Newsletter March 2012

March 12, 2012
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We strive to bring you the most helpful and up to date information every month, and this month's newsletter is no exception.
You can scroll down through the articles below, or you can click on a headline you like to go directly to that article.

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This Month's Headlines:

Reviewing Homework Tips
Getting Honest About Lying
Helping Teens Find Their Passion

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Reviewing Homework Tips

This time of year can be a tricky one for students. The excitement of returning to school after the holidays and the New Year has settled, and students are well into the second half of the year. Course work may be picking up for many students, with longer projects, essays or reports in the pipeline and even finals looming a few months down the road. All of this means it’s a good time to make sure your child is still on track to finish the second half of the year strong and confidently.

Homework is an important part of academics all year round, and it never hurts to have your child brush up on his or her study skills. Homework can also be an important indicator of where your child is at in terms of understanding—many students find they “get it” when they’re in the classroom, but have a hard time applying the same lessons once they are home and tackling their homework alone.

Here are 8 tips to help your child stay focused and successful.

1. Stress the important of time management. It’s been said time and again that this is a vital factor in juggling the demands of school, but also a lesson for young adults to learn to apply to other areas of their lives. Encourage your child to make a To-do list for homework. Have him or her make note of assignments, estimates at how long they will take for completion, ranking assignments in order of completion or importance, and due dates. Having a bigger picture on one list helps them budget their time best.
2. The clearer the directions are, the better. Oftentimes children who struggle with assignments do so because they begin without a clear picture of what’s being asked of them. Make sure your child reads the directions completely before starting, and addresses any questions they have with the teacher, you, or another classmate. For those who struggle with this, it can be helpful to have your child repeat the directions back to you.
3. Help your child learn to break things up into smaller tasks. This can be as simple as giving them checkpoint goals—once they’ve completed half their worksheets, they can have a snack break. Or it can be more long-term oriented, like breaking up a large reading assignment into a certain number of pages each night, instead of waiting and feeling overwhelmed the night before it’s due.
4. Break the list down into easy and hard tasks. Many of us know the benefits of starting with the easy assignments first—it encourages us to keep moving forward, instead of starting out discouraged by a difficult assignment, which can undermine motivation for other subjects and topics.
5. This one can be a bit controversial—teaching your child “power” reading techniques. The idea is helping students learn to read more efficiently, by picking out the important aspects of a passage and skimming over others. However, this can be a dangerous suggestion, as you don’t want your child to get in the habit of speed reading everything and not retaining information. Instead it should be used as tool when pressed for time—such as in timed exams or intensive tests.
6. There’s a reason the saying practice makes perfect has lasted so long. The same is true with test skills. Having your child take brief practice tests will help them better prepare for the potential stress of the real deal.
7. Don’t be a slave driver—encourage your child to take breaks. It’s important to have a moment to stretch, take a few breaths, have a drink or snack, and just generally regroup. It helps children concentrate better and they’re more likely to absorb information when their brains aren’t spent. Have your child figure out what works best for him or her—some children need breaks more often than others, particularly younger students.
8. Look for meaning rather than memorization. Making connections between coursework and other areas of life makes it far easier to remember than quizzing students on facts. So get creative with your children, and show them how their knowledge is interconnected and applicable.

Source “8 Great Homework Help Tips” education.com
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Getting Honest About Lying

Unless you have an angel of a child, chances are you’ve caught your son or daughter telling a little white lie at some point. While it can be upsetting to discover their lies, it’s actually an important part of childhood development. Recent research shows that children start to tell small lies from age 2 to 4.

It’s no surprise that children learn to lie from those around them. Often, it starts with something simple and innocent, like learning how to differentiate the truth and hurting someone’s feelings—like learning not to tell

Grandma that you hate the sweater she gave you, or not to tell your friend’s mother that your mom is a better cook. Children also see other ways adults lie to varying degrees in our lives.

Children typically lie for the same reasons we do—to avoid punishment, difficult conversations, to make themselves feel or look better, to get what we want. As they get older, the reasons may change—to protect a friend, to look cool to peers—but regardless of the reason, most get better at it.

When your child lies, it doesn’t help to get upset, or to start to ask pressing questions. This can undermine the level of trust they feel you have for them and also makes them feel bad or deviant, when the reality is that lying is common everywhere. Pressuring children to tell the truth has been shown to actually result in them lying more often.

So how do you handle this complex situation? Help your child gain a sense of responsibility for his or her actions, and a core set of morals and ideals to fall back on. Here are some ways to do this.

