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Posts Tagged ‘Child’

I have recently moved to a new area. My daughter has started a new middle school. After moving I have found out that and i say this lightly the area that we live is ghetto. Upon visiting her school I realized that her entire school is black the smal 5 percent is a combination. I am african american but i have a problem with my child not being in a diverse school. Furthermore they dont want to put her into algebra which she is supposed to be taking because they say its only for 8th graders, even though shes already taking pre algebra they want her to take it agaIN. Is there a way to get her into a better school without having to pay 4,400 dollars for a private school. we do well but not that well. What do you think?
(In response to Tagind ) its not racist to not want my daughter to attend an all black school. The problem is its not reality, kids should be exposed to other ethnicities. Furthermore i was told that this area is not a good area so what would you call it?

Parenting Children With Oppositional Defiant Disorder.
My Out-of-Control Child.

Active parent concern: A new home guide to help your child do better in school

So many parents get so bogged down in the homework issue that they forget about the most important thing of all: the relationship. Relating to your child with love and understanding is a million times more important than any particular homework assignment. How much homework did Einstein do? Who knows? Who cares? He did not do very well in school. So instead of homework, he was probably doodling and daydreaming. Does your child doodle and daydream? Maybe he or she is another Einstein.

Many people do not know that when Mozart was a kid, his dad took him on several long trips. His dad intuitively knew that music was important for his son. He took his little son to major music centers so that he could meet composers, perform, attend concerts and see operas. One trip, when Mozart was 7 years old, lasted 3 years and a half. If he had had to sit in a class all day and sit around doing homework every night, Mozart’s music never would have happened.

Mozart’s dad looked into his heart and devoted himself to truly helping his son, instead of pressuring him with homework every night. Incidentally, today luckly young Mozarts and Einsteins are taking educational trips with their brothers and sisters and parents who are legally home educating them. 

As a parent you must look into your heart to know what to do, how to do it and when to do it. Look into your heart and love will teach you what to do. If you don’t know what to do, then just wait until you do know.

Timing is important; and proper timing is a facet of understanding. Whatever you do: you must find the right measure of giving and withholding, of giving and receiving, of taking charge or deferring, of gentleness or firmness.

No one can teach you this: you must search out the way with attentiveness, kindness, concern (not worry), and prayer. If you really and truly want to do what is right, and honestly admit in your heart that you don’t know what to do, and if–and this is the big if–you get your ego out of the way, you will be given wordless intuitive guidance. In fact, trusting in wordless intuition is the basis of faith.

Here is an example of understanding. Your son is in his room, but not doing his homework. Normally he does. Instead of barking orders from the living room, you thoughtfully take a look to see what is going on. You see that other kids are outside playing. You notice that today is the first sunny day in weeks. You remember that your son has been sitting in class all day. So you say: “Billy, why don’t you get some fresh air and you can do the homework later?” Argument avoided, and everyone is happy (and he does his homework later). Your parenting grade: A

Another scenario. Your daughter is not doing her homework. You take a look and see that she is text messaging silly messages to friends instead. “Give me the cell phone. Do your homework.” Firmness and directiveness here; not giving in or excuse making. Do you see how important intuition is? Do you see how important love is? You need them to know, in that delicate moment, what to do.

Here’s an example from my own life.

When I was 8 years old, I was invited to a birthday party after school. Never having been invited to a birthday party before, this was a really big day for me. My mother was to wait for me in the car after school to take me to the party. I guess I was excited that day and somehow did not finish a math assignment. The teacher made me stay after school to finish it (the first and only time in life I ever had to stay after school).

I was in a state of panic because my mother was outside waiting in the car. So I just wrote down any numbers that came to mind as answers, quickly handed it to the teacher, and tried to take leave. Teacher called me back, saw what I had done, and started giving me a hard time. I burst into tears and began to sob. I told her about the party and my mother waiting.

I am sure teacher’s heart softened, and she realized in that touching moment that today was not the day to give an otherwise good kid a hard time. She told me to enjoy the party and let me go. Incidentally, I had a good time at the party (and I got A’s in math in high school).

You see, I cannot tell you in advance what to do in any particular situation. But when I am there, I check with my intuition (understanding). Sometimes nothing needs to be done. Sometimes just observing and watching is all that is needed. Sometimes just being there is all that is needed. Other times an action or word is called for. Sometimes “no” with an explanation.

And yes, sometimes bold action is called for. But more often than not, the calm presence of a good authority, a patient thoughtful parent, nips most problems in the bud before they have a chance to develop.

