all you do for and give to your children, there is an intangible gift that could mean the difference between being a follower for the rest of their life or being a leader in all that they do: the capacity to take charge of life through critical and creative decision making.

When your child says, “I am bored,” define the term for your child.

Respond with, “I am thrilled because you are coming to me so I can choose what to do with your time. Since time is a synonym for life, you are asking me to take control of your life and to get rid of that boredom.” Then you must have the courage to take control.

Tell your child he or she can vacuum the house, clean out the garage, collect the garbage, or clean the commodes.” Your child is going to respond, “I don’t want to do that.” Your answer is “There are no other options and doing one of these is not optional. You have asked me to tell you what to do and I have. You will have to do one of these.” You may see tears, anger or any other form of revolt. Pay no attention, and do not allow the child to do anything else until one of the chores is done and passes your inspection.

When the chore is done, let your child know that he/she has the option in the future of deciding what to do before coming back to you and using the word ‘bored.’ It took me only one addressing of the word ‘bored’ in my home. I never heard the word again.

This will require you to have rules about when and for how long children will be allowed to view television, play video games, or be on the computer wasting time, but it will teach them to overcome Greeting Card Syndrome, resolve these feelings of boredom for themselves and to cope with the negative feelings attached to it.

Let all your children know that the feeling of boredom means they are at the threshold of using their imagination and creativity.

<<Previous page

Tags: Strategies

Students: Don’t ruin college chances by picking wrong classes

May 11, 2010 12:00 PM Filed in: High School

Dear Dr. Fournier: Our son is in the eighth grade and the school year will be over in a few weeks. Today, he brought home a list of courses to choose from for his ninth grade year. He must register for the courses now so my wife and I have been looking over the options and discussing with him what he should take. He has picked what I think are too many tough courses and it seems like too much to me. I don’t want to dampen his spirit because he’s excited about starting high school and says he can do it. Should I just let him decide? David E., Blacksburg, VA

Dear David: When children enter high school, they reach an educational turning point. For the first time, schools ask them to become collaborators in determining their future.

As collaborators, they must understand the privilege of selection and with that privilege goes the responsibility of thoughtful reasoning before decisions are made.

The Assessment: Selecting courses for high school is like charting a route on a map to arrive at a certain destination. In charting both road maps and academic maps, one concern is paramount: You must know where you are headed to avoid wasteful detours.

Setting goals to reach your destination is especially important for students entering high school. Unless they have a plan for the future, they cannot become true collaborators. Instead, they will continue to do as they are told, do as they see others do, or do as they please based on the amount of free time they want now or in their senior year of high school.

In order to draw a complete academic map, students must know why each course is a good choice for their destiny and how these courses need to be timed to reach their goals.

What To Do: David, you should help your son find his own academic path. This does not mean that as an eighth-grader, he must decide today what he plans to do with the rest of his life but he should have some idea of his destination. Once he starts on his path, he can always take different twists and turns, but he needs to stay turned toward his goal.

Here are some guidelines to use for helping him prepare realistic goals:

Make a plan: Have your son write his planned destination after high school. This could be college, vocational education or work. For example: “I will major in psychology in college,” or “I will go to vocational school to learn how to be an airplane mechanic.” Let your child know that changes to this plan are always okay. He may want to start with a general field of interest such as, “I like to work with computers,” and fine-tune his choice as he learns more about possible careers.

Research the destination: Have your child research his planned destination. If he plans to go to college, have him visit the library and check grade point averages and high school course requirements of at least three colleges that are viable choices for him. If a particular college is the destination, have him write for a catalog and general information on the college or go on its website and view and/or download this information. Or if he plans to go directly to work, have him call three places that hire high school graduates and ask for the company’s employment requirements. With this information, your child now has the parameters for making his decision because he has defined the possible destination.

Match high school courses to destination: Have your child review all course offerings at his high school. He should mark the courses required by his state for graduation and spread these out over his four years of high school.

Select electives carefully: Have your child mark additional courses he wants to take. These electives should be strategically selected and based on reasoned thinking. Your child may want to explore a subject he has not taken before but might enjoy. Some elective courses may support the child’s destination; others may not.

