Resources for Families

Resources for Families:

RC 7.1 Family Counseling

Rose Geiser, LMFT

Licensced Marriage and Family Therapist
498 Highway 44 West
Shepherdsville, Kentucky, 40165
Phone: 502-345-9587

RC 7.2 Translation Service

*Non-English Speaking

Central KY Interpreter Referral

201 W Broadway St
Danville, KY40422

859-236-9888

*Sign Language

sASL Interpreting Services
1948 Gardiner Lane, LouisvilleKY40205
PH 502-594-5109 FAX 502-384-8865

RC 7.3 Children with Disabilities (2)

LakeCumberland Head Start

605 W Main StCampbellsville, KY42718
(270) 465-2619

First Steps Program
Department for Public Health
275 E. Main St., HS2W-C
Frankfort, KY40621

Phone: (877) 41STEPS or (877) 417-8377

Fax: (502) 564-0329 or (502) 564-8003

RC 7.4 Websites (3+)

NAEYC (National Association for the Education of Young Children) for Families

Description: This website is a great resource for parents. It gives information about common common concerns, learning, and basic child development. Very user friendly and gives good information.

Article : Is My Child Ready for Kindergarten? (attached)

Healthy Children

Description: This site, sponsored by the AmericanAcademy of Pediatrics, gives research based information on ages & stages, healthy living, safety & prevention, family life, health issues and more. The site is very user friendly and a comprehensive resource for parents and educators

Article: Cognitive Development in Preschoolers

Early Childhood News

Description: This is an online resource for teachers & parents which includes articles, activities, crafts and even an online radio show. It includes pictures, easy to use instructions,

Article: Why Can’t they Just Behave? And Other Silly Questions Parents Ask (attached)

Is My Child Ready for Kindergarten?

By Ben Mardell and Melissa Tonachel

Q: I have a child in preschool. How do I know if he will be ready for kindergarten when the time comes?

A: As a parent, you know your child better than anyone else. Pay attention to the things he says and does. Children come to kindergarten from a wide variety of experiences, and settings, so expecting them all to know and be able to do the same things is unrealistic.

Is your son excited about school? That's a good sign. Beyond that, it would be great for him to have some experience with the following things:

listening to others and taking appropriate turns for expressing ideas and questions;
handing materials respectfully and putting them away;
sustaining engagement with an activity or process;
identifying and pursuing his own interests, choosing materials and having some ideas about how to engage with them productively;
being safe in relation to the group (staying within school bounds) and attending to personal needs (washing hands); and
asking for help when he needs it.

He may have begun to develop other habits and skills but they may not be fully developed in preschool or even by the end of kindergarten: solving problems with peers, taking the perspective of others, increasing his stamina, and building academic mastery, for example. Hopefully, on the first day of school, your child will enter kindergarten with joy and the confidence that school is a good place to be--a fun, fair, and good place to learn.

Ben Mardell is associate professor and program director of early childhood education at LesleyUniversity in Cambridge, MA. Melissa Tonachel is a kindergarten teacher in Boston, MA.

Source: Adapted from an online Q&Apublished in 2011.

Category:

Child Development

Healthy ChildrenAges & StagesPreschool > Cognitive Development In Preschool Children

Ages & Stages

Cognitive Development In Preschool Children

Article Body

Your three-year-oldwill spend most of her waking hours questioning everything that happens around her. She loves to ask “Why do I have to . . . ?” and she’ll pay close attention to your answers as long as they’re simple and to the point. Don’t feel that you have to explain your rules fully; she can’t yet understand such reasoning and isn’t interested in it anyway. If you try to have this kind of “serious” conversation, you’ll see her stare into space or turn her attention to more entertaining matters, such as a toy across the room or a truck passing outside the window. Instead, telling her to do something “because it’s good for you” or “so you don’t get hurt” will make more sense to her than a detailed explanation.

Your child’s more abstract “why” questions may be more difficult, partly because there may be hundreds of them each day and also because some of them have no answers—or none that you know. If the question is “Why does the sun shine?” or “Why can’t the dog talk to me?” you can answer that you don’t know, or invite her to look into the question further by finding a book about the sun or about dogs. Be sure to take these questions seriously. As you do, you help broaden your child’s knowledge, feed her curiosity, and teach her to think more clearly.

