Monthly Tips

From the child being carried off the playground kicking and screaming to the mother taking her “baby” to college, transitions are just plain hard. However, change is inevitable both in our daily schedules and in larger life events.

Adults often struggle with the anxiety of forsaking familiar routines and replacing them with an unproven structure. Although children make many transitions each day, change can seem unpredictable and overwhelming, especially when they are not ready to move on to the next place or activity.

Some children respond with challenging behavior when they feel unable to control their timetable. Teaching strategies to better manage anticipated and unpredictable changes is a life skill that benefits both you and your children, now and in the future.

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The joys of summer! Hopefully by now everyone has recovered from the stress of exams and the panic of impending deadlines…WAIT! There’s only one month left to complete all this summer reading? Some schools have now added on math, science or history assignments as well. Is your child taking an AP class? Then he’s pretty much guaranteed summer work.

Most parents were enjoying a welcome break from the pressures of an academic cycle filled with stress and nagging. What’s a laidback summertime mom (or dad) to do?

Follow these helpful tips to get all the assignments and summer reading accomplished in these last few weeks, without feeling like a nag.

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Right about now, the idea of summer vacation sounds pretty sweet for most parents. No more getting up before dawn, packing lunches, stressing over grades or repetitively nagging, “Did you do your homework? Do you have your binder? Did you lay out your clothes for tomorrow? Is your gym bag packed? Are you ready for exams? Who’s driving car pool?” No wonder so many of us are dreaming about a family vacation, trips to the pool and leisurely mornings without alarm clocks.

However, it doesn’t take long for the change of routine to become exasperating. If your teenager sleeps until the afternoon, then eats you out of house and home while leaving his dishes stacked to the ceiling, all while his primary goal is to beat the next level on his video game, it can wear you down pretty quickly. Sometimes it seems that we can actually see brain cells stagnating when children don’t want to do their summer reading, or practice math, or anything that seems remotely educational. Couple all that with the usual whining, (“I’m bored,” “It’s too hot,” “There’s nothing to do,” “Are we there yet?”) and many parents start longing for the school year to begin.

Children with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) or weaknesses in their executive functioning skills provide even greater summertime challenges. These kids become bored more quickly, but seem less able to develop and execute their own plans for entertaining themselves. Additionally, with nothing to do, these sensation-seeking, impulsive, creative bundles of energy are likely to get into trouble: cutting down the neighbor’s tree to see what’s inside, baking cookies but then forgetting them in the hot oven or gluing fake eyelashes on the cat are just a few of the reported results of too much time and too little structure.

So how to avoid these summertime blues? The wise parent develops a plan to keep children active, engaged and educated, while still making it feel like vacation.

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Humans are social animals. Therefore, it stands to reason that a large part of education depends on the intellectual stimulation of socialization. The importance of peer interaction was researched and documented by venerated psychologists Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotsky, giants in the field of education whose theories have formed the basis for creating ideal learning environments. However, you don’t need to spend a lifetime doing social experiments to know that study groups and book clubs work. It’s good, old-fashioned common sense!

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In middle and high school, students face more complex writing assignments, with deadlines that seem far in the future.

Writing a formal essay can be a daunting task. Some students get so buried in the information gathering process that they never feel ready to actually form opinions and commit ideas to paper. Other students write pages and pages, which later get discarded. Then there are those who agonize over each sentence, even each word choice, to the point that they are too anxious to get anything on paper.

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Writing is one of those academic areas that often elicits groans, moans and sometimes tears. Some students dread sitting in front of a blank computer screen or piece of paper and really have no idea how to begin. Often, children put off writing assignments until the last minute and then scramble to get something on paper, not leaving time for edits and revisions, and settling for a lower grade.

Elementary school children are brimming with creative ideas and imagination. A “writing assignment” sounds like work, but games and projects are approached much more willingly.

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As parents and educators, we understand the importance of encouraging our children to be active, rather than passive, readers. When reading stories to young children, we ask lots of questions, fostering text-to-self connections, predicting and inferencing. Teachers often have their emergent readers draw pictures to illustrate their comprehension and opinions about a book.

