This article in the Ney York Times gives some excellent advice for parents who suspect their child may have a learning disability. The author outlines steps from dealing with the school, documenting supporting evidence and when or whether an evaluator might be helpful.
Patient Money – How to Navigate the Learning Disabilities System – NYTimes.com.
Parents often ask me whether their young child has a speech delay. More often these days I get referrals from local preschools for children in danger of being removed from programs due to behavior problems. Many times, these young ones have an undiagnosed speech delay. Speech delays in young children are not uncommon and free help (imagine!) is available through the public school system even for the preschool aged child.
This information sheet from the American Speech Language Hearing Association gives the developmental milestones for speech from ages 1-5 as well as ways parents and caregivers can help children build language skills.
How Does Your Child Hear and Talk?.
Here are a few book resources, which link to Amazon.
Children and internet safety is a primary concern for parents. The internet, social networking and online communities are changing fast- certainly not news by now. But how can parents reasonably protect children from online predators given normal curiosity and also give them independence?
Semantec Corp, an internet security group did a study on what children search for on the internet. Reuters published an article about the results, which indicate that children search for terms like “sex” and “porn” in the top 10 of searches. Of courses these same kids are also searching for terms like “Miley Cyrus” and “Club Penguin.”
Children are curious, and like the rest of us quickly learn to ask the computer questions they want answers to. Explaining to children the danger online may draw them toward it, and monitoring every move may make them believe they cannot be trusted. Surely there is not a fast and true rule that works for every family. However, some form of open communication, monitoring and talking is needed.
Children use Web to watch videos, look up sex | Technology | Reuters.
I am frequently troubled as I continue to meet young high school graduates who have never held a job and have basically no independent living skills. That is to say they cannot cook, do laundry, budget money, or run errands. Many cannot even drive. We live in a world of play dates and homework. Masses of homework.
I did not see homework till junior high, never did any till high school and still managed to get in to grad school with flying colors. Children today are doing 2-3 hours of homework in the third grade. 8 year olds are too young to have full time jobs (6 hours plus homework– forget sports). It’s no wonder that kids who have to study a bit more abhor school, and those that are involved in sports don’t have time to work.
Which is great and all, except that honestly, you could easily end up with a child who has never had to be alone with themselves until they get a license. Which is a bit alarming. Sometimes I wonder that all of the outside demands from multiple channels of technology and financial demands on parents don’t put a special pressure on today’s children. With the passive entertainment of video games and texting always available, how is a teenager supposed to find their own identity?
I can never quite place my finger on the problem. But there is so much, well, worship of young children going on in this society… and then the booting of them from the nest unprepared seems so sudden. Given that shift happens.
Check it out. It’s worth 8 minutes.
I often run into people looking for caregivers – for their children, senior parents, even their pets. Care.com lets you search for babysitters, care for seniors, pet-sitters, and housekeepers/sitters by state. You can search for special needs and tutors also. There is a small fee for background checks. The people that I know who have used the site to find care for seniors and children have been impressed by the ease and choices they were given. Since we live in a metropolitan area, there may be more referrals for our area, however, compared to other referral agencies this site compared favorably in cost and ease to other nanny services.
The site also offered helpful information related child and senior care. Many adults are now caring for children and aging parents- finding caregivers and information on how to care for aging parents is an unexpected challenge.