Saturday, May 12, 2018

IN THIS AGE OF ATTENTION, KIDS NEED FOCUS MORE THAN KNOWLEDGE


IN THIS AGE OF ATTENTION, KIDS NEED FOCUS MORE THAN KNOWLEDGE

Book by Education Pioneer Says Kids CAN Learn the Core Executive Function Skills That Focus Requires and Empowers Parents to Teach These Skills


Does your child have trouble staying focused, breaking down directions, staying organized or  managing their time?  Does this leave you worrying that they won’t be very successful running their own lives when it’s time to leave for college?

So many children today see their unique strengths and talents stymied by a lack of focus.
And in this Age of Attention -- the successor to the Information Age -- kids are struggling more than ever before to make the best use of the two most precious commodities they have: time and attention.

Naturally, parents worry: “Is my kid gonna be okay?”

Enter Massachusetts Distinguished Educator Michael Delman, whose new book, “Your Kid's Gonna Be Okay: Building the Executive Function Skills Your Child Needs in the Age of Attention”, alleviates this anxiety by explaining that kids can learn the core executive function skills they need, and empowering parents to teach them these skills.

Drawing on Delman’s thirty-plus years of experience working with children, including as co-founder and past principal of the McAuliffe Regional Charter Public School in Framingham, Massachusetts, Your Kid’s Gonna Be Okay untangles several of the most important obstacles to children’s growth, confidence, and success and offers actionable solutions for helping them surmount these.

Whether your children are typical learners or have specific learning challenges, such as ADHD or dyslexia, the book will help parents to help them by:
  • Explaining the real underpinnings of motivation.
  • Exploring how people change and how we can help facilitate that change in our children.
  • Showing how we can help our children manage their anxiety and how we can learn to manage our own worries about them.
  • Addressing how to achieve the optimal state of peak performance where our children are sufficiently motivated without being held back by fear of failure.
  • Examining “attention” as a skill-set.
  • Shedding light on the higher-level, more complex Executive Function skills such as prioritizing, planning, time management, and organization.
  • Exploring how to learn and improve from experience.

Filled with over 60 guided exercises and tested examples to help you understand how children learn and grow, Your Kid’s Gonna Be Okay adds relevant tools to your parenting repertoire, and shows you the skills you need to offer support in a way your child will appreciate rather than resent.

Importantly, Your Kid’s Gonna Be Okay offers invaluable wisdom and tools to help parents stay calm. 

Other topics the book addresses include:
  • Why trying their hardest can work against your kids.
  • Why you should STOP trying to motivate your child.
  • The benefits of emotional, not academic support, in helping your kids succeed in school.
  • Three expectations to let go of to help your kids focus.
  • How to help your child build the habit of attention.
  • The secret to winning a homework argument with your child: don’t argue.


Praise for Your Kid’s Gonna Be Okay
"Delman draws on deep veins of experience—as a parent, teacher, and executive function coach—to produce a book that captures both the daily challenge of parenting and his optimistic view that most kids turn out okay. Written with humor and compassion, he masterfully uses personal stories to bring his advice and strategies to life. Enjoy the book for the stories and the humor—but bookmark the strategies, because you’ll want to access them quickly as teachable moments arise and beg for a creative response" -- Peg Dawson, Ed.D., co-author of Smart But Scattered
"Finally, a book that tackles both the emotional and cognitive issues of executive functioning! This book offers the extraordinary gift of knowledge, wisdom, and empathy for parents and educators who are struggling to understand the child with executive function weaknesses.  Michael Delman – who has years of experience motivating children to achieve their best – has crafted a masterful resource that deconstructs the complex issues in executive function skills. It provides a wonderful roadmap for parents seeking answers by explaining the unique way children may engage in the world while giving practical solutions to overcome these challenges." -- Ellen Braaten, Ph.D., co-author of Bright Kids Who Can't Keep Up
"Delman’s highly personalized writing and storytelling explains in remarkably accessible terms and with enlightening anecdotes, how to foster these essential neurocognitive skills in children and adolescents as they face the increasingly demanding “curriculum” of their daily lives. Without a doubt, teaching kids these Executive Function skills is equivalent to giving them the tools they need in their efforts to meet the demands of their teachers and parents. This book gives adults the tools they need to empower children and adolescents to meet their “bosses’” expectations." -- David Gleason, Psy.D., author of At What Cost? Defending Adolescent Development in Fiercely Competitive Schools

About Michael Delman
Massachusetts Distinguished Educator Michael Delman is founder and CEO of Beyond BookSmart, the first organization to apply Dr. James Prochaska’s Transtheoretical Model of Change to help students improve academic performance. He is the author of Your Kid’s Gonna Be Okay (2018), distilling years of wisdom on the executive function skills children need in the age of attention. As an educator since 1991, Michael’s primary mission is to make learning relevant and to help young people find capacities in themselves that they don’t know they have. Co-founder of the McAuliffe Regional Charter Public School in Framingham, Massachusetts, a middle school in its 15th year of operation teaching over 350 students through the Expeditionary Learning Outward Bound school model, Michael is an avid researcher and developer of tools and strategies to help students become more effective. He holds a B.A. in Public Policy from Brown University, and an M. Ed. in Middle School Education from Lesley University.

Title: Your Kid’s Gonna Be Okay: Building the Executive Function Skills Your Child Needs in the Age of Attention
Author: Michael Delman
Hardcover: 238 pages
Publisher: BeyondBookSmart, LLC
Release Date: June 15, 2018
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1732034907
ISBN-13: 978-1732034907

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