"MegaSkills is a remarkable achievement . . . what it means is that parents across the country are willing to stand' shoulder to shoulder with teachers in ensuring that our children have the best possible education." - Don Cameron, former Executive Director, National Education Association The classic guide to childhood achievement, taught in more than 4,000 schools. Specially designed for school-aged children, this cornerstone guide provides you with hands-on techniques and kid-friendly activities to teach children the MegaSkills that are essential to success in school and life: Confidence Motivation Effort Responsibility Initiative Perseverance Caring Teamwork Problem-Solving Common Sense Focus Respect NEW! Along with the age-specific activities, this guide contains academic objectives for each MegaSkill, tips for getting the best from technology, MegaSkills report cards for parents and children, research notes, and a wealth of additional resources. Includes message from Bill Bradley. "This book shows families how to build children's achievement, and it is keyed to current research." - Richard Coley, Director, Policy Information Center Educational Testing Service

Over 300,000 Megaskills books sold - A breakthrough new MegaSkills book - the first of its kind for developing character and achievement in the early years "This new book continues the key MegaSkills commitment to showing how parents can work with their children at home to help them learn." Marian Wright Edelman, president, Children's Defense fun For more than 20 years the MegaSkills program has taught parents how to help their children develop the abilities and values essential for success in school and in life. Now, nationally respected educators Dorothy Rich and Beverly Mattox show you how to start building MegaSkills before children reach school age. Specially designed for ages one through six, MegaSkills for Babies, Toddlers, and Beyond gives you hands-on techniques and kid-friendly activities to teach the 12 MegaSkills: Confidence Motivation Effort Responsibility Initiative Perseverance Caring Teamwork Problem-Solving Common Sense Focus Respect Along with the age-specific activities, this guide contains: Activities for children with disabilities How to get the best from technology MegaSkills measures for parents A wealth of additional resources "These inventive 'recipes' for parent-child activities build competence and confi dence and character, helping parents help their children make the most of childhood's earliest years." Judith Viorst, author of Alexander and the Wonderful, Marvelous, Excellent, Terrifc Ninety Days

Designed for children ages 6 and above, this cornerstone guide provides parents with hands-on techniques and fun activities to teach children the MegaSkills that will give them school and life success.

Erik H. Erikson's way of looking at things has contributed significantly to the understanding of human development and the nature of man. This collection of his writings reflects the evolution of his ideas over the course of 50 years, beginning with his earliest experiences in psychoanalysis in Vienna. The papers cover a wide spectrum of topics, from children's play and child psychoanalysis to the dreams of adults, cross-cultural observations, young adulthood and the life cycle. The text also contains reminiscences about colleagues such as Anna Freud and Ruth Benedict who played important roles in Erikson's life and work.

Working with the Shadow is not working with evil, per se. It is working toward the possibility of greater wholeness. We will never experience healing until we can come to love our unlovable places, for they, too, ask love of us. How is it that good people do bad things? Why is our personal story and our societal history so bloody, so repetitive, so injurious to self and others? How do we make sense of the discrepancies between who we think we are—or who we show to the outside world—versus our everyday behaviors? Why are otherwise ordinary people driven to addictions and compulsions, whether alcohol, drugs, food, shopping, infidelity, or the Internet? Why are interpersonal relationships so often filled with strife? Exploring Jung’s concept of the Shadow—the unconscious parts of our self that contradict the image of the self we hope to project--Why Good People Do Bad Things guides you through all the ways in which many of our seemingly unexplainable behaviors are manifestations of the Shadow. In addition to its presence in our personal lives, Hollis looks at the larger picture of the Shadow at work in our culture—from organized religion to the suffering and injustice that abounds in our modern world. Accepting and examining the Shadow as part of one’s self, Hollis suggests, is the first step toward wholeness. Revealing a new way of understanding our darker selves, Hollis offers wisdom to help you to acquire a more conscious conduct of your life and bring a new level of awareness to your daily actions and choices.

This book contains activities for children aged 5 through 11.

In a moment in our history beset with grave doubts, Erik H. Erickson inquires into the nature and structure of the shared visions which invigorate some eras and seemed so fatefully lacking in others. He illustrates the human propensity for play and vision, from the toy world of childhood to the dream life of adults, and from the artist's imagination to the scientist's reason. Finally, he enlarges on the origins and structure of one shared vision of universal significance, namely, the American Dream. Such a worldview, he concludes, consists of both vision and counter vision (political and religious, economic and technological, artistic and scientific) which vie with each other to give a coherent meaning to shared realities and to liberate individual and communal energy. Erickson postulates that a space-time orientation provided by a viable worldview is, complimentary to the inner work of the individual psyche and is attuned to its multiple functions. In a central chapter, the author links the phylogeny and the ontogeny of worldviews by describing stages in the ritualization of everyday life—that is, the interplay of customs (including the use of language) with from birth to death convey and confirm the "logic" of the visions predominant or contending in a society. He emphasizes the playful and yet compelling power of viable ritualization to connect individual growth with the maintenance of a vital institutions; but he also illustrates the fateful tendency of human interplay to turn into self-deception and collusion, of ritualization to become deadly ritualism—and of visions to end in nightmares of alienation and distraction. Erickson advocates the pooling of interdisciplinary insights in order to clarify the conscious and unconscious motivation which works for or against the more universal and more insightful worldview essential in a technological age.