This book is a classic and should be on every parent and every teacher’s bookshelf. It is into its umpteenth edition, that is how good it is, and I know parents who have worn out their first copy and bought a new one!

You can dip into it, but I bet that you want to read it all as soon as you get it.

If your child needs to develop their language skills (one of the most important learning skills) this is the book for you.

Enjoy it and let me know what part you liked best.
Click on the link to order.

This is a question looks simple enough to answer but is, in fact, quite difficult to answer. You need to know several things before you can answer it.

* What does it mean to underachieve?

Too often we think that children ‘could do better’ in school and get better marks, learn more, and achieve more things. But how do we know this? How do we know when a child is not reaching their learning potential? As a teacher I developed a sixth sense that told me when children were not doing their best.

When you have been with a child in a learning situation for a while you get a pretty good idea of their capabilities. Perhaps this comes from the way they interact with you, or how they take responsibility for their work, or how frustrated they become when things don’t go right. You seem to just know that a child ‘could do better’.

Underachieving children are those who don’t reach their learning potential. It has been estimated that up to 25% of children are underachievers for one reason or another.

* How do you know that a child is underachieving?

There is a whole raft of different signs that give you clues. Children can be boisterous, quiet, reserved, happy, sad, frustrated, or angry. They can avoid doing work, try too hard, worry too much, call themselves stupid, give up on learning, forget their homework, miss important dates, blame the teacher, blame you, blame themselves or ignore the problem completely.

There was always the child who ‘goofed off’ in class and it was pretty obvious that he or she was not doing their best work as a result. There were a few students who pretended that they didn’t care whether they did good work or not, and a few who, despite trying really hard, still did not seem to ‘get it’.

* Who can tell when a child is underachieving?

Someone who knows the child well, either as a student or as part of family. Someone who works closely with the child and can see the changes that are taking place in their attitude about their work, someone who knows what signs to look for and whether they are fleeting or have been growing for some time.

It can be a teacher, mother, sibling, or close relative who first notices the tell tale signs of underachievement. I say that ‘Mom’s know’ because they are often the ones helping with homework, they are on the front line and can quickly notice changes in their child’s attitude to their schoolwork.

* Why do children underachieve?

That is the million dollar question. (Wasn’t it once a $64,000 question? Just goes to show how old I am). There are many, many reasons why children underachieve, but they can be grouped into two main categories.

Children underachieve because;

They are not being taught the way they learn
and
They do not have the learning skills they need to be able to learn.

Your assignment
Try and answer the question ‘is my child an underachiever’.

If you think that your child ‘could do better’ you are probably right.

Then throw away terms such as ‘lazy, unfocused, distracted, doesn’t try’, the kind of things teachers write about students who are underachieving, and think about the two reasons children underachieve.

Is your child being taught the way he or she learns best?

Does your child have the learning skills he or she needs to be able to learn well?

If you are not sure, you need to find out.

‘Over 30 years’ research has proven beyond dispute the positive connection between parents’ involvement and student success. Effectively engaging families in the education of their children has the potential to be far more transformational than any other type of education reform.’

National Standards for PTA’s.

So now you know.

Have you heard the saying ‘Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach him how to fish and you feed him for life’? I am sure that you have, but you may not have related it to your child’s learning.

I would like to change the saying to “Give a child information and you help him learn for a day, show him how to learn and you help him learn for life’.

Children need to learn a lot of information. They need to know how many grams in a kilogram, who is President of the USA, what to do if they get lost, why they have to go to school and a host of other information that it is important for them to know. Do you remember learning your times tables? How were they drilled into you? The games teacher in one of my school made us recite them whenever we were getting changed. No wonder games was not my favorite subject. But, they contain information that I needed to know in order to be good at math. Well, that is what the teachers told us. I now know better.

Yes, knowing my times tables is useful and I would suggest that all children learn some times tables. But I could never remember what I called the ‘middle’ of the table. You know, 6 times 7, 8 times 9, 7 times 8 … all the awkward numbers.

Fortunately it is never a problem. Not because I use a calculator, which I don’t, but because I know HOW to work them out. I have a system of working out the result of two numbers multiplied together. I taught some of these simple ‘tricks’ to children who hated math and felt that they would never be able to understand what they were supposed to do. I am sure that you know the ‘trick’ of working out the 9 times tables using the fingers on both hands.

You don’t?

Perhaps you should ask your child, I am sure he or she knows, and if they don’t let me know and I will pass it on so that life becomes easier for them.