Nevertheless, there are times when taking the computer out of the room, getting rid of rock music or DVD’s, no more television watching, a big reduction in socializing, or changing schools or starting homeschooling are needed.

I recently became aware that when a child gets a little behind (and this can happen for a variety of reasons, none of which are the child’s fault), the child can simply become overwhelmed. For example, one child missed the classes where it was taught that multiplying two negative numbers results in a positive number. For weeks he fell further and further behind, getting all the answers wrong. He basically flunked out.

Only when his parents realized something was wrong, took him out of public school and put him in a private school, did things get better. When he went to the private school, he was so far behind most of the other students, he was put in the slow class. Guess what happened! He was able to follow what was going on, began to excel,, and got A’s in math. This student went on to receive a 4 year academic scholarship to a major university.

The road to college begins in 8th grade. Los Gatos Tutoring Club is here to help you make sure your child stays on track. Call us today to schedule a free consultation (408) 57-TUTOR.

Many of you probably had experiences with movies like mine when you were growing up. Your parents (if you were lucky enough to have at least one) would use the TV or Movies to keep you occupied (out of their hair). My Dad would give me two dollars every day for entertainment so I spent it mostly on movies. Yes, every day, and keep in mind that this was the early fifty’s when most theaters were 25 cents and the most expensive theater in town was seventy five cents. The same money would be around twenty five dollars today.

At the time most movie houses were showing double features and some had three features with two cartoons and a serial. And because of my love for movies I saw every one of them at least twice and some many times. This went on for years and of course couldn’t have been good for me. However it gave me a focused education in films and stories and perhaps a little confusion about real life.

People in movies don’t have to follow through with work and school and oh yeah, the big one, Love. The music plays and they simply are already a brave policeman or cowboy or engineer or even president. The heros in movies seem to do little or no work to be anything they want. I Expected no less for myself than rocket speed to sucess.

Somehow in my little kid brain I replaced my parents love and parts of real life with western movies and their stars. You can imagine why nice family type movies and westerns were so appealing to me with no brothers and sisters and living with my grandmother. In later years it was shocking to discover my movie heroes didn’t give a crap what I felt or know me from Adam. “Gosh Mr. Rogers, don’t you remember me? I was the kid in the fifth row back?”

“Sorry, I don’t give autographs” he said. “Huh?” I said as he walked away. Now I was a young adult when this true event happened, but still I stood there sort of in a daze until my wife came looking for me. She said, “What’s wrong with you?”

“Roy Rogers just gave me the buzz off,” I said. “He must have known it was me that threw rocks at the screen.”

“Oh, don’t be silly” she said. “He wouldn’t give me an autograph” I said. “Oh is that all, so what?” she said. “Why would that bother you so much?” she said. “I don’t know, it just does that’s all” I said. There was this little pause and she said, “For your information they live like three blocks away from us. You mean you didn’t know!” she said.

“No, I don’t keep track of where people live,” I said. “I see Dale Evans every week at the store or post office. She’s very nice” she said. “Oh great, my childhood hero lives close enough to hear trigger fart and I can’t even get an autograph?” “It’s almost like not being able to talk to your uncle or something because he’s too darn famous.”

“Listen honey,” she said, “Trigger can’t fart anymore and besides you’re taking this way too seriously.” “Yea,” I said. “So what can we do to find out why it affects me so much?” “You saw too many of those westerns I think. Didn’t you do anything else?” She said. “Sure, lots of things,” I said. “But the movies made the stuff I did more dangerous.”

She said “Now that I think about it most of the jobs you do are related in some way to movies and now you’re a screenwriter.” she said. “You seem to be obsessed with not only stars but also in the locations where they were filmed, like Lone Pine for example. We found every rock that Randolph Scott used in his westerns.”

“It feels like I’m looking for my long lost family.” I said. “She said “Remember the actress last year that was kidding you about one of your scripts? She knew you were only kidding and laughed with you about it. Why didn’t she affect you the way Roy did?” “It’s probably because she’s a new star of today’s movies,” I said, “And I didn’t grow up watching her.” “Remember what Jack Palance said to you about movies? He said you were full of crap about them that they were only movies.” “Yeah,” I said, “he said he only made films for the money and could care less and “You should do the same.”.

“OK,” she said, “I have an idea. Why don’t you write about it? You write about everything else so maybe other people have the same problem or worse they let it happen to their kids.” “That’s right,” I said, “it is happening to kids today isn’t it, only in a little different way with music lyrics and the general bad behavior of actors.”

“Yes,” she said, “only its worse now and these kids won’t get over it maybe ever.” “OK, that’s what I’ll do is give my opinion about how movies can be improved and still make the studio money.” “So you’re going to tell them to remove the violence and sex and make lame one hundred and twenty minutes of nothing? I can hear the laughing already.”

