“We are all gifted and we are all disabled.” These were the remarks of a developmental psychologist who I heard speak at a workshop. What a powerful reminder that as part of the human condition, we are each blessed with unique gifts, abilities and talents, and we each experience our own challenges in navigating life. What does this mean for ...
If you find yourself concerned about your child's tendency to give up in frustration and proclaim himself unable to complete tasks or engage socially with his peers, the skill of metacognition — a technical term used to describe the act of understanding your thought process — may be able to help. Metacognition allows children to deconstruct challenging situations, figuring out why they ...
Children, as any parent knows, can be baffling and unpredictable; they may tantrum seemingly out of nowhere, or develop stubborn behaviours (such as hitting a sibling or adamantly refusing to tidy up after themselves) and maintain them irrespective of the consequences and the pleas of adults. When such events occur, parents are invariably left wondering, “Why? Why is my child ...
While many children may appear to bounce back quickly on the surface, the trials and tribulations faced by school-aged children can leave deep scars if not managed correctly. The challenges, setbacks, failures, and social pressures most children experience at school can gradually undermine their confidence and sense of self-worth unless their parents work with them to develop their resilience. For ...
Too often, the emotional side of giftedness is overlooked; for all that we laud the intellectual complexity of giftedness, seldom ...
For parents, even the little white lies that children sometimes tell - e.g., claiming to have completed their homework ...
For the parents of overweight children, every day is a balancing act; on one hand, there is the natural desire ...
Anger is a notoriously infectious emotion, easily setting off the desire to react in like kind. Many of us were not taught how to effectively deal with anger during our own childhoods, so when we experience anger in a child, we struggle to react in the way we feel we ought to. Keeping ourselves calm and judicious may prove possible, ...
I recently stumbled upon the article "Music Lessons Increase IQ" written by my former UofT professor Dr. Glenn Schellenberg and published at "Psychological Science". His research studies show that 3 years of weekly music lessons resulted in 6-7% increase in IQ in 9 year olds. This research findings highlight the importance of music for developing child's brain. Music is a fundamental part ...
If you've ever been so overwrought with worry that your patience fell short, or snapped at someone else because something unnerved you unexpectedly, you've experienced the intrinsic connection that exists between fear and anger. Just as fear can, when it is chronic, in effect bully the person experiencing it—constantly telling him what he can and cannot do—it can ...
With the best of intentions, many parents get into the habit of repressing what they are feeling - bottling up their annoyance and frustration in an attempt to indulge their children's needs, energy, and enthusiasm, or to handle their bad behaviour with grace. While this practice seems noble at first (we all want to set a good example, after all), ...
