Why Children Fail IN School

Posted on by Attay, "Teacher Mom"

One of the biggest reasons why children fail in school is because parents are just too busy or just not attune enough to the early signs of a problem brewing. Not that they are totally oblivious or too slow spotting the cues, it”s because they are preoccupied with more pressing problems.

So what am I talking about?

Simply that they are in the daily grind of life to have much time to stop, question and recognize the need to intervene.

But here’s an interesting fact. Even the busiest mom can fail proof her child before he ever enters first grade. If only she knew!

The Early Years Tell a Story

Here’s the thing! You can predict your child’s future pretty accurately, pretty early on in life. If you understand this from the day he is born you can rest easy. You have a whole lot to do with how he turns out.

You shape how well he does in school. You shape how well he turns out as a teen. If you can internalize this simple truth then you have it made.

The good news is it’s simple and easily accomplished. The trick is, and this is the catch, it must begin very early in your child’s life.

Here’s what this all boils down to. This is when the script to your child’s future is written. Because the truth is, you are the author and the architect of his future.

My Newest Granddaughter

It has to begin almost from birth – yes that early. Because by the time he starts school it’s already too late.

If you can internalize this simple truth you are home free. You never have to worry about an under performing child with discipline problems at home and school which in turn can lead to more serious problems for the family down the road, when he is a strapping teenager… believe me it does not take much time to get there.

The bottom line. It can be devastating for you and his self esteem and self confidence. It can lead to issues with the school and teachers, causing serious conflicts which sometimes costs families more than just their sanity and peace of mind.

Turbulent School Years

It doesn’t have to be this way. With a bit of foresight and planning, a little investment of time and energy and a good dose of patience, early in your child’s life, you can arm him for success in school and beyond. Not to mention secure your peace of mind and

My Grandson

avoid the problems of an under performing child in the turbulent school years head.

This is the time to success proof him. It will keep him from bad behavior, poor grades; low self esteem; peer pressure and the teen year blues.

This is especially easy when they are still very young and pliable. If tackled early you will be less likely to suffer from the brutal teen years that families with teens sometimes go through.

There are other important reasons why you need to start this process early. Your relationship with your school going child will be stronger and more trusting. You will cope better with, stress and anxiety over your child performance in school and be able to work together to get better results.

So the best way you can hope to survive your child’s teen years is to make sure he becomes an early and proficient reader.

Early Readers

Children who come to school already strong readers are head and shoulders above other kids who are starting out from scratch. As parents it is important to remember that early readers will enjoy this advantage throughout their school years and through out their life. Very Important!

Fail Proof

This is huge. So if you have a toddler, a slow learner or a child not yet a first grader you still have time to fail proof your child achieve this by being fully engaged in his preschool years by teaching him to read yourself before first grade. If you can do that you are home free.

So to restate it again, the best way you can hope to survive your child’s teen years is to make sure he becomes an early and proficient reader. Children who come to school already strong readers are head and shoulders above the curve and enjoy this advantage throughout life. This is important for every parent to internalize.

Having Good Instincts

Posted on by Attay, "Teacher Mom"

Good instincts usually tell you what to do before your head has figured it out” – Michael Burke.

Having good instincts is a gift we should all be blessed with. But some of us need to learn the A-B-Cs of basics good instincts. They aren’t just for toddlers. It seems most of us, from time to time, need to brush up on our good instinct basics. That is if we want to parent our children successfully.

The reason why parents sometimes forget their A-B-Cs of good instincts is because life gets in the way. There are too many demands and time is always in short supply. So we short change and ignore the very people we are responsible for and love and strive so hard to nurture.

Once in a while I think it’s a good idea, to put time on hold, turn off the racing engines of your minds and think of how you can interact with your kids on a conscious level. Take time to attend to their mental and emotional needs and give them your undivided time and attention on a regular bases.

