Dear Dr. Linda,

My daughter does her homework while she’s text messaging her friends, listening to music and chatting with her friends on Facebook. She argues that she can do her homework while doing all this. Is she right or should I make her do her homework at the kitchen table so I can watch her? Very Frustrated Mom.

Dear Frustrated Mom,

Teenagers value their social life and don’t always understand or agree with advice from Moms. Your daughter will argue that she is doing her homework, and she probably is. She doesn’t realize that she’s doing her homework like a robot but not learning anything from it.

But having her sit at the kitchen table will be torture for her and for you. You don’t need to watch her do her homework.

When you’re both calm and she’s listening, talk about the research that has been done on the teenage brain and multitasking. It doesn’t work. The teenagers who didn’t multitask while they doing homework or preparing for tests finished their work quicker and learned more. In fact there’s a lot of research that proves multitasking doesn’t work for anybody, not just teens.

However, listening to music if it isn’t too loud may help. Research shows that listening to music while studying helps some kids, especially kids with ADHD.

She’ll just have to experiment to see if music helps her concentrate.

Suggest to your daughter that she set up time to do her homework and set up another time to talk to her friends. This way she’ll have the best of both worlds. She’ll do better in school, and she’ll still have time to talk to her friends. Let her know that you think it’s important for her to have time to talk to her friends.

Best wishes for homework time for you and your daughter,
Dr. Linda

Be sure to leave your school success question for me in the comment section below. I publish readers questions and answers every Friday.

Choosing a college is a big decision, and sometimes families don’t agree.

Maybe Dad thinks it’s best if their son starts out close to home at a two-year college, but Mom thinks their son should go away to school.

Often, as parents, we come to these conclusions because of what we did. If Dad, who started at a two-year school, is successful, he might believe a two-year community college is the obvious answer.

Every successful adult has a story, but most successful adults would have been successful even if the story had been different.

As far as where kids should go to college, it’s hard to say what’s best without knowing what the kids themselves want. Many people take the community college route because they don’t want to go away to school and it’s less expensive.

Others choose to go away so they can experience the college life. Many claim it was the experience of going away from home that helped them mature. If you believe your child needs to go to a two-year school and money is not an issue, many excellent two-year schools offer on-campus living.

There are no absolutes in life. No crystal balls.

Again, the first question is what does your child want to do? If they want to follow in your footsteps and are happy with that decision, then that may be the right path.  But, if they want a different college experience and it’s affordable, this is the only time in their life that they’ll be able to experience that.

The important thing is to keep an open mind as you decide as a family what’s best.

Please leave a comment. Let us know how you’re making college decisions in your family?

Dear Dr. Linda,

My daughter is in second grade and is still not reading. My husband and I are very concerned. My mother in law is a retired teacher. She keeps telling us to relax and that she will read because everyone reads at a different time of their life. Her teacher wants to test her to see if there are other issues that might be causing the problem. I agree with my mother-in-law, but suppose she finishes second grade and still can’t read. I also agree with her teacher because I want to know what’s wrong and if I can do something to help her.  Mom of Non-reader

Dear Mom of Non-Reader,

Your daughter’s difficulty with reading is very frustrating for you and your daughter. Be assured that your mother-in-law is right. Every child reads when they are ready to read. However, some children have more difficulty than others and need a little more help to learn to read. Therefore, the teacher is also right.

You need to learn what is causing the problem and then address it. You may discover that it’s just developmental delay and there are no issues causing the problem. Your mother-in-law will be right, and that’ll be great.

But if there is something that you can be helping her with now, it’s good to start right away. Talk to the teacher and the specialist who will be doing the testing. Look into the tests that will be given. Continue to be a supportive and informed parent with an open mind and you’ll see, your child will read.

Best wishes to your and your daughter,
Dr. Linda

Be sure to leave your school success question for me in the comment box below. I’ll be publishing Q & A every Friday.

Not surprisingly, he was up to all hours of the night finishing his homework. Daniel’s Mom worried because Daniel kept having  meltdowns and she didn’t know why.

Daniel wasn’t suffering from low confidence. He was suffering from one of the “Terrible Toos,” having too much to do.

