Don Earl Parent Blog

BEHAVIOR   The most effective way to manage unwanted behavior is to prevent it before it happens. Some effective strategies to promote positive behavior include establishing a routine, being consistent with your instructions, and having realistic expectations for the age and developmental level of your child. For example, you can’t expect most two year olds to sit and attend to an activity for more than 10-15 minutes at a time!   Challenging behaviors can be different things to different people. You may not be able to tolerate whining, while your next door neighbor might have more problems with a child who bites or hits. Although there are general developmental guidelines, each child is unique and has their own personality and temperament. Temperament can be defined as the way a child approaches and reacts to the world around them. Some children are friendly with everyone they meet and others are a little more shy. This is just one example of temperament. An individu...

Building Your Child’s Skills- Make Learning Fun There are so many fun things you can do at home to build your child’s skills.   If you want to teach counting or colors, make it fun and interactive.   At snack time have them count their goldfish crackers or sort their fruit snacks by color.   Play with them.   Build blocks and count them as your stack up the tower or ask them for a specific color.   Let them use their imagination to build and talk to them about what they are making.   Play a board game with them, or even devote one night a month to family game night.   Playing board games teaches your child a lot of different skills.   It teaches them how win or lose, how to wait their turn, how to follow rules, etc.   You can also use it as an opportunity to teach colors or concepts depending on which game you play.   One of the most important things you can do with your child to help build their skills is read to them every single ...

Welcome to the Don Earl Parent Blog!  The first Friday of each month, we will post about a new topic.  Based on the feedback from the survey we handed out at open house, we picked the topics that parents were most interested in learning more about.  Here is the schedule for this school year: November- Building Your Child’s Skills December- Behavior/Discipline January- Positive Communication February- Kindergarten Transition March- Mealtime/Eating Issues April- Self-Esteem May- Toileting/Potty Training  If you have specific questions about one of the topics, feel free to comment and we will reply as soon as possible.  You can access the blog from your computer or mobile device.  It will be on the home page of our website soon for easy access.  We will also send the link out via our Twitter account.  The first topic will be available on November 6, 2015.