In the last parent meeting we talked about how to help out kids with anxiety and stress. Especially as it relates to homework- a common back to school challenge every fall!
We talked about many of the ideas in this post.
And as a group we shared more ideas to help a child with homework, directly and indirectly:
- Endotek spray (Theanine)
- Magnesium – available as a topical oil or as an Epsom salt lotion
- Nicotine patch (work with your ARI doctor on dosage)
- Exercise
- Avoiding florescent lights
- Give your child advance notice of what is coming up
- Be calm when helping your child with homework
- Goal is to collaborate with your child on the homework
- Homework is like a lattice, not a ladder. There is more than one way up. Important for us to see the bigger picture.
- Ask your child how they feel. Share your own feelings. Show them a feelings chart.
- If writing or typing is challenging for your child, and if the homework is a topic like social studies – then you can either help them with the actual typing or print images and help them cut and paste instead of drawing.
- Look into technology to help … here are a few ideas
- If your child likes a TV show, try to use it to help them in some way with homework. For example http://pbskids.org/superwhy/
- Math: make it more interesting and relatable to them. Turn it into a story
- Also make math tactile and interactive
- Khan Academy videos … www.khanacademy.com
- Keep a spelling dictionary in reach
- Get a ball chair for them to sit on or a inflatable chair pad
Another topic was if a child has overly high expectations of himself, and is stressing from pressure to keep making straight As then here are some ideas:
- Engage your child in a discussion about what their expectations are
- That is just a part of who they are, honor and accept it
- When your child is sad about not getting an A we have to accept him for who he is rather than try to fix him
- Acknowledge rather than praise
- Life is about letting our kids solve their own problems
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October 17, 2011 at 9:26 pm |
[...] you everyone for coming for last month’s support group. The notes are posted here and we have a tentative date for the next group, Thursday Nov 17th. The speaker will be Dr Dave [...]
October 22, 2011 at 1:45 am |
These seem like a good number of potential treatments and approaches to try with kids. Since you don’t post your email, just want to let you know that Dr. Miranda now has his own blog, BMI Symposium.
Feel free to bring up topics you’d like him to address and I’ll see about getting them into the pipeline.
Cheers,
Ken