When your three-year-old is faced with specific learning challenges, you’ll find her reasoning still rather one-sided. She can’t yet see an issue from two angles, nor can she solve problems that require her to look at more than one factor at the same time. For example, if you take two equal cups of water and pour one into a short, fat container and the other into a tall, skinny one, she’ll probably say the tall container holds more water than the short. Even if she sees the two equal cups to start with and watches you pour, she’ll come up with the same answer. By her logic, the taller container is “bigger” and therefore must hold more. At around age seven, children finally understand that they have to look at multiple aspects of a problem before arriving at an answer.

At about three years of age, your child’s sense of time will become much clearer. Now she’ll know her own daily routine and will try hard to figure out the routines of others. For example, she may eagerly watch for the mail carrier who arrives every day, but be perplexed that trash is picked up only one day out of seven. She’ll understand that certain special events, such as holidays and birthdays, occur every once in a while, but even if she can tell you how old she is, she’ll have no real sense of the length of a year.

But if you have any questions or concerns about your three-year-old’s development, you should discuss it with your pediatrician. If he agrees that there is reason for concern, he will refer your child for further testing.

By age four, your child is beginning to explore many basic concepts that will be taught in greater detail in school. For example, he now understands that the day is divided into morning, afternoon, and night, and that there are different seasons. By the time he’s five and entering kindergarten, he may know some days of the week and that each day is measured in hours and minutes. He also may comprehend the essential ideas of counting, the alphabet, size relationships (big versus small), and the names of geometric shapes.

There are many good children’s books that illustrate these concepts, but don’t feel compelled to rush things. There’s no advantage to him learning them this early, and if he feels pressured to perform now, he actually may resist learning when he gets to school.

The best approach is to offer your child a wide range of learning opportunities. For instance, this is the perfect age to introduce him to zoos and museums, if you haven’t done so already. Many museums have special sections designed for children, where he can actively experience the learning process. At the same time, you should respect his special interests and talents. If your child seems very artistic, take him to art museums and galleries, or let him try a preschool art class. Also, if you know an artist, take him for a visit so he can see what a studio is like. If he’s most interested in machines and dinosaurs, take him to the natural history museum, help him learn to build models, and provide him with construction kits that allow him to create his own machines. Whatever his interests, you can use books to help answer his questions and open his horizons even further. At this age, then, your child should be discovering the joy of learning so that he will be self- motivated when his formal education begins.

You’ll also find that, in addition to exploring practical ideas, your four-year-old probably will ask many “universal” questions about subjects such as the origin of the world, death and dying, and the composition of the sun and the sky. Now, for example, is when you’ll hear the classic question “Why is the sky blue?” Like so many other parents, you may have trouble answering these questions, particularly in simple language your child will understand. As you grapple with these issues, don’t make up answers; rely instead on children’s books that deal with them. Your local library should be able to recommend age-appropriate books to help you.

Last Updated

5/11/2011

Source

The information contained on this Web site should not be used as a substitute for the medical care and advice of your pediatrician. There may be variations in treatment that your pediatrician may recommend based on individual facts and circumstances.

