Free Teaching Kids to Think by Darlene Sweetland

when it comes to solving problems independently. Remember to celebrate the mistakes and rejoice in knowing that, through practice, they will be much better equipped to take on their future.
    1. Look at each problem as a positive opportunity for practice. Remember, the more practice they get solving the problem, the better they will be at it.
    2. Talk about individual strengths and weaknesses as part of a whole person. No one is without challenges, and it is very valuable to praise how each challenge is overcome.
    3. Don’t overschedule your children. Give them the responsibility to manage their free time. They need practice organizing unstructured time and priorities.
    4. Make sure to praise the process toward meeting a goal as equally important to the goal being met. The following are some examples:
    a. “I am so proud of how dedicated you were to doing all the work so you could be recommended for the honors class.”
    b. “You go to practice every day and love the competition of this sport. That is true commitment.”
    c. “I know how hard that class was for you, and you really put in a lot of time toward studying.”
    d. “I am really impressed with how responsible you were talking to your teacher about how you could pull your grade up.”

C HAPTER 4
    Understanding Developmental Stages

    I was interviewing a parent who brought her son in for an ADHD evaluation. She was concerned about her son’s lack of commitment to his responsibilities, such as school and cleaning his room. She wrote on one of the questionnaires that I use, “I am concerned about my constant reminders to him to stay on task. He asks for help when he doesn’t need it. He isn’t working his hardest to be the best he can be. If it gets done, it’s because someone made him do it.” She ended with, “I don’t know how to help him become an independent learner.” These seem like reasonable concerns for a parent to have, but in this case, the woman’s son had recently turned six years old and just started first grade.
    â€”Dr. Ron
    As psychologists, we are excited to work with parents who want great things for their children and are willing to help them achieve their goals. But sometimes we have to remind parents about what is developmentally typical for their child’s age, such as when parents ask for their children to be more insightful, perceptive, and mature than most children are at that age. The first grader mentioned earlier is capable of a lot of things, but he probably shouldn’t be expected to be “working his hardest to be the best he can be,” self-motivated, and an independent worker at the tender age of six. We wish we could say that scenario is unusual, but it isn’t. With all the outside pressure for parents to make sure their kids have all the advantages possible, they often don’t know what typical behavior is.
    Most parents aren’t confident in their barometer for knowing whether they are expecting enough or too much from their kids. When they are unsure, parents feel it is safer to push their kids ahead rather than risk them falling behind. That is one of the reasons it is so easy to fall into the trap of pushing kids too fast. It is possible to provide too much and push too hard, which results in kids missing out on valuable life lessons. In the first three chapters, we discussed the traps that cause parents to rescue their children. This chapter covers some simple guidelines that will help parents understand what can be expected of children at each developmental level, which will help parents to manage their own expectations. To do that, we venture into the basics of developmental stage theory.
    Developmental Stage Theory
    Developmental stage theory describes child development as a progression through distinct stages. Each stage is characterized by specific skills that are acquired during that stage and not before. Psychologists have been