So here is some free common sense advice for parents of every hue. Take it for what it’s worth. It has often pointed me in the right and saved the day. I am sure it will do the same for you. It’s time well spent developing your own ‘good instinct’ muscle by making sure you learn your A-B-Cs well. It’s easy to do and very necessary. You’ll be glad you did. You’ll see!

Good Example

Not only will the kids benefit but you will too. Make it a regular and conscious practice to recharge your batteries by reconnecting with your children on a deliberate and conscious level. It will pay huge dividends immediately and down the road, for both of you. Remember you will be setting a good example for your children to follow when they are parents.

Children have never been very good at listening to their parents but they never fail to imitate them – James Baldwin

Learn Your A B Cs Well

See if you need to brush up on your A-B-Cs. Leave me your name and email and I will send you the entire Parent’s Alphabets. Here is a sample:

A – Accepting your child unconditionally with all his warts and all
B- Believing in your child and nurturing his abilities and his potential
C – Communicating with your child keeping all channels fine tuned and open
D – Discussing all things big and small openly no matter how difficult or painful
E – Encouraging resilience and the ability to pick himself up after a fall or two
F – Finding common ground, no matter how deep the difference and big the divide
G – Giving age appropriate responsibilities for a sense of accomplishment
H – Helping them understand success and failure go hand in hand
I – Instilling respect for his body, it’s the only one he will ever have
J -Joy in your child, in his uniqueness, in his possibilities and his very being

There you have it. If you are a parent memorize your A-B-Cs. It will see you through the rough patches of child rearing but only if you take the time to learn them well. Don’t forget to enter your name and email in the box below and I will make sure you get the rest of the A-B-Cs all the way to Z

Nurture your instincts so you can be a phenomenal parent. Of course this is only a miniscule part of the myriad of things we parents have to keep learning. Come back soon and see what other lessons we can learn together.

As always my very best.

Till the next time.

Me!

10 Reasons For Parents Teaching Early Reading Skills

Posted on by Attay, "Teacher Mom"

10 very good reasons why every parent needs to teach early reading skills to their children.

It’s the easiest and best way to boost a child’s self-confidence and self esteem and raise a savvy, successful and discerning child? It is our job after all.
Reading is the primary building block for all future learning the earlier he starts the better for his future
His success or failure in life is directly based on this simple fact – but you knew that didn’t you?
An early ready is a confident and assured student that leads to being a highly successful adult
Even all the latest electronic gizmos in the house can’t teach your child to read. Why? Because the missing ingredient is you – the parent equation.
Parent child interaction tends to diminish as the child begins to grow from infant to toddler to the Mr. Know It All four year old this is when you need to be more involved
You are the greatest influence in your child’s life. You determine how he turns out in life.
You are in a unique position to take advantage of all the language interaction you have with your children in the earliest years of life
As long as the parent equation is removed from any kind of early learning it will always be an uphill task and the learning will be slow
Billions of synapses are forming in his brain from birth to age five and the window for optimal learning narrows as he grows older. Most parents are unaware of this and fail to take advantage of this phenomena

Teach Him To Read Early

So believe it or not the reasons why parents need to be involved in their child’s earliest education are easier than you thought. The reasons are important and

My grandson

pretty simple. Teach him to read as early as possible because age five is forever and the optimal opportunity for early reading and learning will be gone forever.

Parents Need Help

There is no doubt parents desperately need help and direction. They need to be shown how with just five minutes 3 or 4 times a day they can actually have their child be reading before first grade, even sooner.

And yet many parents are oblivious to this crucial truth. Though to be perfectly fair, most parents do, instinctively, know it to be true. But often they are under so much pressure working two or three jobs that they have very little time for much else. It is much easier to just let the TV be the baby sitter or hand them expensive talking gadget and let them get on with it.

How I Did It You Can Too

I should know I taught all my four kids to be proficient readers by age five and I was an immigrant mother. Today all my four kids are highly successful professionals amongst the top one percent of earners. You are no different from me. If I can do it so can you.

