It’s off to the cave tomorrow – Leaving at 7:00; that means teachers arrive at 5:30 to school and kids around 6:30.
It means making lunch for 40 before 6:00, and remembering how to measure the long trip down with the tour time, and making sure there’s time to stop for breakfast and potty needs, and then trying to get a half lunch in so that we can make the tour, and then trying to get to the tour, and then trying to get another half lunch in after the tour and then trying to make sure we get home at a reasonable time.
Love to do two caves, but the fish eye from the young teachers is stultifying.
What will the kids see? Well, for those who take their eyes off the floor of the bus or the shoes of the kid next to them, they will see some really beautiful farmland between EVV and Cave City. They will see a really interesting entrance to the cave which is about five miles long. Remember that the cave is the biggest cave in the whole world.
We will arrive at a relatively low key reception hall. There is a busy counter with a few lines. Tickets have been reserved for ten adults, so there will be some adjustments to be made.
Then we all go outside to board a bus which seems to tear through the forest as if it’s got a donut run. We stop at an unassuming cul-de-sac and disembark. Then it’s off through a really ugly steel door and immediately, the hot and sultry is left behind and the children enter a dark and narrow and deep and cold cave about 56 degrees.
The narrow metal steps begin to descend slowly and wind down and around one rock after another until the cave begins to open up at the bottom – about 350 steps down. It’s not straight, so it’s not dangerous. It’s well protected and lots of fun. Kids love the spooky lighting and the long funny walls. It’s just neat and different.
The ranger will turn off all the lights at one point. This is the time when we ask the kids who might get scared if they would like to sit with a teacher. None ever do. It’s total blackness. It’s a reality check. Then it’s off to more cave sites.
We will walk for about two hours. We will see some big rooms and some magnificent cave fixtures. The stalagmites in the Niagra section are really beautiful.
Then it’s back out into the sunlight. This is an exciting trip for the kids, and we have a lot of parents going, so there will be an adult ever six feet or so.
If we are late this time, we will call every parent. Make sure, if you are not going, you sign the red sheet at the front of the school.
Make sure you look at the link for Mammoth Cave.
Thursday, June 30, 2005
Swimming Success
We had the most wonderful day swimming yesterday. It was really hot, but the kids didn’t seem to mind. We are all “face in the water” people now. I noticed that Hadley and Abby are doing the "frog." That's taking a big breath and going all the way under and taking a big frog paddle before coming back up. They are both very proud.
David, who refers to himself as Bavid Deaver and who told us about a bog who was darking loves to dip. That's when they are strolling throught he pool and suddenly dip under. It got a bit of the best of him yesterday, but he was very "drave."
Even the most delicate of the children are “smimming.” They are like ducks, and the general apprehension about kids going under has almost faded. Never have we had a fishier group!
Today I was the general – when am I not? And I told Chip he was going to swim the big test. He smiled his big smile and took off swimming. I was delighted and told him so and told him he could swim anywhere in the pool because he did so well. He was ecstatic.
About fifteen minutes later he wanted to go off the board. MMMM, said I to myself. It’s really quick from passing the test to the diving board over in the deep end. But he really wanted this, so I went over and told the guard that it was his first trip.
We practiced in the deeper end first letting him jump from the side of the pool and swim back so he would get the idea before the initial shock of flying through the air and then heading down into the depths of the deep end. He jumped a few times and then said he was ready.
“OK, jump off and swim to the ladder,” said I, and he jumped in and swam like a little fish. He LOVED it as they usually do. Half is pride; half is fun; alltogether it's just being a boy. Chip will spend the rest of the summer flying off that board in every conceivable manner he can think of. When he sees another boy do a flip, you can bet he will try to copy. And this is what makes swimmers.
Guess who is next? Jack H.
David, who refers to himself as Bavid Deaver and who told us about a bog who was darking loves to dip. That's when they are strolling throught he pool and suddenly dip under. It got a bit of the best of him yesterday, but he was very "drave."
Even the most delicate of the children are “smimming.” They are like ducks, and the general apprehension about kids going under has almost faded. Never have we had a fishier group!
Today I was the general – when am I not? And I told Chip he was going to swim the big test. He smiled his big smile and took off swimming. I was delighted and told him so and told him he could swim anywhere in the pool because he did so well. He was ecstatic.
About fifteen minutes later he wanted to go off the board. MMMM, said I to myself. It’s really quick from passing the test to the diving board over in the deep end. But he really wanted this, so I went over and told the guard that it was his first trip.
We practiced in the deeper end first letting him jump from the side of the pool and swim back so he would get the idea before the initial shock of flying through the air and then heading down into the depths of the deep end. He jumped a few times and then said he was ready.
“OK, jump off and swim to the ladder,” said I, and he jumped in and swam like a little fish. He LOVED it as they usually do. Half is pride; half is fun; alltogether it's just being a boy. Chip will spend the rest of the summer flying off that board in every conceivable manner he can think of. When he sees another boy do a flip, you can bet he will try to copy. And this is what makes swimmers.
Guess who is next? Jack H.
Tuesday, June 28, 2005
Promises, Promises
While reading about childcare on the web, I came across these two articles.
No matter what corner of the world we are talking about, the last possible seating is for the child.
If you look at public education, the last consideration is the child - not the first. Did you ever see a walk out of teachers because of curriculum?
"We just don't have room for a column on children," quotes award winning Editor Bruce Baumann, "It's a financial decision and one we are not likely to change."
How many churches scream from the pulpit that families and children are our business our only business, and then grab the purse strings and run in the other direction?
Been there and seen it -
Archdiocese Puts Day Care Center in Dire Straits Boston MA
By Kimberly Atkins
Parents and officials at a popular Waltham day-care center said they will soon be without a place to care for the tots after Archdiocese of Boston officials suddenly reneged on a deal to rent them space.
The move also leaves the Little Souls Center for Children out more than $6,000 spent preparing to get the space up to code. But most importantly, they said, if they don't find new accommodations, the center will be forced to close, leaving dozens of kids and parents with nowhere to go.
``The thought of losing Little Souls is devastating,'' said Toby Fisher, whose 3-year-old son, Nicholas, is one of 114 children enrolled. ``They bring out the best in each child.''
In a statement, archdiocese spokesman Terry Donilon said the scope of needed renovations was too extensive and would limit the future uses of the building if Little Souls left the property.
``Father (Rodney) Copp and his parish are working incredibly hard to (cut costs) while continuing to meet the overall needs of the parish community,'' the statement said, adding that no lease was signed.