So, although facts, information, the ‘what’ of learning, is important the ‘how’ of learning is much more important. Once you know the ‘how’ of any learning situation it becomes easy, almost boring sometimes.

Help your child learn HOW to learn, give your child the skills he or she needs to be able to handle any learning situation, and watch them love learning and be all that they can be.

Your assignment
First, find out how to do the 9 times tables on your fingers and show your child if he doesn’t already know!

Then stop emphasizing the ‘what’ of learning, take the emphasis off the product (your child’s work) and put it on the ‘how’ of learning (your child’s use of learning skills).

Try saying phrases like these to your child;

I liked how you did that
You really tried hard to do that well
What do you have to do next?
How are you going to do this?
What did you do the last time you had a problem like this?
Did it work?
Why/Why not?

Let me know how you get on, and if you really don’t know the 9 times table trick I can tell you that too!

I have spent many, many years helping children become better learners and succeed in school. I have been part of all the ‘new’ educational approaches that teachers have been encouraged, and in some cases, mandated, to use in their classrooms. I have tried them all, liked some, and dismissed others.

I was trained in the UK in the 60’s- yes, I am that old!- and I believed in child centered education. Not the child centered approach where you let a child rule the roost, do whatever he or she wants and expect them to magically learn and become a better person, but the child centered approach that said you start with the child, you work out what the child needs to learn, and then help him or her learn it.

I taught in a time when there was no set curriculum. Teachers were expected to understand what children needed to learn next, and to plan their lessons accordingly. Not a perfect system, I admit. Some children might have learned about dinosaurs every year for three years! I wonder how many of them went into paleontology?

Not having to teach a set curriculum allowed me to concentrate on helping children learn rather than getting through the set lessons. I tried all the newfangled ways of helping children learn. I can’t even remember the number of ways teachers were supposed to teach reading.

What I learned was this;

The only way to help children become good learners is to help them develop the skills they need to know how to learn. Once a child knows how to learn it almost doesn’t matter how you try to teach him or her, they will learn whatever way you try to teach them.

The one surefire way to help your child become a better learner is to make sure that they know how to learn, that they have developed the skills they need to be able to learn.

And the good news is that you don’t need special training to be able to do this. Once you know what skills your child needs to develop you can quickly and easily incorporate learning opportunities into your daily routine.

This is what Leading to Learning is all about, helping you find simple ways to make your child a better learner. If you haven’t already signed up for my free report and weekly tips on how to do this – look in the right hand corner and start helping your child today.

Some children are highly sensitive to stress and can quickly become fussy and irritated by loud noises or other stress factors. These hyper sensitive children have been called ‘orchid’ children because they can be hard to raise and need careful nurturing – just like orchids.

It seems that if they are stressed by their home environment, if their parents have financial problems or are feeling overwhelmed by life in some way, these children fare badly in school.

But research points out that these children,if given the right environment can flourish in school, often outperforming their peers.

If your child is not an orchid child he or she is probably a ‘dandelion’ child, a child who seems to thrive no matter what stresses and strains are thrown their way.

I agree, sensitive children can be difficult to work with. The are reactive and can quickly switch off when things get too difficult for them to handle. But the same thing happens with all children. Every child has a ‘breaking point’ where stress of some kind prevents them from learning and can lead to some strange behavior.

The only difference between orchid children and dandelion children is the amount of stress that they can handle before it prevents their brains functioning properly. A highly sensitive child is more likely to pick up on stressful feelings than a less sensitive child, and that can make them more vulnerable to stopping learning.

All children need nurturing, need an environment in which they can grow and learn. The fact that that environment differs depending on personality and make up is nothing new. Nor is the fact that children who come from stable home environments do better in school that children from homes full of stress and unhappiness.

I think that even ‘dandelion’ children suffer from an unstable home setting, they just may not show it so much.

What this study does point out is that a child’s emotional state has a big impact on how well they can learn. In my course ‘Love of Learning’ I devote a whole section to understanding a child’s emotional learning skills and what parents can do to help children develop them.

Orchids are beautiful, and I like having one in my house. I also love to see the dandelions appear in my lawn in Spring. When we create the best environments for all children we may end up with fields of orchids as well as fields of dandelions.

Vive la difference!

OK, time for me to ‘fess up. I really don’t understand ‘helicopter’ parents, or hyper parents, or whatever they are called. I don’t understand how intelligent parents cannot see the damage they are doing by hovering over their child, helping them with everything, preventing their children from getting a life of their own.

