Here are some phrases you can use to praise your child. Remember to praise him more for who he is than for what he does. Use praise liberally and you will see your child bloom.

1. I love being with you

All people want to be needed and appreciated, especially little people. Be sure to let your child know often that you enjoy spending time with him or simply having him around.

2. I’m so blessed to be your parent

Children love to see photos of when they were born or when their mother was pregnant with them. Make some time to show your child photographs from when you were pregnant as well as pictures from when he was a baby.

3. I enjoy it when you [insert action]

Children often don’t know how to express their love for their parents. Make sure to tell your child what your love language is. Do you enjoy hugs? Does it make you happy when your child helps in the home? Does your heart melt when your child picks a flower? Let him know!

4. I so appreciate your help

Being a useful part of a team is important to everyone, especially children. Let your child help with chores around the home and make sure he knows how much you appreciate his help.

5. It’s awesome to be different

Children who are raised with a strong sense of independence and self-worth are able to withstand the negative effects of peer pressure. Let your child know that he doesn’t have to be the same as everyone else.

6. You really have a talent for [insert talent]

In my years as a speech- language therapist and audiologist, I saw first hand how degrading it can be for a child to be viewed as a series of problems. Make sure that you focus on your child’s strengths and encourage him to develop it even further.

7.   You are one of a kind!

There will never be someone quite like your child. Make sure he knows that he is appreciated for his uniqueness!

8.  Your best is good enough

Encourage your child to dream big and try new things. Praise his best efforts and cheer him on to persevere until he gets it right.

9.  Thank you so much for …

I’ve tried to count the times I thank my children for something today and realized that I don’t say thank you enough. Thank them every time they are obedient, cooperative or even just for being them.

10. I’m sorry I made a mistake. Will you forgive me!

Admitting to mistakes can be a very powerful way to teach your child how to resolve conflict and strengthen your bond with your child.

“A pat on the back is only a few vertebrae removed from a kick in the pants, but is miles ahead in results.” Ella Wheeler Wilcox

About the Author:

Lisl Fair has a Masters Degree in Speech-Language Therapy and Audiology. She left private practice to spend more time with her four children and took up a career in writing from home.

She is the author of numerous magazine articles dealing with a variety of parenting subjects and is involved in the development of educational children’s books and parenting books.

She runs a Brain-Based Learning and Development Consultancy Business on a part-time basis and helps parents and children discover how they are unique.

In addition to health information overload, alarming recent research indicates that children are developing poor body image issues at a younger ages than ever before. I’ve walked a long road with food and body image issues since I was six years old and did not want my children to travel down the same path. So far, they are all happy youngsters with healthy appetites and zest for life. Here are five food truths that I believe every child should know to have a good attitude towards food and eating and a healthy body image:

1. Eat when you are hungry until you are full

Many of my peers grew up with the ‘clean your plate because I say so’ – regime of parenting. We were threatened with no dessert or, even worse, images of hungry children in Ethiopia if we did not devour the last crumb of the predetermined portion that our well-intentioned mothers dished up for us. In the process, we’ve forgotten how to listen to the innate full and hunger signals that our bodies sent us. Our children’s ability to listen to their hunger and full signals is still in place, and we should encourage them to respect their bodies’ signals regarding food and eating.

2. Everything in Moderation

I have seen time and time again that as soon as a child is forbidden to eat a specific type of food or treat, he or she will bend over backwards to have an opportunity to indulge in that specific food. What matters is what type of foods are available in your home on a daily basis, not an occasional treat your child has once in a while.  Have a variety of real food snacks on hand (like cheese, chicken strips, wholewheat crackers, fruit and vegetables pieces), from which your child can freely choose and in the process your will choose what his body needs.

3. Not all Food is Equal

Children should know how to make informed choices about food. Even preschoolers are not to young to be educated about the effect of different types of food on their bodies. A simplified lesson about vitamins, minerals, proteins, fats and carbohydrates can help them understand that they need real food to have healthy bodies. They should know that sugary, processed treats give them energy for a short while, but no real nutrition.

4. Food Are Meant to Be Enjoyed Together

In almost every culture in the world, food rituals and meal practices centre around being together as friends and families. Food is an essential part of celebrations and feasts all over the world. Children should understand that even if they are not hungry at that moment, it is important that they join the family meal table when the rest of the family is eating, because it is a time of togetherness and sharing.