The center is currently located in a Lyman Street building connected with the now-closed St. Joseph's Church and has been renting that space from the archdiocese. After learning the building would be sold, parish officials at nearby St. Charles Borromeo Church offered to rent its rectory building, center director Jocelyn Wolfe said.
But after a year of spending more than $6,000 on contractors and architects to assess how to ready the rectory space, and giving church officials an estimate of more than $150,000 of work that needs to be done, Little Souls learned the deal fell through last month - leaving folks at the center scrambling to find a new home by October.
``Right now, we are asking everybody for help,'' Wolfe said, adding that there are few other option for working parents. Little Souls always had waiting lists. ``We have a meeting with the mayor coming up. We need a building.''
Family Care Center to Close Richmond, VA
by Bill Lohmann
The greatest loves of our lives inspire the greatest passion, which in part explains the tumult over the projected closing of Grace & Holy Trinity Child Care Center.
The old house with the crayon picket fence in the 1600 block of Floyd Avenue has become an institution over the years, treasured and appreciated by the hundreds of families it has served.
"The center is more than a child-care center," said Tom Illmensee, a former teacher at the center and now a parent of children at the preschool. "It's a symbol in the city. It's a place where love and diversity and compassion and young children thrive. The city desperately needs that. I think even people who don't have children want that type of place in their city."
But the center's days may be numbered as its namesake and primary benefactor, Grace & Holy Trinity Episcopal Church, has decided after 40 years the preschool is no longer financially viable. The church has promised to provide funding through the end of the year but not beyond that, which means the center could close as soon as the end of August. The school year begins in September.
Parents and staff members feel blindsided and abandoned; church officials feel they have been unfairly castigated after years of generous support for making a reasonable, if difficult, business decision. The three dozen children enrolled, ages 2½-6, just sense that something's up.
Parents are desperately trying to come up with a way to save the place, talking about sales and solicitations and even auctioning stuff on eBay. Even a competitor, Susan Corbett, director of Second Presbyterian Church Child Care Center, mourns the potential loss of Grace & Holy Trinity's center as "really, really sad."
"Something really special has been destroyed," she said, "and it does not have to happen."
To understand the depth of feeling people have for the center, you must know what kind of place it is. Lots of child-care centers try to create a family atmosphere, but it's hard to imagine any achieving it as successfully as does Grace & Holy Trinity.
That it is in an old home helps, but most of the credit belongs to the staff -- vastly underpaid, as child-care workers generally are, but never under-appreciated for creating such a caring and creative environment. They love the place, too.
Director Cassandra Strand has worked there 21 years, assistant director Tom Applegate, a decade. Maintenance man Tony Clark, who comes in every night to clean, has kept the building humming for 15 years and has come to adore it, often using his own money to buy light bulbs, air filters and the sand that covers the backyard playground but sometimes migrates indoors in pockets, shoes and tiny hands.
"I've removed tons of sand from this building," he said with a smile at an emergency meeting of parents and staff members last week.
Children are treated as family and taught not only rudimentary academic skills to prepare them for kindergarten but also respect and responsibility. Over the years, the center has grown into a true melting pot, attracting children of various races, religions and economic backgrounds, urban dwellers and suburbanites. They are all the same in one regard, though: Their parents were lucky to find this place.
I know this because I'm one of those parents. Our oldest child attended Grace & Holy Trinity many years ago. It's difficult to describe how hard it was to find a center where we felt comfortable leaving our daughter every day. I can tell you this: We looked a lot. As soon as we walked onto the porch of Grace & Holy Trinity and through the front door, we knew we were home.
I revisited the center last week and stood among the pink and teal and polka-dotted walls. One of the lasting memories I have from our daughter's two years there was this: She didn't like butter on her toast, so Maggie the Cook, a friendly fixture in the kitchen for many years, happily served her toast without butter. It was a small thing, but it made a child happy. Small things can do that.
The same week word came down that the center might be closing, our daughter graduated from high school. We made it, but the current families appear to be left in the lurch with less than two months' notice to find comparable quality child care and not just a place where they feel like they're parking their kids.
Future generations won't know what they missed.
But no matter how good and noble a child-care center is, it cannot exist apart from the real world. Lights and water and building repairs, salaries and insurance are real, and bills come due.
Recent church-commissioned studies, said William Broaddus, senior warden of the church's governing vestry, concluded it is "simply economically unfeasible" to continue operating the child-care center in an aging building that limits enrollment to 40. Expanding in a new facility or merging with another program were among options ultimately ruled out.
"This is not an action the vestry grappled with easily," said Broaddus, a former Virginia attorney general. "There was a lot of angst. It's an operation we've been very proud of."
The church opened the center 40 years ago next week (July 6, 1965) as an outreach mission for families in Oregon Hill. When the Downtown Expressway was built in the 1970s, the center was displaced and moved to Floyd Avenue.
It earned accreditation from the National Academy of Early Childhood Programs and built a reputation that attracted families from all over.
"Which doesn't mean we no longer support the center," said Broaddus, "but the original mission changed somewhat."
Over the years, the church has supported the center with hundreds of thousands of dollars through the vestry budget ($25,000 was earmarked for the center for the current year), a separate endowment and annual sales of plum pudding prepared by church members.
In recent years, the financial imbalance between revenues and expenditures grew, Broaddus said. He cited a number of factors: other child-care alternatives, many of which accept infants; the aging facility that, unlike many church-run day-cares, is not at the church itself; and, in general, the rising costs of doing business while trying to keep tuition reasonable (currently $130 per week). Enrollment, too, hasn't always been at capacity in recent years, although 36 students are now enrolled, Strand said.
In the end, the church decided it was time to throw its support behind other, as-yet-determined, outreach ministries, Broaddus said. No decision has been made on what to do with the building, which has become a valuable piece of real estate in an escalating housing market in the Fan District.
The church underwent a leadership change when the Rev. W. Hill Brown III retired in 2001 after 38 years as rector and the Rev. Bollin M. Millner Jr. was hired as his replacement two years later. Speculation quietly grew about the future of the center, reaching a flashpoint last summer when longtime director Betty Garrett, the soul of the program, became frustrated by what she felt was a lack of support from the church and resigned after 25 years.
"I knew all of the battles I'd fought all these years," Garrett said the other day. "I couldn't fight them anymore."
So now parents have set up a task force to come up with a miracle to save the place or at least get a delay -- which might also take a miracle. The church's Broaddus said stretching out the last goodbye is not likely.
