Heidi Shelton-Jenck's Blog
Posted by Heidi Shelton-Jenck
Bernie Siegel, MD, physician and author of many excellent books about health and healing, has written a wonderful book for parents. Love, Magic and Mudpies consists of short one or two page chapters that address everyday questions and realities for parents raising children. In each chapter he shares a message or story about his own lifetime as a husband, father to five, and grandfather to eight. The stories range from sweetly sentimental to hilarious! All of them ring true, and I connected with his admission that in parenting the best of intentions aren’t always what is needed. Dr. Siegel reflects and shares the wisdom that comes from distance and knowledge.
Each chapter ends with a practical suggestion for creating a home where, “kids feel loved, are kind, and make a difference.” We all want that, right? Raising good kids is what it is all about. This gem of a book is a great one to add to your parenting book collection.
Posted by Heidi Shelton-Jenck
In an article called Hooking Struggling Readers, authors Lori Rog and Paul Krop give some great suggestions for older struggling readers:
- give them books they can and want to read
- try magazines, comic books, newspapers and non-fiction books
- spend less time on skills instruction and more on reading
- try hi/low materials (high interest for tweens and teens with low reading levels)
- choose topics with personal or emotional connections
Some tweens are finally diagnosed with a reading disability after years of frustration in elementary school. Often, their parents have suspected for years that something is amiss, only to be told by school personnel that they need to give their child time to develop and mature. This is particularly true for parents of dyslexic children. Dyslexics are characterized as having average or above IQ. This often means they cope in the early grades, but as they get older, and reading requirements increase, they can no longer keep up with the rate and amount of reading assigned each day. Some tweens have been labeled “lazy”, or kids with a “bad attitude”, when they actually have a reading disability. Some tweens labeled with ADD or ADHD also have undiagnosed reading disabilities.
To learn more about reading disabilities, visit the parent area of ldonline.org, then talk with the special education department in your local school district.
Check out these Suite 101 articles to read more about tween reading: