Blog Entries

Regulating our emotions can be a very daunting thing. Now imagine being a child and doing it. Our brains are not fully developed until about 25 years old, because our prefrontal cortex is still figuring our the decision making piece, and emotions are heavily tied into that. But much of that is started in the early years. You can help your kiddo figure things out by setting them up for success with emotional intelligence.

Problem solving is something we are faced with many times everyday. Even things as simple as what am I cooking for dinner? Do I have all the ingredients? Now what? Each of these questions from one simple task of cooking a meal count towards solving problems. All of these questions are part of our organizing and planning then initiating system-- executive functioning. And when our executive function is struggling --whether as a child or senior-- initiating and following through on these tasks can be greatly overwhelming. So what do we do about it? We practice is constantly.

Persistence, grit, trying again, not giving up. There are many ways to put it and it is not an easy thing to teach to our younglings... but do we give up? No! Instead we keep going to model it and apply our problem solving skills. 

A HUGE part of reading is retention through memory. Are we remembering each letter sound? Can we recall the sound on the spot for both lowercase and uppercase letters?

Did you know that we have 8 senses? We are all taught 5 of them repeatedly growing up, and that is because they help us with our perceptions of the world. Of those most commonly known five senses, though, our children are using them to grow and develop into bright learners ready to take on the challenges life throws at us as adults.

How many times a day do you have to tell your child to “focus”? I know as an adult, that I have to remind myself to focus on a menial task daily.

Children have an innate curiosity in them starting in infancy. We, as caregivers and parents, often see this curiosity used through our children’s senses (taste, touch, etc.). But little do we think about how this curiosity is a basic building block that forms how our children are learning. This innate curiosity then leads to our children developing a sense of  initiative, creativity, imagination, and –eventually– cognitive and behavioral self-regulation. The human brain and body are amazing things!