By Sarah Vander Schaaff Friday is the first day of summer, officially, but around here, some of us have been out for weeks while others are still making up “snow” days. Still, we will continue our summer series on pertinent questions with one aimed at what do when the final school bell rings. What’s the best use of summer if your child has been diagnosed with a learning difference? For this we asked a member of the Mindprint Team with more than a decade of experience teaching at a school dedicated to students with learning differences. As you might expect, her top recommendation is school. “If that is not an option, consistent tutoring throughout the summer and academic summer camps… Read More

By Sarah Vander Schaaff Sitting in the examining room during my eight-year-old daughter’s recent visit to the optometrist, I had a rare insight into how she sees the world. For the most part, it seemed, as I looked at the chart she viewed, “D’s” looked liked “O’s”. In fact, anytime a letter was difficult for her to see, she called it an “O”. I was proud of her poise, sitting in the big chair in the darkened room, with instruments set before her eyes, the doctor flipping the slats, asking again, and then again, for her to read a line of letters. And I was struck my how narrow my own understanding of her eyesight has been. As her mother,… Read More

The first time I heard of an IQ test for children was in grade school. A newspaper article said the actress Geena Davis had such a high one and that she was in Mensa. It’s interesting that these tests are often talked about in the context of trivia, or as a friend recently said, in a hushed tone of secrecy. When it comes to understanding how one’s own child learns, however, these tests can be essential, practical, and also confusing. I’ve turned to a few people here at Mindprint for a simple introduction to the IQ test for children. We focused on one question. What does an IQ test for children have to do with education? Clinical child psychologist, Wendy Matthews starts us… Read More