How to Start School Routines

How is it that summer just started, yet the school supplies are already out in stores? In a few short weeks that will feel like they fly by, your baby will be headed to kindergarten. At this realization, in the midst of a little freak-out and hidden tears, parents will try to put on a brave face as they leave their little one in someone else’s care. But the key to this transition is to start the school routines now!

Preparing for that day is important not only for your child, but for you as well. A month may seem like a long way off, but when it comes to establishing new routines and rituals, it’s actually the right time to put things in motion.

Bedtime:

For example, if bedtime has been at 8:30 or later during the summer months, but a 7:30 bedtime will be in place during the school year, moving bedtime up in 15-minute intervals from now until the school year starts will help your child adjust and keep the drama about it still being light outside to a minimum. As a side note, blackout curtains might be a great investment.

Routines: 

Consider what morning and evening routines will be like, especially if this is your first child to head off to school. It can be unsettling for children when everything is changing, so it’s helpful to think about routines and rituals like a security blanket. Children find real comfort in predictability. If you put things into motion now, it will help your child feel more confident on that first day of school. For instance, practice getting up, getting dressed, brushing teeth, eating breakfast and figuring out the best order to accomplish those tasks and any others that must be done before leaving for school. Adapting your evening routine to how things will be during the school year will help as well. 

After school: 

Being at school and holding it together all day long is exhausting. Your child might come home from school and want to take a nap or they might have a meltdown, especially as they are adjusting to their new routine. Comfort them and help them put words to their emotions. In time they will adapt and adjust.

Independence: 

Remind yourself repeatedly to let your child do for themselves what they are capable of doing. Things like dressing themselves, putting on their shoes and velcroing or tying them, going to the bathroom, pulling their pants up and even buckling a belt are important to know how to do. If they are planning to buy their lunch at school, let them practice carrying a tray with their food and drink from somewhere in the kitchen to the table. That balancing act can be a little tricky. If they are taking their lunch, teach them how to pack it themselves. If they are riding the school bus, practice walking to and from the bus stop together.

Practice:

Make practicing these things fun by turning them into a relay race or a game. When you do that, you’ll be giving them a strong foundation to stand on as they head to school.

Organization:

Work with your child to find a location in your home where all things school-related live like backpacks, homework or notes that need to be signed. Helping them get in the habit of placing things in one location will make mornings easier for everyone.

Read:

Start reading with your child daily (if you aren’t already). Even if you aren’t a fantastic reader, just holding a book, pointing out pictures, colors, numbers and words, or teaching your child to turn the pages from right to left will help prepare them for kindergarten.

Other adults:

If you have told your child they don’t have to listen to anyone but you, now is the time to change that. When your child is at school they will need to be able to listen and follow instruction from their teacher and others. Additionally, if you have never left them in someone else’s care, try to arrange some time between now and the first day of school where they are in the care of other trusted adults. It is good for them to know that others can take care of their needs, and teachers will appreciate that you have helped them practice listening and following instructions from other adults.

Technology: 

This year will be different for your child, so consider a technology plan for your home when school starts. They will be expected to sit, listen and engage in activities, but screen time  is probably the last thing they need when they get home. Instead, playing outdoors in the fresh air can help them release stress and relax.

Emotions:

While you might be excited about your little one reaching this milestone, it would also be normal for you to feel some anxiety. Most of our children can read us like a book. If you are feeling uptight about the beginning of school and trying to hold that inside, your child will likely pick up on this and think you are not OK or that you do not want them to go to school. Acknowledging that and talking with other parents who are ahead of you on the journey could be extremely helpful to you and your child. 

Thinking about all that needs to happen before school starts may feel a bit overwhelming. The good news is, if you start now, you will already have your routine down by the time school starts. Both you and your child can head into the first day of school with confidence and great expectations for the school year.

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How Family Structure Impacts Loneliness

Does family structure impact loneliness? For decades, concern has been expressed about how family breakdown impacts children. But the future impact on adults hasn’t received much attention. That’s changing.

In 2018, a Cigna study set off alarms about loneliness and its potential root causes. It indicated loneliness is at epidemic proportions in America. 

In an article for City Journal, Kay Hymowitz, William E. Simon Fellow at the Manhattan Institute and author of Manning Up: How the Rise of Women Has Turned Men into Boysand The New Brooklyn: How to Bring a City Back, addresses how the rise in the breakdown of the family has created an increase in kinlessness. This phenomenon is impacting older adults in profound ways.