"We've studied this and studied it and we don't see any reason to delay the decision," he said.
Here's hoping the two sides can come to some understanding. Even if it doesn't save the center, maybe it could in some way preserve the respect, dignity and compassion of a place where children have always been taught, above all else, the importance of being kind to one another.
No matter what corner of the world we are talking about, the last possible seating is for the child.
If you look at public education, the last consideration is the child - not the first. Did you ever see a walk out of teachers because of curriculum?
"We just don't have room for a column on children," quotes award winning Editor Bruce Baumann, "It's a financial decision and one we are not likely to change."
How many churches scream from the pulpit that families and children are our business our only business, and then grab the purse strings and run in the other direction?
Been there and seen it -
Archdiocese Puts Day Care Center in Dire Straits Boston MA
By Kimberly Atkins
Parents and officials at a popular Waltham day-care center said they will soon be without a place to care for the tots after Archdiocese of Boston officials suddenly reneged on a deal to rent them space.
The move also leaves the Little Souls Center for Children out more than $6,000 spent preparing to get the space up to code. But most importantly, they said, if they don't find new accommodations, the center will be forced to close, leaving dozens of kids and parents with nowhere to go.
``The thought of losing Little Souls is devastating,'' said Toby Fisher, whose 3-year-old son, Nicholas, is one of 114 children enrolled. ``They bring out the best in each child.''
In a statement, archdiocese spokesman Terry Donilon said the scope of needed renovations was too extensive and would limit the future uses of the building if Little Souls left the property.
``Father (Rodney) Copp and his parish are working incredibly hard to (cut costs) while continuing to meet the overall needs of the parish community,'' the statement said, adding that no lease was signed.
The center is currently located in a Lyman Street building connected with the now-closed St. Joseph's Church and has been renting that space from the archdiocese. After learning the building would be sold, parish officials at nearby St. Charles Borromeo Church offered to rent its rectory building, center director Jocelyn Wolfe said.
But after a year of spending more than $6,000 on contractors and architects to assess how to ready the rectory space, and giving church officials an estimate of more than $150,000 of work that needs to be done, Little Souls learned the deal fell through last month - leaving folks at the center scrambling to find a new home by October.
``Right now, we are asking everybody for help,'' Wolfe said, adding that there are few other option for working parents. Little Souls always had waiting lists. ``We have a meeting with the mayor coming up. We need a building.''
Family Care Center to Close Richmond, VA
by Bill Lohmann
The greatest loves of our lives inspire the greatest passion, which in part explains the tumult over the projected closing of Grace & Holy Trinity Child Care Center.
The old house with the crayon picket fence in the 1600 block of Floyd Avenue has become an institution over the years, treasured and appreciated by the hundreds of families it has served.
"The center is more than a child-care center," said Tom Illmensee, a former teacher at the center and now a parent of children at the preschool. "It's a symbol in the city. It's a place where love and diversity and compassion and young children thrive. The city desperately needs that. I think even people who don't have children want that type of place in their city."
But the center's days may be numbered as its namesake and primary benefactor, Grace & Holy Trinity Episcopal Church, has decided after 40 years the preschool is no longer financially viable. The church has promised to provide funding through the end of the year but not beyond that, which means the center could close as soon as the end of August. The school year begins in September.
Parents and staff members feel blindsided and abandoned; church officials feel they have been unfairly castigated after years of generous support for making a reasonable, if difficult, business decision. The three dozen children enrolled, ages 2½-6, just sense that something's up.
Parents are desperately trying to come up with a way to save the place, talking about sales and solicitations and even auctioning stuff on eBay. Even a competitor, Susan Corbett, director of Second Presbyterian Church Child Care Center, mourns the potential loss of Grace & Holy Trinity's center as "really, really sad."
"Something really special has been destroyed," she said, "and it does not have to happen."
To understand the depth of feeling people have for the center, you must know what kind of place it is. Lots of child-care centers try to create a family atmosphere, but it's hard to imagine any achieving it as successfully as does Grace & Holy Trinity.
That it is in an old home helps, but most of the credit belongs to the staff -- vastly underpaid, as child-care workers generally are, but never under-appreciated for creating such a caring and creative environment. They love the place, too.
Director Cassandra Strand has worked there 21 years, assistant director Tom Applegate, a decade. Maintenance man Tony Clark, who comes in every night to clean, has kept the building humming for 15 years and has come to adore it, often using his own money to buy light bulbs, air filters and the sand that covers the backyard playground but sometimes migrates indoors in pockets, shoes and tiny hands.
"I've removed tons of sand from this building," he said with a smile at an emergency meeting of parents and staff members last week.
Children are treated as family and taught not only rudimentary academic skills to prepare them for kindergarten but also respect and responsibility. Over the years, the center has grown into a true melting pot, attracting children of various races, religions and economic backgrounds, urban dwellers and suburbanites. They are all the same in one regard, though: Their parents were lucky to find this place.
I know this because I'm one of those parents. Our oldest child attended Grace & Holy Trinity many years ago. It's difficult to describe how hard it was to find a center where we felt comfortable leaving our daughter every day. I can tell you this: We looked a lot. As soon as we walked onto the porch of Grace & Holy Trinity and through the front door, we knew we were home.
I revisited the center last week and stood among the pink and teal and polka-dotted walls. One of the lasting memories I have from our daughter's two years there was this: She didn't like butter on her toast, so Maggie the Cook, a friendly fixture in the kitchen for many years, happily served her toast without butter. It was a small thing, but it made a child happy. Small things can do that.
The same week word came down that the center might be closing, our daughter graduated from high school. We made it, but the current families appear to be left in the lurch with less than two months' notice to find comparable quality child care and not just a place where they feel like they're parking their kids.
Future generations won't know what they missed.
But no matter how good and noble a child-care center is, it cannot exist apart from the real world. Lights and water and building repairs, salaries and insurance are real, and bills come due.
Recent church-commissioned studies, said William Broaddus, senior warden of the church's governing vestry, concluded it is "simply economically unfeasible" to continue operating the child-care center in an aging building that limits enrollment to 40. Expanding in a new facility or merging with another program were among options ultimately ruled out.
"This is not an action the vestry grappled with easily," said Broaddus, a former Virginia attorney general. "There was a lot of angst. It's an operation we've been very proud of."
The church opened the center 40 years ago next week (July 6, 1965) as an outreach mission for families in Oregon Hill. When the Downtown Expressway was built in the 1970s, the center was displaced and moved to Floyd Avenue.
It earned accreditation from the National Academy of Early Childhood Programs and built a reputation that attracted families from all over.
