Beyond The Label

Understanding the whys behind your child's behaviors

The homework was done. It was in her locker.

Sally's mother was called in to see the teacher in the fall of sixth grade. The teacher was frustrated, and she had her reasons. Every day she asked for homework, and every day Sally did not have it. It was in her locker, Sally would say. So the teacher would send her out to the hallway to get it...

Oct 03, 2026

He read every word correctly. He could not tell me a thing about it.

Charlie was in third grade, and he hated reading class. He could tell you exactly why, too, which not every eight-year-old can. It was not the reading. The reading was the easy part. It was the twenty minutes afterward, when the questions started and everybody found out again what he could not do...

Sep 27, 2026

He was not being rude. He did not have a translator.

Charlie comes to school wanting to have a good day. He is barely through the door when his archnemesis, Dean, comes up behind him. Dean finds him most mornings. "Move it, Charlie. You're blocking the hallway." Charlie looks. He is at the edge of the lockers, pressed up against them, nowhere near ...

Sep 26, 2026

One of them screamed. The other one pointed.

Two boys. Same age, near enough. The same problem underneath, and not one adult around either of them had spotted it. The first one was known for his temper. Ask him a direct question and he would come apart. Teachers braced for him. He had a reputation before he had a report card, and every c...

Sep 09, 2026

Dyslexia does not mean dumb.

When my son was in the seventh grade, his class was talking about learning differences, and dyslexia came up. One girl, the kind who was always quick to find the weak spot in somebody, could not believe how common it was supposed to be. The teacher had said one student in seven. So she stood up, ...

Aug 24, 2026

One of them wrote two sentences. Another wrote two pages.

For the last two newsletters we have been building one idea together. Writing looks like a single act, but it is really four jobs happening at once, all drawing from the same small tank of effort. First the idea. Then the words. Then the details, the spelling and punctuation and letter order. The...

Aug 17, 2026

This week I am not going to tell you. I am going to show you.

Last week we sat together with dysgraphia. This week I want to take you one step further out, to the children whose ideas are rich and whose writing still will not come. That is written language disorder. This time I am going to do more than tell you about it. I am going to show you, and have you...

Aug 06, 2026

Neat, or finished. She could not do both.

Sally came home in tears from school again. When her mom asked her why, she replied: "My teacher made me stay in from recess to redo my work because she said she couldn't read it. But I had tried my best to get it all done before recess. I can either write neatly and not get done on time, or I ca...

Jul 23, 2026

The spelling list I couldn't read: The problem I could see was never the real one.

Every week in elementary school, the routine was the same. The teacher wrote the week's spelling words on the whiteboard, and each child copied the list, tucked it into a folder, and brought it home. Simple enough. Practice all week, test on Friday. For my son (name withheld for privacy), it was ...

Jul 16, 2026

The homework he'll do, and the one he won't

When a child avoids just one subject, he is telling you something. Homework goes fine. Reading, done. Spelling, done. Then you slide the math worksheet across the table, and the whole evening changes. He slumps. He wanders off. He sharpens a pencil for five minutes. Suddenly he is exhausted, or s...

Jul 14, 2026

He wasn't choosing the Legos over you

Introducing my new newsletter, Beyond The Label Do you ever want just a quick strategy to help your child get through the day, or even the next hour? That is going to be the focus of this newsletter. One useful idea at a time — nothing overwhelming, nothing you need a degree to understand — that...

Jul 13, 2026

Why a tool that worked suddenly stops

It didn't stop working. It got put away I want to tell you about a small moment in my office that I have seen more times than I can count. A mom came in worn out. A few weeks earlier, she and I had set up a simple visual schedule for her child, a row of pictures showing how the day would go...

Jul 01, 2026

Beyond The Label

Understanding the whys behind your child's behaviors

Beyond The Label

Understanding the whys behind your child's behaviors

Beyond the Label