Top Students/Top Parents, Good Students Begin at Home

“Burns’s experience as a teacher shines throughout her debut work, illuminating essential skill bases for young students that promote long-term educational success. This understandable, multifaceted guide, Top Students/Top Parents: A Manual for Parents Who Want to Help Their Children Become All They Can Be, delivers concrete tools for parents to utilize in raising intellectually curious, resilient children, drawing on extensive research in early childhood development and paired with professional expertise in primary education. Burns stresses the need for common-sense approaches to skill building, such as developing personal responsibility and creating functional systems of incentive, consequence, and reward. There’s a significant focus on language and reading acquisition, but Burns also looks at the importance of empathy, self-esteem, and social reciprocity in educational advancement. Burns promotes dedicated parental involvement as the main instrument for educational achievement in youth, Adults seeking sensible, easily implemented methods to stimulate learning and academic achievement in youth will find this guide essential.

“Takeaway: Concrete examples, hard-earned wisdom, cutting-edge research, and a supportive tone make this guide to lifelong learning essential for any parent or early childhood educator.”
—Publisher's Weekly Booklife Editor's Pick  

“Top Students/Top Parents: A Manual for Parents Who Want to Help Their Children Become All They Can Be is highly recommended reading for parents who have the desire to help coach their kids at home for educational success. While the emphasis is on supplementing school efforts, many of these approaches can also translate to home school routines. Parents serve as role models, and kids turn to them for guidance and observe their behaviors and approaches to life.   

“From how to help a child learn from mistakes and translate them to positive lessons in flexibility and life to age-specific reading routines which begin in infancy and continue into teen years Top Students/Top Parents outlines incentives that embrace not just reading and writing, but the mental mindsets that lead to success.”
—Midwest Book Review/Bookwatch 

“If babies could be born with instructional manuals, the Bible should be in one hand and Top Students - Top Parents, in the other! This comprehensive book is organized, affirming, and covers every topic a parent needs to begin a life-long learning journey for their children. The guidebook is full of ideas and practical applications with enough statistics to back up the research without being dry or boring. I've already ordered the first eight copies for my children as an investment into my grandchildren.”
—Vicki A. Brady, mother of eight children, author of The Basic Steps to Successful Homeschooling and Quiet Moments for Home school Moms and Dads. Former host of National Radio Broadcast, Homeschooling USA! She and her husband, Terry, were named 2001 Colorado Parents and Family of the Year. Currently she writes a column, Just A Mom, for The Kaleidoscope Weekly, their family-owned regional paper in Mid-Missouri, www.k-weekly.com.

“This is a wonderful book that shows you how to set up your children for lifelong success. I have personally practiced Kathleen's ideas on my own children, and taught these ideas to five million parents in 46 languages and 72 countries.”
—Brian Tracy (born January 5, 1944) is a Canadian-American motivational public speaker and self-development author. He is the author of over eighty books that have been translated into dozens of languages. His popular books are Earn What You're Really Worth, Eat That Frog!, No Excuses! His worldwide, best-selling Psychology of Achievement has been translated into more than 28 languages.

“What a breath of fresh air! With all the reform legislation currently being enacted at the state level, I find this book to be extremely timing and informative. Educators are fully aware of the key role parents must play if we are to be successful in educating their children. Ms Burns has managed to condense a wealth of educational research and years of experience into this compendium for easy use by parents. Anyone wishing to know what to do and when with their child simply must access this manual. It is clearly written, easy to follow and rich in valuable information. Every parent and every educator should read this manual.”
—Henry C. Roman, Ed.D., Former Executive Director, South Central BOCES, Superintendent of Schools for District No. 60, District No. 70 and Hanover School District, Pueblo, Colorado

The book will be used:

• as a training manual for everyone who has dealings with infants or school-age children: stay-at-home moms, working moms, home school moms, grandmothers, and child caregivers, teachers, and all fathers who are able to participate in their children’s education
• as a text for training church and school parents
• as Fund Raisers for groups such as Church, PTAs, Boy/Girl Scout
• as a College text book for an extra credit class
• as a gift from hospitals to mothers of newborns
• as a gift from pediatricians to parents of their patients
• as a source for ideas and suggestions to use as blogs
• as a source for parent pointers in newspapers
• as a source for games and concepts to be taught on U-Tube or Library videos