“No, of course you need these elements of real life in any story. You must have a good story and a reason for things to happen. Some movies today start out dark and evil and progress to dark and evil and end with dark and evil and that’s no way to tell a story. For a film to be successful the audience must tell friends about it. One big problem is the high cost that scares investors into making something safe.

What they need to make movies safer for investors is a new kind of testing. Why make a film unless you KNOW people will like. I can’t believe investors take such big chances with all that money. It’s possible to make good honest pictures that people will love and still make money for the studio.” “You know that not one person in Hollywood is going to pay attention to you don’t you?” she said.

“I know, but it doesn’t matter about that because Hollywood’s days are numbered anyway. They are so mixed up they can’t even make an original movie or endorse an original screenplay. Can you see them making Rocky 15?

Good actors have little to work with in Hollywood and that’s a shame. That’s why indie films are getting bigger and better every day and sooner or latter with the combination of pissed actors and increased technology a new generation of indie films will put Hollywood to shame.”

The road to college begins in 8th grade. Tutoring Club will help you keep your child on track! Call us today for a free consultation. 408-57-TUTOR

When parents ask me to coach their teenagers they inevitably want their child’s school grades to improve and seem a little shocked when I say, “Yes, that’s easy.”

Like Susan, who sent her 13-year-old to me. Grace was doing OK at school, however her parents wanted to get her into a better school and to do that her grades needed to improve. Grace was enrolled in one of my coaching programmes and by the end of the programme her predicted C grades had become A and B, with a 100% pass rate in science a previously disliked subject.

How did we do it? The answer is to know your child’s learning style. When you do, you can help them to help themselves. Coupled with understanding what motivates them, what drives them and their perspective of the world, you can motivate any teenager to improve their schoolwork.

So this week I though I would share with you my guide to learning styles:

Learning style is the way in which you learn most easily, knowing this can make studying much easier. People learn in four ways, through reading, listening, doing or graphics and we will discuss each one.

Reading — these people learn mostly by reading and writing; this is predominately the style taught at school. When studying, they read and make lots of notes. This style is known as verbal memory.

Listening — These people learn most by hearing something spoken to them. In class they are likely to enjoy discussion where people are talking and get bored when there is writing to be done. When studying they may read and talk out loud or tape themselves and listen at a later date. They will also ask others to question them so they can speak their answers. This style is knows as tonal memory.

Doing — these people learn by movement in some way. These will be the students constantly fidgeting at school, they cannot sit still. In studying they are likely to walk around and make up rhythmic songs and poems. These students may benefit from studying with either the TV and radio on and also may hum or sing while they are studying. This style is known as rhythm memory.

Graphics — these people learn by seeing pictures, tables or graphs. When studying, they are likely to draw pictures and put information into tables and boxes, they also will enjoy using mind maps. This style is known as design memory.

Action

Think of a time that your child was studying recently and the methods they used.

Which one of these four do you think they are and why? Ask your teen and see if you are right.

Write a list of 5 ways you can support your teenager’s learning style now you have discovered what it is. For example, telling your child to switch off the TV while studying may not be the right things to do, depending on their learning style.

So, if we go back to Grace, she was typical in that her Mum made her do her homework in a room all by herself with no noise. Grace found this very hard and as we worked together we found that she was very high in rhythm memory. So we began to do things like introduce a radio into the room where she was studying, studying while walking around the room and making up songs and poems. The results were incredible. As for the science exam, she made up a song about the valancy table while playing the guitar at the same time — it worked a treat and is just what someone with high rhythm memory needs. I should know, as this is my greatest learning style. When I was in the police, I learned every piece of legislation to a song and I can tell you, it took me all my might not to sing the charges to someone as I was arresting them! In fact if you asked me now, I could still sing the Theft Act to you. You play it, I’ll sing it!

This Guide, Written By An Education Professional, Guides The Reader Through Some Important Considerations In Choosing A School For Their Child. The Guide Is Written In Simple, Clear Language And Encourages Parents To Reflect On A Range Of Key Issues.
How To Choose The Best School For Your Child? (45 Pages).

www.LearnToLearn.com. The education system focuses on WHAT to learn, not HOW to learn. Most struggling children don’t know how to make a D a B. They can’t think of the strategies needed to make that D a B… how to “perform” effectively. If we can improve a child’s thinking power — his or her fundamental brain skills, or cognitive abilities, and increase the ability to strategize, the child can learn how to make that D a B and build the confidence to continue growing. http