Avoid overload: Have your child list how he will distribute these courses during the four years of high school in a way that minimizes overload. Have him write the grade he must get in each course for each subject in order to end up with a grade point average that will open doors later in college, vocational school or in a job. Your child will then be able to weigh how much work he will need to put in each year of high school to meet or exceed grade goals.

Now your child is ready to collaborate with his teachers and guidance counselors to determine what he needs for the future. Any child that has not completed his own rigorous inquiry about state graduation requirements, elective courses and where he is headed in life will not develop mind wealth. This is also a child not ready to speak with a counselor about subject planning for his high school career.

Our nation has too many students that go to teachers, advisors or counselors for all the decision-making on classes. If they do this for four years of high school, it should be no surprise to parents they will do this in college and end up with a degree that leads to a dead-end street.

The first and most important step for your child to learn now is to take ownership of the present with a self-developed compass as to where he is going.

<<Previous page

Tags: Responsibility, System, Strategies

Insignificant for you is opposite for child

April 27, 2010 12:00 PM Filed in: Skill Sets | Elementary School

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

Certain skills needed for taking the ACT test

March 30, 2010 12:00 PM Filed in: High School

This is a college entrance test, not an achievement testRead more...

Tags: Strategies, Skills

Writing with a pen spells big trouble for children

April 06, 2010 12:00 PM Filed in: All Levels

Dear Dr. Fournier: My daughter holds her pencil in the most awkward way. Her writing is as difficult for me to read as it is for her to write. We agonize over homework writing assignments as well as other homework. She has no problem with math at home yet she has a hard time making her numbers readable, so much so that the teacher deducts points off for wrong calculations. The school psychologist tested her and found no learning disability. That means I cannot get any help from the school system for her on this. Our pediatrician says nothing is wrong.

I am frustrated, as she is, because teachers continue writing on her papers, “Redo this. I can’t read it.” She now has to write cursive, which is a nightmare, plus, her teachers want her to use a pen instead of a pencil. Do you have any advice for me? Sharon D., Springfield, MO

Dear Sharon: Problems with fine motor skills, such as writing, usually spell big trouble for children in school.

The Assessment: Students are expected to learn through verbal commands from teachers or from written commands in textbooks, workbooks or ditto sheets. Most of these commands require students demonstrate their understanding and learning in writing. For the child with an awkward pencil grasp, this may be a monumental task. Even though she understands the material, her writing does not adequately demonstrate that knowledge.

Asking a teacher to give an oral assessment to the child is usually impractical. But there are other ways to help a student with fine motor difficulties without asking the teacher to do additional work.

What To Do: Ask for a teacher conference but prepare for it thoroughly by researching and analyzing your child’s academic problems.

First, pick a current assignment in each subject and time your child as she reads directions and finishes work. How long does each assignment take? What strategies does your child use to complete the work? Does she have the required knowledge but seem unable to express it in writing? Track her progress and analyze the timed results to determine which assignments are most difficult for her.

For each difficulty you can identify, develop solutions to present to your daughter’s teacher. Remember that each solution must meet one criterion: Your daughter must do the intellectual work required of all students to master the knowledge at hand.

Here are some possible scenarios with possible solutions:

1) Writing sentences from an English book and underlining each noun takes an hour and 10 minutes. Photocopy a month’s worth of pages and have your daughter identify the parts of speech by underlining only. (This can be done for math computation drill exercises also.)

2) Computing 10 math problems takes 55 minutes because your daughter has trouble spacing the problems on the page so they don’t run together. A possible solution is to fold the paper into six blocks (vertical in half and horizontal in thirds). Write a problem in each box and have the child stay within the box to compute the problem. Answers will be in a square at the bottom of each box. Have her do as many problems as she can in 30 minutes, or at least half of the work. If she completes a sufficient number correctly, then she has shown mastery. Otherwise, she will do the rest of the problems the following evening.

3) Redoing work because of ink takes up valuable time. Have your child use only pencil so that errors can be erased instead of crossed out. This also lets your child produce neat, legible work that she can be proud of.

4) Writing in cursive causes homework delays. Have her do work in manuscript, except handwriting assignments.

Teachers want to help their students but they must fulfill their own responsibilities, first. Your solutions should not require the teacher do more work in order to use techniques that respect your daughter’s differences. In a parent-teacher conference, you can work collaboratively to find solutions that will benefit all three learning partners - student, educator, and parent.