Hymowitz cites studies, including one by Ashton M. Verdery and Rachel Margolis, that showed a surge in the number of “kinless” older adults. 

“A jump in the number of never-married and divorced adults is also part of the kinlessness story,” writes Hymowitz. “Baby boomers were the first generation to divorce in large numbers. They continue to split up even as they amble into their golden years. This gives rise to the phenomenon known as “gray divorce.”

Hymowitz also cites Robert Putnam’s work Bowling Alone, where Putnam raised the caution flag about the decline people were experiencing in social capital, especially the likelihood that boomers would experience a lonelier old age than the greatest generation before them. 

Divorced people don’t typically have ex-spouses who are willing to take care of them in their old age or illness. Nor do stepchildren typically care for stepparents as they would care for their biological parent. Even biological parents who walked away from their children now find themselves navigating old age alone. 

Verdery and Margolis summarize their findings. “Evidence is accumulating that the legacy of divorce and remarriage has a long reach straining intergenerational relationships and suppressing the support that divorced parents, stepparents and remarried biological parents might expect from their children later in life.”

Additionally, Hymowitz mentions cohabitation as a key ingredient in the rise of kinlessness.

“Superficially, cohabitation looks roughly equivalent to marriage; couples live together as ‘husband and wife,’ sharing a bed, living space, meals and in many cases children, but without the ring and city-hall certificate,” Hymowitz says. She asserts that the increase in couples who are living together has added to the fragility of post-transition relations.

Consider this: 

Cohabiting couples break up faster and more often than married couples. Separated, cohabiting fathers prove more likely to withdraw from their children’s lives than divorced dads. Cohabiting and single parents have looser ties to their own parents and friends than marrieds. Plus, the Cigna study found that single parents as a whole represent the loneliest Americans.

“Even evolutionary-psychology skeptics, might notice that though marriage has shape-shifted over the centuries and across cultures, it has always defined those people – spouses, parents, children, grandparents, siblings, in-laws – to whom we owe special attention and mutual protection,” Hymowitz says. “Marriage creates kin; cohabitation does not. Some of the most crucial obligations of kinship have always been to tend to the sick and to bury the dead.”

It is worth noting that even today, the vast majority of unpaid caretaking of the aging in the U.S. is done by relatives, according to Putnam.

Hymowitz surmises that a lot of what’s happening is due to a change of what the family is. Hymowitz points out that kinless elders often show hoarder tendencies. They hang on to every stray electric bill, used coffee cup or odd bit of broken furniture. They cling to their stuff for lack of meaningful human interaction.

“Uprootedness uproots everything except the need for roots,” wrote American historian Christopher Lasch. Hymowitz believes one of our greatest challenges is to communicate that need to coming generations before they make decisions that will further fragment their lives and communities.

In conclusion, Hymowitz reminds us that the policy discussions about the troubles of the American working class and poor center on vocational and technical education, higher-paying and reliable jobs and benefits. These are necessary efforts, but they are not enough to counter the loneliness, kinlessness and despair crushing so many spirits. The solution must include what Tom Wolfe called a “great relearning.” This great relearning includes how to satisfy the human longing for continuity and connection.

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4 Must-Do’s for Parents After Divorce

Based on hundreds of peer-reviewed studies, Dr. Warren Farrell, co-author of The Boy Crisis, says that “Dad’s time trumps Dad’s dime.” 

“More than 100 psychologists and researchers got together. They wrote in unanimous consent that the children need their father about equally to their mother in the case of divorce,” says Farrell. 

Farrell explained that for years researchers believed that children did better with an involved father because intact families had more money and lived in better neighborhoods. However, researchers controlled for virtually every variable and found that father involvement plays a vital role in the health of a child. It’s not just about the money he may provide, although that is very important. It is the combination of presence and provision.

“The degree of difference between the health of a child who has both father and mother involvement, who has four things after divorce is so different from the health of the child that doesn’t,” Farrell says. 

Whether the child is born prematurely or full-term, Farrell says the importance of the father being involved is enormous. 

“Prematurely-born children are more likely to develop their brains better and get out of the hospital sooner and have more psychomotor functioning when the father is visiting the hospital as much as possible, according to research from Yale University,” he says.