"Which doesn't mean we no longer support the center," said Broaddus, "but the original mission changed somewhat."
Over the years, the church has supported the center with hundreds of thousands of dollars through the vestry budget ($25,000 was earmarked for the center for the current year), a separate endowment and annual sales of plum pudding prepared by church members.
In recent years, the financial imbalance between revenues and expenditures grew, Broaddus said. He cited a number of factors: other child-care alternatives, many of which accept infants; the aging facility that, unlike many church-run day-cares, is not at the church itself; and, in general, the rising costs of doing business while trying to keep tuition reasonable (currently $130 per week). Enrollment, too, hasn't always been at capacity in recent years, although 36 students are now enrolled, Strand said.
In the end, the church decided it was time to throw its support behind other, as-yet-determined, outreach ministries, Broaddus said. No decision has been made on what to do with the building, which has become a valuable piece of real estate in an escalating housing market in the Fan District.
The church underwent a leadership change when the Rev. W. Hill Brown III retired in 2001 after 38 years as rector and the Rev. Bollin M. Millner Jr. was hired as his replacement two years later. Speculation quietly grew about the future of the center, reaching a flashpoint last summer when longtime director Betty Garrett, the soul of the program, became frustrated by what she felt was a lack of support from the church and resigned after 25 years.
"I knew all of the battles I'd fought all these years," Garrett said the other day. "I couldn't fight them anymore."
So now parents have set up a task force to come up with a miracle to save the place or at least get a delay -- which might also take a miracle. The church's Broaddus said stretching out the last goodbye is not likely.
"We've studied this and studied it and we don't see any reason to delay the decision," he said.
Here's hoping the two sides can come to some understanding. Even if it doesn't save the center, maybe it could in some way preserve the respect, dignity and compassion of a place where children have always been taught, above all else, the importance of being kind to one another.
Childare from a Writer's Perspective
For some of us who take a different road in life, here’s a really interesting little piece that came out of the Philippines.
This young woman probably felt a lot like some of us and some of our children do in school - odd and not quite connected. Many of us who had miserable childhoods write.
It’s interesting that she also is interested in the early childhood experience and getting a degree. I wonder if we will hear from her again.
This young woman probably felt a lot like some of us and some of our children do in school - odd and not quite connected. Many of us who had miserable childhoods write.
It’s interesting that she also is interested in the early childhood experience and getting a degree. I wonder if we will hear from her again.
Justice in the Jungle
One of the most interesting stories I’ve heard in a long time is the story that came out of Addis Ababa, in Ethiopia.
Africa is a desperate place filled with suffering and death. Part of the suffering belongs to young girls who are forced into marriages or stolen from tribes and forced to become wives in other tribes. It's an old custom that won't die out.
Little girls can’t physically handle all the marriage rights, so to speak, and are often brutalized by eager husbands and end up sterile, infected or dead. I’m sure you’ve heard the stories.
In Ethiopia, such a brutalization was in progress - a group of seven men beat a young twelve year old for seven days for her reluctance to “marry” one of them. She had been abducted. She managed to make her escape and fled into the jungle where she came across three black maned lions that protected her from the men until the authorities came.
Some of the “experts” said it was her whimpering that made the lions think she was a young lion and therefore defend her against the men. Some said the lions weren’t hungry. Some said it was a miracle the lions didn’t eat her.
When the whole world seems upside down, the natural state seems to take over and issue a justice that we don't understand but are very grateful for. I think about young girls like her and how terrible their lives are and it makes me glad I'm an American.
Africa is a desperate place filled with suffering and death. Part of the suffering belongs to young girls who are forced into marriages or stolen from tribes and forced to become wives in other tribes. It's an old custom that won't die out.
Little girls can’t physically handle all the marriage rights, so to speak, and are often brutalized by eager husbands and end up sterile, infected or dead. I’m sure you’ve heard the stories.
In Ethiopia, such a brutalization was in progress - a group of seven men beat a young twelve year old for seven days for her reluctance to “marry” one of them. She had been abducted. She managed to make her escape and fled into the jungle where she came across three black maned lions that protected her from the men until the authorities came.
Some of the “experts” said it was her whimpering that made the lions think she was a young lion and therefore defend her against the men. Some said the lions weren’t hungry. Some said it was a miracle the lions didn’t eat her.
When the whole world seems upside down, the natural state seems to take over and issue a justice that we don't understand but are very grateful for. I think about young girls like her and how terrible their lives are and it makes me glad I'm an American.
Monday, June 27, 2005
On Listening
Edith wrote:
When someone gave me a DVD player for Christmas and said, "Just plug it in to the wall and the TV and you'll be watching movies tonight," I wanted to throw the batteries (not the remote, it's breakable) at them and run for that cabin in the woods as fast as my 64 year old legs would take me.
But it's the age of technology and everyone can and should be able to do SOME of these techno things. I had help with my DVD because there are too many possible plug in places on the back of my TV. But when I lost my internet connection for the SECOND time, and after Rob [ Molly’s husband ] came and fiddled with it and finally said, “Call Sigecom,” I was really frustrated. I went to bed and dreamed of my escape. I would take the 4 lane highway till it became the deer path in the woods and never see electricity, much less internet ever again.
When I woke up (about 15 minutes later) I knew I had to call Sigecom and try. All my kids are just a click away, even Regis in Estonia!! So I called and got a very patient man who talked me through a very complicated (at least to me) set of directions. And as you see, I'm back on the net!! HOORAY!!!
Now how did this all happen? Well, when I was about three, I learned to listen and do. I always told my second graders that learning to read was very important. If you can read and understand, you can build your own car, bake a complicated cake, make almost anything... But I think being able to listen and hear and follow directions, both the simple and the more complicated, may actually be more important today or at least AS important!!
So, before I went to bed, I was able to find his blog and read about the trip to Estonia, and I sent Regis an email before I went to bed last night!
E
This is the most important thing a teacher teaches – listening, but if a teacher hasn't learned to do it, she can't teach a student how. There are many ways we listen. We listen with out ears, with our hearts, with our minds, and with our gut. But primarily, the first lesson is to learn to listen with our ears. “What did I say?” By hearing the words, you can then go to what someone meant.
“I need for you to be quiet,” comes the teacher’s directive. Children who have learned to listen to meaning know that that means stop talking. Children who are still struggling with the words might think the teacher has a need, but it has nothing to do with them, so that they continue to talk.
