Thursday, June 4, 2009

Raising self-regulated kids takes work

By Katherine Dedyna, Canwest News Service

Lots of little kids declare "You’re not the boss of me!" to their bemused parents.

Yet the kids are on the right track. The sooner parents can instil a sense of "executive function" in their children, the better, psychologists say.

Helping even very young children develop ways to regulate their own reactions and emotions has been linked to doing better in everything from school work to getting along with others.

Called "effortful control" by Wanda Boyer, an educational psychologist at the University of Victoria, executive function includes four abilities learned by a child: to keep focused on a task; to shift attention from one task to another whether they want to or not; to initiate actions; and to stop actions whether they want to or not.

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