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Often times, children with learning difficulties experience heightened symptoms of anxiety. The academic struggles combined with (real or imagined) social, emotional, or behavioral fears can become debilitating for a child. As a parent, it is hard to see your child suffering academically, emotionally, and socially. Therefore, gaining a better understanding of the connection between learning disorders and anxiety is a vital step in aiding your child and increasing their confidence and overall ability.

Reflections are repetitions of what your child has just said. This can be a verbatim repeating of what they have shared or a summary. Using reflections during dysregulated moments helps your child to slow down their own thoughts and big feelings while also allowing them to feel heard by letting them know that you’re listening to them.

Children’s emotions typically follow a curve. They are calm, until something triggers them and their emotions intensify. If the child is unable to cope with their feelings, they reach a peak emotion, which is typically when we would see them hit, yell, kick, or cry. Sometimes, it feels like you are looking at a child you do not recognize during these peak emotions. During each stage of this curve, parents can react differently in order to minimize the size of the child’s reaction and alleviate emotional stress. In order to find what triggers big reactions in a child, parents need to be detectives.

Power struggles with children can emerge for a variety of reasons. These willful and increasingly autonomous moments are a normal part of development and typically begin around age two. When parents are confronted with navigating a newly willful toddler, they are forced to make tricky split second decisions as to how to manage a behavior, tantrum or big emotion. Fortunately, there are effective strategies to help end power struggles with your child, many of which can be simple changes in the way the parent views the child’s behavior.

Most adults haved learned to successfully integrate their “thinking brain” and “emotion brain” in a way that allows them to continue to problem solve in these moments. Kids typically haven’t yet mastered this regulatory capability. We have to help our kids learn to effectively integrate their “thinking brain” and their “emotion brain” when they’re experiencing big feelings.

You’re seated right near the stage, watching the conductor lead the orchestra with rhythmic motions, pointing to the string instruments, to the woodwinds, to the bass… Just as the conductors so fluidly guides the orchestra to create beautiful compositions of music, so does our Executive Function guide our everyday thoughts and behaviors. Simply put, our executive function skills are imperative to our daily activity and functioning in the world around us.

Going back to school can be an exciting time for some students and their families, but can be a period of anticipation and worry for others. The latter has been the case for more students lately, as the last year and a half has changed the meaning of “back to school.” Feeling anxious about this upcoming change and the uncertainty of what school will look like this fall is typical. There are ways you can help your child cope and adjust with this upcoming change.

It’s natural and appropriate for all young children to feel separation anxiety while separating from their caregivers. Children long to be close to their caregivers and separating from them threatens their sense of security, which creates feelings of worry and distress. For some kiddos, the distress of separating from their caregiver becomes more severe, which can interfere with daily life. Often, this leaves caregivers feeling low on options and overwhelmed. Navigating separation anxiety is a balancing act of managing the child’s desire to be close while providing encouragement towards independence.

Positive parenting programs have a large and meaningful evidence-base for helping parents manage problem behaviors. However, positive parenting is not widely understood by parents. Many parents assume that positive parenting means kids can do no wrong and that we reward them anyway. In fact, positive parenting is quite different. Positive parenting actually involves relationship building, using parental attention effectively, giving kids independence, using discipline appropriately, and providing a safe, secure, and consistent environment. Once parents understand what positive parenting really is, skepticism tends to dissipate.

There are many moments throughout the day that require giving directions to kids. Parents need to make sure kids are safe, help them transition between activities, and ensure daily tasks are completed. The way we say directions or instructions matters and we want to make sure we are setting both ourselves and our kids up for success.

If your child has had difficulties in school or you have concerns about their development, you have likely been referred for a neuropsychological evaluation. To many parents, this daunting, new recommendation has you imagining your child hooked up to machines for neurological imaging and observation. When in fact, these evaluations require no fancy machines and are often fun for kids. We want to answer common parent questions about these evaluations and clear up the confusion.

When we are faced with behavioral challenges, it is easy to see the problem, but it is much harder to see the solution. Because we see a glaring problem, we might yell “stop!” or “don’t!” to get our child to change their behavior. The truth is: we want them to stop, but we really want our kids to show a more positive behavior.

Having ADHD does not define a person and there are skills, strategies, and other interventions to help those with ADHD thrive. The way we like to look at it is that ADHD is a disorder of regulation: dysregulation of attention, dysregulation of impulsivity, dysregulation of emotions. Our job is to give these kids the strategies to be able to better regulate so they can do what they need to do each and every day. The first step to helping them regulate is to understand the facts and myths behind ADHD.

Being a parent is hard and some moments are more challenging than others. You will have many moments you are proud of and some that make you cringe. When you feel that disdain and disappointment in your own actions, what should you do?