How to Parent So Children Will Learn / Edition 3

by Sylvia B. Rimm

Overview

Dr. Rimm provides practical, compassionate, no-nonsense advice for raising happy, secure, and productive children from preschool to college. This book contains easy-to-follow parent pointers, sample dialogues, and step-by-step examples to show parents how to select appropriate rewards and punishments, decrease arguments and power struggles, set limits, nurture creativity, encourage appropriate independence without giving children too much power, guide children toward good study habits, and much more. Parents will refer to the topics in this book again and again.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780910707862
Publisher:	Gifted Unlimited
Publication date:	04/23/2021
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	340
Sales rank:	228,799
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Sylvia Rimm, Ph.D., is a best-selling author who was a contributing correspondent for nine years on NBC's Today show and who hosts a nationally broadcast radio program: Family Talk with Sylvia Rimm. Dr. Rimm is a psychologist who specializes in working with gifted children and is the director of the Family Achievement Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio. She also writes a syndicated newspaper column on parenting. Dr. Rimm has authored hundreds of articles and more than 20 books, including See Jane Win, which described her research on the childhoods of successful women. This book hit the New York Times bestseller list and was featured on the Oprah Winfrey and Today shows, and in People magazine. Katie Couric, former long-time host of NBC's Today show, said, "Dr. Rimm is a welcome voice of calm and reason-someone who offers practical advice, with almost immediate results. She's a guardian angel for families who need a little or a lot of guidance." Dr. Rimm has served on the Board of Directors of the National Association for Gifted Children and is a frequent keynote speaker at conferences. A mother of four and grandmother of nine, she lives with her husband in Cleveland.

Read an Excerpt

"Top Ten" List for Dr. Sylvia Rimm's Smart Parenting: How to Raise a Happy, Achieving Child

The complexity of today's parenting makes it important to develop some basic principles to guide parents. In Dr. Sylvia Rimm's book Smart Parenting, four chapters emphasize the foundational concepts that can help parents raise happy, achieving children. She has now developed a top ten list to summarize essential principles to assist parents:

1. Praise moderately to avoid pressure; postpone "super-praise". Praise conveys your values to your children and sets expectations for them. No praise conveys the message that you don't believe in them. Reasonable praise, like "good thinker," "hard worker," "smart," "creative," "strong," "kind," and "sensitive" sets high expectations that are within your children's reach. Words like "perfect," "the best," "most beautiful," and "brilliant" set impossible expectations. Children internalize those expectations, and the expectations become pressures when children find they can't achieve those high goals.
   
   
2. Do not discuss children's problem behaviors within their hearing. Discussion about children also sets expectations for them. If they hear you talking to grandparents and friends about how jealous or mean they are or how shy or fearful they are, or if you refer to them as "little devils" or "ADHD kids," they assume you're telling the truth and believe they can't control these problem behaviors.
   
   
3. Take charge; don't overpower your children. Your children require leadership and limits to feel secure. Envision the letter V. When children are small, they're at the base of the V withfew choices, little freedom, and small responsibilities that go with that size. As they grow, give them more choices, more freedom, and more responsibilities. Their limits remain. Children will feel trusted. If you reverse that V and children are given too many early choices and freedoms, they feel empowered too early. They resent rules and responsibilities and feel as if you're taking away their freedom. They expect to be treated as adults before they're ready. They became angry, depressed, and rebellious.
   
   
4. Build resiliency; don't rescue your child from reality. Although children need to develop sensitivity, overprotection encourages dependency and oversensitivity. You can be kind without being oversympathetic. Your children will need to learn to recover from losses and failures, and resiliency will permit them to triumph over obstacles.
   
   
5. Stay united, be willing to compromise, and say good things about your child's other parent. Leaders in a family that lead in two opposite directions confuse children. Children will not respect parents who show no respect for each other. Turning your children's other parent into an "ogre" or "dummy" may make you feel like a good parent temporarily, but your sabotage will backfire and your children will no longer respect either of you. This is especially hard after divorce, but it is even more important in divided families.
   
   
6. Hold teachers, education, and learning in high regard. Set your children's educations as first priority. This ideal will become more clear if they hear how much you value learning. Tell them about the best teachers you had and elevate their teachers as well. Set expectations for higher education early so they will assume education does not stop after high school.
   
   
7. Be positive about your own work and that of your child's other parent. If you walk in the door and complain about your work daily, your children will become anti-work kids. They'll complain about their schoolwork and household chores. If you don't like your work, attempt to find better work and remind them that education provides more job choices.
   
   
8. Be a role model of ethics, activity, and hard work. Locate other good role models for your children. Your children are watching you. When you "get away with" speeding, keep too much change, or are disrespectful to your mother (their grandmother), they'll notice. When you're interesting and energetic, they'll be equally impressed. You can be a good role model without being perfect, but your imperfections are showing. You don't have to do it all. Introduce your children to friends and mentors who also will be positive influences.
   