5. If You Want to Feel Alive, Eat Foods that Are Alive

What we put into our bodies has a significant impact on how we feel and act during the day. One of the best types of foods for energy and alertness is raw fruits and vegetables because they are filled with live enzymes and nutrients. There should always be fresh fruits and vegetables available for children to snack on.

Many parents have an innate urge to control their children’s food intake and it takes some getting used to, to learn how to trust your child’s instincts about what and how much he needs to eat. Never judge his intake based on a single day only – you will see food fads and strong preferences gently phase out over time. Make sure that there are nutritionally-dense food available on a consistent basis and your child will learn to love the foods that are good for him.

About the Author:

Lisl Fair has a Masters Degree in Speech-Language Therapy and Audiology. She left private practice to spend more time with her four children and took up a career in writing from home.

She is the author of numerous magazine articles dealing with a variety of parenting subjects and is involved in the development of educational children’s books and parenting books.

She runs a Brain-Based Learning and Development Consultancy Business on a part-time basis and helps parents and children discover how they are unique.

What is Early Reading Skills?

Early reading skills are precursors to the ability to read and can be defined as skills that provide a foundation from which a child learns to interact with the printed world around her. On a practical level, the following can be considered as early reading skills (or pre-literacy skills):

• being curious about the printed world in the environment;
• asking what is written in various places;
• attempting to page (‘read’) a book appropriately (right side up, tracking from left to right);
• attempting to break down written words into letters;
• attempting to learn the names of the letters in words;
• trying to copy print from books or signs;
• becoming aware of differences between languages (metalinguistic ability);
• playing with words, sounds or rhymes;
• memorizing chunks of language from a book or television programme.

Five Ways to Encourage Early Reading Skills

1. Sound it Out

If you want to make a child aware that words consist of individual parts, you can sound out simple three letter words for her on a regular basis. Choose words that occur naturally in her environment like cat, dog, pot, pan and encourage her to sound it out after you, pausing after each letter (c-a-t). Make sure to use the phonetic names of the letters and not the alphabet names.

2. Read Aloud

Reading aloud to your child helps to build her vocabulary and helps her to learn the cadence of written language read aloud. Early reading skills stands on three pillars: auditory skills, visual skills and language skills and reading aloud regularly to your child helps to build the language pillar.

3. Visit the Library

A visit to the library can help your child to interact with a variety of books and printed material. Allow her to choose the books she’d like to check out.

4. Learn Around the Kitchen Table

Food labels and brand names provide an excellent way to learn that written language can be a symbol for the names of things. Help your child to identify brand names like Cheerios, Kellogg’s, Heinz etc.

5. Magnetic Alphabet and Family Names

Make sure to add a magnetic alphabet to your fridge and write the names of all your family members with the letters. Emphasize the beginning letters of the names for your child to help her learn that each starts with a different letter. You can even draw pictures with a white board marker on the fridge to help her remember which family member each name belongs to.

Most importantly – have fun with your child as the world of print unfolds before her!

About the Author:

Lisl Fair has a Masters Degree in Speech-Language Therapy and Audiology. She left private practice to spend more time with her four children and took up a career in writing from home.

She is the author of numerous magazine articles dealing with a variety of parenting subjects and is involved in the development of educational children’s books and parenting books.

She runs a Brain-Based Learning and Development Consultancy Business on a part-time basis and helps parents and children discover how they are unique.

"...man is a bundle of relations, a knot of roots, whose flower and fruitage is the world..." Ralph Waldo Emerson

Why Tell Stories About Your Past To Your Children?

A well-known quote says that two of the most important things parents can give children are roots and wings. Through sharing stories about your own childhood and experiences from your past, you can provide your child with a sense of belonging and rootedness. Children revel in the intimacy of sharing some of your childhood memories with you. My children want to hear certain incidences of my childhood over and over. Every time they fall and get a nasty scrape, I have to retell the story of the time I fell off my bike and got a very nasty scrape right on my cheek. It was very painful to laugh and smile! Listening to my story help them know that I identify with their pain and that I have had accidents and have done silly and irresponsible things too when I were little.

Your child’s knowledge about his ancestors, can also help to guide his decisions in life. My husband is of Scottish descent and our son went through a stage where he studied everything relating to Vikings. He even tried to determine whether he could possibly have real Viking blood in his veins! It helped formed the way he saw himself and his place in history.