<<Previous page

Tags: Skills, Strategies

The story of an eighth-grader’s life

April 13, 2010 12:00 PM Filed in: All Levels

If school is a desert island, subjects are the bridge off the islandRead more...

Tags: Skills, Grades, Strategies

After Spring Break, what now?

April 20, 2010 12:00 PM Filed in: All Levels

Parents can’t get children back into a routineRead more...

Tags: Homework, Strategies, Responsibility

Take a break from studying?

March 16, 2010 12:00 PM Filed in: High School

Dear Dr. Fournier: My son has had a very difficult year in school. He’s a ninth-grader with mid-term exams after spring break. Since these grades will be on his permanent record, I’ve told him to forget about a spring break vacation and instead, to use the week to get a head start on preparing for exams. He says he’s tired and wants to rest. How do I convince him to use this time so that he won’t be up all night cramming before his exams? It seems like such a waste if he doesn’t use this time to get ahead. What is your advice? Suzette S., Chicago, IL

Dear Suzette: While your comments seem to make a compelling case that your son needs to use spring break to get a head start in preparing for his exams, this school “holiday” was instituted for a reason: Students (and teachers) need the break.

The Assessment: Just as adults look forward to an annual vacation from work, children anticipate spring break from school. While learning how to break from a routine is important, we need to learn how to break constructively so that when we come back to work or school, we are refreshed and not overwhelmed at the thought of having wasted the week when we could have been getting ahead.

Many adults prepare for a vacation by lugging along work-related reports, books or other materials and one of two things happen: They sacrifice vacation time for extra work and thus feel that they had no break or they return from a peaceful break feeling guilty that they didn’t get any work done.

In a slightly different fashion, two things happen with parents as spring break approaches. They want their child to have the break from school but they also have a desire that their child not fall behind in school (or in your case, Suzette, that your child get ahead on preparing for exams). This leads parents to try to turn a child’s spring break into an extra week of schoolwork.

Children, no matter what grade and age need a time to rest while parents need to be assured that spring break will not interrupt school progress. The solution is to negotiate a balanced plan for rest, study and commitment.

What To Do: Before spring break, have your child show you a calendar with exams and projects filled in for the rest of the school year. If he doesn’t know what will be coming up beyond spring break, have him meet with his teachers to determine how much new work will be covered in class and how much previous work will be covered on exams.

Once all the information is in place, have your child create a test preparation calendar that breaks down the general concept of “studying” into three specific actions:

• When notes will be ready for review
• When he will make and take a practice test
• When he will review the tests with teachers

Scheduling must take into consideration his regular homework load, long-range projects and other regular activities such as sports or music. If your son wants to take spring break off, he must demonstrate how he will shift the workload to compensate.

This calendar is your child’s realistic commitment to preparing for final exams. The completed calendar puts your child in control of learning and sets plans for responsible action when spring break is over. Your child will be able to take a rest from the school routine with the knowledge that he knows what needs to be accomplished – and when – after the break is over.

As a generation that attempts to fill every second, we lose a lot of productivity to heart attacks, anxiety, depression and other stress-related conditions. We need to teach our children that a break is healthy and legitimate in the life of a person who is in control.

<<Previous page

Tags: Grades, Strategies

School Expectations Change In Seventh Grade

February 16, 2010 12:00 PM Filed in: All Levels

Ideation is the missing link that stumps many seventh graders
Read more...

Tags: Strategies, Grades, Homework

Child Can Spell At Home But Not In School On Tests

February 09, 2010 12:00 PM Filed in: Elementary School

The child’s spelling problem stems from dependence issuesRead more...

Tags: Homework, Strategies, Responsibility

Homework Problems Stem From Lack of Plan

January 19, 2010 12:00 PM Filed in: All Levels

Mom doesn’t help by fostering procrastination in daughterRead more...