I knew that hyper-parents were out there, but it wasn’t till I saw a documentary on CBC last night that I realized there were so many of them, and that they were so intelligent (they tend to be middle class and reasonable well off), yet so stupid!

Let’s get one thing straight. Children grow up. They grow up to be adults that are expected to contribute to society. That is what growing up is all about. Hyper-parenting stops children from growing up, prevents them being able to contribute to society, turns them into takers rather than givers. This is not a good thing, not a good thing at all.

If you do not let your child make mistakes, their own mistakes, they are never going to learn how to handle mistakes when they meet them. They are always going to be running back to Mommy and Daddy to sort things out for them. How long can this go on, when should the bird leave the nest? Or rather, when should mommy bird kick them out so they can learn to fend for themselves?

I suggest that nearly everyone is ready to leave the nest by 18 years of age. At 18 you are a young adult, note ‘adult’ not ‘child’.

OK, so at 18 there is still a lot to learn, but it should be learned from others who are 18, not from parents. Yes, parents should be there to provide some support if absolutely necessary, but they should be mainly making sure that their young adult offspring have opportunities to grow up, to develop the emotional and social skills they need to become part of society.

In the documentary employers talked of parents negotiating salaries, complaining to professors about university grades, and setting up work spaces for their offspring. Doing all the things that are part of the experience of growing up.

And it is not only young adults that suffer.

Parents can program their young children to the extent that the children have no time, or energy, to develop any independence, to develop a sense of responsibility for their actions (after all mummy made me do it!), or to play freely and enjoy their childhood.

What a sad state of affairs.

To all you hyper parents out there I just have one thing to say, but it could be the most important piece of advice you ever get.

CHILDREN LEARN MORE BY PLAYING THAN BY BEING TAUGHT HOW TO PLAY.

Let your child grow up. You will both be happier in the long run.

Your child uses you as a model, he or she tries to be like you, to do what you do, and to think like you do. Girls tend to model themselves on their mothers, boys on their fathers. Young students also model their behavior on that of their teachers. There is nothing surprising or new about this.

But what if the teacher doesn’t like math and feels that their math skills are weak? What kind of role model are they then?

Research from the University of Chicago has found that female teachers who are concerned about their math skills may be passing that concern along to the girls they teach, and that as a result, the girls become anxious about their own ability in math and do less well in math tests.

Ah, the power of modeling.

Modeling is one of the 3M’s of how parents influence a child’s learning. (You do know all three don’t you? Just in case you have forgotten they are Modeling. Mentoring and Mediating). I often think that it is the most important of the three.

So, how good are your math skills? What attitudes to math are you modeling for your child? Are you stopping your child from being good at math by passing on your concerns? Do you sigh and run for the calculator whenever you have to work out a math problem?

Or do you model your enjoyment of math, your lack of fear of numbers?
Here are some ways you can show your child that math is fun.

Play guessing and counting games.
Let your child guess how many buttons he has on his clothes, then have fun counting them.
Guess how many trucks will pass while you are waiting for a bus, then count and see who had the best guess.
Guess how many fries are on a plate, or how many peas he can eat.
Count in two’s and threes. starting at a different number each time.

Play number games.
How many ways can you make 10? 25? 100?
Make number patterns, and ask someone to solve them. E,g, What number comes next? 3,4,6,9,…
or 10, 9, 7, 4,…
Buy a book of number games and do them together.

Measure things,
Get a tape or ruler and use it. Measure books, chairs, wrists, anything that can be measured.
Weigh things, guess the weight before checking to see who is closest.
Try and stay quiet for a whole minute – use a clock or watch as a timer.
Now can you do it for two minutes? Five minutes?

Look for numbers and try to work out what they say.
Cereal boxes are good for this- how many numbers can you find? What are they telling you?
Check page numbers, do they always start at #1? Why/why not?
Teach your child to use Roman numbers, where can you find them? What do they mean?
(Hint – look for the date at the end of movies)

I am sure that you can think of hundreds (numbers again!) of ways of helping your child find math fun, no matter what your level of math skills.

Don’t prevent your child becoming a math whizz – show him or her that math is nothing to be afraid of and that it can be enjoyable and fun. Then, if they do get a teacher who models a poor attitude to math your child will be immune.

Do you help your child

In the last couple of days I came across two totally different scenarios that confirmed my belief that style matters. You can try one for yourself, the other was a report on ways to help children learn.

OK – the research first.