“History cannot give us a program for the future, but it can give us a fuller understanding of ourselves, and of our common humanity, so that we can better face the future.” Robert Penn Warren

What Kind of Stories Do Children Like?

 Most children love tales of grand adventures, although most parents have to embellish a bit on their childhood antics to fit the epic scale of their children’s imaginations. Even an everyday occurrence can turn into an adventure when it is told in the right way. Remember that your child’s experience of the world probably differs widely from yours because he is growing up in a different social, cultural and maybe even geographical reality. Things from your childhood that may seem common to you, might fascinate him. It astonishes my children that I only learned to operate a computer when I was close to 18. We’ve bought a MacGyver DVD Box Set and watched the episodes together as a family – they love seeing the old fashioned ‘technology’, the way we dressed and how the world operated before cell phones and tablets.

Three Things to Remember When Telling A Story

Next time your children beg you to tell them a story from when you were little, keep the following in mind:

1. Don’t preach! Even if you want to tell a story to drive home a message, don’t preach at your children through your stories. They are bright and intuitive enough to read between the lines.
2. If you can’t remember any stories from when you were little, close your eyes and focus to remember one object in your room as a child. Start your story with: ‘I remember I always had a teddy bear, rag doll, star-shaped pillow on my bed and when I… ‘ Try to sketch a short story about that one object. What color was it? What did it smell like? What did it feel like? Did it make a sound?
3. Borrow stories from your siblings, cousins, childhood friends or from your parents’ childhoods. Whenever my mother visit us, my children always ask her about how it was when she grew up.

Sloan Wilson says: “The hardest part of raising a child is teaching them to ride bicycles.  A shaky child on a bicycle for the first time needs both support and freedom.  The realization that this is what the child will always need, can hit hard.” Building up a treasure house of memories about stories told from your past, can help to give a child the support he needs through childhood to soar when the opportunity for freedom arises.

About the Author:

Lisl Fair has a Masters Degree in Speech-Language Therapy and Audiology. She left private practice to spend more time with her four children and took up a career in writing from home.

She is the author of numerous magazine articles dealing with a variety of parenting subjects and is involved in the development of educational children’s books and parenting books.

She runs a Brain-Based Learning and Development Consultancy Business on a part-time basis and helps parents and children discover how they are unique.

“Yeww! What’s this? Do I really have to eat this? I’m not hungry,” is all I hear. My bubble burst, my ability to nurture my children deeply questioned, I heap the contents of the plates into the dog’s bowl. While most meals at our home are met with ferocious appetites, I have enough memories of nutritious ideals gone awry to keep me humble at least until my future youngest grandchild is thirty.

Incidents like these, made me wonder about legitimate reasons why toddlers may refuse to eat. Apart from toddlers who won’t eat unfamiliar food, all mothers have dished up their toddler’s favorite food only to be stopped by a mouth that won’t open for a bite. In raising my four children, here are the top four reasons my children wouldn’t eat:

1. Making Changes Too Fast

 Like most conscientious mothers, I went through stages where I worried about the quality of my children’s nutritional intake. Are they getting enough fibre, nutrients, the right types of fats, green vegetables, orange vegetables, fruit, protein – the list goes on and on? These questioning episodes usually started after I had to pay a doctor’s bill for tonsillitis for all of them! Being the enthusiastic person that I am, it usually took less than a day for me to have a firm resolve about the ‘New Nutritional Standards of the Fair Family’ in place. Consequently, I whipped up healthy recipes with ingredients whose names are difficult to pronounce: quinoa, millet, GMO-free, tahini, xylitol … No surprise that my children’s mouths refused to cooperate not only in pronouncing mom’s new invention but also in devouring it. I’ve made changes too rapidly. The sustainable healthy eating changes I made in my home was introduced gradually – slowly with only one new ingredient or dish at a time. Best way to get your children to enjoy something new – eat it yourself and tell them that it is a delicacy reserved for grown-ups!

2. Underlying Illness

Children’s appetites wane two or three days before they show symptoms of being ill like a fever, sore throat or coughing. When your toddler won’t eat, his body might be trying to tell him to reserve energy for fighting infection.