Most Consequential Investment In His Future

To learn more on how and why I taught my kids to become early readers leave me your name and email and I will make sure you get a FREE copy of “Why Johnny Still Can’t Read,” especially if you have a pre school child, a child with a reading block or reading disability. Do it for your child, remember it’s the biggest and most consequential investment in his future.

Also sign up and learn more on how easy it is to teach your toddler to read. I know that, not just reading, playing games, storytelling or singing but all other exchanges that take place during the course of everyday life, are extremely important but just when he needs more interaction not less he is in full pull of the TV orbit and in the firm grip of the electronic gizmos.

Too Many Parents Fall For The Electronic Hype

He is the prime target of the slick Madison Avenue genius machines who make billions of dollar on the ferocious appetite – fueled no less by Madison Avenue them self – of unsuspecting parents and their kids.

From toys, to shoes; from food to clothing, every aspect of their lives is fare game. Companies’ sole purpose seems to be to indoctrinate and manipulate America’s kids to pestering parents into buying the latest gizmo, the latest fashion, the latest electronic wizardry. Parents fall for it believing all the hype and think their children will learn to read or spell or count all by them self.

Most parents go along with it despite knowing better, perhaps to combat the vague sense of guilt that washes over them for working long hours at two or three jobs trying to provide for their families.

Sadly, no amount of electronic wizardly will teach a child much of anything except perhaps to be a glutinous consumer.

So the vicious cycle continues till it threatens to take over every nook and cranny of the house. The cycle is never ending. The old stuff is thrown out to make room for the latest and newest Madison offerings.

Missing The Mark

Big mistake! The biggest teachable moment is completely missed. There is a lesson in there somewhere, for parents and grandparents to teach a few easy lessons to their voracious little consumers.

If they stop and think a while they can use such moments to make their children smarter and more responsible consumers. They could teach the value of money; the wisdom of saving; the benefit of conserving and the biggest lesson of all, being savvy and informed consumers, to say nothing of teaching them to read early all by them self.

This is where a child is either at an advantage or disadvantage depending on the level of parental involvement. So every parent and grandparents needs to get involved and give their little geniuses a head start by taking the reins and giving the gift of early reading skills.

To help you get started sign up for my Free Newsletter in the box above and also pick up , Free “Why Johnny Still Can’t Read.”

Till the next time my very best,

What Parents Can Do To Raise Early Readers

Posted on by Attay, "Teacher Mom"

What parents can do to raise early readers is really very simple and also very powerful. And though there are, as many routes to teaching as there are teacher, it’s only the parent who truly has the edge.

If you are a parent of a very young child you may have noticed how easily and quickly your child picks up things. Many a time you have scratched your head and wondered, “Now how did he know to do that?”

You may or may not have shown him how to do this or that but he never fails to amaze you on how much and how quickly he picks up things. Have you seen a two year old with an iPad lately? Yeah! See what I mean?

What parents can do to raise early readers is truly priceless and yet ever so simple to do.

Natural Curiosity For Learning

Now imagine what would happen if you deliberately put time and energy into nurturing this ability. You could take his natural curiosity a step further – like teaching him to be an early reader.

In other words you don’t have to settle for the traditional – wait till first grade – before you introduce and teach your child reading skills. The thing is you will not believe how fast and easily he catches on. It will amaze and thrill you and before you know it, he will be reading to YOU instead the other way round.

Learning to Read

Don’t let anyone tell you your child isn’t ready to learn. He is ready from the moment he starts to speak. You can give your child a head start for life by simply introducing early reading skills – don’t worry you have the ability. By early I mean reading by 5, 4 or even 3. Yes, Your child is totally capable. You didn’t think, he could learn to read, much before 6 or 7, did you?

Because if you did, you are doing a great disservice to your child and to yourself. Chew on this! By 6 or 7 he has already missed the most optimal time for learning, missed the boat to perhaps being at the top of his class.