“The father breathing on the child when it’s first born helps the bonding process to occur and changes the dad’s brain,” Farrell says. “The sooner the father gets involved with the child, a whole nest of neurons in the male brain begins to develop and connect with each other that mimics the mother instinct – overlapping with mother instinct. Oxytocin levels go up, testosterone levels go down. Dads connect emotionally with their children.”

According to Farrell, these four must-dos for parents after divorce can help your child have a reasonable chance of doing well.

1. The first one is ensuring an equal amount of time with mother and father. 

Being in checks and balance mode with each other never means the father going away and working 80 hours a week and coming back when he is exhausted and the children are in bed. Farrell asserts that children need more than a Disneyland Dad or just a visitor on the weekends. They need time, and plenty of it.

2. The second must-do is for the mother and father to live within a 20-minute drive time from each other. 

This gives children greater stability and creates less resentment. Why? Because if parents live further away after divorce, the kids may have to give up activities or friends in order to see the other parent. 

3. It’s also important that children are not able to hear or detect bad-mouthing or negativity from one parent about the other.

If one parent responds negatively about something concerning the other one, it can affect the child’s intimacy with one or both parents. Bad-mouthing isn’t just by words, it’s also via body language and tone of voice. Farrell says that many parents will swear that their kids did not overhear them saying something negative about the other parent while on the phone. However, the child could detect the difference in the tone of voice, even from another room.

4. Finally, kids benefit if parents spend significant time doing consistent relationship counseling after the divorce, even if it only happens every few weeks.

If parents only seek counsel in an emergency, the chances are you need to solve the problem sooner, and you are more likely to make the other parent wrong and you only see the other parent when you are emergency mode. Therefore, you don’t have the chance to think and feel through with compassion the other parent’s best intent to solve the problem and make decisions.

“Before you make a decision to have a child, do the research on why children need a significant amount of father involvement so that you don’t raise a child on your own and think it is just fine to do so and think that having a stepfather or you doing the father-type of role is going to be enough,” Farrell says.

“If you believe your new husband is going to be a better stepfather than the biological father is a father, know that almost always the stepfather perceives himself to be an advisor, and the dynamic between a biological mother and stepfather is one where the biological mother does make the final decision. All of the dad-style parenting that a stepfather could potentially bring to a child’s life, like roughhousing, is likely to be inhibited by a biological mother with a lot more power and potency than she will use with the biological father. There’s a tendency for the stepfather to back out of equal parent engagement and just become a breadwinner.”

Since research consistently shows that both parents are best, Farrell expresses concern for unmarried biological moms who are living with the father.

Farrell wants these moms to understand that when Mom takes the primary parent role, it often leads to the father being uninvolved and feeling that he has no value. In situations like this, many fathers leave the child’s life within the first three to four years. 

A word of caution here. While there is no question that some parents are unfit, careful evaluation may be necessary to discern whether an ex is truly not fit to parent, or if it would “just be easier not to have to deal with them.” If your thought process is more along the lines of, “I made a mistake marrying them, want to start life over again without them, don’t like them, don’t like dealing with them,” it might be wise for you to reconsider your stance.

There’s a big difference between safety and abuse issues and misunderstanding the other parent’s reasoning, thought processes or parenting style. If the goal is for children of divorce to be healthy in adulthood, it is important to follow these 4 must-do’s after a divorce when it is possible and safe to do so.

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10 Tips for Getting Fit as a Family

There seems to be constant buzz about how little time busy families spend together. Even during summertime, between work, screens, music, sports, and other commitments, families stay on the go. Is there any time to get fit as a family?

According to “The State of Obesity: Better Policies for Healthier America” survey released in 2015, some 78 million Americans are obese, which puts them at an increased risk of health problems, including heart disease, diabetes, and cancer. 

In 2018, the adult obesity rate was at or above 35% in seven states and at least 30% in 29 states – but in 1980, no state had an adult obesity rate above 15 percent. Among children and teenagers, 31.8 percent were overweight or obese and nearly 17 percent were obese, including 5 percent of children between the ages of 6 and 11 and 6.5 percent of those between the ages of 12 and 19 who were severely obese. 

“In order to build a national Culture of Health, we must help all children, no matter who they are or where they live, grow up at a healthy weight,” said former Robert Wood Johnson Foundation President and CEO Risa Lavizzo-Mourey. “We know that when we take comprehensive steps to help families be more active and eat healthier foods, we can see progress.”

