Children with Asperger’s (AS) and High-Functioning Autism (HFA) can appear somewhat paradoxical in nature. On one hand, many kids on the Autism Spectrum are cautious, anxious, and shy. On the other hand, it’s not uncommon for AS and HFA children to struggle with impulse control, too. This can make them look aggressive and rebellious—even when that isn’...
The ability to communicate well and learn verbally is strongly emphasized both at home and at school. However, useful though verbal skills are, there’s another extremely important area of learning that many experts feel we’re neglecting: Spatial skills. The term “spatial skills” is used to describe the ability to accurately interpret and remember the spatial relations between objects. ...
Discussions about returning to school during the COVID-19 pandemic often revolve around helping children (and their families) stay physically healthy while participating in classroom learning. For many kids, however, the mental health implications of going back to school are equally challenging. Though some children eagerly anticipate seeing their friends again, others are experiencing profound anxiety about how their lives will ...
Modern parenting methods typically revolve around a rigid system of enforcing accountability: If a child behaves well, he (or she) is rewarded. If a child behaves badly, he is punished. In theory, this approach is logical enough; we expect our children to learn that their actions have consequences. Furthermore, we expect this knowledge to help them form a natural aversion ...
As a psychologist living and working in Toronto, where 51% of residents were born outside Canada, I deal with immigration related ...
The last two years have been a period of prolonged stress and isolation for many people, leading to an increase ...
Parenting is one of the most demanding jobs one will ever have. A parent’s desire to do the right ...
Almost all children go through a period of being afraid of the dark. This may manifest as a simple fear of darkness itself or as a fear of monsters or intruders who only come out at night. What’s more, these fears often last longer than parents realize; according to a study conducted in Australia, 64% of preteens and teens (those ...
One of the biggest myths about children is the idea that they lack empathy by nature. In reality, though children can be self-focused and lack knowledge and perspective, they’re hard-wired to feel empathy for others. How much this quality develops, however, is largely dependent on how a child is raised. Empathy is, after all, part instinct and part learned ...
For years, low self-esteem was used as something of a catch-all scapegoat. If a child was bullying others, failing at school, or getting into trouble, his (or her) self-esteem was the first place parents and teachers looked when trying to solve the issue. Recently, however, research has corrected some of our prior assumptions about self-esteem: In actuality, low self-esteem is ...
As numerous schoolyard rhymes tell us, tattling is an incredibly unpopular phenomenon among children. It’s not exactly a favourite behaviour at home, either: Most parents know all too well the frustration of having a child frequently seek their intervention because a sibling has taken his toy or violated another minor rule. These parents know that their child could probably ...