3. Legitimate Dislikes

Some children are extremely fussy eaters who only eat a limited variety of food. Fussy eaters often have sensory issues with food and disliking textured food might indicate a broader sensory integration disorder. However, most children have one or two food items that they would rather not eat. Just like adults, children have unique taste preferences and should be allowed to express their likes and dislikes within boundaries. In our home we allow two to three dislikes per child. We won’t force an individual child to eat a food that he or she has placed on his or her dislike list. For one it is porridge made from corn flour, for the other its tomatoes, one dislikes honey and the last one doesn’t like spicy food. I’ve seen over the years that consistently providing a variety of healthy food goes a long way in helping children to try new foods.

4. Watch the Fluids

Our youngest child loves to drink herbal tea (with lots of milk of course). She is also not the biggest eater in the world. See the connection? We’ve had to limit the amount of tea she drinks during the day, especially close to meal times as it was interfering with her food intake. If your toddler won’t eat, carefully evaluate his fluid intake during the day and adjust accordingly.

I’ve learned that children are intuitive about what their bodies need and adjust their preferences according to their needs. That is why children’s preference of a certain food last only a while before moving onto something completely different. Learn to respect your child’s innate knowledge about what her body needs and keep on providing a variety of healthy food choices – that is what good enough parents do!

About the Author:

Lisl Fair has a Masters Degree in Speech-Language Therapy and Audiology. She left private practice to spend more time with her four children and took up a career in writing from home.

She is the author of numerous magazine articles dealing with a variety of parenting subjects and is involved in the development of educational children’s books and parenting books.

She runs a Brain-Based Learning and Development Consultancy Business on a part-time basis and helps parents and children discover how they are unique.

When last have you admired the texture of a rock?

You see, some irresponsible citizen thought it was a good idea to dumb garbage at the base of the hill. Every time I walked past this mess, I got angry at the unknown perpetrator and never considered that there might be something of value just beyond the obvious. My friend had much more foresight than I – something I took care to avoid became a place to search for precious treasures while I was gone. My children seemed not to notice the rubbish as they raced up to footpath to the top of the hill to look for crystallized stones.

I learned a dear lesson yesterday – to look beyond the obvious, to look beyond the imperfections in life to find hidden treasures. I realized that reaching beyond the obvious takes a frame of mind. An attitude that says ‘thank you’ instead of ‘why should this be so.’ It is the eyes of thankfulness that see crystals beyond rubbish. It is a thankful heart that is fully alive to small miracles present everywhere in our daily lives. I sat on that hill yesterday wondering when the last time was I looked, really looked at the intricate patterns on a rock. When was the last time I got excited about discovering a ‘diamond’ embedded in red stone? It is when life slows down, that I can really appreciate the wonder of now.

What’s so amazing about this experience is that children easily catch onto an attitude of thankfulness. It is as if children are pre-wired to latch onto wonder and gratitude. I try to imagine what would happen in my family if I manage to live every day in an attitude of thankfulness. Would I encourage my children to look beyond the obvious and reach to what is lovely? I’m not sure that gratitude can right all wrongs in life, but it certainly will go a long way in making the most of every moment. Let your child hear you say ‘thank you’ for at least five things today. Its definitely worth trying!

About the Author:

Lisl Fair has a Masters Degree in Speech-Language Therapy and Audiology. She left private practice to spend more time with her four children and took up a career in writing from home.

She is the author of numerous magazine articles dealing with a variety of parenting subjects and is involved in the development of educational children’s books and parenting books.

She runs a Brain-Based Learning and Development Consultancy Business on a part-time basis and helps parents and children discover how they are unique.

I can literaly see the gears grinding in her head as she is entering this world of literacy. Halting tries gradually move to confidence as she reads her first reader aloud to everyone who will listen. She knows a couple of consonants and not even all the vowels and yet in her mind she’s taken off into a world of stories. She refuses to guess at the text by looking at the pictures and stubbornly decodes every word on the page. The sight word building blocks are falling into place gradually. What a joy to behold!

Abigail (6 years)

A couple of days ago we watched the  National Geographic Film ‘The First Grader‘. Although some of the content is not appropriate for children and I had to screen several scenes, Abigail was spell bound as she watched a 84 year old Kenyan man fight for the right to learn to read and write. It added to her determination to work hard at her phonics. It showed me anew that being able to read and write not only unlocks the world of the written world, but helps to build dignity, self-respect and self-discipline.