Regular exercise, adequate rest and healthy eating can be the difference in a family that lives, plays, learns and works well together and one that does not. The secrets of getting fit as a family is no mystery!

“Research shows that children need regular exercise to build strong bones and muscles,” says Teresa Wade, Health and Fitness Director at the Sports Barn. “Exercise also helps children sleep well at night and stay alert during the day. Habits such as these, established in childhood, help adolescents maintain healthy weight despite the hormonal changes and social influences that can lead to overeating. Active children are more likely to become fit adults.”

Getting your family in shape does not have to be costly. But it does require you to move away from the screens and do something.

Here are some suggestions for busy families who want to get fit as a family during the summer months.

  • Schedule a regular time throughout the week for physical activity. 
  • Take turns selecting a weekly family activity. 
  • Start a log of daily fitness activities for each family member. 
  • Adapt all activities to suit those with special needs and preferences. 
  • Help everyone find something active that makes them feel successful. 
  • Buy equipment or toys that promote physical activity.
  • Discover what free and low-cost physical activity spots are nearby (park, bike trail, hiking trail, tennis court, swimming pool, etc.). 
  • Limit screen-time.
  • Use physical activity as a reward instead of food (e.g. Family goes skating). 
  • Emphasize the importance of having fun and learning. Avoid a push “to win.” 

“I encourage families to slow down a bit. Schedule time in your week to be active together. Actually pencil your family into your planner,” Wade says.

“If you wait for it to happen, it isn’t going to happen. Believe it or not, exercise can be fun. Start slowly with something like walking or biking in the neighborhood. When my grandchildren are with me, we often take a walk around the block before we go to bed. It is a wind-down time and helps us connect before the end of the day.”

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9 Ways to Support Military Families

It's probably easier than you think!

How can you support military families?

Kelli Day met Shawn Campbell her junior year of college at Texas A&M in College Station.

“He was already on the military track and dreamed of becoming a pilot. We were working together at a coffee shop when he asked me to go mountain biking and the rest is history,” said Kelli Campbell. “We got engaged a month before he left for officer candidate school and got married a week after he came home after completing school, and had four children Tristan, Kenna, Kate and Donovan, who are now 15, 12, 10 and 5.”

Shawn became a Marine and flew the CH-53, the Marine Corps’ largest helicopter, known as the Super Stallion. Maj. Campbell was deployed three times in the Middle East during his 15-year military career.

In 2016, Campbell went on a routine night-training mission at his home base in Hawaii. Just before midnight, his helicopter collided with another. Twelve Marines were killed, including Campbell.

“Years ago we decided that if something happened to Shawn, I would take the kids and move to Kansas City where my family lived,” Kelli says. “We went there not knowing if we would stay. Shawn and I had dreams for our kids, plans for things we would do together as a family.”

While in Kansas, Kelli became familiar with Folds of Honor. It’s an Oklahoma-based charity that provides educational scholarships to the children and spouses of fallen and disabled service members. Founded by Maj. Dan Rooney, a former Air Force F-16 fighter pilot with three combat tours in Iraq, and current Air Force Reserve pilot, the organization has awarded more than 16,000 scholarships in all 50 states, as well as Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands.

“Folds of Honor gave us a way to start over and honor Shawn’s legacy by giving the kids the things we wanted for them,” Kelli shares. “Scholarships from Folds of Honor allowed our three oldest children to attend a school together where they were provided with the educational, extracurricular and personal support they needed. They gave our children a lifeline because they understood their needs at a very difficult time.”

While people typically see Memorial Day as the kickoff to summer, it’s also a day to pause and remember that we get to celebrate because of the brave men and women who have given the ultimate sacrifice. From that, we can learn how to support military families.

“I don’t think Shawn would want us sitting around having a pity party on Memorial Day, but he would want us to stop what we are doing and say the names of people we know who served and gave their lives for our freedom,” Kelli says. “We used to make a point of taking the kids to the closest national cemetery to look at headstones and remember friends we had known and lost. We both felt it was important for our children to understand the significance of this day.”

Kelli describes her husband as “not your typical hardheaded Marine,” but soft-spoken, kind, gentle, and fun. She intends to keep her husband’s memory alive for her children by reminding them how he lived and served our country. She also wants to help other families who are on a similar journey. Currently a regional development officer for Folds of Honor, she also serves on their national speakers bureau and Kansas Chapter board.

