Please check out my new article on Wandering Educators, “I Saw it in a Museum.” I wrote about my top 5, most inspirational museum visits of all time. I think you’ll enjoy it!
Now that our daughter has completed the college application process, and has accepted an offer from UPenn, we can take a humongous sigh of relief. The process was so exhausting that we all have taken a vow not to use the “C” word here any more. (Yes, “C” word = College.) Applying to college is an arduous, stressful process no matter what you do – even if you take a laid-back approach. What am I saying? There is no laid-back approach to applying to college! The more advanced your child is academically, the more competition she will face, because most of the top universities are small and the demand is high. Here’s what I know from my experience:
It is fabulous if you can get into one of country’s top schools, and you should certainly welcome the opportunity if it should present itself. Just keep in mind you will find highly successful and mega wealthy people who attended local colleges, remote and state universities as well as those who never went to college at all. It may sound cliche, but your success will depend vastly upon your motivation rather than the name of the college where you graduate.
Good luck. You’ll get through this. I promise.
Luckily for me, I have only one child, because I do not care to speak or hear the “C” word ever again.
As a children’s book author, I am often asked, “How Can I tell if my young child is gifted?”
www.free-clipart-pictures.net
There are many possible signs:
Parents can generally tell if their child is an advanced learner. If one or both of a child’s parents are gifted, it makes sense that the child may be as well. In any event, a child does not have to be “gifted” to be ultra successful in life. We’ve all known very intellectual yet lazy people as well as ultra successful adults who showed no sign of being gifted as a child.
Success is mostly about motivation and getting along with others.
Clip art copyrighted by Bobbie Peachey,
http://webclipart.about.com
I thought it would be interesting to research many different statistics about American children. Here are some of the countless fascinating facts I discovered:
In a NHANES II survey of the Prevalence of Obesity in Children ages 2-19 years
Experts estimate that two to six children out of every 1,000 will have autism. Males are four times more likely to have autism than females.
We can estimate that up to 500,000 individuals younger than 21 have autism.
Source: http://autism.emedtv.com
The National Association for Gifted Children estimates there are around 3 million academically gifted children in grades K-12 in the U.S. That’s about 6% of the student population.
Source: http://www.nagc.org
Students who study music test better. Those who took courses in music performance and music appreciation scored higher in the SAT than those who did not participate in the arts. Music performance students scored 53 points higher on the verbal and 39 points higher on the math.
Source: http://www.childrensmusicworkshop.com
One child in four in the US grows up not knowing how to read.
85 percent of all juveniles who interface with the juvenile court system are functionally illiterate.
Source: http://www.begintoread.com
The number of elementary school-age children (ages 5 through 13) declined by 381,000 while the number of their high school-age counterparts (ages 14 through 17) increased by 329,000 between 2003 and 2004.
The last census shows that high school graduation rates for women (ages 25 years and older) continued to exceed those of men, 85.4 percent and 84.9 percent, respectively. But 28.9 percent of men had a bachelor’s degree or higher compared to 26.5 percent of women.
Utah, Minnesota, Montana, New Hampshire and Alaska continued to have the highest proportions of people 25 years and older with a high school diploma or higher (around 92 percent).
About 40% of adolescents ages 12–17 years have tried smoking cigarettes, including a few puffs, in their lifetime.
Overall, Mexican American adolescents (41%) and non-Hispanic white adolescents (41%) had a higher prevalence of ever having tried smoking cigarettes, compared with non-Hispanic black adolescents (34%)
Sixteen percent of adolescents aged 12–17 years had their first alcoholic drink before age 13. Among those adolescents who had an alcoholic drink, 37% did so before age 13
Eighteen percent of males and 14% of females aged 12–17 years reported drinking before age 13.
Overall, 21% percent of adolescents aged 12–17 years had at least one drink of alcohol during the 30 days before the survey (Table 18).
Females (23%) reported a higher percentage of alcohol use in the past 30 days than males (19%).
Ten percent of adolescents aged 12–17 years had five or more drinks of alcohol in a row within a couple of hours on at least one day during the past month (Table 21).
Females (10%) were as likely as males (11%) to have had five or more drinks of alcohol in a row within a couple of hours on at least one day during the past month.
Non-Hispanic black adolescents (30%) were least likely to have had at least one drink of alcohol, compared with Mexican American adolescents (42%) and non-Hispanic white adolescents (41%).
Approximately 21% of adolescents aged 12–17 years had ever tried marijuana.
Nearly half (46%) of all 15–19-year-olds in the United States have had sex at least once.
Teens are waiting longer to have sex than they did in the past. Some 13% of never-married females and 15% of never-married males aged 15–19 in 2002 had had sex before age 15, compared with 19% and 21%, respectively, in 1995
In 2007, the adolescent birth rate was 22.2 per 1,000 adolescents ages 15–17.
http://www.childstats.gov/pubs/
the total number of missing children reported to the police and entered into the FBI’s National Crime Information Center (NCIC) in 2000 remained at approximately 750,000, or 2,100 children per day, down from 2,200 per day in 1998.
There were 12.9 million one-parent families in 2006 — 10.4 million single-mother families and 2.5 million single-father families.
About 5.7 million children, or 8 percent of the total, lived in a household that included a grandparent in 2006. The majority of these children (3.7 million) lived in the grandparent’s home, and of these, about 60 percent had a parent present.