Now that school is starting, it’s a good time to plan ahead for outside activities. You may not know exactly what will come up but you’ll have a good idea. It’s much easier to schedule fewer outside activities right in the beginning than to wait until your child is involved and then discover that she needs to drop a couple of them.

Keep in mind that school is your child’s most important activity. If your child is involved in too many outside activities, this constant running from one thing to the next gets in the way of school success. Help them choose two or three things they love doing. Even two is enough.

When kids have too much to do, they often appear to have emotional problems, learning problems, poor study skills or poor work habits. In fact they just don’t have the time to do their homework. They’re involved in so many activities and have so many chores that they end up with no time to play, relax and unwind.

It’s as if these kids are attempting to squeeze school into their busy schedules. Kids obviously do better in school and in everyday life if they aren’t stressed-out, too tired, over-scheduled and burdened with hours of homework.

When kids are overwhelmed, parents need to help monitor the amount of work and activities, in and out of school. It’s a parent’s job to protect their kids from having too much to do.

Strategies and Recommendations:

Together with your child, make a schedule of his day. Put in the activities he’s involved in or wants to be involved in. Include the time it takes to get to the activity and get home. Be sure to include dinner.

Now how much time is left? Is there enough time for homework?  Does finishing homework mean he’ll have to stay up too late.

If you see that he has no time for homework or only time for homework when he should be getting ready for bed, talk about what can be changed. Let him decide what to drop and what to keep. Don’t insist that he drop an activity he loves, such as playing on a team, or practicing guitar.

Many children aren’t getting enough exercise. Physical exercise helps not only build strong bodies but also improves brain function. So it’s a good idea to encourage one activity that involves moving such as sports or dance.

You can do this now before school starts and save the complication and disappointment of dropping something later.

For kindergarteners, 1^st and 2^nd graders, one scheduled activity is plenty. Even though they don’t have much homework, they need lots of time for playing. Playing is a learning activity.

Older elementary school kids can usually manage two activities. For tweens and teens, three is the maximum and for some that’s too many. If teens are taking several AP classes and have lots of homework, two activities may be all they can handle.

When you’re helping your child fill in their schedule, remind them that school will include activities that take more homework than usual: doing a science project, studying for final exams, a senior project, a college-like term paper. When these deadlines come around, kids need to have the available time to do their best job.

Helping your child carefully select a couple of outside activities now gives your child time for homework, class projects and other things that pop up like birthday parties, family gatherings, going to their school’s football games and sleep-overs.

Your child is going to have piles and piles of papers. These papers need to be organized. they need to be hole punched and filed in 3-hole binders. Some are necessary for the next test and some are notices about next week’s cupcake sale . . . or last week’s sale, oops.

Every night or at least once a week, go through the papers with your elementary-school child, tossing the unnecessary sheets into the paper recycling bin and hole punching the others. Encourage older children to follow this plan. It could even be on their to-do list that’s on the fridge.

Once the papers are hole punched, put them in 3-ring binders. Label each binder. For example, one can be English, another math, etc. Or put dividers in an individual binder, sorting the papers by subjects and labeling the binders by dates, for example, 1st quarter, 2010, 2nd quarter, 2010. Encourage your children to create a system that works for them.

Keep the binders on a shelf to be referred to for tests and exams, science projects, book reports, term papers, fund-raising activities and field trips.

Make a table of contents for each binder including the date for the test or event. When that exam or event is over, cross it off the table of contents and throw away the paper. Be sure, however, to save papers that need to be referred to again for mid-terms or final exams.

The teachers will let your child know what they want in the binder they use for school. It’s all those other papers that need to be filed away.

Check out some more organizing tips.

Leave a comment below and let us know how you help your kids organize their school stuff.

To begin with, Alex was failing social studies because the tests came from the notes the teacher wrote on the board. Copying notes from the board was so difficult that Alex couldn’t read them. If that weren’t bad enough, Alex had no idea what the teacher was saying because trying to write the notes was all consuming.

Secondly, he was failing English because of the papers he wrote. The teacher insisted on having his students write in cursive. Now Alex was penalized for poor penmanship and poor grammar, spelling and punctuation.
Thirdly, he failed math because he couldn’t keep numbers lined up nor read his own writing. Finally, he was failing science because his grade depended on written lab reports. So, Alex never did them—too much writing.