Tags: Homework, Responsibility, Strategies

Student Doesn’t Need Occupational Skills - Yet

January 12, 2010 12:00 PM Filed in: All Levels

Basic skills are not inherent and still must be lessons taught

Dear Dr. Fournier: My child is the most disorganized human being on the planet! I try to get her to write her homework and other assignments down in her notebook and to put all her handouts in one place and that has not worked. I’ve bought books, pads, special notebooks, trappers, calendars and planners for her, all to no avail. She doesn’t use them to get organized. If anything, she uses them to become a bigger mess. Is there any hope for us or am I expecting too much? Katie W., Pensacola, FL

Dear Katie: Do parents expect too much if they ask their child to go to work and do their job? Probably not. But do parents ask too much if they confuse teaching with telling? Definitely.

When we select a new dentist, we assume that if the person has the title of dentist, he or she must have the occupational skills that go with it. We do not arrive at the dentist’s office and demand, “Let me see you hold the drill,” or, “Let me watch you mix a filling to see if you do it right.”

The occupational title makes us feel secure that the dentist has been told, taught, mastered what was taught, passed state boards, and practiced the trade. The dentist has a major advantage over a child who, at the age of five or sooner, begins the 12-year occupation of student. The dentist goes to school to learn the occupational skills required. But when our children arrive at their workplace (school), they are expected to have many of their work skills already in place.

The Assessment: When our children don’t have the occupational skills of being a student (and these increase in amount and complexity for each grade), we use the quick fix, “I'll tell them what they have to do.” Apply this theory to your dentist. Would you want to be examined by someone who was only told how to drill a cavity?

For students, it takes more than telling for your child to learn important occupational skills, such as organization, time management, task analysis, completion of commitments, prioritizing, self-assessment, recognition of positive and negative consequences, independent learning, and planning for achievement with responsibility.

These are not topics of courses taught in school, but each skill is essential for children who are growing up in a world where what they learn is quickly eclipsed by new knowledge. Unfortunately, at times we are so intent on giving our children current knowledge that the essential task of teaching them how to be independent, self-directed and continuous learners for the grade they are in and to build on later, is glossed over.

What To Do: Katie, a memo pad or a calendar with a day or a week-at-a-glance feature are the precise ways to tell children what they must do without teaching them skills that will make them lifetime learners. It is no wonder that so many children say “no” to a technique that makes no sense for their lives.

A memo pad or a day-at-a-glance calendar is a technique many adults use. However, through experience these adults have incidentally learned pre-skills for the larger tasks. We can’t assume a child has mastered the skills of task analysis with appropriate logic and sequencing, time management, resource assessment, prioritizing and forecasting, to name a few.

Statistically, 25 percent of all children can innately carry out this kind of adult organizational skill. But that also means that 75 percent cannot! Yet they could if they were taught with the same expectations and effort that we place on mastering reading or math. So, when your child doesn’t do what you have “told” her to do, ask yourself, “What am I assuming my child knows how to do that she probably doesn’t?”

Many times, I have found the problem to be in my assumption rather than in the child’s desire to please.

All children need to, grade by grade, learn what ultimately will be the full array of these adult techniques. To accomplish this, however, they simply need parents who can recognize their child’s age and their non-negotiable need to be taught. Parents do not necessarily ask too much of their children, but sometimes they just ask for what a child cannot learn by just being told.

<<Previous page

Tags: Skills, System, Strategies

Hassle-Free Homework^{^®}

Dr. Yvonne Fournier :: Article Archive 2010

Student's mission changes with different grades

Children cannot grow two feet taller overnight

Safe school environment means bullying must end

What does it mean to be a Strategizer®?

Learning each day eliminates necessity to cram

Thinking; expression enhanced by the power of words

Time management must be learned

New school year means lots to get used to

Prepare your child for grade-level transition

Simple instructions, sometimes not so simple

You answers to children’s questions will help in school

Don't cram facts, use context to develop learning

Time is life: Calendars develop responsibility

Let children resolve boredom alone

Students: Don’t ruin college chances by picking wrong classes

Insignificant for you is opposite for child

Certain skills needed for taking the ACT test

Writing with a pen spells big trouble for children

The story of an eighth-grader’s life

After Spring Break, what now?

Take a break from studying?

School Expectations Change In Seventh Grade

Child Can Spell At Home But Not In School On Tests

Homework Problems Stem From Lack of Plan

Student Doesn’t Need Occupational Skills - Yet

Hassle-Free Homework®

Dr. Yvonne Fournier :: Article Archive 2010

Hassle-Free Homework^{^®}