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"The thing that impresses me most about North America is the way parents obey their children"    (King Edward VII , 1841-1910)

It's more effective to reward your child for being "good" (appropriate) than to punish him for being "bad" (inappropriate).

Children today are under enormous pressures rarely experienced by their parents or grandparents. Many of today's children are being enticed to grow up too quickly and are encountering challenges for which they are totally unprepared.

Parenting style matters - a lot!

There has been an explosion in the prescribing of medication for very young children, particularly preschool and kindergarten boys (Juli Zito , Univ. of Maryland)

The teenage years require a delicate balance between the young person's need to gain independence, and the parent's need to retain authority.

The quickest way to change your child’s behaviour is to first change your own.

"To be a man, a boy must see a man."  (J.R. Moehringer)

Removing a child from a traumatic environment does not remove the trauma from the child's memory.

The challenge of adolescence is to balance the right of the parents to feel they are in charge with the need of the adolescent to gain independence.

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Encourage Playtime

    Play is widespread throughout the animal kingdom suggesting that it must serve some vital function.  One way to find out what play is good for is to take it away from animals and see how they fare. The problem is that this experiment is nearly impossible to do. Animals (including children) are irrepressible; they play under the most adverse conditions. The only way to get an animal to stop playing is to restrain […]

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4 Stages of Development

At each of the four stages of development, from birth to age eleven, there is virtually a different being inhabiting your home. To get a flavour of each stage, it may be useful to keep these different creatures in mind: Infant: a small, squawking, hungry little bird, all mouth and unable to fly on its own Toddler: a curious monkey, a veritable natural scientist bent on actively exploring the world Early Childhood/Preschooler: a fanciful, talkative […]

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Separating from Parents

    Being a parent of a teen can cure a person of narcissism. When your child was born, you were the center of  his/her universe. You were special . Now that you have an adolescent, you have become less central. No matter what you do, your teen continues to invest in the outside world more than at home. This is how it should be. Teens slowly move away from their parents physically and  emotionally. […]

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Workshops

+ Behaviour Management (now available online)

This full day or 2 evening workshop will introduce you […]

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+ A Parent’s Guide to the Teenage Brain

  A teenager’s brain is not just an adult brain […]

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+ Reading Rescue

A program for children with reading problems

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+ A Guided Tour of ADHD (now available online)

This workshop will present the facts, myths, misconceptions, controversy and […]

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Contact

2720 Rath Street, Putnam, Ontario
NOL 2BO

Phone: (519) 485-4678
Fax: (519) 485-0281

Email: info@rickharper.ca

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Parents' Comments

“I wish we had found Rick 2 years ago. We could have saved ourselves and our son a lot of trouble.”

(T.T. – Byron)