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Teaching Children with Compassion: A Key to Learning
Several years ago, I read an enlightening article by Wallace Goddard on bringing up and teaching children with compassion. I frequently talk about “seeing children with new eyes.” Mr. Goddard calls it “seeing them with compassion.” When we feel compassion for our children, we are gentle with their efforts to learn and the mistakes they make in the process. I talked...
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Let Children Make Mistakes and Grow Up
When my grandchildren, Jack and Maggie, were small, I helped them make a chicken basket for Easter. It was made of two paper plate halves glued together. The pattern had the chicken facing sideways, with one eye glued on and a wing drawn on one side. When it came to gluing on the eyes, Jack had a fit because in his...
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Your Spark Station Doesn’t Have to Be Perfect, It Just Has to Work for Your Family
One of my favorite books is Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. I’ve read it a number of times and seen several movie versions. I first read it in high school, and while most of my peers were bored stiff, I was mesmerized by the writing, the language, and the humanness and tragedy of the characters. There are many themes in...
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You Don’t Have to Know Everything to Help Your Child Learn
Whether your children learn at home, in a public school, or in a private one, you have probably felt this worry: “I don’t know enough to help them.” Some of us did well in art but were slow in math or loved science but hated English. Some parents have a degree in engineering but are clueless about English literature, and...