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''Why Can't They Just Behave?'' And Other Silly Questions Parents Ask
By Laurie Prusso
Parents truly are their children’s first and best teachers. When it comes to dealing with children’s behavior, sometimes the job seems bigger than we would like it to be. Every day our children can behave in ways that frustrate, embarrass, and confound us. Some of the behaviors they display are just related to being a child. Other behaviors, however, are related to our habits and responses to them.
Some parents are really confused about what kind of behavior is cute, what is normal, and what is inappropriate. Parents may spend a lot of time explaining, bargaining, and convincing their child to understand why to behave, in the end missing an opportunity to teach the desired actions. Some parents, even if they want to do something about misbehavior, don’t know what to do, or are reluctant to anger or disappoint a child. Parents need to recognize what, when, and how to teach children the skills they want them to have. Children can learn to behave and it is our responsibility to teach them these skills.
Think Ahead
How do you want your child to behave when he is 10, 14, or even 18? Those behaviors need to be taught now, when your child is young. When my children were growing up, it was important to me that they speak politely at the dining table. In fact, it was important that they came to the dining table! Even if they chose not to eat, which they could, we all sat down together at mealtime. As adults, I wanted them to have the skills to be appropriate and comfortable in many environments. Some of these skills were, asking politely, thanking appropriately, speaking graciously, and helping to serve and clean. It would have been silly of me to expect this behavior without implementing some teaching strategies and supportive relationships to accomplish them. These are basic manners, which all children need to develop in order to be successful in the world outside of their family environment. It is not very helpful to allow children too much flexibility at home and then expect good behavior when they are away from home.
Other desired behaviors may include things like getting homework done and turned in on time, taking care of things, and being responsible for something else. These things won’t just happen. We can have an expectation and then have a big gap between the expectation and the child’s ability to live up to it. Sometimes that gap is the missing teaching and learning that needs to occur. Fortunately, there are some effective ways to teach and support your child’s learning about behavior.
It might be fun for you to create a list of the characteristics you would like your child to have when he is ready to move away to attend college. Make a long list first, and then try to narrow it down to 10 or 12 of the most important qualities. You can begin to teach and provide practice for those attributes and characteristics now when your child is young.
The Four E’s of Parenting – Example, Education: Explicit and Implicit, Experience, Encouragement
The Four E’s of parenting provide a concrete way for you to think about helping your child accomplish desired learning and appropriate behavior. You are the key player. Instead of just wishing your child would behave, you are responsible for the teaching, training, and follow-through.
The Four E’s sometimes overlap, but that is fitting, as this provides reinforcement and fortification for your child’s learning. For example, you will soon see that when you respond kindly and patiently to a child’s ridiculous request for banana splits for dinner, you are setting a good example and providing encouragement. You may also be teaching something about nutrition and appropriate limit setting. Or, if you decide that banana splits represent at least 3 of the food groups, you are demonstrating how to be flexible, fun, and collaborative. Life is like that. It matters more how you do something, than what you do.
Example:
Of course, example is the most powerful teacher in the world. Your influence on your child is almost immeasurable. You have the ability to set the tone for the day, to listen patiently, to be compassionate, and to organize your home in loving and fun ways. This influence belongs to you! If you use it wisely, you will make the greatest impact possible on your child.
Check yourself to see if the example you are setting is the one you want to set. Do you behave in ways that you want your child to behave? Do you speak to your child and to others the way you want to hear your child speak? If you want your child to be kind and patient, are you kind and patient? Do you complain? Procrastinate? Swear? Yell? If you do, it is likely that your child will too. When you speak to and about your spouse, are you respectful, loving, and kind? Your child will learn how to talk to you and to others by the way you speak to and about others. Your child will absorb your mannerisms and habits like a sponge and there is nothing you can do to stop it. Be the kind of person you want your child to become. Example is the most powerful tool you have.
Education:
We can intentionally and consciously teach children things we want them to know. We can teach them skills for living, manners for getting along, and we can teach them ways to make decisions. The two kinds of education that we typically use are explicit and implicit. Explicit teaching occurs when we think in advance about something that we want to teach our child, and then set up a learning experience, such as baking a cake. Implicit teaching occurs when we read children's literature and talk informally about things in life. Implicit teaching also occurs as our children watch our every move and internalize what we teach with our lives.
Experience:
In order to become skilled at anything, we need opportunities to experience the process and practice the skill. Growing up is a time for practicing and gaining experience in life. Children have not yet mastered all of the behaviors and skills that we sometimes expect from them. When misbehavior occurs, we may look at it as an opportunity to provide more practice (experience), education, and support for the desired learning. Remember when you learned to type? If the teacher punished you when you made mistakes, and then took the typewriter away because you still made mistakes the third or fourth time you typed, you would never have learned to be successful in that skill!
Encouragement:
Incourage {sic}. Put courage in! Your child, like all children, will do better when he feels good about himself and his relationship with you, not in a sappy, permissive way, but in a caring and supportive way. We can encourage our children to try, try again, keep trying, and find different ways to try. Relationships are the greatest motivation for appropriate behavior. Focusing on the child and the relationship is often a better way to improve behavior than is focusing on the behavior itself. Think about something you love to do and have become good at. Either you struggled alone, which wasn’t very fun and made it a lot harder, or you had some encouragement from others. Children will be more successful if they are full of courage!
Putting It Into Practice:
You can put the Four E’s into practice for any skill or behavior that you want your child to develop. Remember the steps: example, education, experience, and encouragement. First consider what it is you want your child to learn. Look at yourself as an example. Does your behavior need some tweaking and finishing before you expect better of your child? Be honest and willing to grow. Criticism is really a discouragement strategy whether we use it on our children or on ourselves. Just decide what you want to do better, and start doing.