   
9. Enjoy learning experiences with your child. Too many parents of twenty-year-olds have sobbed in my offices because they couldn't find time for their kids when they were growing up. Make time for learning with your kids, and they'll be learners forever. You'll not have regrets, only memories.
   
   
10. Keep a separate fun time and adult status without giving adult status too soon. Enjoy adult life without your children. Weekly dates and a few adult vacations a year will keep you excited about life. Give your children something to look forward to. They can watch and wait and do child activities with the family. Kids who get adult privileges have responsibilities beyond their maturity.
    

Table of Contents

	Acknowledgments	xi
	Preface	xiii
	Introduction	xvii
	How to Get the Most out of This Book	xix
Chapter 1	Empowering Your Children with the [logical or] of Love
	Praise	5
	Too Much Praise, Too Much of a Good Thing	6
	The Referential Speaking Effect	9
	Empower Your Child with the Power to Be a Child	13
	Directions of Power: Dependence and Dominance	16
	The Dependent Pattern: Facilitating Independent Power	22
	Dominant Children	24
	Why Do We Overempower? How Do Children Think?	25
	Take-Charge Techniques for Parents	30
	Rewards and Punishments	30
	Overpunishment and Opposition	36
	Positive Messages	37
	Reasoning and Talk	38
	Overemotional Responses	39
	Setting Limits by Time-Out	39
	Setting Limits for Arguers	43
	Avoiding Power Struggles	48
	What About Genetics?	54
	Questions and Answers	54
Chapter 2	United Parenting
	Parent Rivalry	79
	Father Is an Ogre	80
	Mother Is an Ogre	86
	Daddy Is a Dummy	90
	Mother Is the Mouse of the House	91
	How to Avoid Ogre and Dummy Games	97
	Why Do We Sabotage?	99
	Abuse: When There Can't Be a United Front	100
	When Parents Love Their Children but Not Each Other	102
	Adoption and Foster Parenting: Can There Be a United Front?	108
	Adoption	108
	Foster Parenting	110
	Maintaining a United Front with Relatives	111
	Grandparents	112
	Aunts and Uncles	116
	Maintaining a United Front with Child-Care Givers, Nannies, and Other Important People	117
	Sibling Rivalry	118
	Rivalry Between Parent and Same-Gender Child	123
	The Parent-Teacher United Front	123
	Selecting Your Children's Teachers	127
	Changing Your Children's School	128
	Exceptions to the Parent-Teacher United Front	128
	Curriculum Differences	129
	Physical or Verbal Abuse	130
	Sexual Abuse	131
	The Teacher-Parent United Front	132
	Questions and Answers	133
Chapter 3	Teaching Habits That Encourage Learning
	Homework and Study	161
	A Time and a Place	162
	How Parents Can Help (but Not Too Much)	166
	Motivating Children to Study More	170
	How-to-Study Hints	172
	Using All Senses	172
	Memorization	174
	Note Taking	175
	Studying from Textbooks	175
	Learning Math Facts	176
	Studying for Math Tests	176
	Spelling	176
	Foreign Languages	177
	Finding Ideas	178
	Organizational Skills	179
	Anxieties and Disabilities	183
	Writing (Pencil) Anxieties	184
	Creative Writing	185
	Reading Anxieties	185
	Math and Spatial Disabilities	186
	Learning Disabilities	189
	Test Anxiety	192
	Attention Deficit Disorders (ADDs)	192
	Morning, Noon, and Night	203
	Morning Routine	203
	Mealtimes	204
	Bedtime	208
	Chores and Work	211
	Practice in the Arts	214
	Why Do We Do It? Why Do We Nag?	216
	The Communication Habit	217
	Fun and Games	218
	Questions and Answers	220
Chapter 4	Setting Positive Expectations
	How to Model Achievement	243
	You Are Their Models	243
	How Do You Like Your Work?	244
	Change the Work Script	244
	If You Hate Your Work	245
	How Was School Today?	247
	Changing the School Script	247
	If You Hated School	249
	Designing an Achiever Image	249
	Describing Your Spouse as an Achiever	251
	When Parents Are Immigrants	254
	When Parents Can't Control the Models--or Can They?	255
	Special Talent Teacher or Coach	255
	Family Members	256
	After Divorce	257
	When a Spouse Dies	258
	Television and Literature Heroes	259
	Peer Role Models	260
	Placing Yourself and/or Your Spouse Back on a Pedestal	264
	Setting Expectations	264
	Expectations for Adolescents	268
	Gender Expectations	269
	Schoolwork Is Central	270
	Perfectionism and Competition	273
	Boredom	280
	Grade Expectations	286
	Post-High School Expectations	288
	Intrinsic Learning	292
	Questions and Answers	295
Appendix A	Position Statement on Students with Attention Deficits	313
Appendix B	Resources	316
Appendix C	Booklists	318
	Notes	323
	Index	325