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Posted December 18, 2012
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More About This Textbook
Overview
Dr. Rimm gives realistic, compassionate, no-nonsense yet easy-to-follow advice for raising happy, secure, and productive children from preschool to college. This survival manual contains practical advice and parent pointers, step-by-step examples, and sample dialogue.
Dr. Rimm tells parents how to: Parent with a united front, Work with teachers and schools, Encourage learning and creativity, Guide children toward good study habits, Solve homework struggles, Help children improve test-taking skills, Set limits for children, Select appropriate rewards and punishments, Handle sibling rivalry, Decrease arguments and power struggles, Encourage independence without overempowering children.
About the Author:
Sylvia Rimm, Ph.D., is a best-selling author who has appeared regularly on NBC's Today show. She is director of the Family Achievement Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio, and is a clinical professor at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine
Editorial Reviews
Missouri Association for Gifted & Talented GAMbits
This is a book that you do not have to sit down and read cover to cover to find the part that applies to your situation. You will find instant answers, and from my own personal experience will receive instant results. After reading a few pages of this book I incorporated Sylvia's strategies and was astounded at the quick and positive results in my own children.Sylvia covers many topics in this book from United Parenting (yes dad you have to do your share) to how to draw up a study contract with your kids. Seeing the improvement in your children and the way they feel about themselves when they begin to achieve puts a smile on everyone's face and gives the parent the pat on the back and the assurance that you do have the ability to raise happy, successful children . . . How To Parent So Children Will Learn, will not spend much time on the bookshelf at my house, I will be referring to it constantly and I am looking forward to the start of the school year and the positive changes that I am sure will incur.
—Trish Trimble
Product Details
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Table of Contents
Acknowledgments xi
Preface xiii
Introduction xv
How to Get the Most out of This Book xvii
Empowering Your Children with the V of Love 1
Praise 3
Too Much Praise, Too Much of a Good Thing 3
The Referential Speaking Effect 6
Empower Your Child with the Power to Be a Child 10
Directions of Power: Dependence and Dominance 14
Why Do We Overempower? How Do Children Think? 22
Take-Charge Techniques for Parents 27
What about Genetics? 49
Questions and Answers 50
United Parenting 71
Parent Rivalry 72
Why Do We Sabotage? 94
Abuse: When There Can't Be a United Front 95
When Parents Love Their Children but Not Each Other 97
Adoption and Foster Parenting: Can There Be a United Front? 103
Maintaining a United Front with Relatives 106
Maintaining a United Front with Childcare Givers, Nannies, and Other Important People 112
Sibling Rivalry 113
Rivalry between Parent and Same-Gender Child 117
The Parent-Teacher United Front 118
Exceptions to the Parent-Teacher United Front 123
The Teacher-Parent United Front 126
Questions and Answers 127
Teaching Habits that Encourage Learning 151
Homework and Study 151
Motivating Children to Study More 160
How-to-Study Hints 161
Anxieties and Disabilities 175
Morning, Noon, and Night 194
Chores and Work 202
Practice in the Arts 205
Why Do We Do It? Why Do We Nag? 207
The Communication Habit 208
Fun and Games 209
Questions and Answers 211
Setting Positive Expectations 231
How to Model Achievement 231
When Parents Are Immigrants 241
When Parents Can't Control the Role Models- Or Can They? 243
Placing Yourself and/or Your Spouse Back on a Pedestal 251
Setting Expectations 252
Intrinsic Learning 281
Questions and Answers 282
NASP Position Statement on Students with Attention Problems 299
Resources for Parents 303
Organizations, Associations and Websites 303
DVDs for Parents and Educators 304
Learning Leads Q-Cards 305
Course 305
Miscellaneous 305
Additional Reading for Parents 307
References 309
Endnotes 311
Index 313
Introduction
Parents often wonder why some children enjoy school, love learning, and achieve so well in the classroom, while other children who are equally capable are so negative about school, avoid learning, and underachieve. Parents may find themselves baffled because the bright, happy child they used to know has "shut down" to learning. This shut-down sometimes begins as early as first grade, although many children turn away from education in middle or high school or even in college.
Intelligent children don't automatically fulfill their early promise. People often blame schools for their children's problems. However, parents are at least as crucial-in fact, even more so-in shaping children's attitudes toward learning. Certainly, schools and teachers are very important and do make a major difference in encouraging children's learning. Positive school experiences increase the likelihood of positive life experiences, and education continues to provide the most effective path toward upward mobility, success, and life fulfillment.
You, as parents, have the most dramatic positive impact on your children's education, not only during their childhood, but for their entire future. Teaching your children to learn and achieve will enhance their confidence and their potential for life satisfaction. Accepting them as underachievers or assuming that achievement will not provide them with happiness will only take away their confidence. Yet fostering achievement at home is more difficult than it has been in past generations. Parents can't rely so easily on their own childhoods to guide them in parenting their children. Families have changed so dramatically that rules from pastfamily research are not necessarily applicable to present
generations.
The variations of familial arrangements that provide home environments for children these days include stepfamilies, single-parent families, grandparent families, families with homosexual parents, families that use childcare providers, adoptive and foster families, and undoubtedly others that I have not thought of. The complexities have also multiplied for traditional two-parent families. Television, the Internet, video games, violence, divorce, dual careers, overburdened educational systems and overburdened parents, drugs, and peer pressures are only a few of the environmental stressors that are rising dramatically with each generation. Ethnic, cultural, and religious differences make for increased heterogeneity within and among families.
All in all, moms and dads seem to find themselves bewildered about parenting. They know for sure that they can't love their children too much, but many parenting guidelines and books leave them floundering in confusion and contradiction. Nonetheless, there are highly predictable home and school environments that guide capable children along paths on which they will learn and feel good about themselves. The four chapters that follow will provide you with the foundation that will almost inevitably lead your children toward learning and achievement.
Parent planning begins from before birth and extends to young adulthood. Parents can't control their children's environments entirely, but they can set some main directions that virtually assure achievement. Families need a game plan, some rules, and some reasonably clear strategies and goals. That's what my book is about-assuring a love of learning and accomplishment while recognizing that overall happiness for your children is the true goal of parenting.
Happy parenting! May your experiences provide you the joys that it has for my husband and me.