Lori Day Consulting

I was interviewed for this article. Basically, no you should not hold your child back because of the pandemic!

Should You Hold Your Child Back a Grade? As we approach the end of a school year that may be among the most stressful in history for students, teachers, school employees, and parents, many of us are grappling with the severe impacts on the emotional health of our kids and, in some cases, our fears that virtual learning will cause more summ...

From 2018. Not sure how I missed this one as an Atlantic subscriber, but somehow I did, and it's one of the best articles I've ever read about some of the ills of how we raise kids today.

>>You appreciate the need for children to develop patience, mastery, tolerance for boredom. But demand piles upon demand until it becomes a kind of daily war, as if this structure were specifically designed to destroy the very things that it purports to nourish. Your children soon meet other repeat offenders who frequent the principals’ and psychologists’ offices, children who sit on exercise balls and wear weighted vests in class to better constrain them, like characters from Kurt Vonnegut’s “Harrison Bergeron” dystopia. You observe as your children uncover, like video-game Easter eggs, your state’s various statutes that trigger ejection from class; soon even your kindergartner discovers that all he needs to do to leave the room is announce an urge to kill himself, a fact he then exploits at will. You don’t blame the schools for these essential interventions, but you can hardly blame your child either for wanting out, because clearly something is wrong. Your children love learning, reading, exploring, creating; at home they write books, invent board games, make up languages, build gadgets out of old coffee makers. They appear to have the makings of successful adults—they’re resourceful, independent, and interested in contributing something to the world. But the markers of success in children are in many ways the opposite of these markers of success in adulthood, and in the meantime—a long, decade-plus meantime—children are trapped in a kind of juvenile detention where success is defined by how well adults can manage them, the chief adult being you, the parent.

The Immense Pressure on Children to Behave as Tiny Adults When I re-read a beloved series of books from my childhood, I saw all too clearly how society limits kids’ creativity and originality.

Why Your Brain Feels Broken Pandemic stress and multitasking can affect memory in a real way.

This brings back nightmares!

A brief history of the bizarre and sadistic Presidential Fitness Test This is how rock climbers, Eisenhower, and Swiss kids forced you to do pullups.

This is great.

Idaho Introduces a 'Free-Range Parenting' Bill Idaho's Reasonable Childhood Independence Act strives to protect parents from frivolous neglect charges while trying to raise independent children.

Our kids will catch up academically. What they need is attention to their emotional wellbeing.

I’ve lost a year with my kids battling over school and I’m done.

My seven year old and I were in the midst of our usual asynchronous day battle. I had his writing homework in my hand from school. He’d written several full, well-thought-out sentences.

But he won’t do the same for me, at least not without a fight.

I told him he didn’t have to write about his best day like his teacher asked, he could write about his worst. He could write about whatever he wanted as long as he wrote a few sentences.

He said he’d get in trouble. He said he was doing a bad job in first grade. He was on the brink of tears but didn’t know why.

And it hit me.

Instead of getting frustrated and pushing the assignment, I sat down with him at his desk in his superhero bedroom.

I said “you won’t get in trouble and you can’t fail first grade. In fact, you’re kind of a superhero yourself.”

He sat up in his chair just a little and looked at me with disbelief.

I said, “Do you know that no kids in the history of kids have ever had to do what you’re doing right now? No kids in the history of kids have ever had to do school at home, sitting in their bedroom, watching their teacher on a computer. You and your friends are making history.”

A visible weight lifted from his seven year old shoulders, “What does that mean?”

I told him it means I haven’t given him nearly enough credit for rolling with the punches. I told him how proud I am of him and his friends. That kids this year are doing the impossible and they’re doing a really great job.

I apologized for not saying it sooner and more often. A little tear fell down his cheek.

We’ve thanked everyone from healthcare workers to grocery store employees but we haven’t thanked the kids enough for bearing the burden of what we’ve put on their shoulders this year.

We’ve said kids are resilient, and they are. But they are the real superheroes in this whole scenario for having ZERO say in their lives but doing their best to adjust every day.

We closed his school-issued laptop and spent the rest of the day playing. This was supposed to be temporary and here we are a year later still trying to hold our head above water.

This is our home and I won’t turn it into a battle ground anymore over something we can’t control. Something that no longer makes sense.

Hug your little superheroes today and don’t forget to cut them the slack we’ve given everyone else.

Join me in the trenches at Christine Derengowski, Writer !!

Boston weighs changing school start times - The Boston Globe Boston school officials expect to announce new start times on Dec. 7, but are keeping quiet about what the new times could be.

For those of you in the Boston area, I'll be live on Tinyhood tomorrow from 4:00 - 8:00 p.m. answering all of your educational questions related to choosing the right school for your child and managing the application process. All you have to do is sign in and join the conversation!

Education Planning for Children | Tinyhood Have you been wondering how to start your search for the right school for your child, the best time of year to apply, what questions to ask, or how to get started with an educational consultant? Join Lori Day, Education Psychologist and Consultant for a Q&A all about the school application process.

Some great back-to-school healthy eating tips for kids. Mine appears in #2. Happy new school year!

Help! 11 tips to get kids to eat healthy Ask any parent about some of the top challenges of raising kids, and getting them to eat healthy would probably be high on the list.

LOL this is a riot!!

#6. Transition them from their steady diet of acorns and bugs back to table food. Expect some resistance here, but be persistent. It’s important that they be able to eat people food once they begin school so they’re not walking around all day snacking on handfuls of gravel from their pockets. If you continue to find them nibbling on dead leaves and mulch well into autumn, don’t lose hope. By the end of the year, all of their natural food sources will be snow covered, forcing them to revert to the traditional macaroni and cheese cuisine until the ground thaws. An occasional small pinecone can be provided as a treat.

How to De-Feralize Your Children for Back-to-School 1. Find them. Where are they? Nobody knows for sure. Seems like one might have been enrolled in a facility of some kind and another was left with a...

This is great.

Target Unveils Clothing For Kids With Special Needs Target is rolling out a collection of sensory-friendly apparel for children and says adaptive clothing for those with disabilities is on the way too.

A's on the rise in U.S. report cards, but SAT scores founder New research shows nearly half of HS seniors graduate with A average, up sharply since late 1990s