Abigail is a blessed little girl, because for many children in the world, reading doesn’t come naturally at age six. Many children who are taught to read early struggle to make sense of the written word. This may be because they are not neurologically mature enough in that area at that age. Her older brother Victor had considerable trouble with reading when he was her age. We kept at it for three years, and this year he is finding his voice in the reading world as he reads Dr. Seuss aloud to me for the first time. I knew he had what it took. I’m delighted with his progress.

Many factors hindered Victor’s progress. He had an undetected eye problem and visual perceptual difficulties. He had sensory integration problems and low muscle tone. He was simply not ready to learn to read at age five/six. Yet, time and an environment rich in print, reading aloud and encouragement eventually triumphed. Today he is nine years old and well on his way to being a reader.

Victor (9 years)

It has been a steep learning curve for me teaching these two vastly different children to read. Nothing in my education could prepare me adequately for this journey. My expectations were shaped by teaching Zoe (11) to read. She took to it like a duck to water and is an avid reader. I still have a long road ahead of me, but what I know so far about teaching a child to read includes:

• Don’t start too early or move too fast. If in doubt, wait.
• Early success is essential to keep the child motivated.
• Reading aloud to your child lays a foundation for learning to read and write.
• Engage all of your child’s senses in the learning process.
• A successful reading program should include phonics as well as sight words.
• Some children need months or even years of repetition on basic skills like blending and learning the alphabet.
• Reading should be fun – tears of frustration have no place in learning to read. Lower your expectations for at least a couple of months as you repeat basic skills. Find new and fun ways to teach basic skills.
• Invest in a home library of easy readers.

About the Author:

Lisl Fair has a Masters Degree in Speech-Language Therapy and Audiology. She left private practice to spend more time with her four children and took up a career in writing from home.

She is the author of numerous magazine articles dealing with a variety of parenting subjects and is involved in the development of educational children’s books and parenting books.

She runs a Brain-Based Learning and Development Consultancy Business on a part-time basis and helps parents and children discover how they are unique.

Parenthood changes you in all the ways that matter. It enlarges hearts, it anchors lofty ideas, it dissolves petty issues, it graces you with second chances, it reveals strength you didn’t know you had and it keeps you rooted to what really matters in life. I’ve learned and grown and changed in ways I never thought possible because I gave life to four amazing human beings.

I wasn’t always able to see the journey of parenthood so clearly. When diapers and bottles and night feeds and ear aches dominated my days I felt as if I was losing some essential part of myself, as if busyness and babies brought brokenness instead of the bliss I thought it would bring. Yet, slowly, as my children grew and I grew even more, I started seeing that most of the things I obsessed over and fretted about never happened. Slowly, I came to appreciate four unique people and started loving this blessed position I am in: mother.

And so, I have learned to embrace motherhood – to love my children AND to love being a mother. Do you know what happened when I loved my children but was too scared to really embrace motherhood because it seemed like a monster who threatened to swallow me whole? I found myself withdrawing from them, those that I love most. I found myself closing my eyes and wishing I was anywhere but with them. I found myself withholding time, love and nurturing because what would be left if I gave it all? Until I learned that love multiplies, it never divides.

The time, the love, the nurturing you are planting in your children’s lives will multiply exponentially and revisit you on those days when you feel like you’ve never done anything right as a parent. Wholeness as a family, bliss as a mother is not in more me-time, more time away, more boundaries, but in simply giving. Keep on embracing, keep on loving, keep on giving yourself to those you have given life to. That is the contradictory road to joy in motherhood.

…the largest a mother ever is, is just before the swollen birthing, and after that she spends the rest of her life small, so very small.

~ Ann Voskamp, A Holy Experience

Photo credit:  Ben Earwicker Garrison Photography, Boise, ID www.garrisonphoto.org

About the Author:

Lisl Fair has a Masters Degree in Speech-Language Therapy and Audiology. She left private practice to spend more time with her four children and took up a career in writing from home.

She is the author of numerous magazine articles dealing with a variety of parenting subjects and is involved in the development of educational children’s books and parenting books.

She runs a Brain-Based Learning and Development Consultancy Business on a part-time basis and helps parents and children discover how they are unique.

Her post stroke a cord with me. I’ve also spent the last 11 years raising children, I’ve also viewed myself as un-hirable, I’ve also had many rejection mails and letters mar my days. I’ve had opportunities to write on and off during the 11 years and in the last year my clients have grown exponentially. I’m now a stay-and-work-at-home-mom and feel blessed to have the best of both worlds. I never thought that it was possible and now I am living it.