Children who suffer from FAS (Fetal Alcohol Syndrome) have real problems learning because they have ‘blockages’ in their brain. These ‘blockages’ are very hard to pinpoint and you never know what effect FAS will have on as child’s ability to learn.

It can be very frustrating trying to help these children learn. Their brains never seemed to hold information, or be able to process it in a ‘normal’ way. When I taught children like this I felt that there was very little hope of them ever making any significant progress. It was very disheartening.

But new research gives these children hope. Researchers have found that using and strengthening the motor skills of these children can create new brain pathways that help them overcome some of the bad effects of FAS. By helping these children use the skills they have they are helping them develop new ways of learning.

Great stuff.

OK. Onto the next ah-ha moment.

I was at a seminar this weekend. It was about helping prospective clients understand exactly what you are offering them. (Howard Olsen – High Output, look him up).

Howard was trying to get us to understand that developing a new habit takes time and can be uncomfortable, and he made us do a very simple exercise to demonstrate this. You should try it too.

Using your right hand, if you are right handed, and your left hand, if you are left handed – write your name on a piece of paper.

Now try writing it again, but with the other hand.

Not so easy, right?

As Howard stated, you probably felt awkward and uncomfortable, it took you extra time and effort, and you still did a lousy job of it!

Now I understood what Howard was demonstrating but I saw this exercise in a different way. If you try to do something that is not natural to you, in a way that is unusual for you, it becomes much more difficult to do well.

When children try to learn in ways that do not fit their learning style they find it difficult, and do a lousy job of it.

What links these two situations?

Well, they are both about using a person’s preferred way of learning to make learning easier.

Does style matter – you bet it does!

I read a comment in a blog today that stated that educators need to mobilize resources outside the classroom to make up for the shortfall of resources within school systems.

I agree.

BUT

The next sentence made me angry – the writer suggested that educators (teachers?) can act as leaders, can tell others how to support children’s schooling. I realized that it is time to question the power teacher have over how children are taught.

So I wrote this ‘rant’. It is aimed mainly at teachers and other educators but i thought that you might be interested.

I would love comments – either for or against!

So, what are YOU going to do to support parents helping their children learn?

The more I understand about how children learn the more I realize how important parents are in helping children succeed in school. At first I believed that teachers were the most important people in terms of a child’s learning. After all, they are trained in how to teach and how to help children learn.

Then I believed that parents and teachers had an equal role in influencing a child’s learning. I discovered that a few teachers believed this too. These teachers were usually the ones who had plenty of contact with parents, mainly kindergarten teachers who met parents when they brought their child to class.

Now I believe that parents have a much bigger influence on a child’s learning than teachers. In fact, I have come to understand that teachers cannot teach a child well unless a parent has prepared the child for school type learning.

Now, I am a slow learner, it has taken me many years to get to develop my beliefs and to feel happy with them. I need proof that my beliefs are based on a sound foundation. Even then I am reluctant to throw away old beliefs and accept new ones.

So what made me change my mind? Why did my beliefs change? It was a mixture of experience and research that changed my mind.

While I was teaching and working with parents whose children were struggling to learn it became obvious that some parents were better at helping their children learn than others. Some parents seemed to have a reasonable understanding of their child’s struggles to learn and were willing to try and do something about it. Other parents, no less loving and wanting to help their child, had very little awareness of the struggles their child was going through and had no idea how to provide the help their child needed.

You can guess which child made the most progress.

Then I carried out my research into how parents help children learn. I met some amazing parents. Parents with little formal education but with an understanding and an awareness of their child’s learning issues, parents who were teaching their children sign language to help them overcome language issues, parents who were helping children publish their own books as a way of developing their writing. Amazing stuff.

I also met parents who wanted to help their child learn but who had no idea what to do. Parents who were spending vast amounts of time, money and energy trying out ways to get help for their children. Most of the time the support they were paying for was either useless or even damaging to their child’s learning.

So I gradually came to understand that it is what parents do that has a bigger influence on a child’s learning than what happens in school.

Parents rock!

YOU make the difference.

What are you going to do about it?

How did

On January 7th California signed on to legislation that is supposed to give parents power to alter schools they think are not doing their job.

If parents are unhappy about their child’s education and 50% of them sign a petition stating this the school board must make significant changes to how the school is run. These changes can include closing the school, replacing the Principal or changing the way the school is funded.

This worries me.

I am all in favor of more ‘parent power’ in a child’s education, but with power comes responsibility.

Have parents been excluded from their child’s school? Have they been unable to see what is taking place in the classrooms? Or have they not taken the time, or made the effort, to find out what the problems are and how they can be fixed?

