As an elementary teacher, I get lots of the same kinds of questions from parents every year, and all of them fall into ghe general category of "How can I help my child to do his or her best in school." With Smart Start I'll be adressing a frequently asked issue realting to education. Feel free to respond in the comments with other questions you may have. My goal is to provide you with answers, tips, and insights to help you support your child as a learner at every stage.

Where I live, the air is fragrant with flowers and newly cut hay right now. It is July, and officially summer. Summer in a child's mind is a time of adventure and family, of lazy mornings and lazier afternoons.

But summer also marks the beginning of an important time in your child's academic career: a time of maintaining skills and progress. Children who do not spend time reading over the summer often show significant losses in their reading skills at the start of the new school year, and boys, specifically find it challenging to sink into a good book over the summer months.

Young boys who have just started reading chapter books often struggle with finding books that engage them. Many tend to prefer nonfiction texts or comics: stuff with a wow-factor and humor rather than character development and plot. Boys are often inclined to put the book down mid-way through and zip off to something more engaging if the book hasn't fully drawn them in, and nonfiction reading or comics caters to this style of reading.

But strong comprehension strategies are built and sustained by reading fictional chapter books that require readers to keep track of characters, monitor plot changes, make predictions, and build on prior knowledge. And it's a worthy summer cause to try and find at least one or two chapter books that belong to a series that your son likes, so that he can practice and build on some of these important reaching comprehension skills.

Summer reading for boys ages 6-9(click thumbnails to view gallery)

Recently a friend of a friend admitted that his daughter was overweight and that he didn't know what to do about it. "I feel bad," he confided. "All I do is tell her that she's too heavy, but I don't know what else to do."

His daughter is a chubby 8 year old... And already the most important man in her life is telling her she's not good enough the way she is. Ouch.

Girls, and particularly overweight girls, get so many negative messages about their bodies in our culture. I have multiple friends who remember their mothers or father's saying things like, "Men don't like fat girls," and "If you lost a little weight, you'd be prettier." And I remember my own dad making rude comments about strangers--particularly women--who were overweight when we were out together running errands or at a restaurant.

Prejudice towards overweight children and adults is deeply ingrained in our culture. And many parents don't seem to realize that they are their child's first line of defense with regards to how they'll see themselves in the world.

While it seems obvious that reminding your child that they're heavy will not fix the problem, and modeling a healthy lifestyle will, the issue is far more complex---or there would be far fewer overweight kids.

So what should a dad say to his daughter when he realizes she's becoming overweight? How can he help?

I usually love to play with my 3 year old. I love taking walks that slow to the pace of a snail so that he collect a pocket full of pebbles or jump in puddles. I love listening to his stories and hearing him giggle when he catches a ball.

But there are also days when I don't love it quite so much. Days where I've worked long hours and come home exhausted. Days where all I want are twenty uninterrupted minutes to check my email and get caught up on my favorite blogs. Days where the minute he sees me settling down with my lap top he starts to whine. "Play with me mommy! When are you going to play with me?"

"In a minute," I say, trying desperately to stretch that minute to five. "Go see how tall you can build a tower with your blocks."

But the guilt that creeps up then is made only worse by the fact that like so many others, I am a full time working mom, and my time with my son (who spends his days with my in laws) is curtailed during the week to an hour in the morning and a few at night. Because I work, feel like when I'm home I should always be engaged, involved, hands-on, actively seeking out learning with my little boy.

And the expectation for parents to spend more quality time with their kids is pervasive. According Elizabeth Cooksy, a sociology professor at Ohio State University, "Parents are feeling peer pressure to spend more time with their kids, and guilt when they do not,"

"We've really moved into this cultural expectation that this is what good parents do," Cooksey said. "It's more a cultural consensus, that if we are going to be parents, we are going to have to put time into it."

And 2006 study found that both single and married parents are spending more time with their kids. Which means that in spite of the fact that there aren't miraculously more hours in the day, working moms are spending at least as much quality time with their kids now as mothers did forty years ago. (Incidentally, this also means working moms are insanely busy. All the time.)

But really is all that hands-on playtime a good thing? Maybe at the end of the day everyone is better off when mom (or dad) insists on some downtime and kids are left to their own devices for a while. Perhaps I'm actually encouraging creativity and self-reliance when I tell him to bug-off and go build with blocks? One thing I know for sure: when I've had some downtime, I'm that much more likely to fully engage him in his request to "pretend we're baby sharks!"

One of my favorite things about children is that they are unabashedly quirky. They take on the world with a kind gusto and wide-eyed wonder, and they bring unbridled passion to their interests: be it collecting rocks, or eating bread only with the crusts removed.

