The Motivation Breakthrough: 6 Secrets to Turning On the Tuned-Out Child

The middle level years are an extraordinary period of our human development. The only other time we grow as much physically, emotionally, and intellectually is form ages zero to two. But early adolescence is much more than just tripping over large feet and calling friends on the phone to discuss who likes whom. The ways we deal with conflict, relationships, and personal development as adults have direct connections to specific experiences we had between the ages of ten and fourteen. We can create a very positive future then, when we provide careful and compassionate experiences for today’s young adolescents.

Spending a month on a remote island in Maine with his teasing older brother and grandparents he hardly knows is not Josh’s idea of a great time. But that’s what happens the summer his parents go abroad. Twelve-year-old Josh, who has dyslexia, can’t do anything right in his grandfather’s eyes, and is constantly compared to his perfect bookish brother, Simon. So Josh secretly plans to run away back to New Jersey. However, despite gruff Gramps, Josh finds himself captivated by life on Sea Island and all of the challenges it offers him. Plus, Josh discovers unexpected romance and kinship with a young visitor. His biggest challenge, though, comes at the end of the summer when he faces a life-threatening emergency and uses skills he didn’t know he had to lead the rescue.

This anthology of poetry is organized to show the experience of a person who takes charge of her own life despite difficulties and challenges. Fifty-three poems and three short stories describe the experience of growing up. The author, a women who wrote these poems during her childhood and teenage years, experienced a difference currently called by many names; specific learning disabilities, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and dylexia. She was in an ordinary class and received virtually no help for the challenges she experienced due to her handicaps.The poetry was published in journals of poetry, newspapers, and magazines when she was a teenager. Mountain Books asked the author to organize these poems into an anthology because the publisher believed they should be shared with today’s readers. They inspire and emmpower all people who have stuggled to overcome these difficulties. They sensitize parents and teachers who work to help children and adults who struggle. They show personal growth and encourage the reader to take responsibility for their own actions and experiences.

A touching account of one youngster’s struggle in learning to read and the painful journey that he took to gain self-confidence, self-respect, and tremendous success as a human being, as a student, and as an athlete. Benny’s story stands as a tribute to the human spirit and should serve as an excellent resource for students with dyslexia, their parents and their teachers.

When Josh’s friends call him “Slosh,” it’s particularly painful. Although he’s smart when it comes to computers and math, Josh also has ADHD — Attention Deficit with Hyperactivity Disorder. After talking to his teacher, Josh’s parents decide to take him to a doctor, and things start looking up. Best of all, over time, Josh’s classmates come to appreciate him as just another one of the guys.

Kids write letters to one of the greatest scientists of all time — and he answers them!

This book offers a small sampling of the amusing, touching, and sometimes precocious letters sent to Albert Einstein by children from around the world, and his often witty and very considerate responses. Alice Calaprice has compiled a delightful and charming collection of more than 60 letters, most never published before, from children to perhaps the greatest scientist of all time. Enhancing this correspondence are numerous photographs showing Einstein amid children, wearing an Indian headdress, carrying a puppet of himself, donning furry slippers, among many other wonderful pictures. They reveal the intimate human side of the great public persona, a man who, though he spent his days contemplating the impersonal abstractions of mathematics and physics, was very fond of children and enjoyed being in their company.