Is It Possible for Kids To Take Responsibility for Their Own Learning?

When I was at school, I remember always sitting at the back of the class and being one of the worst students. Only later on in life, during my Special Education studies, I learned about how kids are treated based on where they sit in the classroom.

Did you know that some seats are better than others and determine the teachers’ attitude towards the kids sitting in them? Well, I didn’t know this either and by the time I did, it was a bit too late for me to save myself all those frustrations at school.

But what I realised was that teaching the teachers about their varying attitudes based on sitting positions was missing the mark. Who do you think really needs to know this?

If you have answered “The kids”, you are right! But kids, of course, do not read blogs, so I would like to encourage you, the parent, to pass the information below to your kids and, by doing so, to allow them to take responsibility for their own learning and future success.

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How to Stimulate Visual Kids

Visual kids have a combination video-and-still camera in their heads. They like to see things. Pictures, colours and visual representations of things are their main information carriers. These kids learn best and expresses themselves best using pictures, graphs and colours. To them, one picture really IS worth a thousand words.

Visual kids use colours, graphs and pictures to learn the sounds around them.

Here are some ideas that help visual kids learn better…

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Diagnosing Learning Difficulties and Gifted Children in the Early Years

Drawing of cogs inside a head and symbols flying around

It was psychologist Howard Gardner’s book, Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences, which first questioned the common psychological orthodoxy about intelligence, the intelligence quotient (IQ), and presented the revolutionary concept of Multiple Intelligences. At a time when a set of tests positioned children in a single spot on the bell curve and educators’ capacity to affect this position was seen as limited, the dawn of multiple intelligences shone a light at the end of a tunnel.

With this great recognition of our ability to enhance intelligence, the two extreme parts of the bell curve – the children with the learning difficulties and the gifted children – became the center of attention. Those two seemingly unrelated ranges of ability require the same type of attention and multiple intelligences brought hope for improvement for both.

A natural progression of that was the area of early diagnosis and early intervention. Should we diagnose learning difficulties during early childhood or will this put a label on them that is too hard to remove? Should we diagnose gifted children or will this doom them to isolation and social challenges? And once a special need is identified, should we intervene or just let nature take its course and allow the kids to “grow out of it”?

Each of the questions presents the choice between a reactive and a proactive approach. For government organizations, these questions are translated to the cost difference between the two, which then determines the approach. For teachers, however, critical time plays an important role in the choice.

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14 Tips to Protect Your Kids Online

The Internet is a great source of information and allows us to connect easily with many people around the globe. For kids, like adults, the Internet is a fascinating world of discoveries, great exploration and yes, some danger. Like many other areas of life, in order to appreciate the “light” of the Internet, we need to have some “darkness”.

There are horrible stories of abuse and even death through misuse of connections formed with kids on the Internet. Sneaky people exist on the Internet as much as they do in any other place society and they abuse their right to participate and become a risk to our children.

So, if you want to protect your kids online, the answer, I say, is education (surprise, surprise).

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The ADHD Myth

Boy leaning against a stack of books looking sad

I go over 22 year of special education experience and can see a great inflation in ADHD. Well, it did start as ADD – Attention Deficit Disorder – and soon became ADHD with the “Hyperactive” addition.

The special education profession is still split on the existence of ADHD. Some say it is a brain malfunction, some say it is only children’s need to move a lot beyond the “normal” range. I think that no matter which approach you take, our society is sick with the labeling disease!

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Knowledge or Attitude?

For many years, knowledge was considered to be the ultimate factor for success in life. Many parents and educators still pump knowledge into kids’ brains, in hope this will bring kids to the desired achievements.

While in the past knowledge was something not all people could have, nowadays it is much more accessible. Unfortunately, knowledge is not the thing that will give kids the edge to succeed.

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How Do You Force a 17-Year-Old Boy to Go to School?

It is common belief that teens have to finish school in order to succeed in life, but that is not true. Sometimes, leaving school is the best thing that happens to them. For example, I was kicked out of school at the end of grade 10 and it was the best thing that happened to me. It was a strong wake-up call. In the end, I became a teacher.

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Parenting – A Rewarding Career

Applying for a parenting career requires no interviews and no application forms, though it is one of the most demanding and rewarding careers. Without the benefit of selection criteria, we discover that to be good parents, we need many skills and abilities that we do not learn at school.

Some people hope that these skills will show up in the delivery room together with their first born. Others say you either have them or you don’t. I believe that the magic of pregnancy and childbirth is not enough to make us parents and we can and should develop these skills over time.

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Music For The Mind

Did you know?

Children studying music from as early as grade 4 get to their first year of high school with an average academic score that is 11% higher than kids who did not study music.

If they continue their music studies into high school, by the time they graduate, their average academic score is 23% higher than kids who did not study music.

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Teaching Young Kids Money Management

Kids need to learn money management long before they leave home. When their friends have brand-name shoes or a computer game and your kid wants them too, understanding money is going to be very handy. So if you wonder when it is the right time to learn about money, my answer is: the minute your kid can count to 10.

Unfortunately, handling money is not something we learn at school. Just like many other life skills that we find necessary in adulthood, money management is also neglected while lots of energy is wasted on high levels of math.

Children can be taught at a young age that money is their way to get the things they want in life. It is, after all, your way of getting the things you want in life.

Here is how…

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