Some children begin to listen for meaning and with their hearts at a very young age. It comes from good and loving homes. “I need for you to be quiet,” says the teacher, and the child who is good and loving understands the primary word is “need” not quiet. This is the child who is a teacher’s blessing.
Then there is the child who understands the directive with his mind, and he understands that for the betterment of the whole group, he should stop talking. He’s the altruistic child, usually a leader, and usually the head of his class.
Listening with the mind often has to do with reading. When you read, you listen with your mind and imagination. Learning to do that is more than learning to read. An important part of reading is imagining, moving away from absolutes and toward possibilities.
The primary objective in any human development scheme is to rear children so that they understand the world around them and can apply what they have learned to the loving of one another.
Understanding means listens with all three – ears, heart and mind.
As for the gut, sometimes there are inaudible words, words not said, words hiding and too shy to be said. These we hear with our instincts.
Listening takes a lifetime of practice.
When someone gave me a DVD player for Christmas and said, "Just plug it in to the wall and the TV and you'll be watching movies tonight," I wanted to throw the batteries (not the remote, it's breakable) at them and run for that cabin in the woods as fast as my 64 year old legs would take me.
But it's the age of technology and everyone can and should be able to do SOME of these techno things. I had help with my DVD because there are too many possible plug in places on the back of my TV. But when I lost my internet connection for the SECOND time, and after Rob [ Molly’s husband ] came and fiddled with it and finally said, “Call Sigecom,” I was really frustrated. I went to bed and dreamed of my escape. I would take the 4 lane highway till it became the deer path in the woods and never see electricity, much less internet ever again.
When I woke up (about 15 minutes later) I knew I had to call Sigecom and try. All my kids are just a click away, even Regis in Estonia!! So I called and got a very patient man who talked me through a very complicated (at least to me) set of directions. And as you see, I'm back on the net!! HOORAY!!!
Now how did this all happen? Well, when I was about three, I learned to listen and do. I always told my second graders that learning to read was very important. If you can read and understand, you can build your own car, bake a complicated cake, make almost anything... But I think being able to listen and hear and follow directions, both the simple and the more complicated, may actually be more important today or at least AS important!!
So, before I went to bed, I was able to find his blog and read about the trip to Estonia, and I sent Regis an email before I went to bed last night!
E
This is the most important thing a teacher teaches – listening, but if a teacher hasn't learned to do it, she can't teach a student how. There are many ways we listen. We listen with out ears, with our hearts, with our minds, and with our gut. But primarily, the first lesson is to learn to listen with our ears. “What did I say?” By hearing the words, you can then go to what someone meant.
“I need for you to be quiet,” comes the teacher’s directive. Children who have learned to listen to meaning know that that means stop talking. Children who are still struggling with the words might think the teacher has a need, but it has nothing to do with them, so that they continue to talk.
Some children begin to listen for meaning and with their hearts at a very young age. It comes from good and loving homes. “I need for you to be quiet,” says the teacher, and the child who is good and loving understands the primary word is “need” not quiet. This is the child who is a teacher’s blessing.
Then there is the child who understands the directive with his mind, and he understands that for the betterment of the whole group, he should stop talking. He’s the altruistic child, usually a leader, and usually the head of his class.
Listening with the mind often has to do with reading. When you read, you listen with your mind and imagination. Learning to do that is more than learning to read. An important part of reading is imagining, moving away from absolutes and toward possibilities.
The primary objective in any human development scheme is to rear children so that they understand the world around them and can apply what they have learned to the loving of one another.
Understanding means listens with all three – ears, heart and mind.
As for the gut, sometimes there are inaudible words, words not said, words hiding and too shy to be said. These we hear with our instincts.
Listening takes a lifetime of practice.
A Column on Listening
Ever start a new job, meet someone, or find yourself in a new location and feel as if everything you ever said or did was left behind? It’s at these points in our lives that we reach back to our preschool and kindergarten memories because that’s the way it was back then; that’s the way a child’s world is – no recognizable past.
Does anyone ask questions anymore? Questions, after all, require a response, something to be listened to. More and more, adults seem like children; they are not asking questions. Most children can’t distinguish a question from a statement. When a question is asked, most little kids can’t respond. They don’t know how.
So what? Asking questions bespeaks a civility that moves people closer. It’s a format to gain information and make conversation, and it’s not happening. Without discourse, the exchange of knowledge remains a strictly functional, clodhopping approach to life.
The ability to ask someone a worthwhile question and then stop and really listen to the answer is a dying event. Why? Perhaps because listening to someone else means the asker may no longer be the center of the universe. He must relinquish center stage to the new speaker who is answering the question.
Listening is a learned activity. In an early childhood environment, it’s the mainstay of the early education curriculum. If children don’t learn to listen, they can’t learn anything.
Our new preschool teacher, Miss Mary Grace approached her three and four year olds by saying, “The first rule and most important rule we have is about listening.”
And what were the children’s responses? Three turned from her to watch the pet room, five started talking among themselves, three listened, and two more started crawling toward the family station.
I asked the chuckling Miss Mary Grace about her take on the children’s overall response. She quipped easily, “The ones whose parents read to them know how to listen.” Reading to a child every day is not only a sign that parents know the importance of listening for themselves, but they understand the importance of a child knowing how to listen as well.
Listening takes time to learn to do, and then it takes time to actually do. Activities that surround listening have to encourage it, like reading and conversations over the non-TV dinner.
There are several kinds of listening and all of them have their place:
*Attentive listening is the shortest kind of listening. You can expect children to listen for less than a minute to most things, so don’t lecture and don’t preach.
*Inattentive listening is what you get when you put on a video, a record or tape or CD. They get some of it, but not enough to learn well. So listen to good stuff and keep the volume down.
*Indirect hearing is a part of a sentence that they hear while they are doing something else. That’s why repetition is so important. If teachers say the same things in the same way, then a child knows who, what, when, where, why, how he’s supposed to act or act on because he’s heard it all before. It’s functional.
Functional listening is really a bottom line thing because it’s not the focus. It’s the extraneous stimuli that’s speeding past the window. The other daily parts of our lives that mimic functional activities are fast food and TV.
Think about it. Functional eating means we snarf without really tasting. It’s the filler that is always the same – like TV. Where people listen to radio, they watch TV. In fact, interestingly enough, the way we “watch TV” is about the same as the way we treat one another. When was the last time anyone asked TV a serious question?
Does anyone ask questions anymore? Questions, after all, require a response, something to be listened to. More and more, adults seem like children; they are not asking questions. Most children can’t distinguish a question from a statement. When a question is asked, most little kids can’t respond. They don’t know how.
