The Pressured Child:
Helping Your Child Find Success in School and Life
Michael Thompson, Ph.D.
Date: Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Place: Greens Farms Academy
35 Beachside Ave
Westport, CT
Choral Room
Time: 7:00 p.m.
The Pressured Child is for parents who have forgotten what school is actually like and who may be filled with worry and misapprehension about their children’s life in school. Dr. Thompson describes the psychological journey that children experience during their thirteen years in school. He reminds parents that children are almost never judging themselves by grades--they are always monitoring their own development and constantly searching for three things: connection, recognition and a sense of power. He illustrates how children find these in many different arenas of school life. There are three kinds of children in school: 1) those whose journeys are characterized mostly by success, 2) those whose journeys are characterized by a chronic, but manageable struggle, and 3) those whose journeys are characterized by fury and despair. Each journey has its own pressures. Every child is constantly developing strategies for coping with the pressures that he or she feels.
Dr. Thompson followed students in seventh grade through senior year, in independent, Catholic, and public schools. In this talk, he shares stories from the trenches, taking parents and teachers into the school day experience of children, illuminating how they manage their school careers and how the best educators and wisest parents can support them along the way.
Michael Thompson, Ph.D. is a consultant, author, and psychologist specializing in children and families. He is a clinical consultant to The Belmont Hill School and has worked in more than five hundred schools across the United States as well as in international schools in Central America, Europe and Asia
For more information and to RSVP, call Elizabeth Duffy at 203-656-9593, or email to rduffy1002@aol.com