When students make the transition from “learning to read” to “reading to learn,” they are shown many techniques to help them more fully understand written language. They are taught to use text features such as titles, subtitles, bold and italicized words, pictures, captions, bullets and sidebars to introduce and predict the subject matter. We set a purpose for reading and teach the students to monitor their own comprehension by asking questions, making connections, and forming opinions. Most importantly, as the literature and textbooks grow more dense and complex, students are taught to constantly highlight, annotate, draw in the margins, use sticky notes to mark questions about specific content – in other words to fully engage and interact with the targeted material. Using visual, kinesthetic and cerebral processes while reading helps students put information into memory more effectively, as well as pinpointing content that needs more explanation or evaluation.

How then, do these skills translate to 2014 and beyond, when a high percentage of the reading our students do is electronic rather than with traditional books? The good news is that more digital note-taking features are available every day. The bad news is that it takes a little getting used to, requiring motivation for those of us used to good, old-fashioned paper/pencil/post-it methods.

For students reading online, there is a wealth of tools at their disposal.

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We hope that you had a very happy and restful holiday, and we wish you a very Happy, Healthy and Productive New Year!

For some of the college students, you are still on break. Enjoy it and know that you have NO schedule that is pressing at this time. However, for the rest of us, whether we are students, parents or just employed individuals, it’s time to get back on track as the New Year begins.

We hope you did not make BIG resolutions for this New Year. Why, you might ask? We think it is very hard to keep those resolutions; little, small step resolutions are better to make and manage. So here’s a list of examples of how to make those New Year’s resolutions become reality, the Thinking Organized way.

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It happens every year. Some unsuspecting student reading Shakespeare or poetry will whine, “But how am I ever going to need this in real life?” A couple of older students roll their eyes as I pull out my soapbox for a familiar lecture.

Passionately and convincingly (I hope) I explain to the innocent youngster that reading and analyzing written language is one of the most important skills she will learn in school. How do I know? I probably cannot even fathom the occupations that most of our students will pursue in the future. Certainly jobs that are popular today, such as app designer, social media manager or sustainability expert, weren’t even conceived of when I was in school. However, the ability to comprehend what you read is a necessity for any job. Separating what’s important in a text, scanning for key points, deciding what is believable and citing relevant information appropriately are all skills that are used for a lifetime, not only in academia.

Furthermore, learning to think critically and analytically is important for citizens of the future to be able to understand the important issues facing our planet and devise creative solutions. People who don’t use critical thinking skills tend to understand things superficially, never delving below the surface for the real or implied meanings. Individuals who have learned how to think are much more likely to identify bias, consider all relevant factors, make complex comparisons, problem solve and achieve a desired result. Critical thinking is at the root of all human progress. I could go on all day.

As parents, how then do we encourage students to attack all textual material with a critical, analytical eye? Several research-based techniques can enhance these skills with both younger and older readers.

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I am guessing that you, like most parents, have high expectations for your child. You know how smart your student can be. You see all the little “aha!” moments of exceptional brilliance, social adeptness, athletic prowess and/or perceptive insight. You know deep in your heart that if he just applies himself, your child could set the world on fire.

However, we’ve all seen and heard about children who are pushed too hard. Leah goes from soccer to piano to dance to religious school and barely has time for homework. Steven is taking online classes to graduate a year early, and loses sleep because of his academic burden.

How do we know how hard to push? When does “just enough” become “too much?”

Like most things in parenting, a careful balance is the key to a high-achieving student who still makes time for social events, family functions, relaxation and old-fashioned fun. You know your child best, so the first priority is to trust your instincts. If you feel that your child is spending too much or too little time on homework or extra-curricular activities, say so. Have an honest talk with your student to figure out what goals he has for himself, what requirements and obligations he currently maintains and what can be juggled to achieve a reasonable schedule that combines academic achievement with other objectives. Help him look at his calendar and specifically list all of his activities. This will give your child a visual of whether or not he is balancing all the balls he has in the air.

On the other hand, don’t be afraid to express your high expectations to your child. Letting him know the goals you have for him will set the bar and give him something to strive towards.

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