If there is one cognitive skill Americans are familiar with it is this week’s topic: attention. It seems that every parent asks themselves, “Does my have child have ADHD?” And that is largely because the diagnosis of ADHD has risen significantly over the years. According to the CDC, 6.4 million children between the ages of 4-17, or 11%, had been diagnosed with ADHD in 2011.  That is up from 7.8% in 2003. While all cognitive skills are important, attention plays a particularly big role in our contemporary lives. So if you are currently asking yourself, “does my child have ADHD?” you will want to keep reading. Attention Attention is the ability to initiate and maintain focus for learning, work, and… Read More

Slower processing speed can cause frustration for even the brightest kids. They might have a hard time finishing tests, take longer on homework, or have trouble keeping up with class discussions even when they know the answers. Note: This is one of a 10 blog series on learning traits. Read about all 10 learning traits here. What is Processing Speed? Processing speed is the rate at which a student can see or hear information, analyze it, and respond. It is also referred to as visual processing, auditory processing, or processing efficiency. Why is Processing Speed important? In elementary school, slower processing might only be evident when a student scores much lower than expected on standardized tests. Slower processing might become more obvious in middle or high school, when there is a lot more work. Slow processing… Read More

By Sarah Vander Schaaff How we celebrate Halloween is a sign of the times: what costumes are popular, what the weather may bring (snow, hurricanes, ice or wind) and even what we dole out to eager trick-or-treaters. Considering nearly 1 in 13 children has a food allergy, a rate that has increased about 50% since 1997, it makes sense that food allergy awareness and its associated color, teal, are joining the wave. FARE (Food Allergy Research and Education) is encouraging families to think about making a few additions to Halloween. Their website provides ways for families to create a map of allergy-friendly treat givers, to print a teal pumpkin sign or sheet of stickers, and advice on how to distribute… Read More

By Sarah Maraniss Vander Schaaff A few days ago, my six-year-old brought home a book from school that was considered a “right-fit”. Her assignment was to read the book to me out loud. We’ve been doing this since the start of the school year. It was a routine assignment and from what I could tell from the book’s jacket, a routine kind of book for a typical first grader. But this was not routine. A few pages into the story, she lost much of the fluency I would have expected given the book’s vocabulary. And why? Because she was distracted by the pictures. “That man is not wearing a helmet,” she said, looking at a man on a motorcycle depicted… Read More

By Sarah Maraniss Vander Schaaff Earlier this week, I went to a screening of American Promise, a documentary that follows the path of two middle class African-American boys through The Dalton School of New York. The next day, I read Otis Lawrence Graham’s article  “The Rules: making sense of race and privilege,” in my husband’s alumni magazine. And today, as I write this, I realize how little I’d really thought about race and education in independent schools. I had assumed that the abundant resources, highly educated parents, and having teachers and administrators freed of some of the bureaucracy of the public educational system was the best of all possible environments for doing things right. And in some ways, perhaps the… Read More

By Sarah Vander Schaaff If your child was about to walk a tightrope in a circus act that demanded great dexterity and focus, would you yell and wave and try to get her attention, or would you let her concentrate on the task at hand? Why, then, I wonder, do parents yell and wave and try to get their children’s attention when they step on stage to sing? I’m about to outline five things parents do that sabotage their children’s growth in the realm of live performance. These tacit rules are in danger of being obliterated by parents who just can’t let go. Am I fired up about this? You bettcha. But I’m not getting on a soapbox to preach… Read More

By Sarah Maraniss Vander Schaaff I don’t have an answer to the question many women are asking about their relationship with the NFL. I cannot say, however, that I ever assumed that the NFL particularly valued women. The fact that the most prominent women on the field are cheerleaders, who are paid $500-$700 per season but reportedly generate one million dollars in revenue, has something to do with that. We can rightfully lambast the way the league disciplines its players who’ve broken the law, not only with violence against women but also other offenses. But the sport is violent, and instead of focusing on how the league handles what happens after a player has assaulted a woman, I’d like to… Read More

By Sarah Vander Schaaff What adolescent girls wear to school is a subject of much consternation, judging from the parent meeting I attended at my children’s school today. The conversation was lead by a psychologist trained in the treatment of eating disorders, body image and trauma, but voices rose highest when talking about whose skirt had been measured with a ruler. The three-fold theme of the talk, Gender, Body Image and Dress had complex implications, from distinguishing our understanding of “gender” from that of “sex” to looking at the effects of negative body image on depression, low self-esteem and eating disorders. But the logistics required for a school to enforce a dress code took priority over these fundamentals, and I… Read More

By Sarah Maraniss Vander Schaaff Ben Harvatine had been practicing hard before he hit the mat and couldn’t get up. He’d been dizzy for a while during wrestling practice, but that hadn’t alarmed him: it’s what happens when you’re cutting weight in a 100-degree room. The twenty-year-old MIT student wound up in the hospital and spent months recovering. It was a concussion, the first he said he’d gotten in more than a decade of wrestling. “For a week or two I struggled to carry on conversations,” he told me when I interviewed him by phone a few weeks ago. He couldn’t keep up in his mechanical engineering and architecture classes. And he was sensitive to light. “I effectively didn’t go… Read More

By Sarah Vander Schaaff “How was your day?” I am going to go out on a limb and guess that if you asked your children this question after their first or even fiftieth day of school, you got this answer: “Good.” End of story. I confess that I spring the question on my two girls the moment I see them after school. Perhaps what I am really yearning for is a fulfillment of my own wishes. I hope you had a day of intellectual discovery, meaningful exchanges with friends, and ate something more than cream cheese for lunch! That’s a lot of unspoken pressure, and it’s no wonder they keep the lid on the discussion with the impenetrable and irreproachable… Read More