So what? Asking questions bespeaks a civility that moves people closer. It’s a format to gain information and make conversation, and it’s not happening. Without discourse, the exchange of knowledge remains a strictly functional, clodhopping approach to life.
The ability to ask someone a worthwhile question and then stop and really listen to the answer is a dying event. Why? Perhaps because listening to someone else means the asker may no longer be the center of the universe. He must relinquish center stage to the new speaker who is answering the question.
Listening is a learned activity. In an early childhood environment, it’s the mainstay of the early education curriculum. If children don’t learn to listen, they can’t learn anything.
Our new preschool teacher, Miss Mary Grace approached her three and four year olds by saying, “The first rule and most important rule we have is about listening.”
And what were the children’s responses? Three turned from her to watch the pet room, five started talking among themselves, three listened, and two more started crawling toward the family station.
I asked the chuckling Miss Mary Grace about her take on the children’s overall response. She quipped easily, “The ones whose parents read to them know how to listen.” Reading to a child every day is not only a sign that parents know the importance of listening for themselves, but they understand the importance of a child knowing how to listen as well.
Listening takes time to learn to do, and then it takes time to actually do. Activities that surround listening have to encourage it, like reading and conversations over the non-TV dinner.
There are several kinds of listening and all of them have their place:
*Attentive listening is the shortest kind of listening. You can expect children to listen for less than a minute to most things, so don’t lecture and don’t preach.
*Inattentive listening is what you get when you put on a video, a record or tape or CD. They get some of it, but not enough to learn well. So listen to good stuff and keep the volume down.
*Indirect hearing is a part of a sentence that they hear while they are doing something else. That’s why repetition is so important. If teachers say the same things in the same way, then a child knows who, what, when, where, why, how he’s supposed to act or act on because he’s heard it all before. It’s functional.
Functional listening is really a bottom line thing because it’s not the focus. It’s the extraneous stimuli that’s speeding past the window. The other daily parts of our lives that mimic functional activities are fast food and TV.
Think about it. Functional eating means we snarf without really tasting. It’s the filler that is always the same – like TV. Where people listen to radio, they watch TV. In fact, interestingly enough, the way we “watch TV” is about the same as the way we treat one another. When was the last time anyone asked TV a serious question?
Saturday, June 25, 2005
The Right to Choose
Listening to what other people say always teaches us something. Jeff’s comment on spanking makes sense – spanking is a last resort, a very last resort, one most parents would rather never use. And add that to David’s mom’s statement that it’s something we use when the safety line has been crossed is perfect.
Removing the option of spanking from a parent’s right to choose is a little scary. If parents consider a child like Mortimer, and I had one, there are times when the child must be stopped from repeating whatever he is doing that risks his life and the life of another.
And the interesting thing about a crack on the butt is that the behavior usually stops. I don’t know a child for whom a spanking encouraged poor behavior. On the other hand slippery, post-reason lessons, lectures, and talks do about as much for some children as nothing at all. Is it better to stop a behavior with one short crack, or let the behavior rear it’s terrible head a thousand times earning the whole family one frustration after another?
We all want our children to understand what it is they’ve done to encourage our frustration, but sometimes it’s beyond words.
When a child cuts off the 14 inch ringlets of his three year old sister, it’s time for more than, “Sweetie, mustn’t, mustn’t.”
When you stop to read a label, and the 18 month old climbs thirty feet on the scaffold like a monkey after bananas, it’s more than “no, no time.”
When the three year old sneaks out of the house and across town on foot to buy some Jell-O you wouldn’t by him earlier that day, it’s worth a crack on the bottom.
When a child draws with indelible marker on new wallpaper at a friend’s house, nothing will justify, but a crack on the but will get everyone’s attention.
When parents are awakened at 6:00 in the morning with the small voice saying, “Katy’s on the furnace down at the school. I can’t get her down, she’s going to burn up,” it’s poisonous hand time for sure.
But strangely, the idea that fear is a passion that we should deny our children, is dehumanizing. As a Christian, I believe we all have the right to all the eleven passions, and fear is one of them. The passions are neutral, and fear is neither a good nor an evil, because fear of bad is a good thing and fear of good is a bad thing, so the intent of use makes the passion good or evil.
Truthfully, many children go through life never feeling the hand of regret strike them, and that’s the way it should be. Most children will have had all the spankings they will ever get by four. By the time a child is reasonable, spankings seem silly.
Removing the option of spanking from a parent’s right to choose is a little scary. If parents consider a child like Mortimer, and I had one, there are times when the child must be stopped from repeating whatever he is doing that risks his life and the life of another.
And the interesting thing about a crack on the butt is that the behavior usually stops. I don’t know a child for whom a spanking encouraged poor behavior. On the other hand slippery, post-reason lessons, lectures, and talks do about as much for some children as nothing at all. Is it better to stop a behavior with one short crack, or let the behavior rear it’s terrible head a thousand times earning the whole family one frustration after another?
We all want our children to understand what it is they’ve done to encourage our frustration, but sometimes it’s beyond words.
When a child cuts off the 14 inch ringlets of his three year old sister, it’s time for more than, “Sweetie, mustn’t, mustn’t.”
When you stop to read a label, and the 18 month old climbs thirty feet on the scaffold like a monkey after bananas, it’s more than “no, no time.”
When the three year old sneaks out of the house and across town on foot to buy some Jell-O you wouldn’t by him earlier that day, it’s worth a crack on the bottom.
When a child draws with indelible marker on new wallpaper at a friend’s house, nothing will justify, but a crack on the but will get everyone’s attention.
When parents are awakened at 6:00 in the morning with the small voice saying, “Katy’s on the furnace down at the school. I can’t get her down, she’s going to burn up,” it’s poisonous hand time for sure.
But strangely, the idea that fear is a passion that we should deny our children, is dehumanizing. As a Christian, I believe we all have the right to all the eleven passions, and fear is one of them. The passions are neutral, and fear is neither a good nor an evil, because fear of bad is a good thing and fear of good is a bad thing, so the intent of use makes the passion good or evil.
Truthfully, many children go through life never feeling the hand of regret strike them, and that’s the way it should be. Most children will have had all the spankings they will ever get by four. By the time a child is reasonable, spankings seem silly.
Friday, June 24, 2005
Truth and Fiction
Back in April, I published a column on spanking because it was hot in the news, and there was a lot of controversy about it. As a concerned parent and grandparent, I realize that not only is every child different, but every situation is different. There is no legitimate tool of parenting I would dismiss, even when it goes against the modern agenda.
