“When I approach a
child, he inspires in me two sentiments: tenderness for what he is, and
respect for what he may become.” - Louis Pasteur
One of the great
mysteries of life has to do with the big question of our children and
their potential. What is it, and how do we help them achieve it? No job
any of us will ever have is more important than the job of raising a
child. Unfortunately, no job comes with less training on how to do it!
As a result, most children never come close to achieving their innate
potential because parents are not taught how to unlock it.
This article is the
first in a series providing expert knowledge on child development to
parents and to young people who will be the parents of the future. Our
goal is to raise the bar for our children by educating parents, which
is what the National Academy for Child Development (NACD) has been
doing for almost thirty years. We help children from all over the world
including typical and highly capable children as well as those with
brain injury, cerebral palsy, autism, Down syndrome, Dyslexia, learning
disabilities, ADD, and other challenges. After implementing our
programs, each of our clients has been able to do more than they could
before, often achieving beyond everyone’s expectations. Yet their
success has come not through our directly working with the children,
but through our education and guidance of their parents.
Related Items:
Parents
are children’s first and most important teachers. If anyone questions
the role of parents as educators, they need only to look at the fact
that most children will learn more by the time they are five years old
than they will during the entire rest of their lives.
Although parental
involvement in the first few years of a child’s life is crucial to
development, the individual attention parents can provide continues to
be tremendously important throughout a child’s education. Good schools
and great teachers are important, but good parents and great parenting
are imperative.
Who is the world’s greatest expert on an individual child? It’s neither the teacher nor the school psychologist nor the pediatrician - it’s the parent! In
most cases, however, the parent who is the greatest expert on their
individual child is not an expert on children in general, and they need
specific knowledge and experience in order to help their children
develop their potential to the fullest.
One glaring topic
consistently absent from the national debate about the American
educational system is that of teaching high school students in depth
about child development. With growing concern about the soaring drop
out rate and the reduction of highly skilled individuals in our labor
force, the debate currently centers on how to raise math and reading
scores, and how much time and funding can be redirected away from the
arts, sports and other programs. Ironically, if we spent more time
teaching our future parents about child development, we would be
empowering them to dramatically increase the abilities of our future
generations even if we did nothing to change the schools.
NACD’s
track record of success with 30,000 families over the last thirty years
has proven that providing loving and dedicated parents with the
expertise they need to assist their children results in amazing growth
and achievement in children of all ages and capabilities. Stay tuned
for upcoming topics and tips we will share with you in this column to
help your children become all they can be.
If you have questions regarding your child and their development please send your questions to
This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
. I will answer them in upcoming columns.
Bob Doman
http://NACD.org
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