Parents and teachers need to work together to help children learn. If parents and teachers work against each other children’s education suffers.

How have schools been allowed to get into the situation where parents are so unhappy with their child’s education that they feel they have to force changes on the school, changes which may, or may not, be effective?

What have parents been doing as the school gradually becomes non-functional? What have teachers been doing to enlist the support of parents? I believe that all parents and teachers want the best for the children in their care. If parents and teachers want the same things why don’t they get together to make them happen.

Parent power is a good thing. Why have parents taken so long to take their power? And fulfill their responsibilities?

Could it be that parents and teachers find it difficult to communicate with each other? That teachers struggling to do well in a classroom do not know how to enlist the help of parents and that parents, afraid of the supposed power of teachers, never let teachers know their feelings?

Are there any answers out there?

A recent report from the UK found that one in five boys and one in seven girls aged one to seven experience problems talking and understanding speech. This is significant as the ability to talk, listen and understand is fundamental and underpins all learning and communication.

This result indicates that one in six children will never reach their learning potential because they lack basic communication skills.

One in six!

And this situation can be easily be avoided.

The author of the report Jean Gross, England’s first Communications Champion, stated that the reason for these dismal numbers could be traced to busy parents. Being busy leads to lack of face-to-face conversations, conversations that help children learn how to communicate.

Some parents are so busy trying to earn enough money to pay the mortgage that they never sit and eat with their children. Taking the time to eat together as a family means that parents and children can talk about what has happened during the day, can exchange ideas and information, and help children develop the language skills they need to communicate.

Jean Gross says that children are primed to respond to a face, especially the faces of their parents. Watching TV and hearing other people talk is just no the same and does little to improve children’s ability to communicate. In other research the amount of TV a child watched had a direct impact on their language development – children who watched a lot of television had poorer vocabulary and communication skills that children who watched less TV.

One of the first things I ask when I work with parents is whether their child has a television in their bedroom. Not only are children with a television in their room often much too tired to learn in school but they also lack the one-on-one communication that helps them develop their language skills. In this report some children under the age of one already had a television in their bedroom! What chance will these children have to sleep well and to develop the language skills they need?

Some language issues can be picked up when a child goes to school. But it can be very difficult for them to get the remedial help they need, speech and language support is always in big demand and waiting lists are long. Language is so fundamental to learning that any delay in language development is bound to lead to learning issues.

Gross did not mention the possibility of learning problems for these children, instead she described how children with poor language skills that are not corrected run the risk of developing mental health problems or getting into trouble with the law later in life.

This is serious. One in six children are at risk.

Time to talk to your child!

There is a backlash against giving out report cards in the fall. In fact, fall report cards deserve an F because teachers do not know a child well enough to be able to report back to parents in a meaningful way and the marks given may not represent a child’s ability. So it says in my paper today.

What do educators recommend instead? Well, some say that student-led meeting will fit the bill and others suggest round table chats with parents about the academic progress children are making.

These are good moves, but something about them bothered me and it took me a while to work out what it was.

For a start, the proposed new meetings would only be once a year. The other report cards would still be full of grade levels and information that parents cannot use despite the best efforts of teachers to making them informative and useful. But having meetings that are either student led or around a table is a move in the right direction.

So why was I feeling upset? What was it about this news item that bugged me? Well, after sushi for lunch, (raw fish is great brain food) I worked it out. I am upset for two reasons.

Firstly, I am upset because the new initiatives do not go far enough, and secondly I am upset because I have to find a way to get my message out.

What do I mean by ‘the initiatives do not go far enough’? My research showed that student led conferences and parent/teacher chats are all well and good but that they still leave the teacher in charge. Parents do not have the opportunity to share their thoughts and ideas about their child’s education in any meaningful way.

In student-led conferences and round table meetings the emphasis is on what the teachers can tell the parents,what the teacher has taught the child ad how well the child has responded. I know that all parents want to know how well their child is doing in class and, of course, teachers should be able to give them this information. But this transfer of information from the teacher to the parent is only half the story. What about the information parents can give teachers?

Student led conferences and ’round table discussions about progress in school’ do not allow parents space and time to share how they are trying to help their children learn, what they are doing to support their child’s education, and how family circumstances impact a child’s learning.

Only when teachers and parents can meet freely as equal partners in the education of children will children be able to benefit from the help they get in school and at home.