Toddlers and preschoolers in particular seem to develop habits and behaviors that at any other time in their lives would be considered totally strange, but at the age of 2 or 3 are par for the course.

Wondertime's "The Oddball Chronicles" are full of the obsessions, collections, and passions that make young kids wildly original and unique. One child has an obsession with the kitchen rolling pin. Another a love for cotton balls taken to the extreme.

It's a reassuring to read about the weird fascinations and fixations of other people's kids--because they make me make me feel, as the parent of a little one, just a tad more normal.

My son is currently obsessed with the idea that foxes live upstairs in our hallway. He won't go up the stairs alone, unless he pretends he's a shark--because clearly, everyone knows sharks eat foxes, right?

Do your kids have odd obsessions or quirks?

When you have a baby you are automatically inducted into the cult of people-who-will-sleep-anywhere-at-all. Welcome. It's a lovely place, really. Especially if you're Daddy, and you're on night duty. Or maybe you're not on night duty, and you're in the way and snoring.

Before having a baby, I had no idea how frequently spouses spent their nights on the guest bedroom pull-out, on the couch downstairs, or in their child's princess bed.

It's the Murphy's law of parenting the young child. Where you end up, and how you end up there, might be different, but the fact remains the same: you will end up sleeping somewhere else not once, but many times, in the span of your child's young life.

In our household, co-sleeping was something we were into when our son was small, so when we realized our three-year old was still waking up in the middle of the night (night terrors) seeking consolation, we bought a king-sized bed and told him to come crawl into our bed in the middle of the night, instead of trekking to his room, where one of us would invariably end up sleeping.

But co-sleeping, like anything else in the realm of parenting, is something that some parents are totally for, and others are totally against. And many of my friends who say they are totally against co-sleeping because of what it might do to their marital relationship, end up booting their husbands out of bed. So that hubby can get better sleep. So that there is more room in bed. So that no one will have to listen to hubs snoring. So that maybe, just maybe he'll forget all about sex. Or whatever.

And apparently this is not as unusual as one might guess. According to some sources, by 2015 60% of custom homes will be built with dual master bedrooms. Does your spouse end up sleeping somewhere else?

I recently attended a party for one of my son's friends, and found myself slipping into teacher mode as I watched a particular little boy interact with the other kiddos there.

In my opinion, this child was likely on the autism spectrum, exhibiting numerous spectrum behaviors from extreme noise sensitivity, and rigidity about everything, to throwing numerous and extreme tantrums over things most kids don't even notice ("She is making a beeping noise, so I just can't play by her.")

The child's parents seemed to be unaware that he may not have been behaving typically for his age. In fact, both parents were regularly justifying his behavior, suggesting that "all kids are OCD" and that his bursting into tears when everyone was singing happy birthday (too loud) was something any kid might do.

And I get it. If he was my kid, I'd probably be doing the exact same thing. No parent is really ever ready to learn that their child might not be typical.

Nearly one in a hundred children are diagnosed with autism, and the disorder affects boys far more than it does girls. The causes are still unknown, although some believe that it may be linked to vaccinations and even to things like an early exposure to television. The disorder can affect everything from the way a child is able to interact socially, to how he or she is able to learn and grow and later become an independent adult.

With that said, there is so much that can be done with early intervention for children who are on the spectrum. And I I felt torn about saying nothing (which is what I did.)

Would you (or should you) ever tell a friend that you think their child might be _____? Fill in the blank: be on the spectrum, have a reading disorder, have ADD, or even be gifted for that matter. Is it ever right to step across this unspoken boundary, especially if it might be in the long-term best interests of the child?

I've recently seen some version of the study linking weight loss to the amount of sleep moms get in at least five different places, and it kind of makes me want to cry a little. If I'm getting six hours of sleep, I call it a good night.

I mean, really, when was the last time you got eight hours of solid, uninterrupted sleep? Maybe it's just me, but I can't seem to make that happen, even on a good night when my 3 year old goes down like a dream (which is never) and my to-do list isn't two miles long (also never.)

I have three jobs: my full time day job, writing here, and full time parenting. In other words, when some people's day ends after the kiddo is finally in bed and the laundry is going, mine is just starting. Apparently this isn't good for my overall physique, or my mental health, but I can't even begin to fathom how to do things differently so that I could sneak in another hour of sleep here or there.

Even when I go to bed early, or perhaps more accurately, especially when I go to bed early I can't fall asleep. Instead I lie in bed, my brain going at a million miles an hour, worrying that I'll forget to do something, or strategizing about how I'll get it all done.