Alex is smart. So what’s going on here?

Alex has dysgraphia, a learning disability that makes writing difficult.
Children with dysgraphia can sit in front of a blank piece of paper or computer screen. Three hours later the paper or screen are still blank. These kids often have wonderful and creative thoughts but can’t get them onto paper or a computer. They can tell you what they want to say but are unable to write it. For some, writing is such a slow and tedious process that they don’t have the patience to sit still long enough to write.

Other kids will write fast and furiously, skipping words, getting sentences and paragraphs in the wrong order. Often they can’t read their own handwriting. The end result is the same: poor grades and an aversion to writing.
Often these children stop writing because, even if they can get the paper written, they’re terrified that their teacher or their parents will insist they revise and rewrite.

Some children may also have actual physical problems with writing that are related to poor eye-hand coordination or lack of fine-motor skills. These children tend to avoid writing, even something as simple as their homework assignment.

Symptoms of Dysgraphia :

• Poor handwriting
• Good ideas but difficulty getting the same thoughts onto pape
• Difficulty copying from the board or from a book
• Overly long time spent when required  to write a paper
• Difficulty with spelling, punctuation and grammar

A diagnosis of dysgraphia, a writing disorder, is not appropriate if the child does not have all the symptoms. Some children are simply poor spellers, some have poor motor skills and some simply haven’t learned punctuation and grammar yet. Because children can have different challenges with writing,  you’ll want to pick and choose from the list below to help them improve and learn to enjoy  writing.

Five Strategies for Writing at Home:

• Use a computer. Encourage your child to use a computer when at all possible. Kids who write too fast and whose handwriting is lousy often do well on a computer—especially as they become proficient at keyboarding.
• Set up short practice sessions. For young children, practice writing individual letters, words, sentences, or short paragraphs. Keep the sessions appropriate (in subject and in length) to your child’s age, maturity level and personality. For example, 5 to 10 minutes for 6 year olds because they are just learning how to write, 15 to 30  minutes for 7 – 10 year olds, 30 to 45 minutes for middle schoolers and and 60 minutes and more for high schoolers.
• Depending on their maturity level, personality and desire to write, more time is great. But for the struggling writer, more time may be counterproductive. My book  “How to Improve Writing Skills” helps children with writing challenges.
• Help with spelling. During a writing session, if your child has trouble spelling, spell the words for her. If the primary goal is writing, stopping often to look up a word interferes with the creative process. Or encourage her to ignore spelling until the draft is written. Use the spell-check function of your computer’s word processing program.
• Have your child tell you what he wants to write about. Then write his thoughts on paper. This can be in list form, on a web (main idea in the middle of a circle and thoughts are on spokes coming out of the circle), or outline form. Then decide together which ideas should be in the beginning of the paper, which should be in the middle and which should be at the end. Number the ideas and cross out the ones that do not belong. Then have your child write or type the final copy by writing one thought after the other.
• Try to avoid making your child rewrite excessively.  Forcing a child to do so is drudgery that often turns him off to writing. Remember your child’s maturity and appropriate skill level for his grade.

Dysgraphia can certainly affect children’s grades, test scores, and even their attitude toward school. If you suspect that your child may have dysgraphia, talk to your child’s teacher about modifications and accommodations that can be done in the classroom.

Is Homework a Hassle in Your Home? Use these Three Tools to Make It Easier.

Time Management. Be sure your child has enough time to do homework, and you have enough time to help if needed. To be sure, download this schedule template and fill it in with your family. You may want more than one. Maybe fill one in for each member of the family. By doing so, you may see that your kids’ days are completely booked up between school and after school activities. They have no down time to relax or play much less do homework.

Homework Helper. Be sure that your children aren’t spending too much time on homework. Even though homework may be beneficial, it can also be counterproductive. The following are appropriate time spans for homework per grade: 1^st – 10 minutes, 2nd -20 minutes, 3rd – 30 minutes, 4^th – 40 minutes, 5th -50 minutes, 6th – 60 minutes, 7th and 8th – 60 to 90 minutes, 9^th thru 12^th – approximately two hours. If your child is spending more time doing homework than is recommended, find out why. Maybe, she needs some extra help, maybe there’s too much homework, maybe he’s not completing classwork. To help with homework problems, read my free homework advice booklet.