Here is the column I published:
Mortimer refuses to cooperate. When he is asked by a teacher to put away a toy, he walks away from his mess. When he is scolded, he sticks out his tongue. When he is put in time out, he yells at the teacher and says “No!”
Some adults would say that the teacher had no right to scold Mortimer, and that Mortimer should not sit in time out because time out corrects behavior by coercion. The teacher is only Mortimer’s facilitator.
Consequently, Mortimer is not afraid to say and do as he pleases. Nothing in Mortimer’s world is going to interfere with his carefree unopposed life.
Now let’s get real. In the world we know, a four year old who is fearless and thinks he dominates every situation is really in constant danger. Think of all the things that could happen to an unreasonable child who refuses to take a single direction.
“Leave the dog alone; put the matches down; stay on the sidewalk; don’t touch the knife; stay out of the pool.”
Undisciplined children lack trust. Mortimer doesn’t trust the adults in charge of his life because they are only his facilitators not his primary teachers. Mortimer has developed what is commonly called a lack of respect.
Respect, quite frankly, comes from the presence of fear – the new four letter word in child rearing. Should children fear anything and if so what?
Fear is a perception at its worst, and a limit at its best. Sometimes fear comes from the natural world, and sometimes from the social world.
Mortimer’s parents have a respect for fire, heights, speed, deep water, large wild animals, storms, and a host of other physical things. As well they fear social disgrace, rebuke and alienation.
Mortimer depends on his parent’s code of honor to be safe and accepted, and he should, but everyone knows that if Mortimer’s parents lived his unopposed lifestyle, the response from the adult world would hurt. Hurt is a natural repercussion of imprudence or bad choices.
Very young children don’t understand repercussions because they are not reasonable. The cause and effect of choosing poorly takes a long time. Most reasonable adults know that trying to reason with a three year old is ludicrous. Offering behavior alternatives to a four year old is laughable. It almost constitutes neglect.
A child’s imprudence is small in the scheme of things. His punishment should be small as well. In traditional society, it is called a spanking. A spanking is not a violent action against a child. It’s only the teaching shadow of the fear that naturally confronts us in the adult world when we are foolish and endanger ourselves.
Pain is the tool that teaches that we are not invincible, and that our world is not set up by facilitators who allow us to go unopposed.
The ability to calmly suggest changes to a naughty child is for the parent who has done his work. When his children are curbed from the beginning, and that’s most kids, parents are free to go calmly into the storm.
But poorly behaved children need to meet consequences of unacceptable behaviors. And sometimes, like nature and the rebuke of society, it hurts. A safe loving discipline like a spanking is such a measure.
The alternative to spanking is to allow children to go unopposed into the public system fearless and defiant. Then it is too late. They are often treated for the gamut of childhood mental disorders, drugged and spend a lifetime helplessly trying to catch up.
****
I received a lot of fan mail about the column. Lots of people wrote to say, “Thanks for saying what we are afraid to say.” But the critics are out there, and I’m sure this column helped lead my column being dropped at the paper. For a more modern agenda, the very idea of spanking a child is so detestable, there is no equivalent.
Then, last week, I saw this letter to the editor published on the Internet. Needless to say, I read with relish and a little horseradish:
I feel compelled to respond to Judy Lyden's column of April 8 titled "For all of us, respect comes from the presence of fear." This author endorses the use of spanking as a means of instilling fear in young children in order to create respect. She also states that the only effective discipline is physical punishment. Lyden suggests that opposition to spanking "almost constitutes neglect."
As a therapist who specializes in counseling with children and a former child protection worker, I strongly and urgently oppose this method of supposedly teaching children respect. There are numerous behavioral programs available today to help parents raise responsible, respectful children without hitting them. Child protection workers and the court system have ample evidence that spanking can result in damage to young bodies and minds.
Erma Bombeck once responded to the advice to never spank your child when you're angry with the question, "Why would I hit my kids when I'm happy and calm?" Adults spank when they are angry and the anger often stems from someone or something other than the child. A child is an easy target for anger release. Spanking is not a responsible method of guiding young children.
Raising children was the most difficult job that I've ever known. The tasks are endless and parents are on call 24 hours seven days a week. My biggest regret from my child-rearing days is that I spanked my children.
I only spanked when I was angry or frustrated at something or somebody other than my children. When I was calm and in control, I had no difficulty in providing positive reinforcement which produced effective results.
My children do not spank my grandchildren and I am grateful. My parents used spanking as a discipline method and I do not respect them because they spanked. I respect my parents because I know they loved us and tried to provide the very best for us.
Barbara Coloroso, author of "Kids Are Worth It" and an internationally-recognized speaker on parenting writes, "Physical punishment is an obvious form of abuse and fear teaches children to obey only until they are able to get what they need themselves or they grow big enough to strike back or leave."
Dr. Thomas Phelan, author of "1-2-3 Magic, Effective Discipline for Children" and an internationally-renowned expert and lecturer on child discipline, writes that "research tells us that physical discipline tends to generate anxiety in children, lower their self-esteem and make the kids more likely to become aggressive themselves."
****
As a thinking person, it would be easy to take this laughably apart. I could say "get it right or where did you learn to read," but when you do that, you lessen the intent, and the intent is the humanly inspired work of the heart and soul, and that would be wrong. This person was serious about her letter, so the gracious and rightful thing to do is to read between the lines and wonder about the real intent.
I think perhaps the intent of this letter is to further a very modern agenda invading our child rearing world. It seems to a modern mind to be ultra reasonable.
The agenda is built on a misconception that the common home and the ordinary family have failed utterly to rear children. This modern trend disregards the home as a useless tool, a place where the family’s influence on a child should be squashed by the later influences of the “professionals” who can influence children once a child reaches daycare or school.
The two houses of thought battling it out here are fundamentally divided. One that says formation comes from the home and one that inspires public places and public people like teachers and psychologists to reform the child outside the home.
I believe in the family and the home, and I believe that formation in the home is generally good and competent, and that individual choices and styles are an important part of our freedom to rear our children. I believe no matter what one does, the home is the primary educator of the child and will ultimately influence the child more than anything else.
I think the very idea that says the “experts” know more than the parents is wrong. That’s a real problem especially when no child seems to be turned away from therapy and the roulette numbers scream 10 to 30 percent of children are in need of psychological help. That’s ridiculous; that’s fraud. Who needs a new boat?