And I can't take any comfort in a recent poll by the National Sleep foundation, that found that half the nation reports having frequent insomnia, because it seems that the drug companies who market sleep medications are behind it.

But I am curious--misery loves company after all-- how much sleep do you get every night, really?

My three year old has just recently started to explore the nuances of telling the truth.

He's beginning to experiment with what happens when he tells a story that his more tall tale than truth. Right now his tall tales are harmless and imaginative, and I can tell he's weaving together snippets of information that he's heard from books, along with the wild color of his own imagination.

The problem is I'm not quite sure how to teach him about telling the truth.

As adults we are constantly sending mixed messages to our children. We say we're "fine" even when we're exhausted and moody and miserable, when someone asks. And who really expects the cold hard truth when they ask, "Do I look fat to you?"

In fact, lying is a huge part of social tact, and the people who haven't mastered the fine nuance of bending the truth somewhat stick out like a sore thumb.

We don't want to know every detail someones trip to the dentist or whatever, when we say a simple "How are you?" in passing. You know those people, right? The ones that launch into full narratives--and you're sort of stuck there nodding and smiling, even though you don't actually give a crap what they're telling you about?

But how do you explain this to kids: that telling the truth is always important and necessary, except when it isn't? Is there is a difference between honesty and telling the truth?

It's the time of year when, walking along wooded trails in New England you can often spot the bright orange of the Red Spotted Newt or Red Eft. Kids call them salamanders (you can learn the difference between the two here) and the whimsical book The Salamander Room definitely captures the wonder and affection many kids feel towards these small creatures.

In the story a little boy named Brian carries home a small red salamander. He makes it a bed of leaves in his room with crickets and bullfrogs to sing it to sleep... and with each turn of the page his room becomes more and more magical as it is transformed into a forest habitat as the boy imagines how he will care for his small new pet.

It's the kind of story I remember imagining as a kid, lying in bed when I couldn't fall asleep: what if the ceiling were removed so that I could see the sky? What if I could sleep among the trees? Written by Anne Mazer, this gentle story is a lovely bedtime book. It's also a great story to read if your child happens to find a newt and wants to bring it home. Which my three year old son happened to do just yesterday.

Clutching it carefully in his palm, eyes wide, Bean begged to be allowed to keep the little Red Spotted newt as a pet. After some quick research, I found that these critters are actually easy pets to keep for a while. If he's going to have a pet, this one seems almost ideal. Better, at least than the earth worms he's always trying to put in his pockets. Although hand washing is a must. Here's why.

It's my opinion that three year olds aren't really able to keep any any kind of pet that requires actual, but the newt only requires a few small earth worms every so often, and a little terrarium to live in. So after a quick trip to the pet store, and a scamper through the woods to gather moss and bark for the newt's new habitat, Bean spent almost an hour tonight narrating a wonderfully elaborate story about what his new friend Leafy was doing in it's little home. (Other names he contemplated: Violet, Speckles, Louie and Spot.)

Does your child have a favorite nature book or a pet from the woods?

Jenifer Garner's recent response to this question made me smile because it's pretty much exactly what I manage to mutter whenever someone asks.

"Sometime. I don't know. I have to think about that one."

Garner's lovely daughter Violet is 2, and two seems to be the magical age that makes everyone in the universe--both random strangers and dear friends--feel the need to inquire about future procreating plans.

When my son turned 2 the whole "when are you having a second?" became something I was asked on a nearly weekly basis. He is now 3 and the concern from random strangers, or the raised eyebrows from friends who've gone and had a second kid, seems to grow more urgent with every passing month.

"But don't you want your kids to be close in age so they can be friends?"

"You won't want to start all over again with diapers once you're out of them! It's better to do it all at once!"

Etc. And basically, it feels like behind every questions is an accusation: You're a wimp. Suck it up and have a second kid right now because that's what everybody does.

Garner is a delightfully refreshing down-to-earth celeb mama. She seems to truly enjoy motherhood, and she seems like she actually is a hands-on mother, which is more than many Hollywood mamas can boast. Which makes her hesitant answer all the more authentic.

Parenting is damn hard, sometimes. Especially when the kid is under 3. Sleep deprivation made me feel insane for brief episodes of time. And it's only just now, that I'm starting to feel like my life is no longer defined by motherhood, and my son is still crawling into my bed in the middle of the night when he wakes up. Which isn't to say I don't love motherhood, because I do. I've loved every single stage my son has gone through. And I think that we will have a second one. Sometime. Maybe.

It meantime, it seems like Garner and I both need to master the fine art of the sarcastic come back. Got any?