How to Parent So Children Will Learn - Softcover

Rimm, Sylvia B.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0910707863 ISBN 13: 9780910707862

Publisher: SCB Distributors, 2021

Synopsis

Dr. Rimm provides practical, compassionate, no-nonsense advice for raising happy, secure, and productive children from preschool to college. This book contains easy-to-follow parent pointers, sample dialogues, and step-by-step examples to show parents how to select appropriate rewards and punishments, decrease arguments and power struggles, set limits, nurture creativity, encourage appropriate independence without giving children too much power, guide children toward good study habits, and much more. Parents will refer to the topics in this book again and again.

About this title

About the Author

Sylvia Rimm, Ph.D., is a best-selling author who was a contributing correspondent for nine years on NBC's Today show and who hosts a nationally broadcast radio program: Family Talk with Sylvia Rimm. Dr. Rimm is a psychologist who specializes in working with gifted children and is the director of the Family Achievement Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio. She also writes a syndicated newspaper column on parenting. Dr. Rimm has authored hundreds of articles and more than 20 books, including See Jane Win, which described her research on the childhoods of successful women. This book hit the New York Times bestseller list and was featured on the Oprah Winfrey and Today shows, and in People magazine. Katie Couric, former long-time host of NBC's Today show, said, "Dr. Rimm is a welcome voice of calm and reason-someone who offers practical advice, with almost immediate results. She's a guardian angel for families who need a little or a lot of guidance." Dr. Rimm has served on the Board of Directors of the National Association for Gifted Children and is a frequent keynote speaker at conferences. A mother of four and grandmother of nine, she lives with her husband in Cleveland.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

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 past family 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.

Edition details

• Publisher: SCB Distributors
• Publication date: 2021
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0910707863
• ISBN 13: 9780910707862
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 3
• Number of pages: 340