Just Because :)

When I was in my twenties I was lucky enough to be invited to take part in a pilot program, called the "Contemporary Woman Project. A group of about 20 women all single Moms from all walks of life, got together, along with two counselors and spent a weekend in the woods learning how to build trust after a traumatic event. Most of the women had gone through divorce or some other trial and were having problems getting on with their lives.


 Many hours were spent "talking about our feelings" and we also had to work together to make it across a difficult obstacle course and many other challenges. I learned that when I put my mind to it I was actually quite a capable person for I had completely left my comfort zone for a few short days and learned how to rock climb a fifty foot cliff and repel back down. I will never forget the women that I met that weekend. At the end of it we were asked to write little notes about what we thought of each other. I still have those notes and call them my flowers. I read them when I am feeling down and they never fail to cheer me up.

 Think about how you could incorporate a similar idea into your children's lives. How pleased your child would feel if he found a short note in his lunchbox saying "Worlds greatest kid" or a note on the bathroom mirror saying "Smile!! Mommy loves you." Use your imagination and I am sure you can come up with something that will put a smile on your child's face. Make it a daily habit to plant flowers of encouragement where your child is sure to find them. They say it is the little things that count and a child never tires of hearing that he or she is loved and important.

Sleep and Success in School

Getting a good night's sleep is a key success factor to help your child do his best in school.

One of the really KEY elements in having your child sleep well is to restrict any exposure to screens after a certain time in the evening. An absolute MINIMUM of one hour before bed where no PC or TV is allowed is essential if you want your child to get the best possible sleep.

Screen work does not just have a bad effect on sleep because it is interesting and keeps your child awake because he's enjoying the film or the computer game. The frequency of light from a screen causes brain alertness on a fundamental level and will reduce the quality of sleep if a child is exposed to it close to bed time.

Happy sleeping and school success!

Cassie

Expectations and their effect on how children succeed

I read a magazine story today about a young woman who had grown up in a rough downtown estate. As a child, she attended a poor school where there was little in the way of encouragement and nothing - for her - in the way of friendship. She was a conscientious, studious child which she says made her as popular as "a bogeyman with typhoid".

This brave girl fought free of her roots and is now a successful writer. But what struck me the most in her story was the comment that what really scarred her about her childhood was "how little was expected of us." It reminded me of this poignant story about the effect of expectations on how well children do:

At the beginning of the year, the Principal called four teachers in to his office and told them, "Because of your outstanding performance over the years, we have selected you as the four very best teachers in this school. To reward you for your excellent teaching ability, we have chosen four classes of children who have been shown, in tests, to have the highest IQs in the whole school.

"To each of you we have assigned a class of these very bright children, for you to teach for the whole year. Now, we want you to teach using the exact same methods that you have used in the past. Neither the children nor their parents know anything about this streamlining, and we need to keep it that way, so nothing is to be said to the children about the fact that they have been selected to be in these special classes."

At the end of the year, it was found that the children in the four classes had not only outperformed the rest of the school, but were among the top performers in the whole district. The Principal called in the teachers, and, after commenting on how well they had done, asked them how they had found the children to teach.

The teachers enthusiastically described the children as very intelligent, very eager to learn and so on. Imagine their surprise to hear that the children had not in fact been tested for IQ, but were simply a random sample! And then imagine their disappointment when they found out that their own names had been drawn out of a hat - they had not been chosen as the best teachers after all!

The Principal’s expectations of the teachers, when he told them that they were the best teachers in the school, and the expectations the teachers had of the children, though unspoken, combined to give a dramatic result!

Happy parenting,

Cassie

Teaching your child skills for success

Your child is going to learn a lot at school - English, Math, Geography and much more. But there are a lot of SOFT SKILLS that don't get taught very much - or in some cases at all - in any structured way at schools.

Some of these include:

Goal setting
Problem solving
Listening
Visualizing Goals
Managing their emotions and emotional state
Focus/Concentration
Using their Imagination


... I'm sure you can think of others. All of these soft skills are extremely useful and can be learned much more successfully by a young child than if they wait until they are adults.

The KidsGoals website is all about helping you teach your children skills for success. If these kind of topics interest you, please consider signing up for our Parenting Newsletter in which we address many of these topics.

Happy Parenting,

Cassie