Organize Papers. If you can’t find the homework sheets because you and your child are drowning in school papers, you need to get three basic items: a good three-hole punch, a large three ring binder and dividers. With your child, at a convenient time for both of you, sort out all the old school papers from his backpack and binders. Discard papers that definitely will not be needed in the future. Put the remaining papers in the binder under each subject. Do this weekly to stay organized.

Now, with a little help from you, your child can stay on top of homework.

But how do you know if your child’s problems stem from a learning disability or something else? When Andrew struggles with the multiplication tables, it could be a symptom of a much bigger issue which hours of math-drill won’t solve. Better than math-drill is finding the real issue. Does Andrew have a learning disability? By ignoring the possibility of a learning disability, many children never get the help they need. As a result, they find the entire school experience difficult, confusing and frustrating. School can be hard enough for most children. When a child has a learning disability, it’s even more exasperating because it rarely goes away.

So it’s time to discover why your child struggles in school or in a particular subject and what you can do to help him attain school success. Start by finding out if your child has a classifiable learning disability. “Classifiable” means the learning disability fits into a category that’s on the “approved”
list. This entitles him, by law, to receive special school support.

Most students have trouble in school at some point in their lives, but their problems may not be ongoing, severe enough, or specific enough to be considered learning disabilities. For example, Jessica keeps failing her social studies tests, Andrew can’t remember his math facts, and Cari cries every time she has to write a book report. According to the law, are these children defined as having a learning disability? Maybe?

Perhaps Jessica’s family is having problems at home, and Jessica is so worried about her parents that she keeps flunking tests. Maybe nobody showed Andrew a way that works for him to remember his math facts. And Cari missed a week of school when she had her tonsils out. Unfortunately, it was the week her teacher taught the class how to write a book report.

Just because a child has difficulty doing something in school doesn’t mean she has a learning disability. If that were the case, everyone would be classified as learning disabled!

Three Strategies for Managing Learning Disabilities

• Have your child evaluated. How do you know if your child has a
learning disability that meets legal criteria? It would be great if we could give them a blood test or a throat culture, but it’s not that easy. Parents, teachers and administrators have to rely on a combination of specific criteria. The school will do testing for learning disabilities. They will be looking for nonverbal learning disabilities, verbal learning disabilities, and other types of learning disabilities.

If you suspect your child’s school difficulties may be caused by a learning disability, consult your child’s teacher, school counselor, school social worker, school psychologist or principal for advice, or ask to have your child evaluated by the school. If you need to follow through, write a letter to your local school district requesting that your child be tested for a learning disability. This test is typically free, even if your child goes to a private school.

You can take your child to a qualified professional, usually  a neuropsychologist or psychiatrist. Or ask your pediatrician if she has a list of professionals who can help. And remember, it’s a good idea to get a second opinion.

• Become educated. If your child is classified as having a learning disability, learn what’s available to your child. Contact your state education department for information. You can also contact the Learning Disabilities Association of America (www.LDANATL.org ) for advice. Many strategies can help your child learn. Go online or go to the library or local bookstore to find books on helping learning-disabled students.

• Be an involved parent. It’s important to help you child but don’t make a career of your child’s learning disability. Accept it, understand it, make adjustments and move on with your lives. Too many parents become over-involved, some to the point of being obsessive-compulsive about their children’s learning disability. This is harmful to them and to their children.

What if, after testing, you find your child doesn’t have a learning disability? Our schools are filled with children who, in spite of having learning problems all through school, don’t meet the state or federal guidelines for having a learning-disability.

These children often aren’t provided sufficient support. They may be given remedial reading in the lower grades. However, for the most part, once they reach middle and high school, they’re on their own. They may not be able to keep up with the reading, writing, or math.

Now it’s up to you to step in. Ask the school for more support. Get tutoring. Do what’s appropriate to get the help your child needs. Your child deserves school success. The good news is that many school districts now have learning labs and other support systems in order to address these students’ needs, and most private schools provide additional support.

