By Sarah Maraniss Vander Schaaff Today, we have a Q&A with a man some of you may know best as Dr. Scott from the PBS show, Dinosaur Train. His full name is Scott D. Sampson and he has a new book out this month: How to Raise a Wild Child, the Art and Science of Falling…
By Sarah Maraniss Vander Schaaff What is the warning most parents give their children when they hand them a cellphone? According to Thomas Dodson, founder of the nonprofit, Above the Fray, it goes something like this: Don’t do anything stupid and don’t go over the data plan. Dodson, a father of two girls, ages 8…
By Sarah Vander Schaaff It’s cold out. And all of us who are not posting photos of a late February escape to the some warm environs, and Mars is looking pretty good right now, will agree. That’s why today we’re going to talk about the benefits of a nice warm mug of hot chocolate. I’m…
By Sarah Vander Schaaff In her book, Sitting Still Like a Frog, therapist Eline Snel discusses a school program called Mindfulness Matters that she conducted with three hundred children and twelve teachers. The group had a thirty-minute mindfulness session once per week, and each day after held ten-minute practice sessions. This continued for the entire…
By Sarah Vander Schaaff What adolescent girls wear to school is a subject of much consternation, judging from the parent meeting I attended at my children’s school today. The conversation was lead by a psychologist trained in the treatment of eating disorders, body image and trauma, but voices rose highest when talking about whose skirt…
By Sarah Vander Schaaff Continuing our series on What to Expect When You Have No Idea What to Expect (raising tweens to teens), we hear from a mother of two girls and a boy, whose ages range from 15 to 17. If the theme last week was to listen to your growing children, this week’s…
By Nancy Weinstein The United States is failing its gifted students. And despite the national weariness for standardized testing, the answer lies in a test. But it’s a test you can’t study for; would never tie to teacher performance; doesn’t require billions to fund, and thanks to advances in technology, can be taken anywhere in…
By Sarah Maraniss Vander Schaaff A twitter follower of the On Parenting blog asked: What happens when your kids are in school & have a lack of control (over) what & when they are told about tragedies? Several years ago, when I first started teaching, I had a student discuss how he learned about the attacks on…
October is, among other things, National Dyslexia Awareness Month. But today’s blog post is timely no matter the date, because a delayed diagnosis of a child’s learning difference exhausts every resource a parent might have. If have a concern about dyslexia, we strongly encourage you to have your child tested. This is a service schools must provide…
The documentary film, “Race to Nowhere” is described on the film’s website as, “Featuring the heartbreaking stories of students across the country who have been pushed to the brink by over-scheduling, over-testing and the relentless pressure to achieve…” It was nearly three years ago that the film came to the Princeton-area community, thanks in large…