Parents have a hard time imagining their child being able to read much before 6 never mind before 5 – that’s because the way our educational system is set up and because parents tend to hang on to their babyhood for as long as they can. But give it a try, you will be amazed at what your child is capable of.

Take it from me, I know. I have done it for over forty years with spectacular results with all my four kids and still doing it with my grand kids

You may have already tried the traditional method of teaching your child to read with varying degree of success. Or maybe you never paid much heed and are totally hands off and prefer ‘Leap Frog’ jump in your place. What ever your style might or might not be, rest assured, if you consciously make the right choices while your child is still young, your life will be blissfully happy – or not – when he reaches those proverbial teen years.

Different Paths To Learning

Here’s the thing we can take different paths to teaching and learning and arrive at the same destination, sooner or later, depending on where we start out from. But we have to make a start and be hands on and not leave it all to schools.

The good news is every parent is more than capable of raising smart kids. If they do they can look forward to the sweetest and most promising years of their child’s life – the teen years.

How I Did It

When my kids were young I developed an extremely easy and quick method of teaching my kids to read after I discovered – to my horror – my second child was ‘guess reading’. You know, making up words as he went along taking cues from the pictures on the page and memorizing the story sequence. Many of you parents know what I’m talking about, Too many parents struggle with the same problem and are frustrated they don’t know what to do about it..

That’s how I found out and it became the imputes to my making sure my kids were not ‘guess reading” but rather learning to decode problem words on their own. It was important to me to arm them with this vital skill way before they started school formally

Because I was on top of things I caught the problem early enough to do something about it and save myself my child and the teacher endless battles before the problem got out of hand. By being vigilant and on top of things I succeeded with amazing results with each one of my four kids and never once stressed over their school performance through out their school years.

Stay Strong

As parents we have little time to wast. Every minute counts especially in the very early years. These are years their brains are growing at an amazing rate. Don’t wast a minute of it. Harness this awesome power before it slips quietly away.

To learn more get a FREE copy of “Why Johnny Still Can’t Read.”

My very best.

Till the next time.

Me!

Mother – Job Description

Posted on by Attay, "Teacher Mom"

I was going through some old emails the other day when I spotted this from my niece in London. It was so hysterical and so on the mark, she said, that she forwarded it to all her friends.

I am reading it again and as in most second readings – of any kind – the second time reading it drives the point home more clearly. I doubt if there is a single mother in the universe who will not identify with every single word.

So if you are a Mom or a Mom – in – waiting, welcome to MOTHERHOOD.

Enjoy!!!

And be sure to pass it on to every mother you know. No doubt they too will see them self reflected here.

JOB DESCRIPTION:

Long term, team players needed, for challenging permanent work in an, often chaotic environment. Candidates must possess excellent communication and organizational skills and be willing to work variable hours, which will include evenings and weekends and frequent 24 hour shifts on call.

Some overnight travel required, including trips to primitive camping sites on rainy weekends and endless sports tournaments in far away cities. Travel expenses not reimbursed. Extensive courier duties also required.

RESPONSIBILITIES:

The rest of your life. must be willing to be hated, at least temporarily, until someone needs £5.

Must be willing to bite tongue repeatedly. Also, must possess the physical stamina of a pack mule and be able to go from zero to 60 mph in three seconds flat in case, this time, the screams from the backyard are not someone just crying wolf.

Must be willing to face stimulating technical challenges, such as small gadget repair, mysteriously sluggish toilets and stuck zippers.

Must screen phone calls, maintain calendars and co-ordinate production of multiple homework projects.

Must have ability to plan and organize social gatherings for clients of all ages and mental outlooks.

Must be willing to be indispensable one minute, and embarrassment the next.

Must handle assembly and product safety testing of a half million cheap, plastic toys, and battery operated devices.

Must always hope for the best but be prepared for the worst.

