Y3K Tutor In Your Home | Brookline, Dover, Natick, Needham, Newton, Sudbury, Wayland, Wellesley, Weston areas

Children who eat dinner with their families do better in school and are less likely to drink, smoke, do drugs, or develop eating disorders.  A study found Americans rank 23^rd out of 25 countries when it comes to family meals.

Evaluate your children and yourself by your own standards, not someone else’s.

Do not accept unacceptable behavior.

In response to a traumatic news event (such as a school shooting tragedy), many children may have questions and concerns. Y3K Tutor In Your Home offers the following suggestions to help guide parents and caring adults to best support children who may be grieving, concerned, or troubled by a terrible event:

Be Supportive

• Children will benefit greatly from support and caring expressed by the adults in their lives. Create an environment in your home that encourages respect for each other’s feelings and fears, and allows for a supportive, healing environment.

Be Available

• Let children know that you are available to talk with them.

• Let children ask questions.

• It is ok if you do not have answers to all the questions. It is ok to let your child know that you do not have the answer but that you will try and find out.

Be Caring

• Let children know about the support being provided to students, friends, and families of the victims.

• Be aware of children who may have experienced a previous trauma and may be more vulnerable to experiencing prolonged or intense reactions and will need extra support.

Be Reassuring

• Acknowledge the frightening parts of the event.

• Explain what happened in words that children understand. Explanations should be appropriate to the child’s age, developmental stage, and language skills.

• Reassure children that they are loved and will be taken care of.

• Children who have concerns about siblings who are living on a college campus or have concerns about safety at their own school should be reassured and their concerns validated.

Be Thoughtful

• Be aware of how you talk about the event and cope with the tragedy.

• Children learn about how to react to traumatic situations by watching and listening to parents, peers, and the media.

• Reduce or eliminate your child’s exposure to television images and news coverage of the shooting. The frightening images and repetition of the scenes can be disturbing for children. If they do see coverage, be sure to talk with them about what they saw and what they understood about the coverage. Make sure to correct any misunderstanding or misinterpretations.

• Maintain your child’s routines as best as possible.

Be Creative

• For children who are too young to talk or do not feel comfortable talking about their feelings, expressive techniques such as play, art and music can provide additional ways for children to express their feelings and let you know what may be troubling them.

• Many behaviors and symptoms of stress are normal for children who have just experienced a trauma. However, if you find that your child is preoccupied with the event, has ongoing sleep or eating disturbances, is experiencing intrusive thoughts or worries, is focused on fears about death, or is having difficulty going to school and leaving parents, your child should be evaluated by a mental health professional. Contact your pediatrician or school counselor if you feel that the symptoms are persisting and are interfering with your child’s daily routines.

The Y3K Tutor In Your Home family's heart goes out to all of the children and adults of Newtown, CT.  Especially to those that attend the Sandy Hook Elementary School.

Head lice can be a common problem in children. Lice can be transmitted to others easily so proper treatment is essential. We all want to avoid getting lice.  However what do you do if your child’s head starts to feel itchy?  Any student suspected of having head lice should go to the nurse’s office for a hair inspection at school or to a doctor’s office immediately.

The goal is to identify and eliminate head lice and nits as quickly as possible to minimize interruption of classroom time.  Any student found to have evidence of head lice must be excluded from school until proper treatment for lice has been completed. This is for the safety of the rest of the school.

If your student has head lice the following steps need to be taken:

1.  Siblings and parents must be head checked to see if they have lice also.

2.  Tell the school so a notice can be sent out to the affected classrooms as soon as possible. This will allow for proper cleaning and the head checks of classmates if the school deems it appropriate.

Prior to a parent-teacher meeting, talk to your child to find out if they have any issues they would like discussed.  This would include any social, bullying or learning style issues.  Sometimes kids will disclose some of this information to their tutor, so you may want to ask us for some feedback too.

If your student chooses to not dissect an animal and is given a hard time, explain to the teacher that you know the state policy.  For example in Massachusetts the 2005 State Board of Education Policy gives anyone the right to refuse to cut up animals.  In fact Massachusetts residents can mention the following policy: 

"All public schools that offer dissection as a learning activity should, upon written request by a student’s parent or guardian, permit a student who chooses not to participate in dissection to demonstrate competency through an alternative method." [2005 MA State Board of Education Policy]

 

Look up the policy where you live and have it ready to go to avoid being intimidated.

The Children's Cooperative Nursery School in Newton, MA will be having their annual fall fundraiser on Sunday October 14th at the Newton Harvest Fair. This will be a silent auction taking place on the Newton Centre Green. When attending the auction, be sure to bid on the Y3K Tutor In Your Home tutoring that will be up for grabs. By participating, we hope to help three and four year old children and their families from the Newton area. This fundraiser ensures that the children of families needing financial support will be able to enjoy the important experience of preschool education. Money raised from the Y3K Tutor In Your Home auction donation and other items will help defray the tuition costs for families who are less able to pay.

If your child is being bullied, they need your complete support. Facing a bully can be a hard and scary thing for a child, so they need to know that you believe them and have their back. Your child needs to know that if they defend themselves against a bully and get in trouble at school for doing so, you will support them. It can be one of the most difficult things to do in the world but confronting a bully can be an opportunity for children to face their fears and learn to stand up for themselves.

 

Some signs that your child may be a victim of bullying include: fear of going to school, negative self talk, drop in grades, and sudden change in opinion about a specific person.