Making how schools report back to parents a little less rigid is helpful, but it does not address the issue of how parents and teachers can work together to help children learn. Parents and teachers are equally important in a child’s educational development. It is about time schools acted as though they believed this.

Now onto the second reason I am upset. This is to do with my lack of skill and experience and my feelings about being a ‘candle in the wind’. ( I am old enough to be a Dylan fan).

I know that teachers want to do their best for parents and the children in their school, and I also know that they need to find better ways to communicate with parents, ways that meet the needs of children. The problem is getting them to understand what those needs are and what they can do to help.

So, my New Year’s resolution is this – to find a way that I can help parents and teachers understand how to work together to help children learn.

I have absolutely no idea how I am going to do this. But that is part of the fun. If you have any suggestions please let me know – all ideas will be acknowledged.

I have taught many, many children during my 35 year teaching career. And, as any teacher will tell you, you can quickly tell which child will be successful and which will not.

I am not talking about how some children seem brighter than others but about the children, not matter what their level of ‘brightness’, who you just know will make it, will become all they are capable of being, will have a good chance of succeeding in school and in life.

I can remember Esther, she struggled to learn to read, wore hand-me-downs and had to look after her five brothers and sisters, but I knew that she would make it. I knew that she would persevere at whatever she set her mind to until she had mastered it and then she would move onto the next challenge. She was never going to be rich and famous and she would always struggle in a low paying job but she knew that she was doing the best she could and had a positive attitude despite all her challenges.

I knew that Mark, would do well. His family had recently arrived in Vancouver as refugees from a war torn country. He had seen things that would have been enough to disturb him for the rest of his life if he let them. He was ten years old and did not speak English. He came to my class everyday and worked harder than any of the other children. He never missed a lesson and insisted on doing everything I asked him to do no matter how hard he found the work. I found out later that not only did he work hard in class, he would go home and teach his parents what he had learned in school that day so that they too could begin to learn English and start to participate in their new country.

But the student I remember most was in my very first class after I graduated from ‘teacher college’. This was in the 60’s and there was still a lot we had to learn about why some children had learning problems. In retrospect it is obvious that this boy was dyslexic. He was bright and could read but he could not write. He would produce pages and pages of beautifully written gibberish. I did my best to help him but it wasn’t much because I had no idea what his problem was. What I remember were the tears of frustration that we both shed on occasion and the dogged determination of the boy to do whatever it took to overcome his problem. He was going to find a way to succeed, he was going to be successful.

All these children faced significant learning challenges and were finding ways to deal with them. Other children who also faced challenges to learning were not as committed to finding ways to handle them and were much more ready to give up, to accept that they could not learn and to see themselves as failures.

Then there were the so-called ‘normal’ students. Those who did not have learning difficulties and were progressing fairly well through the educational system. Even among those students teachers have a pretty good idea about who will be successful and who will never reach their learning potential.

What made the difference between students who, whatever their situation, would rise above their difficulties and become all that they were capable of becoming? I wanted to know.

There are the usual suspects, quality of teaching, parental involvement, socio-economic status etc. But none of them seemed to fully account for why some students were going to make it and some were not.

It took me many years to begin to understand why some children were going to reach their learning potential while others were forever going to remain in the ‘underachiever’ category and never fulfill their potential.

Because of my work with children with learning difficulties I was fortunate to be trained by a group of learning experts in ways to help these children learn become better learners. This group of academic educational researchers had identified the learning skills that enabled children to learn. Children who lacked one or more of these skills struggled to learn and never reached their full learning potential.

The researchers described two groups of skills that children need, emotional and cognitive learning skills. As I learned this I began to understand why some students were more successful than others. They had the skills they need to succeed.

The three students I described at the beginning all lacked cognitive learning skills. But they all had wonderful emotional learning skills, skills that allowed them to go beyond their cognitive learning issues and to find ways of becoming successful.

All I could do at the time was to encourage their efforts, to support them in their attitudes to school and learning. How much more successful these children would have been if I had also been able to support their cognitive learning skills haunts me still.

The difference between success and failure? Learning skills that go beyond those taught in any classroom, but learning skills that we can help all children develop.

What made the difference between success and failure for these students?

I wanted to find out.

It was too easy just to say that

Perhaps it is not such a new concept after all, but it certainly is one that needs reviewing and updating. It is a simple idea really, but it has been overlooked and ignored for so long that it needs reintroducing and being given more importance.

What it it? It is the idea that parents need to help their children learn how to learn.

What do I mean, learn how to learn? Surely children just learn and teachers help them learn?

Well, it doesn’t work quite like that.

