As a six-year-old, mom would send me off walking for milk, eggs or bread to the mom-and-pop grocery six blocks away. These shopping errands were big math builders for me. For half a mile I had to keep in mind that a loaf of bread and a carton of eggs were 59 cents and the […]
Category Archive:
Children’s basic needs
Liberty, Freedom and Responsibility
“Freedom is not the last word. Freedom is only part of the story and half of the truth. Freedom is but the negative aspect of the whole phenomenon whose positive aspect is responsibleness. In fact, freedom is in danger of degenerating into mere arbitrariness unless it is lived in terms of responsibleness. That is why […]
Dealing with Tantrums
The day that your child turns red then blue while writhing on the floor in an attempt to get his or her way, is a day when you earn perhaps your first parenting medal, “valor under stress.” Joan, a mother of two, related to me her ordeal of a temper tantrum with three-year-old, Robbie. “It […]
Seek First to Understand, and Then to Be Understood
One is none. Two is ten. ~Icelandic proverb about children For a while, this parenting stuff can seem like you’ve got it under control. Then comes the second child. As Uncle Norm told me years ago, “Before I had children I had ten theories about raising children. Now I have ten children and no theories.” […]
Helping Your Child Be Better Organized
“A place for everything, and everything in its place.” What a wonderful dream. When I was six years old, my toys would fit in one drawer of my dresser. Jacks and balls, jump rope, coloring books, crayons, checkers and a deck of cards. A shelf in the closet held all the toys for five children; […]
Increasing Your Child’s Active Working Memory
“Is there something wrong with Henry?” Dee inquired about her four-and-a-half-year-old son. “Henry can only accomplish one task at a time. When I ask him to brush his teeth and put on his pajamas, he can do one or the other, but not both.” Dee was describing Henry’s “active working memory.” Henry was having difficulty […]
The Best Gift for Our Children
It was Parents’ Weekend during our daughter’s freshman year at college. The ladies cross-country team had arranged a dinner for the parents. As we dined on ravioli at a local restaurant, it dawned on me that I was sitting in the middle of a statistical anomaly. Every team member had a parent there, and of […]
Taking Responsibility for Our Children’s Success
Our new education needs to be exponential education to meet the exponential change on our planet. We need every person on our Earth to have opportunities to realize their potential through self-directed meaningful activity in specially designed learning environments that passionately engage children and adults. As our children develop mastery they will, in turn, create […]
Educating the Whole Person
As we look towards the new education, we see that our constant testing for facts and measuring academic skills have robbed our children of rich and meaningful learning experiences. For deep learning, we need to involve the whole person–mind, body, heart, and spirit. Human potential cannot be quantified. As we study history and explore human […]
Towards the New Education
Exponential Education: Releasing Human Potential Remember that moment playing tic-tac-toe when you discovered if you were the first one to mark a square, you could beat your opponent? If you always won, what was the fun of that? It was on to bigger and better games. In the movie, War Games, a computer designed to […]