Teenage Children

He was always the worst-behaved child in the room. It didn’t matter where he went. Or when. Three-year-old Cameron* simply couldn’t control himself — ever.

“He was bouncing off the walls all the time,” recollects his mother, Susan*. “I loved him dearly but couldn’t bear to be around him because he was so obnoxious, in-your-face, he could never sit still, never stop moving, couldn’t control his impulses—he was always hitting, kicking, jumping or touching.”

Desperate to figure out what was going on with her son, Susan stumbled onto an article about a little girl whose behavior seemed nearly identical to Cameron’s and who was “cured” through a special diet.

When Susan and her husband saw their son’s first report card, they were shocked: a string of Bs and Cs littered the page.

I just found out that my daughter’s school isn’t making Adequate Yearly Progress as defined by the No Child Left Behind Act.
This is somewhat of a shock, given that the school routinely ranks among the top in the state.
Confused, and more than a little concerned, I started digging for information. What I found was, frankly, even more puzzling.
It seems that, overall, the school’s students did just fine on the test—indeed, they scored roughly15% above the state average on all standards. So how in the world did they end-up sanctioned by the feds?

It is the first slightly cool day of Fall, wind chimes tinkling in the distance as the sun drifts through the trees to make dappled designs on the street.

A meeting between you and your child’s teacher can be a powerful tool for helping your child succeed in school.

Living in Austin gives parents a distinct advantage for exposing their kids to music — the Live Music Capital of the World has its advantages, including ready access to live children’s music and excellent music instructors.

Case in point: the Austin Girls’ Choir, which celebrates its 20th anniversary this month.

The secret to the group’s success is its focus on each chorister taking responsibility for herself and the choir as a whole. This not only imbues the girls with the benefits of a musical education, but also with responsibility.

At long last, this year marks my complete immersion in the public school system. That’s because my youngest is starting kindergarten, so I will no longer have one foot calmly rooted in private preschool while the other tries to dance through the intricacies of public school.

Not that our experience with public school has been negative. It’s just that there’s a lot more going on in the vast public school system than there is in the sweetly small confines of a preschool.