Understanding Your Child

While recommendations on how to raise your child into a successful adult change with every new research report, there are some basic truths about children that remain the same:

• All children are different in their reaction and tolerance to the outside world. Understanding your child's temperament (energy level; ability to adjust to new situations; intensity of emotions and sensitivity to sights, sounds, smells, feelings and tastes) will enhance your relationship at home as well as provide valuable insight into how he or she is handling school. (Raising Your Spirited Child, Mary Sheedy Kurinka, 1991)
  
  
• All children have different abilities that will help them succeed in school and life. Depending on your child's specific skills, he or she may be naturally good at verbal or mathematical tasks, art, athletics, music and a variety of other activities or possess such qualities as leadership and self–understanding. Knowing this will help you reinforce your child's strengths and work on his or her weaknesses. (Multiple Intelligences: The Theory in Practice, Howard Gardner, 1993)
  
  
• All children have their own views of the world and unique ways of responding to it. Their early successes in life depend on being prepared not only academically, but emotionally as well. The following is a very broad look at the emotional development you might see in your child that will enable him or her to meet the increasing challenges of life at home, in school and at play.