The Fessy Den Blog

3 Cures for Your Gifted Middle Schooler’s Academic Boredom

Leave a Comment | June 07, 2017

Are your son’s middle school classes uninspiring? Is his homework just so much drudgery through which to suffer? When classwork is too easy, many gifted students disengage. They coast on their natural abilities, acing their exams but failing to develop the intellectual habits that will sustain them when they reach the greater academic challenges of high school and college. If you’re worried your son is...
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3 Ways to Provide Stability to Your Middle Schooler During a Divorce

1 Comment | April 19, 2017

No parent wants to subject their child to unnecessary emotional distress, but sometimes, divorce is unavoidable. Middle schoolers already feel insecure about themselves. When a change like a divorce hits their family, it’s normal for everyone to have a wide variety of emotions to navigate. Research has shown that “although divorce is hard and often painful for children, it’s possible to avoid long-term ...
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Why Private School Transportation Is Easier Than You Think

1 Comment | April 12, 2017

You have enough trouble just getting to work—especially if you live in an area like Boston, with some of the worst traffic in the country. The prospect of dropping your son off at a private kindergarten program in another town, adding another stop to your already headache-inducing commute, is hardly appealing. The kindergarten program might be in the opposite direction from where you work or...
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A Parent’s Perspective: What an All-Boys Private School Is Really Like

1 Comment | April 05, 2017

When Newton MA parents Dave and Jen Visco started searching for a kindergarten program for their oldest son, they didn’t know much about private schools. They weren’t totally convinced on public schools, either. And, as Dave puts it, “We certainly didn’t know a lot about single-sex private schools.” Does this sound familiar? Every year as September looms, parents all over the Boston area face the...
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5 More Questions to Ask When Evaluating a Private Kindergarten Program

8 Comments | March 08, 2017
Evaluating a Private Kindergarten

Few decisions are as agonizing for parents in the Greater Boston area as where to send your son for his first year of school. You have many goals for his education: You want to find a kindergarten program that will lay a solid academic foundation for the rest of his formal education. You want a school where he’ll fit in socially, making new friends and...
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How to Teach Your Son Good Character When His Middle School Won’t

Leave a Comment | March 01, 2017
Teach Your Son Good Character

How do you raise a compassionate, honest, and respectful son in an age that is anything but? Too often, character education seems “tacked on” at America’s middle schools (as one English teacher describes): signs posted—and ignored—in the hallways saying “share with others” and “be honest,” single-semester classes unconnected to the rest of the curriculum. “All middle schools say they address ...
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Does a High-Quality Pre-K Matter? What Researchers and Teachers Say

1 Comment | February 22, 2017

Is pre-kindergarten just a place to leave your child while you’re at work or are there actual academic and developmental benefits to starting your child’s formal education the year before he starts kindergarten? As the research piles up, it’s becoming clear that an academic jump-start at 4 years-old can launch children down the path to success in kindergarten and the years beyond. What the Research...
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Help! My Middle School Son Won’t Clean His Room

Leave a Comment | December 08, 2016
Fessenden-boys-in-clean-drom

The messy room is as close as anything gets to a universal parenting challenge. One psychologist told the Chicago Tribune messy rooms have been the top complaint of parents for as long as such records have been kept. Other articles describe the teen and pre-teen bedroom as a “battleground,” offer advice for “winning the chore wars,” and even reassure parents their child’s pigsty is not...
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10 Private Elementary Schools Within 20 Minutes of Boston

Leave a Comment | November 30, 2016

If you live in Boston, one of the perks of enrolling your child in a private school, rather than taking your chances in the Boston Public Schools lottery, is the ability to expand your school search beyond the city limits. The city of Boston offers many excellent educational opportunities for students starting in pre-kindergarten or kindergarten. But by adding the areas immediately outside the city...
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What Is the Ideal Ratio of Day Students to Boarders at a Junior Boarding School?

1 Comment | November 23, 2016

As you browse through the Junior Boarding School Association’s list of junior boarding schools in the Northeast, you’ll find that some schools are comprised of almost entirely day students with a handful of boarders. The populations of others are made up of varying mixes of boarding students and day students—students who live off-campus with their families. For example: Hillside School, in Marlborough, ...
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