Here are just a few of many ways we can support military families, come alongside them, and keep the memories of the fallen men and women alive:

  • Give respite to the single parent by taking the children for a few hours.
  • Say thank you. These families make a significant sacrifice on behalf of our country. Acknowledging this is huge.
  • Include the sons or daughters of deployed or fallen parents in your parent/child activities.
  • Organize meals just like you would for a new baby. Set aside one night a week to deliver food to the family.
  • Have your whole block tie yellow ribbons around trees to help everyone remember their deployed or fallen neighbor.
  • Check on the family regularly. The spouse left behind needs to know that another grown-up is around even if they don’t need anything.
  • Invite the family along on outings with your family even if it’s just for a quick ice cream.
  • Think about chores the fallen parent would have normally done. Help with the garbage cans each week or offer to change the oil in the car. Help with the window air conditioners or just getting the Christmas tree into the house.
  • Write letters or send cards to let them know you are thinking about them.
Maj. Shawn Campbell
Kelli Campbell and her children

We can intentionally and proactively serve military families who have made and continue to make it possible for us to reap the benefits of their willingness to serve.

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How Your Life Changes When You Become a Mother

“I hear so often that your entire life changes when you become a mother. But I just really want to know how… How exactly does it change? Like, specifically.”

As we walked down the sidewalk on a cool spring day, my best friend, who was pregnant with her first child, asked me this question.

I suddenly felt very nervous, as if I were in an interview and my answer was going to be highly scrutinized and dissected to its core. How can I possibly narrow down the specifics of a life-altering experience? I racked my brain and let out an anxious chuckle as I grasped at how to articulate all the million ways my life changed when I became a mother.

“I think the biggest thing that changed for me is… time. Before kids, I thought I was busy. I thought I had a never-ending to-do list. I thought I was overwhelmed. But I had NO idea what busy was. After kids, you literally have no time. You are working 24/7, whether it’s at a job or at home or both. You are constantly taking care of everyone else’s needs. All. The. Time. It never stops. And it’s the most exhausting and overwhelming thing you’ve ever done. You’ll sacrifice so much… but it’s so worth it because you will finally understand what unconditional love is.”

I vividly remember the moment I realized what being a mother meant.

My first daughter, Jackie, came as a happy little surprise. Although I certainly didn’t feel ready to be a parent, at the ripe age of 27, I found myself with the most precious bundle of joy. There was a flood of emotions as I navigated the waters of motherhood, especially when it came to being a working mom. My entire perspective changed one night, as I rocked and nursed my sweet baby to sleep after a long day at the office.

I realized that motherhood is a thankless job; expected; commonplace. It’s just what you do.

There are no awards given to the best mom. No “Mom-of-the-Month…” (although there should totally be!). You don’t get a raise for doing an exceptional job. No one congratulates you on calming a screaming baby or praises you for changing 50 diapers in a day. There is no recognition for how many times you woke in the middle of the night and no trophy for the fact that you are still able to run on three hours of sleep (barely). And all that hard work you pour into making and sustaining this tiny human will never get you a promotion.

But the paradox is that being a mother is actually MORE rewarding than any amount of acknowledgment you could ever receive. To experience the love a mother has for her child is beyond anything I can begin to describe. It’s supernatural. It’s divine. And that’s what keeps us going at 1 a.m., and 3 a.m., and 5 a.m. … through the blowups and blowouts, the baby blues and the bliss.

Motherhood is a thankless job that I, for one, am so very thankful to have.

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How to Care for Independent Aging Parents

If you’re in the midst of raising children or grandchildren, managing a career and caring for an aging parent or relative, you are not alone. In fact, a 2012 Pew Research report found that about half of all U.S. adults in their 40s or 50s have a parent age 65 or older and are raising a young child or financially supporting a grown child.

When our parents have strong desires to remain independent and we have strong desires to care for them, it can be a real challenge.

“I always like to focus on the things that are necessary for aging parents to stay as independent as possible,” says Amy Boulware, (LAP, MSW) Geriatric and Special Needs care manager for Chambliss Law. “The desire to remain independent is so strong, sometimes parents are willing to go to great lengths to keep up the appearance they are doing well on their own. I call this ‘malicious independence.’ They know they aren’t doing well, but they keep it from their family members. The sad thing is, often, they have already lost their independence because they are isolating themselves and not getting to do the things they enjoy doing.”

