Dr. Sally's Background and Family Experience

January 20, 1976 was the day Cynthia Goldberg was born. While Sally and her husband experienced the same exhilaration and joy that most other parents feel when their first baby is born, they also experienced the same sadness and disappointment usually connected with having a baby born with a special circumstance.

Cynthia was born with a developmental delay. There was a serious question about her educational potential.  Would she ever be able to read, write, and develop daily living skills like everyone else?  The speculation was no.  Determined to prove the “experts” wrong, Sally, a first grade teacher at the time, decided to do everything possible to give her child a head start for learning.  She soon discovered that learning began not when school started, as she had formerly thought.  From observing her highly responsive daughter, Sally could see that learning was taking place all day long through play and life experiences.  She decided to design specific toys to teach her daughter colors, letters, numbers, shapes and reading.  She also enriched her home environment with classical music and interactive play activities. 

Much to Sally’s delight, by the time Cynthia was two, she knew all the colors, letters, numbers, shapes and was reading over 100 words.  Soon Cynthia began attracting her own attention.  A neighbor approached Sally and said, “Our children are older than your daughter and do not have any kind of delay, yet they don’t know half of what she does.  If I get a group of parents together, would you give us some workshops about your techniques?”

Before long Sally’s popular workshops and handout material evolved into her first book, published in 1981 by the University of Michigan Press, called Teaching With Toys: Making Your Own Educational Toys. What Sally did not know at the time was that when she began creating concepts and developing materials for Cynthia that those would evolve over time into her highly respected parenting business of today.
 
What happened to Sally’s daughter Cynthia?  She has graduated from a high school for students with learning disabilities, earned a two year certificate from a special program at Cape Cod Community College, and has been gainfully employed at various jobs on Cape Cod, MA.   In addition, she writes poetry in which she combines her spiritual thoughts with her clever artwork.  There was a time when her poetry and art were turned into items for sale like tiles, mouse pads, mugs, and sweatshirts.  In 2002 there was an article about her in the Falmouth Enterprise newspaper because a line of her poetry was selected to be on the 2002 T-shirt for the Cape Cod Women’s Club. “Women are like shining crystals who hear the secrets of the sun.”

Recently in 2008 there was an article about her in the Cape Cod Times because one of her paintings was selected to be the new image for the Cape Cod Chapter of the American Heart Association (AHA). Promotional items with her artwork on them are available from the AHA in Hyannis, MA 508-775-2180. See photo on left.

Sally Goldberg, Ph.D., knows unequivocally, that the first five years of life create the critical foundation for later learning.  She knows not only through her educational studies and research, but also from her unique parenting experience.  Today, as an acknowledged educator, writer, and public speaker, she also knows how to communicate that information in practical terms to parents and caregivers. That is what she has been doing since 1995. Today she has affiliated with Shara Lawrence-Weiss, founder/director of Personal Child Stories, to bring you the finest in personalized books and play-and-learn workshops.

Mother of two grown daughters, Cynthia and Deborah (see photo above), Sally resides in Arizona. The three Goldberg ladies who live in different locations make quite a trio.  If not reading, writing, or out with friends, you are likely to find any one of them at the gym, out running or in the pool swimming.