Here’s what 12-year-old Joey explained to me: “Those teachers are losin’ it. They get nuts if you forget a pencil! I’m talkin’ about a pencil! I have to remember which room to go to each period, how to get there, what book I need, if I have my homework, if I can get to the bathroom in those few minutes, and if it’s A, B, C or D day, and they want me to remember a pencil too?”

Joey’s not lazy or stupid or trying to annoy his teachers. He’s been classified with a learning disability.

If your child is experiencing some difficulties at school, don’t be too quick to blame him. Instead, find out what’s really going on. Your child may have a learning disability. Many become frustrated and angry with their children or with the teachers and the schools. They blame their child for being lazy, for having a low frustration level, or for giving up too quickly. They invariably lecture and punish her when she gets poor grades.

Here are three strategies to follow if you think your child might have a learning disability.

• Shift your attention to find the cause of the learning the learning disability. In order to solve the problem, you need to shift your attention from the bad grades to the more important issue: what is causing the bad grades. Once you find what is causing your child to struggle and find ways to fix or overcome that, his grades will automatically go up. You can think of this in terms of cause and effect. The bad grades are only the effect. Once you find the cause and remedy it, the bad grades will cease to be a problem.
• Become your child’s ally. When a child struggles because of a learning disability, it’s hard for both the child and the parents. In such situations, parents should behave as their children’s allies, not their adversaries. They need to help their children by trying to identify the causes of the problems, and then to help them resolve their problems through remediation and/or accommodation. Again, it’s not an easy task. But to insure school success, parents need to understand the real problems their children are experiencing, and then find the support they need.
• Find out what assistance is available for children with learning disabilities. The good news is that no parent or child needs to experience such frustration and anger. If your child is struggling, there’s plenty of help available, both through the school and through private counseling and tutoring. Talk to the teachers, counselors, administrators, psychologists, physicians, friends, relatives, and neighbors. Find out what assistance is available, and how to go about taking advantage of these services.

Always remember that your goal is to insure that your child experiences school success.  If it takes navigating around a few more bumps than you had anticipated, that’s okay.

Happy navigating.

Michael believed that if he tried hard and kept working at something, he’d succeed.  He could succeed at school. He was sure of it. He said that nobody had told him this—not his parents, not his grandparents. How did he know?  It was the message in his fortune cookie in a Chinese restaurant–so it must be true.

It’s a cute story but in Michael’s case, luckily only partly true. In fact he had wonderful support from his parents and his grandparents. They cheered him on every day as he struggled with severe language issues.

Although Michael could speak when he was five, nobody could understand him. His family was concerned with school and worried about his future. By the time I met Michael, he had been through three years of neurologists, audiologists, pediatricians, and speech therapists.

I started working with Michael when he entered kindergarten and continued meeting with him through high school. Between the school and hour-long weekly tutoring sessions, Michael succeeded. Sure there were rough times. At times, Michael became so frustrated that he would pound his fist on the table because he couldn’t retrieve the words he needed to express himself. But, through everything, Michael’s family never walked away.

They accepted his strengths and weaknesses, supported him daily and respected his needs. He’s in college now, wants to be an engineer. He’s an amazing math student! And he now talks up a storm!

Michael’s story shows that even with odds stacked against him from the get-go, with the proper support, success in school and beyond is attainable. However, it takes a great deal of effort on three main fronts: the child, his parents and his teacher.  But it starts at home with you.

All parents, like Michael’s, want their kids to do well in school. How well children do in school and beyond is determined by their own special genes (nature) and experiences (nurture). Sometimes their genes contain special “gifts” from the past. For example, they may have inherited their Great-Grandpa Joe’s dyslexia or Grandma Sue’s love of reading.

Some children are extroverts like their dad and get A’s in class participation, while others are introverts like their Aunt Sally, and are very happy just to listen and take it all in. Many parents have a fantasy of a child they want their child to be, but it may not be the child they have.

To ensure school success and beyond, you need to

1. Accept your child for who he is.
2. Support your child in any way you can.
3. Respect your child so that she can reach her full potential.

These are three of the most important factors in school success. Since you—Mom and Dad—are the most important significant others in your child’s life, your acceptance, support and respect are essential to her emotional, social and intellectual growth.

In fact, these three factors are the building blocks of positive self-esteem, which is of the highest importance to ensure school success.