If you do a little bit of looking at books with your children and inspire them to be curious about the pictures and ... what the word means, but don't get into very structured systematic teaching at too early an age, and you also interact emotionally and have fun with pretend play ... then you have the best of both worlds.

We need to take a less narrow look at our children’s problems and, instead, see them as windows of opportunity—a way of exploring and understanding all facets of our children’s development. If we can understand the underlying developmental process, we can see a child’s struggles as signs of striving toward growth instead of chronic problems or attempts to aggravate adults.

If your child is going to develop a healthy personality with the capacity to remain intact and grow, she must learn how to test reality, regulate her impulses, stabilize her moods, integrate her feelings and actions, focus her concentration and plan.

Parents are led to believe that they must be consistent, that is, always respond to the same issue the same way. Consistency is good up to a point but your child also needs to understand context and subtlety . . . much of adult life is governed by context: what is appropriate in one setting is not appropriate in another; the way something is said may be more important than what is said. . . .

Good discipline is more than just punishing or laying down the law. It is liking children and letting them see that they are liked. It is caring enough about them to provide good, clear rules for their protection.

Although pretend play is important, it is still the means to an end, not the end itself. Do not make the mistake of thinking a contrived, pretend drama can substitute for real interpersonal comfort in dealing with important emotional issues.

Attention, learning, and problem solving depend in part on the ability to plan and sequence actions and ideas. The Interactive Metronome(R) helps individuals systematically exercise and often improve basic motor planning and sequencing capacities.