Megaskills for Babies, Toddlers, and Beyond: Building Your Child's Happiness and Success for Life by Dorothy Rich and Beverley Mattox
	Sourcebooks	304 pages	January 2009	Paperback

MegaSkills are “superbasics.” According to the authors of this well organized, sensible parenting guide, MegaSkills are “the prerequisites that make it possible for us to learn everything else.”

Some examples of MegaSkills are confidence (feeling able to do it), motivation (wanting to do it) and effort (being willing to work hard). Others include motivation, responsibility, initiative, perseverance, teamwork, problem-solving, common sense, focus, and respect. Each of these qualities is examined in detail along with practical exercises that a child and his or her “team” of parents and teachers can use to foster them.

The book is segmented into “recipes” which show what activities enable the child to incorporate the skill, what the parent and teacher can do to help, and how to give the child the best chance for success. The authors, both of whom are educators who have co-written other works about classroom and parental involvement in a child’s development, want parents to look at what they have been leaving out of their own “recipes” – omissions that have kept their efforts from flourishing. For support they remind parents that they are already part of a team, hat many people are responsible for helping their children acquire needed skills, so that even if they are not sure how to go about imparting MegaSkills, there are others who can come on board to assist or who may be assisting already.

I was particularly interested in this book because I am a granny and my granddaughters are being raised in a gentle but disciplined way. They are learning at their own pre-school pace how to achieve goals, how to act in public, and how to treat other people with respect. I think my children will enjoy using MegaSkills techniques with these little girls because it points them even more clearly in the direction they are already heading.

The twelve MegaSkills are presented by means of exercises, carefully explained, for each age group – 1-2, 2-3, 3-4,4-5,5-6. The overlap reflects the fact that not all “twos” or all “fours” are alike.

For the Megaskill of perseverance, for example, a two to three-year-old can absorb something of this quality by having you, the parent, read the same books over and over. Each time, point to the picture of different animals and say their names. Then cut out animal pictures from magazines and paste them in a book. Let the child look at and try to say the names in “her” book. By age four to five, the child will be ready to have a scheduled reading time, place and duration.

For the MegaSkill of common sense, even a one to two-year-old can be shown size differences. What is the biggest thing in the room? The smallest? Who is taller, mother or baby? Mother or father? By the time the child is five to six, she or he can use the common sense activity of planning a trip, deciding what to do to prepare and how to get from one place to another place. This sequencing exercise can lead into an understanding of direction and mapping.

I got a good feeling from reading this book. It offers ideas and activities that can really be applied, and it’s clear how it would help develop good habits for both child and parent. It would be a great gift for an expectant parent or a family grappling with, for example, the so-called “terrible two” stage. It contains a list of resources that includes books highlighting or augmenting each MegaSkill. Very thorough. Highly recommended.