Her story got me thinking, that if people really knew what mothers are capable of, they’ll employ them first AND be flexible about where and when they work. Here are the reasons why I believe mothers should be everybody’s first choice when looking for someone to get the job done:

1. Moms are Creative

Have you ever had to fix the last banana with a band-aid because your son doesn’t want to eat a broken banana? Ever had to invent your own version of Gangham Style because you children thought it was fun? Moms are the ultimate lateral thinkers, because they often have to keep multiple people happy with limited resources.

2. Moms Know How To Stick To It

Those sleepless nights to have a purpose other than forcing you to lower your housekeeping standards because you’re to tired to care when last you washed the kitchen floor. Getting up and keeping on getting up at night makes mothers tougher than most. They can stick to something even if it is hard.

3. Moms Can Multi-Task

Women in general are usually praised for being able to do more than one thing at once, but mothers have taken this craft to the next level. Ever had to look after three or four sick children all at once? If you want to have several things done, simultaneously, by yesterday – ask a mother – she’ll take it in her stride.

4. Moms Know It All

Its true, moms do know it all! Try to keep up with a couple of children’s interests, be a hip mom and stay abreast of technology and follow up on all the questions children ask just before they fall asleep – you’ll have the largest general knowledge around. Want to hire a knowledgeable all rounder? Ask a mom!

5. Moms Are The Ultimate Network Operators

Have you ever seen how efficiently a lift club or fundraiser gets organized by a bunch of mothers? Well, that’s because they are excellent at networking and knows that it takes a village to raise a child. Want someone who knows a lot of people and can spur them into action? Get a mom!

6. Moms Use Both Sides of Their Brains

Years of multitasking, creativity, networking and perseverance help mothers to integrate the functions of the more analytical left side of the brain with the more creative, global right side. The result: some one who works faster, smarter and better. Want to put your project on a new level: Hire a mom!

Here is to all mothers out there looking for work that will accommodate their family’s needs: May you all find wonderful opportunities, you deserve it because moms can!

About the Author:

Lisl Fair has a Masters Degree in Speech-Language Therapy and Audiology. She left private practice to spend more time with her four children and took up a career in writing from home.

She is the author of numerous magazine articles dealing with a variety of parenting subjects and is involved in the development of educational children’s books and parenting books.

She runs a Brain-Based Learning and Development Consultancy Business on a part-time basis and helps parents and children discover how they are unique.

As our children came along, some of them were late talkers, some were late walkers, but all of them got it right in the end. Initially, I really worried about every milestone which was accomplished later rather than sooner, but I soon realized that I was missing so much of the joy of parenting by not living in the moment. In a couple of months I will officially be without a toddler in the house for the first time in almost eleven years. I’ve learned a lot more about child development from raising four children, than I ever learned from books. This is some of what I’ve learned:

• All children are pre-programmed to GROW and CHANGE and LEARN! Your child will do this in spite of your efforts.
• Developmental milestones are guidelines that show us how childhood development progresses typically. It gives an AGE RANGE for skills and not a specific age. For example: A child who starts crawling at six months and one that starts crawling at eight months both fall within the range of typical development.
• If your child lags behind developmental milestone age ranges ask yourself the following questions: What happened developmentally in that area over the last three months? Is the delay in one or more areas of development? Did your child show accelerated development in another area during the same period of time?
• If your child is under eighteen months of age and shows no progress in a specific developmental area for more than three to four months, it might be time to seek the help of a early interventionist.
• If your child shows delayed development in all development areas, discuss your concerns for your doctor.
• Very often children focus all their energy on a specific area of development, and the progress in another area may seem to stand still.
• If your child has a confirmed developmental delay, don’t be so focus on what he can’t do, that you cannot celebrate the things that he is able to do. Keep the fine balance between nurturing your child and challenging him onto the next level.

Milestones are guidelines and not a measurement of your success as a parent. Learn to take one day at a time and enjoy your child for the unique person that she is.

About the Author:

Lisl Fair has a Masters Degree in Speech-Language Therapy and Audiology. She left private practice to spend more time with her four children and took up a career in writing from home.

She is the author of numerous magazine articles dealing with a variety of parenting subjects and is involved in the development of educational children’s books and parenting books.

She runs a Brain-Based Learning and Development Consultancy Business on a part-time basis and helps parents and children discover how they are unique.

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