Must assume final, complete accountability for the quality of the end product.

Responsibilities also include floor maintenance and janitorial work throughout the facility

POSSIBILITY FOR ADVANCEMENT & PROMOTION:

Virtually none. Your job is to remain in the same position for years, without complaining, constantly retraining and updating your skills, so that those in your charge can ultimately surpass you.

PREVIOUS EXPERIENCE:

None required unfortunately. On-the-job training offered on a continually exhausting basis.

WAGES AND COMPENSATION:

Get this! You pay them! Offering frequent raises and bonuses. A balloon payment is due when they turn 18 because of the assumption that college will help them become financially independent.

When you die, you give them whatever is left. The oddest thing about this reverse-salary scheme is that you actually enjoy it and wish you could only do more.

BENEFITS:

While no health or dental insurance, no pension, no tuition reimbursement, no paid holidays and no stock options are offered. This job supplies limitless opportunities for personal
growth and free hugs for life

Job Description Of Your Own

After you finish laughing, forward it to all the Mothers you know, in appreciation for everything they do on a daily basis. And don’t forget to share your own job description experiences in the comments section. I am sure we all can come up with Job Description of our own some might be doozies. it will make interesting reading, don’t you?

As always, my very best, till the next time,

Me!

Words To Ponder Quotes

Posted on by Attay, "Teacher Mom"

Words have awesome power. These are words to ponder, Nothing is more profound in the human experience than the power of words. Our words do matter.

Do words touch or move you? Do you stop to ponder and search for the meaning behind them? Do certain words or phrases; leave you feeling wiser, smarter, humbler or angrier? Because words can do that and more?

Have you ever got an email that made you do a whole lot of reflecting? That left you feeling better for having read it?

I got one such email the other day that I almost deleted without opening it first. I’m glad I took the time to read it because the words made me think and reflect on the power of their message. I know I grew a whole lot wiser in the process.

Prepare To Feel The power Of Words

“Great insights and also a lot of fun…”

Of all the things you wear, your expression is the most important.

The best vitamin for making friends….. B1.

The happiness of your life depends on the quality of your thoughts.

The heaviest thing you can carry is a grudge.

One thing you can give and still keep…is your word.

You lie the loudest when you lie to yourself.

If you lack the courage to start, you have already finished.

One thing you can’t recycle is wasted time.

Your mind is like a parachute…it functions only when open.

The 10 commandments are not a multiple choice.

The pursuit of happiness is the chase of a lifetime!

Be kinder than necessary because everyone you meet is fighting some kind of battle.

It is never too late to become what you might have been.

Life is too short to wake up with regrets. So love the people who treat you right. Forget about the ones who don’t.

Believe everything happens for a reason. If you get a second chance, grab it with both hands. If it changes your life, let it.

Nobody said life would be easy, they just promised it would be worth it.

Ideas won’t work unless ‘You’ do.

A sharp tongue can cut your own throat.

If you want your dreams to come true, you mustn’t oversleep.

So what did you think?

Did words to ponder quotes leave you pondering too? Powerful wisdom in the words. I am sure you have your own opinion on the meaning of words and how they are perceived. Perhaps you have a few wise and thought provoking words of your own. I am sure you can come up with something memorable your self just waiting to be heard.

We all have moments of wisdom and produce words born of our own deep reflection. We all have words of wisdom passed on to us that we would do well to live by. Whatever the case may be please share them here with the rest of us

So in that vain here are a few of mine own:

Your children are the mirror you hold up to yourself.

To have touched a life with words is to have lived beyond the grave.

Nothing is more profound in the human experience than the power of words. Your words matter.

As always my very best and come back soon.

Me!

Funny But True Observations

Posted on by Attay, "Teacher Mom"

The Things You Should Have Learned By Now…

Funny But True Observations

Experience is a wonderful thing. It enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again.

By the time you can make ends meet, they move the ends.

