Hi Dr. Rene, My two-and-a-half-year-old is going through a lot of the typical two year old stuff. He has a growing imagination, talks lots, tests boundaries and is experiencing new fears. I am taking this all in stride, but I do find myself thinking that he doesn’t seem very resilient. He seems so sensitive to … Continue reading Helping a Child Be Resilient
Dear Dr. Rene, My son is almost three years old. He is very verbal and cognitive, but seems overwhelmed easily in playgroups. If we are at playgrounds and there are three or more kids nearby, he wants to leave. If an indoor group is loud, or children are misbehaving, he gets extremely upset. He manages better … Continue reading Playdates and Stressed Kids
Planning and reviewing skills are a piece of building attention span and impulse control. In some of our classes, each week the children have to plan their 15 minute play time. This includes choosing where they will play (only 1 center each day) and planning three activities to occupy their time. Teachers check on their … Continue reading Teach Planning and Reviewing towards Self-Control
I just wanted to share a link to a great article from The New York Times titled Building Self-Control, The American Way by Aamodt and Wang. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/opinion/sunday/building-self-control-the-american-way.html?pagewanted=all During the next week, I will post ideas and activities to support developing listening skills, planning, goal setting and follow through skills, sequencing, their attention to detail, attention span and … Continue reading Article on Teaching Self-Control
Once they are talking, there are many ways to build a child’s vocabulary. Continue giving running commentary – Talk about all the things they are doing and seeing. Be sure to include functional definitions and adjectives. Continue echo expansion – When they say, “more juice,” model back, “you’d like more apple juice, please?” Keep their … Continue reading Building Vocabulary
With so many patterns of normal speech and language development, it can be difficult to sort out what is most important. There are a few basic milestones that if not met, signal flags in early language development. First word – Most people say babies should have a first word by one year old. The normal … Continue reading Early Speech Milestones
I started the morning Play & Workshop program with a checklist of Language Development milestones by age, so I’ll give a few comments about using checklists. The best way to use checklists is to look for progress overtime. I hesitate to even give checklists because many parents immediately fall into one of two traps: Trap … Continue reading Using Developmental Checklists
Parenting by Dr. Rene 