Do you remember learning to drive a car? Before you went on the road you had to know where the brake was, how to turn the steering wheel, where the indicator switch was and how to use it. And that was just the beginning of what you needed to know, I hope that you had learned a lot more than that! You had to know how the car worked before you learned how to drive it on the road.

Well, I hope that you did. Imagine driving a car and not knowing how to stop it, or how to signal a turn or keep it going straight. Doesn’t sound like fun does it? You had to have certain skills BEFORE you could learn how to drive, how to handle the car once it was on the road.

Just like you learning how to drive, children need to learn how to learn. They need a set of skills they can call on and use when they want to learn something. These skills have various manes, I call them learning skills, others call them foundational skills or basic skills. But whatever they are called, unless your child has them he or she will struggle to learn.

Who helps children develop these skills?

Fortunately children are pretty bright and pick up many of these skills themselves from watching how you, and others, handle the world around them. But this can be a very hit and miss affair.

Do they learn them in school? They may do, but teachers spend most of their time helping children learn what is on the curriculum and may not even be aware of the learning to learn skills that children need. Children are often left to try and work out HOW to learn on their own and some do better than others.

So who helps them develop these learning skills? You guessed it, it is you, the parent, who is in the best position to help your child develop these vital learning skills. In fact you are probably helping your child develop them and you are not even aware of it. Every time your child watches you solve a problem, do something new, or learn something, he or she will also learn HOW you did it, and will try to do the same.

So, back to this NEW CONCEPT. If parents had a guaranteed way of helping their children develop these learning skills, rather than leaving it up to chance, do you think that children’s ability to learn and do well in school would increase?

I do, and I know of others that think the same.

The new concept in how parents can help children love learning, reach their learning potential, and succeed in school and in life is that parents need to help their children learn how to learn.

Wouldn’t that be wonderful!

Parents ask me many questions about their child’s education. There are many things that they want to know. I decided that a list of the ten most asked questions might be a useful guide for you to look at.

1. How much homework should my child be getting each night?

2. When should I start helping my child learn to read?

3. How can I stop the homework hassle that happens most nights in our house?

4. Why don’t they teach spelling in school?

5. What does the report card really mean, and what should I do about it?

6. How bright is my child, is he/she doing as well as the other children in class?

7. Does he/she have any learning problems that I need to do something about?

8.My child doesn’t like to learn, how can I motivate him/her to work harder?

9. My child needs extra support, how do I get the help he/she needs?

10. I have been told that my child may have a learning problem, how can I find out what it is and what to do about it?

This is a summary of the questions that I get asked the most. Sometimes a similar question is wrapped up in different language, but in the end, parents are worried about three things.

* How well is my child doing in comparison to his/her peers?
* Does my child have a learning problem?
* What can I do to help my child do well in school?

Do you have the same questions? Have you got suitable answers to any of them? What other questions do you have? Where do you go to find answers?

I would love to hear your views, and any more questions that you may have. I will send the person who sends me the best response to this post a free copy of my Parent Support Assessment, which you can use to check if you are giving your child the support he or she needs to become a successful learner.

Parenting is the most difficult job in the world, no one ever does it perfectly no matter how hard they try. However, in my work with parents I have found three things that parents do time and time again that lead to problems.

All parents want their children to do well in school, I have never, in over 35 years of working with all types of parent, met one who did not want their child to do well. Most parents try to help their child learn by working with them,and getting them extra help and resources. All the research states that parental involvement in a child’s education can make the difference between success or failure for the child. So, any way that parents try to help children learn is a good thing.

But some ways are better than others and when parents decide on how to help their child learn they make three mistakes, mistakes that may mean that the help they are providing is not the kind of help their child needs.

The first mistake parents make is to rely on their own educational experiences as a way of helping their child. You know, the “I learned how to spell this way so you can too” approach. I have seen many parents make their child learn the same way that they were made to learn when they were in school.

The main problem with this approach is that education has moved on since the parents were in school, we know much more about how children learn and how we can help them learn. What seemed like a good teaching idea twenty years ago may have been proven to be a waste of time.

You need to find out what your child is doing in school and how you can help him or her with their schoolwork before you make your child learn something in a way that is different from the way the teachers help him or her learn. Talk to your child’s teacher and find out how they are helping your child – then try to do something that matches what they do.

The second mistake parents make is to rely on advice from family and friends.
When family and friends give you advice about how to help your child learn they are trying to be helpful. The advice they give you has probably worked well for them, has helped their child learn, so they want to share their success with you.