• The one we hate to hear most is the biggest—be a model to your child. Trickier than it sounds, this involves being honest and aware of the ways you tell little white lies to your kids or others, and how you take responsibility when you’ve said or done something you shouldn’t have.
• Calm down before you act. If you explode every time your child is in trouble, he or she will be more likely to lie to avoid punishment in the future. Instead, do your best to respond calmly. It’s always easier to get to the bottom of things and teach a valuable lesson when you’re not acting out of anger.
• Choose punishments that help your child build a conscience and respect for others. If your child has not been giving you notes his teacher sends home for you, a good first step may be to have him admit this to the teacher and ask for a second note to bring home. Here, he can see the effect of his actions, will recognize how uncomfortable it is to tell the teacher the truth and will be less likely to do something similar in the future.
• Try to put yourself in your child’s shoes. What is she trying to gain with her lies? Is she trying to protect herself, another’s feelings or responding to shame and guilt? Whatever it is, you may not be able to fix it, but you can start to understand his or her motives better.
• Demonstrate the consequences of lying. The boy who cried wolf is a classic example of how repeated lying undermines other’s trust in us and can come back to hurt us. If and when your child comes clean, be sure to let him or her know how proud you are for the honesty. This reinforces confidence in doing the right thing, making it easier the next time they are tempted to lie.

If you feel your child is lying at an unusual rate, there may be something else going on under the surface. As we raise our children, it’s important to constantly check in with them, and try to get a feeling for what they might be struggling with at school, at home, or in their social life. Some children who lie are just looking for extra attention or structure in their lives. It’s up to us as parents to try to help our children get what they need to grow into happy, honest and trustworthy adults.

Source “The Truth About Lying.” scholastic.com
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Helping Teens Find Their Passion

Kids learn from an early age that passion is a key element in life. Whether we realize it or not, messages of passion are everywhere—passion for a cause, a passionate marriage, a passionate performance. The key to passion, though, is that it’s hard to fake or manufacture—usually you either feel it or you don’t.

This can be confusing for young adults who know they are “supposed to” feel passionate about things, but aren’t sure what’s important to them or worthy of their energy and time. When career and further education factors are also on the horizon, such as when your teen starts looking at or applying to college programs, it can be even scarier to be pressed about passions.

A recent study by the Associated Press and MTV suggests that teens are feeling this pressure overall. Many of those polled pointed to academic pressures weighing them down, and many specifically said they felt pressure to get into a good school but were unsure of what they wanted to do with their lives. For obvious reasons, it can be hard to make an important decision like where to go to school when teens are unsure of what they even want to study or pursue as a career path. It seems they are getting the message that passion is important, but are having a hard time being motivated by their own feelings, rather than by the social pressures to go to a good school to end up with a well-paying job. As many of us know, we don’t need more people who are unhappy in their profession just to make a paycheck.

So, before you get discouraged, what can a parent do to help their teenager find their passion? Patty Leeper, a professional coach in San Francisco, asked herself the same question after finding it was a common frustration for parents. Leeper created The Purpose Program, which aims to help teens find their skills and interests and look for ways to bring them into reality. Leeper usually guides students through a few weeks of group work, helping them differentiate between external pressures and expectations versus their own sense of purpose and interest.

You can use some of Leeper’s ideas to work with your own children. Here are a few ways to help your child find something he or she is excited about.

• First, start by helping your child identify his or her strengths and interests. It can be helpful to make a list, and don’t be afraid to offer up your own reflections of what your child is good at—often times we don’t recognize our own greatest strengths.
• Stress the importance of passion in life. Find movies, books, documentaries, news segments and other forms of media that demonstrate this. Leeper suggests “Roadtrip Nation,” a PBS series where college students interview a range of successful people, from Senators to artists. Stories like these point to the importance of passion and individuality over going to the perfect school.
• Create a vision board, or other physical reminder of what your child loves. Search the Internet for pictures or posters, and have fun with putting them together in a collage or other way that will inspire you child when he or she looks at it. This vision board can help you brainstorm about majors, jobs, internships and other fun ways to engage, and might spark ideas you or your child wouldn’t have thought of otherwise. Other people who see it might also have their own two cents to add in.
• Encourage your child to take action. It’s never too soon to start showing what’s important to you. Facebook, blogs and other social media are extremely useful for this. Your child can create groups, forums, a webpage with information about whatever their interests are, or even just engage in discussions with friends. The important thing is that they continue to discuss and explore, expanding their horizons and interests and connecting with others who feel the same. You may find your child would rather talk to peers about it than adults, and this is a great way to do so.
• Don’t let your own preconceived notions get in the way. Leeper says many parents feel nervous with this kind of “follow your heart” message, thinking it will make it harder for their children to find jobs or succeed. But, Leeper says it’s important to think practically, and to help children stay on track when they get a little too farfetched in their ideas. Also remember that not every idea or passion has to turn into a career, although one thing the current young generation has shown us is that ideas that are seemingly unrelated to work can turn into big businesses—just look at Facebook, which was started as a way to socialize and meet potential dates, and has turned into a multi-billion dollar empire. Sometimes, it pays to follow your instincts.

Source Donaldson, Cindy. “Tips to Help Your Teen Find Purpose.” education.com.