Thou shalt not weigh more than thy fridge.

Someone who thinks logically provides a nice contrast to the real world.
It’s not the jeans that make your bum look fat.

If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved, & never will achieve, its full potential, that word would be ‘meetings’.

There is a very fine line between ‘hobby’ and ‘mental illness’.

People who want to share their religious views with you almost never want you to share yours with them.

You should not confuse your career with your life.

Nobody cares if you can’t dance well. Just get up and dance.

Never lick a steak knife.

The most destructive force in the universe is gossip.

You will never find anybody who can give you a clear and compelling reason why we put the clocks back.

You should never say anything to a woman that even remotely suggests that you think she’s pregnant unless you can see an actual baby emerging from her at that moment.

There comes a time when you should stop expecting other people to make a big deal about your birthday… That time is age eleven.

The one thing that unites all human beings, regardless of age, gender, religion, economic status or ethnic background, is that, deep down inside, we ALL believe that we are above average drivers.

A person, who is nice to you, but rude to the waiter, is not a nice person.

Your friends love you anyway.

Never be afraid to try something new. Remember that a lone amateur built the Ark. A large group of professionals built the Titanic.

Hope you enjoyed my niece’s email as much as I did. Now here is an assignment for those of you who have a natural bent for humor.

Let’s see if you can come up with as succinct and as humorous one liners as the author above. I will start you off with a couple of my own one liners. Ready?!

Here goes:

Silence is golden except when it collides with apathy
Your Words have power beyond the grave make them count

Words like raindrops nourish the soul

Now it’s time to get your creative juices flowing and post your own masterpiece for all to read. I shall post as many as I can in my next post.

As always my very best.

Till the next time.

Me!

Be Your Child’s Advocate

Posted on by Attay, "Teacher Mom"

Years ago when my youngest child started first grade I ran smack bang into a brick wall after only a few days in school with the school authorities. I was a new immigrant to this country and the brick wall seemed intractable. What was so obvious to me was totally alien to the school authorities.

Yellow Ducks

Horror of horrors he was already reading above his grade level the first day of school .But after just a few days in school he had had enough. School was a huge letdown. As far as he was concerned it was not what it was cracked up to be. This coming from a child who couldn’t wait for the day when he could go to school like his older siblings.

So imagine my surprise when he refused, just plain out refused to go to school. “All we do is color yellow ducks” He had had it with yellow ducks. School he decided was not for him.

Don’t Be Intimated

Being new to the ways of my adopted country I didn’t know any better. I immediately went head to head with, first the school, then with the whole school board. I couldn’t, for the life of me understand why, my simple suggestion to put him up a grade met with such surprise and resistance, even hostility.

The reasons they gave made no sense, at least to me. He couldn’t tie his shoes laces, he was slow buttoning his jacket; was unable to blow his noise properly etc. etc. And further more because he was only six years old he needed to remain with his own age group.

By now we were at our wits end with a child refusing to go to school and a school refusing to let him go at his own pace. So we demanded a meeting with the school board – one of many – and off we went to do battle – still not knowing any better.

After five meetings over a course of several weeks and a lot of back and forth between board members and us, they decided to put him up a grade for a few months to see how he would do with a proviso that he would be sent back to first grade if he did not keep up in second grade.

Keep At It To Succeed

But my son was still bored and school was still a disappointment. We knew what the problem was. He just wasn’t challenged enough. Second grade was too easy and school was too miserable so why go to school at all. Why not just stay home and read what ever he wanted to.

Back to the school board – this was before Gifted Programs and Magnet Schools were even imagined. I asked to address the board and after a lot of arguing back and forth I posed one question

Why did the school board insist on pigeon holing my child and holding him back? Why did they come down on a certain age in a certain grade mantra? We don’t dress all six year olds in the same size cloths, I argued, or fit them in the same size shoes, feed them the same amount of food or insist they be a certain height or weight?

