Sorry to be absent for so long, but I’m back now with good news—The Knighting of Sir Kaye is ready to be printed and the official release date is October 20th. And now that I’ve had a moment to catch up with things, I thought I’d share something I found interesting.

I recently read an article published earlier this year on the MindShift website. It was entitled “If School is not Relevant” and it posed some interesting questions about the effectiveness of schools in teaching children to succeed.

Two of those questions caught my attention, and I’ve adapted them (freely) to apply to parents, because after all, the family is a child’s first school. Here they are:

What if parents gauged themselves, not by how well their kids are provided for financially, but in how well prepared they are to take on the challenges of life?

What if our kids can point to the time we spent with them as the reason
for their success?

When children are young, one of the best ways parents can spend time with them is reading aloud and talking about what has been read. Here are two ways to enrich your conversations with your children about books you’ve read together:

Ask questions about what happened in the story: Asking children questions about what they’ve read teaches them how to reason and helps them develop common sense and logic, all valuable tools for taking on the challenges of life. It helps them learn to put thoughts and feelings into words.

Ask questions about what didn’t happen in the story: Questions about details that are not specifically mentioned in a story teach children to use their imaginations to project their ideas beyond what is known and to draw conclusions that make sense based on the details they already know. This can help them become creative problem-solvers as they develop their intuition and their ability to make logical inferences—another great way to help children prepare for the challenges of life.