Giving kids the social skills they need to succeed
“The real scholars were left in almost total freedom to ply their studies and their Games, and no one objected that a good many of their works seemed to bring no immediate benefits to the people or the community and, inevitably, seemed to nonscholars merely luxurious frivolities.” – Herman Hesse, Magister Ludi: The Glass Bead Game Two summers ago, my […]
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Before I went to graduate school and embarked on a professional career, I flirted with the world of hippie-dom for a few years. I was captivated by Jack Kerouac’s writing that extolled the life of on-the-road spontaneity and the freedom to “dig” all that was around us. I spent my share of time at Grateful Dead shows, captivated as I was […]
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“Well, I’m not giving my baby any more dangerous drugs. From now on, it’s nothing but fresh air, lots of hugs, and good old-fashioned Ritalin.” – Marge Simpson To medicate or not to medicate, that is the question. It is, at any rate, for scores of parents of kids and adolescents with ADHD. Paraphrasing the […]
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Recently, my family and I spent a week camping on the coast of Maine. We spent part of the week at a beautiful new campground in the town of Brooklin, right near Blue Hill and Deer Isle. As luck would have it, we wound up adjacent to another family with children close to my daughter’s age. As luck would also have it, one of the children […]
» Read moreFor many years, I’ve maintained (only half facetiously) that the best part of my job is that I’m able to wear jeans and a t-shirt to work. While I have no problem with wearing nicer outfits, comfort is a big deal for me when considering my wardrobe. In my work with kids, I spend lots of time chasing kids around, […]
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For many human service professionals, state licensing boards require the completion of a certain number of continuing education units in order to maintain licensure. Personally, I’m required to attend 30 hours of continuing education programs every 2 years in order to renew my license as a mental health counselor. Some of these presentations are excellent and the best of them […]
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In the 2 minutes each year in which I’m not working or with my family, my favorite thing to do is to play music with my band. Since 1998, I’ve been writing music, singing, and playing guitar with 3 of my closest friends. If the rest of the world felt the same way about our music as we do, we’d […]
» Read moreA few weeks ago, I was sitting in my office with a group of 3rd grade boys. We were finishing up our session with a snack and a quiet activity – to the extent that doing anything with a group of hyperactive 3rd grade boys can be quiet. As I asked the boys what they wanted for snack, one of them […]
» Read moreBashing the US Public Education system has become so popular that it seems to be giving baseball a run for national pastime. You’ll get no argument from me if you say the system has its faults. But taken as a whole, there’s a good deal more that’s right with our public schools than there is that’s wrong with them. In […]
» Read more“ADHD?…they used to think I had that. Now they know I have Mad Cow Disease!” -11 y.o. Academy MetroWest participant When new kids enroll in our program, the first step in the process is undergoing an initial interview. We run through some activities in our gym with them to help us get a […]
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