Ages 8+
Around age 8 your child enters a new developmental stage, and school demands change. If your child is struggling, we offer strategies that can help.
Browse Our Articles Below
Dyslexia–What Is It?
If your child is struggling with reading, you have probably wondered if he or she has dyslexia. Like many others, you might be thinking of dyslexia as “seeing things backwards.” That is a common misperception. In reality, dyslexia may have less to do with how you see letters than with ho ...[Read More]
Tools: Use Number Charts to Teach Early Number Awareness
Your child has learned to count to ten, and is able to count up to five objects with one-to-one correspondence. If that is the case, a good foundation has been laid. But how about associating each of the numbers with its visual image? Number awareness involves three distinct elements. The child must ...[Read More]
Tools: Is Your Child Struggling with Multiplication Facts?
As a child, I was not able to memorize all the multiplication facts. In a Tools post coming soon, I will share strategies I used and am now teaching my clients, who also struggle with this. Look for this post. In the meantime, you might want to read my articles Impacts of Word Retrieval Difficulties ...[Read More]
Tools: Stimulating Early Vocabulary Development
In this tools post I give you strategies to use with your child for the purpose of stimulating early vocabulary development. Most of your child’s early vocabulary will consist of naming words. These words help your child make sense of the physical environment and get ready to make basic reques ...[Read More]
Tools: Help Your Young Child Develop Number Sense
Number sense involves more than just counting. It requires understanding quantities and comparison concepts like more/less, larger/smaller. Your child only gradually acquires these skills through the preschool years. (See my article, Is Math and Number Sense a Language Skill?) But you can start very ...[Read More]
Are Math and Number Sense Language Skills?
Is your child struggling with math tasks in the early grades? It could be an effect of language-processing difficulties. I currently see several third grade students in a language group. They all have language-processing difficulties of one kind or another, and all have very significant word retriev ...[Read More]
Don’t Label My Child! Are Labels Helpful or Harmful?
Parents are naturally concerned about their child being “labeled.” Some are even so afraid of having a label put on their child that they resist getting a professional evaluation of the child’s difficulties. Other parents are actually relieved when they get a label to put on their ...[Read More]
Impacts of Word Retrieval Difficulties
Is your child having trouble using words effectively or remembering numbers, letters or math facts? It could be that significant word retrieval difficulties are impacting your child’s learning as well as communication. Word retrieval difficulties are common and occur at all degrees of severity. They ...[Read More]
Failing Kindergarten?
New requirements are pushing academics into preschool and Kindergarten. Are we expecting too much of our young children? We have all heard of four-year-olds learning to read, but does that mean that most children that age could do the same? There are programs that claim to be able to accomplish ...[Read More]
Preschool Graduation–A Troubling Announcement
The preschool graduation was a longstanding tradition at our school. I had attended all but two for the past 12 years, and I wasn’t about to miss this one. As in previous years, the school auditorium was filled to capacity. Everyone watched, listened and clapped, as the children did the Chicke ...[Read More]