Getting older and more fragile is a hard thing to deal with, but things do happen as we age. Boulware believes the goal of providing good care to our parents is to avoid making decisions in the midst of a crisis.

“If we can help parents think about the things that are becoming more difficult for them such as going to the grocery store, cooking or keeping the house clean, then we can develop a plan to remove some of the burdens and help them stay as independent as possible,” Boulware says. 

“Most people do estate planning, but few think about doing elder care planning,” Boulware shares. “Inevitably, something happens and then you are thrown into making quick decisions.”

So, how do you have that hard conversation? Boulware suggests that you begin the process by asking questions like:

  • What are the things that are important to you as you age?
  • How can we work together to help you have quality care later in life? What does that look like for you? 
  • What are the lifelong behaviors or details that make you tick that would be very important to know? For example, do you have a nightly routine, always have a certain snack, use something to help you sleep at night, etc.? There may be routines and rituals that you know nothing about that if discontinued, could cause agitation, fear or frustration for your parent. 
  • Who would you like to designate to make decisions should you become unable to do so? When do you think would be a good time to take care of that? 
  • What can you afford?
  • If we see you struggling, how would you like us to handle that?

If you try to have the conversation and your aging parents won’t let you, seek help from a trustworthy third party.

This conversation in particular is often one we put off because it’s just plain uncomfortable and nobody wants to think about the end of life. Mapping out a plan ahead of time can pave the way for smoother transitions in the future. It can also strengthen your family relationships because the choices your parents make are truly theirs and it will be easier to honor them by following through with their wishes.

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Why Reading to Your Child Matters

Reading matters for children, but why? While you might be reading bedtime stories to help your child settle down before lights out, you may be doing much more than just a nightly ritual.

An Ohio State University study shows that young children whose parents read them five books a day enter kindergarten having heard about 1.4 million more words than kids whose parents did not read to them.

Jessica Logan and her team launched into this research after findings from an earlier study indicated that one-fourth of children are never read to, and another quarter were only read to once or twice a week.

In collaboration with the Columbus Metropolitan Library, Logan and her colleagues determined the average number of words in board books and picture books, and then calculated how many words a child would hear from birth through his or her 5th birthday at different levels of reading.

They found that:

  • By the time a child is 5 years old, if they have never been read to, they know 4,662 words. 
  • If they’ve been read to 1-2 times per week, their word count increases to 63,570. 
  • Reading to a child 3-5 times per week increases their vocabulary to 169,520 words, and daily reading expands their vocabulary to 296,660 words. 
  • If a child is read five books a day, they know upwards of 1,483,300 words.
  • Children who hear more vocabulary words are better prepared to see those words in print when they enter school. They are also more likely to pick up reading skills more quickly and easily. 

“This million word gap could be one key in explaining differences in vocabulary and reading development,” says Logan. 

Logan contends that being read to is different from everyday communication. Why? It’s because books expose children to words that are much more complex and difficult than what they hear by just talking to their parents and others at home. 

For example, reading a book about animals, where they live and their natural habitat, will introduce words and concepts that are not likely to come up in everyday conversations.

“The words kids hear from books may have special importance in learning to read,”  Logan says. “Exposure to vocabulary is good for all kids.”

If reading hasn’t been a priority in your home, it’s easy to start. Here’s how. 

  • Visit the library with your little ones for story hour. Get a library card if you don’t already have one so you can take some books home with you. 
  • Look for gently-used books at garage sales or used bookstores. You might even have some friends who have been holding onto books that could use a new home or who would be willing to trade books back and forth. 
  • Check out Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, a book-gifting program that mails free, high-quality books to children from birth until they begin school (age 5), regardless of family income. Register your child to receive a new book each month. (Yes, please!)
  • Make reading an exciting time to connect with your child. Change your voice for the different characters or animals. Let your child turn the pages. Point to different things on the page as you read about them. Ask them to find the thing you are reading about on the page.
  • Place your finger under the words as you read them. This helps your child learn that we read from left to right. It will aslo will help them visually see the word you are saying.

Don’t have lots of books to choose from?

No worries. Almost any parent with grown children can probably still recite to you word for word certain books that their child asked them to read again, and again, and… again. Happy reading!

This article was originally published in the Chattanooga Times Free Press on April 28, 2019.

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