Hispanic and Asian children under 12 were more likely to eat dinner with a parent every day in a typical week than children who were non-Hispanic white or black children.
On September 30, 2006, there were an estimated 510,000 children in foster care.
Source: http://www.childwelfare.gov
Parents with children of different ages talk to me about school. The most common concern among these parents is homework; their children are not self disciplined enough to get the work done on their own.
Clip art licensed from the Clip Art Galleryon www.DiscoverySchool.com
The question is, when should you, as a parent stop reminding your child to get his homework done and when should stop helping him actually do it? I asked this question of 1st-3rd grade Montessori teacher, Rachel Pulido, who has more than 30 years of teaching experience. “By third grade, an average student should be able to do her homework on her own, without being reminded. It’s normal for parents to want to step in, but it is better if children in third grade and higher suffer the consequences of not getting their work done. Otherwise they will not learn to be independent and self motivated.”
This is great advice. While it may be upsetting for parents to watch a child’s grade slump, this is the best way for the student to learn self discipline.”Middle school students should be completely self sufficient about managing their assignments. It’s fine for them to ask for help at times, but they should not be guided by their parents or reminded about deadlines.”
As far as children with learning disabilities, Ms. Pulido said, “This is a different story. No matter what the age of the child, you will have to be more involved. If not, the student may disconnect and lose interest, because the work may be too overwhelming.”
Not long ago, I watched a news segment about a healthy, normal 6th grade boy, who severely lacked confidence. It turned out that his mother was obsessed with him getting everything correct on his homework and excelling on all his tests. She laid out his work on the dining room table, sat him down and watched and pointed as he filled in worksheets. She checked every answer, read his textbooks, quizzed him excessively and called teachers often to ask questions. The stress this created for him was insurmountable. He was afraid to try anything on his own without the approval of his mom, including making the simplest decisions (like what flavor of ice cream he should order). His well-meaning, yet controlling mother created a helpless, insecure, unhappy child. A counselor worked with her to show her how her controlling actions were detrimental to her son.
While this is an extreme case, it is representative of a common problem. So unless your child has a learning disability, let her face the consequences of slacking off with homework. There’s nothing wrong with setting boundaries and communicating exactly what your expectations are and what the repercussions will be if her grades start slipping. But rather than doing the work for her, let your child learn the the best way – by making old fashioned mistakes and suffering the consequences.
Being book smart does not make a person a genius. It takes much more than that – creativity for one. Do you know someone who is precise and rigid, yet flat in the creativity department? This is the sort of person who is excessively organized and gets everything done on her list. She has perfect handwriting. Her grades were perfect in school. Her home is always tidy. She always knows where everything she owns is located.
http://www.school-clipart.com
This is what I call the “Overachiever.” But she is not a true genius. She is devoid of creativity. She cannot go with the flow; she is inflexible. If her plans change, she is nervous. She needs to have things “just so.” She is the kind of person you’d want to have as your surgeon, your organizer or your hair stylist. But she would not be a good president of a company, the President of the United States or a teacher.
The Overachiever can be an accomplished musician, playing Chopin flawlessly, exactly the way it was written to be played. But he is not a genius like Chopin because he is a technician, rather than an artist. Don’t get me wrong; the overachiever is to be well respected for his diligence, reliability and commitment to excellence. Who ever said one must be a genius to be respected? There is a lot to be said for doing a job well, and many overachievers are super successful. Yet they are not geniuses.
My own definition of a true “Genius” is one who is well-rounded rather than lopsided. A math whiz with no social skills in my definition, is not a true Genius. A true genius possesses all these factors:
Possessing all of these factors is rare. How many do you have? How many do your children have? How many people do you know who has all of them?
Have you ever thought about where our basic food comes from? Have your kids ever asked you about it? Just about every time I go to the grocery store, I think about how grateful I am for our farmers who grow all this stuff we eat – the wonderful abundance of fruit, veggies and grains (especially organic!) we have to choose from. I think we all take for granted the work others do to make sure we have healthy food to eat! I grow a few tomato plants in buckets every year and know how much works goes into that. So I can surely appreciate what it takes to feed the world!
One great way to explore the world with your kids is to learn about crop production. The US Department of Agriculture offers some great tables that list crop production from countries all around the world.
I learned some interesting things:
If you look at the data with your children, talk about the reasons different countries grow more of a crop than other countries do. (Climate, population, land size). Discuss how we all help each other out by supplying food to other nations.
With Thanksgiving just one week away, this is a great time for us all to be thankful for our food!
Now is the time to improve your geography literacy and encourage those around you as well! This year’s National Geography Awareness Week Theme is:
Here’s what you should do right now:
I have been reviewing a lot of children’s books about famous men – Ben Franklin, Marco Polo, Charles Darwin. Three men who have changed the way we think and live.
I realize that what they all have in common is a magnified level of curiosity. It is not that any of these men were born knowing any more than others. It is simply that they had a thirst for knowledge. That is truly the definition of intelligence – curiosity.
So you must ask yourself, how curious am I? What about my kids? Are they always asking and searching for answers? If so, you’ve got intelligent kids, who perhaps someday may be another Darwin or Ben Franklin or Marco Polo.
It may seem like there isn’t much left to be discovered. But we just don’t know yet what we just don’t know. And I am desperate to learn all about it.