But what is good for their child might not be good for your child. Children learn in different ways and need different approaches if they are to learn quickly and efficiently. What works for your friends child may not work for your child. Yes, listen to the advice they offer, but then evaluate it against what you know about how your child learns best – you do know how your child learns best don’t you? – and then decide if the advice is going to be useful to you and your child.

Remember, what is sauce for the goose may be poison for the gander.

The third mistake parents make is to buy things they see in the media.
There are many wonderful things advertised for sale on television, the Internet, or in the paper. They all tell you how well your child will learn by using the latest technological device, or completing a certain workbook. Some – not all -of the things they advertise can be very helpful and most of them are advertised as being fun to use.

But the questions are helpful for whom? Fun for whom?

I have seen outrageous claims made for some products. Remember the Baby Einstein products brought out by Disney? It was claimed that by watching these videos young children would learn and get a head start on school. Now Disney has to repay all the parents who bought them because not only was there no proof that they helped children learn but there was convincing proof that the actually prevented children learning!

Do not go out and purchase the latest, brightest, ‘guaranteed-to-help-your-child-learn’ item until you have worked out if it actually fits your child’s needs. And check the claims that companies make about how this will help your child. There is plenty of good research out there that helps you make the right decisions about what to get your child to help him or her learn more. Make sure that you check it out before you buy.

If you need information and advice about ways to help your child there are many good parenting sites on the Internet. This one in particular, is devoted to helping parents help children learn. So watch for future updates and download the free report.

Apart from a few years at the beginning of my teaching career I have always worked with children with learning difficulties. People would tell me that I must be a very patient and understanding person to have been able to do this. Just the opposite.

The reason I could do this work was because I was impatient, I wanted these children to learn, and learn quickly. And I was not very understanding, it was because I did not understand why these bright children struggled to learn that I took training courses and did research in search of an answer to their problems.

What I discovered came as a shock.

I discovered that children have learning problems, not because of their inability to learn, but because they do not know how to learn. They had never developed the skills they needed to be able to learn.

So, when a child is struggling to learn how do we help?

Usually the child is sent to a tutor where he has to review the same material he has failed to learn already, or he is given more homework as though by reviewing what has been taught in the lesson he will magically come to understand it! We give children who are struggling to learn more information, more practice, more stuff to do.

The definition of madness is doing the same thing and expecting a different result.

It is madness to treat children this way.

Instead of trying to help struggling learners by making them do the same thing they have already failed at but do it more slowly, or in a different way, we need to help these children understand HOW to learn. We need to help them develop the basic learning skills they need to make sense of the information they are being given.

Let us stop doing our children a disservice. Let us give our children the help they really need, help with developing their learning skills.

I have been hearing a lot recently about the type of skills people need in the 21st Century and how important it is that schools help children develop these skills. These 21st Century skills are the skills that will help a student get a good job and contribute to society.

There is a lot of discussion about what these skills actually are, and there does not seem to be a definitive list that teachers can refer to. Everyone seems to have their own list depending on their vision of the future.

Stephen Downes in his blog ‘Half an Hour’ gives the best definition I have read. He calls these skills an ‘operating system for the mind’. He says that they are the skills that help people make use of all the facts in their heads in a way that makes them relevant and useful and helps them become autonomous individuals, capable of making their own decisions and directing their own lives.

He then argues that schools are too busy filling children’s heads with facts to help them develop these 21st Century skills, skills that will help them succeed in life.

It is an interesting argument, and one that many people would agree with. But I think that there is a more fundamental discussion that needs to take place.

I agree that schools should be helping children develop the skills they need to go out and earn a good living and have a successful life, but that is not enough. Schools are about learning, learning facts as well as skills, and learning does not just happen on its own. Children need to know HOW to learn.

Few teachers really understand how children learn. Teachers are very good at teaching, presenting information in different ways and hoping that children will find a way of understanding what they are teaching. Good teachers will help children by going over information in many different ways until a child has understood it. More often than not the child is expected to know how to make sense of the lesson on his own.

Children are very bright. They seem to pick up learning strategies even when they are not taught them directly. They may not learn all the strategies they need, and this will impact their learning, but on the whole children seem to learn how to learn quite well without actually being taught how to learn.

This brings me back to the idea of 21st century skills. If schools are going to be expected to teach children the skills they need to prosper in the emerging digital world – and I think that they should- then why are they not expected to help children develop the skills they need to become good learners?

And if teachers are not able to help children learn how to learn then who will?