We all know not every six year old is the same height or weight. Don’t eat the same amount of food or wear the exact same size cloths. So why do try so hard to fit their brains in a pre determined pigeon hole and not allow for individual differences as we do in all other areas of a child’s development. I wanted some logical answer to this insanity.

The answer was the same as before.The best they could suggest was to enroll him in a private school some 30 miles from our home.

Apart from the fact that I could not afford to send my child to a private some school 30 miles from home the more important point to me was I was paying any number of taxes and felt entitled to have my child attend his local school.

More over I reminded them I had three older kids enrolled in grades above their age level. Then why the fuss with my youngest?

Persistent Pays

Cut a long story short he was put up another grade with a stern prediction and a warning. I was told my son would have serious problems down the road socially as well as physically. As a passing thought I was reminded again of all the things he was unable to do, like tie his shoe laces, button his shirt etc and that he was still behind in his motor skills,

My answer was to assure them that – tongue in cheek – he would be able to tie his shoe laces and button his shirt by the time he entered college. My concern was more to nurture his love for learning and inquiring than to worry about what he was able to do or not do at his age.

At nine he had read “The Rise And Fall Of Adolf Hitler,” But he still had not learnt to ride a bike. It would be a couple of years more before he showed any interest in learning to ride a bike or to throw a ball.

This is over thirty years ago. Today that same six year old is a Civil Rights Attorney with enormous gifts. He is a musician, a writer, a poet, a wrapper, an organizer and a speaker in demand in academia across the country. And yes! He can tie his shoes laces and button his shirt.

I shiver to think what would have happened if he had switched off mentally through pure boredom in the early years of schooling.

The moral of my personal story is this. Sometimes you have to fight and advocate for your children. You can see what others can’t. They are to busy enforcing rules that some times make no sense, Education was an area we just could not compromise on.

Loss To Society

As my husband told the school board members at one of those contentious board meetings that it was his firm belief, our over croweded prisons were full of highly intelligent people who sadly were never challenged or stimulated enough at the right stage in their mental development at home or at school. They had to know how to tie a shoe lace or button a shirts above all else. Their intellectual development be damned. Or so it seemed to us.

They were lost to boredom and society was lost to them. Who knows what human talent went undiscovered unrealized because they had to fit a predetermined mold that had little to do with the bigger picture of their life.

Mistakes We Make

We pigeonhole our kids putting them in straitjackets stunting their growth
We insist all children fit a mold, a certain age in a certain grade, no deviating from them
We make assumptions about a child’s ability to learn to read before a certain time and age
We fail to capitalize on their rapidly developing brain, their natural curiosity and high energy
For the most part we are still stuck in the early 20^Th century mind set about how, when and where children learn best
We fail to think for ourselves and give too much power to so called experts who spew statistics without knowing how it effects the individual child

“We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts we make the world.” Buddha”

Know Your Own Power

Though things have changed from thirty years ago parents are still unaware and unsure of their own power to influence appropriate out comes. They should be bold and confident in calling the shots where their children are concerned. They should resist allowing – armed with the knowledge of their own child – of them being pigeon holed or forced to follow some arbitrary guideline, to fit a certain mould.

For the most part, parents are aware – often vaguely – of problems their kids might face down the road, but what they might not be aware of is, how easy it is to wake up one morning and wonder what happened. Suddenly he hates school and begins to fall behind and by the time you get to the bottom of the problem he has already fallen far enough behind to make it that much harder to catch up.

The world is moving and changing much too fast …just read Thomas Friedman’s book ”The World Is Flat”…it’s an eye opener to the challenges the kids will face in the decades ahead.

If you have a toddler, a preschool child or a child with learning difficulties and want to learn how to ensure your child is READING before first grade – biggest head start you can give him – then enter your name and email and get the pdf “Why Johnny Still Can’t Read. It’s FREE!

My very best, till the next time,

Me!