Personally, my greatest concern is what I call false reporting which I see all too often. My own intent was to show spanking as an option. Anyone who says spanking and hitting, especially a professional, is assault or even in the same ball park needs a college refund. What I wrote and what was reported about what I wrote are two very different things. Getting it right is important. Getting it wrong is common. But read them for yourself and decide.
Here is the column I published:
Mortimer refuses to cooperate. When he is asked by a teacher to put away a toy, he walks away from his mess. When he is scolded, he sticks out his tongue. When he is put in time out, he yells at the teacher and says “No!”
Some adults would say that the teacher had no right to scold Mortimer, and that Mortimer should not sit in time out because time out corrects behavior by coercion. The teacher is only Mortimer’s facilitator.
Consequently, Mortimer is not afraid to say and do as he pleases. Nothing in Mortimer’s world is going to interfere with his carefree unopposed life.
Now let’s get real. In the world we know, a four year old who is fearless and thinks he dominates every situation is really in constant danger. Think of all the things that could happen to an unreasonable child who refuses to take a single direction.
“Leave the dog alone; put the matches down; stay on the sidewalk; don’t touch the knife; stay out of the pool.”
Undisciplined children lack trust. Mortimer doesn’t trust the adults in charge of his life because they are only his facilitators not his primary teachers. Mortimer has developed what is commonly called a lack of respect.
Respect, quite frankly, comes from the presence of fear – the new four letter word in child rearing. Should children fear anything and if so what?
Fear is a perception at its worst, and a limit at its best. Sometimes fear comes from the natural world, and sometimes from the social world.
Mortimer’s parents have a respect for fire, heights, speed, deep water, large wild animals, storms, and a host of other physical things. As well they fear social disgrace, rebuke and alienation.
Mortimer depends on his parent’s code of honor to be safe and accepted, and he should, but everyone knows that if Mortimer’s parents lived his unopposed lifestyle, the response from the adult world would hurt. Hurt is a natural repercussion of imprudence or bad choices.
Very young children don’t understand repercussions because they are not reasonable. The cause and effect of choosing poorly takes a long time. Most reasonable adults know that trying to reason with a three year old is ludicrous. Offering behavior alternatives to a four year old is laughable. It almost constitutes neglect.
A child’s imprudence is small in the scheme of things. His punishment should be small as well. In traditional society, it is called a spanking. A spanking is not a violent action against a child. It’s only the teaching shadow of the fear that naturally confronts us in the adult world when we are foolish and endanger ourselves.
Pain is the tool that teaches that we are not invincible, and that our world is not set up by facilitators who allow us to go unopposed.
The ability to calmly suggest changes to a naughty child is for the parent who has done his work. When his children are curbed from the beginning, and that’s most kids, parents are free to go calmly into the storm.
But poorly behaved children need to meet consequences of unacceptable behaviors. And sometimes, like nature and the rebuke of society, it hurts. A safe loving discipline like a spanking is such a measure.
The alternative to spanking is to allow children to go unopposed into the public system fearless and defiant. Then it is too late. They are often treated for the gamut of childhood mental disorders, drugged and spend a lifetime helplessly trying to catch up.
****
I received a lot of fan mail about the column. Lots of people wrote to say, “Thanks for saying what we are afraid to say.” But the critics are out there, and I’m sure this column helped lead my column being dropped at the paper. For a more modern agenda, the very idea of spanking a child is so detestable, there is no equivalent.
Then, last week, I saw this letter to the editor published on the Internet. Needless to say, I read with relish and a little horseradish:
I feel compelled to respond to Judy Lyden's column of April 8 titled "For all of us, respect comes from the presence of fear." This author endorses the use of spanking as a means of instilling fear in young children in order to create respect. She also states that the only effective discipline is physical punishment. Lyden suggests that opposition to spanking "almost constitutes neglect."
As a therapist who specializes in counseling with children and a former child protection worker, I strongly and urgently oppose this method of supposedly teaching children respect. There are numerous behavioral programs available today to help parents raise responsible, respectful children without hitting them. Child protection workers and the court system have ample evidence that spanking can result in damage to young bodies and minds.
Erma Bombeck once responded to the advice to never spank your child when you're angry with the question, "Why would I hit my kids when I'm happy and calm?" Adults spank when they are angry and the anger often stems from someone or something other than the child. A child is an easy target for anger release. Spanking is not a responsible method of guiding young children.
Raising children was the most difficult job that I've ever known. The tasks are endless and parents are on call 24 hours seven days a week. My biggest regret from my child-rearing days is that I spanked my children.
I only spanked when I was angry or frustrated at something or somebody other than my children. When I was calm and in control, I had no difficulty in providing positive reinforcement which produced effective results.
My children do not spank my grandchildren and I am grateful. My parents used spanking as a discipline method and I do not respect them because they spanked. I respect my parents because I know they loved us and tried to provide the very best for us.
Barbara Coloroso, author of "Kids Are Worth It" and an internationally-recognized speaker on parenting writes, "Physical punishment is an obvious form of abuse and fear teaches children to obey only until they are able to get what they need themselves or they grow big enough to strike back or leave."
Dr. Thomas Phelan, author of "1-2-3 Magic, Effective Discipline for Children" and an internationally-renowned expert and lecturer on child discipline, writes that "research tells us that physical discipline tends to generate anxiety in children, lower their self-esteem and make the kids more likely to become aggressive themselves."
****
As a thinking person, it would be easy to take this laughably apart. I could say "get it right or where did you learn to read," but when you do that, you lessen the intent, and the intent is the humanly inspired work of the heart and soul, and that would be wrong. This person was serious about her letter, so the gracious and rightful thing to do is to read between the lines and wonder about the real intent.
I think perhaps the intent of this letter is to further a very modern agenda invading our child rearing world. It seems to a modern mind to be ultra reasonable.
The agenda is built on a misconception that the common home and the ordinary family have failed utterly to rear children. This modern trend disregards the home as a useless tool, a place where the family’s influence on a child should be squashed by the later influences of the “professionals” who can influence children once a child reaches daycare or school.
The two houses of thought battling it out here are fundamentally divided. One that says formation comes from the home and one that inspires public places and public people like teachers and psychologists to reform the child outside the home.
I believe in the family and the home, and I believe that formation in the home is generally good and competent, and that individual choices and styles are an important part of our freedom to rear our children. I believe no matter what one does, the home is the primary educator of the child and will ultimately influence the child more than anything else.
I think the very idea that says the “experts” know more than the parents is wrong. That’s a real problem especially when no child seems to be turned away from therapy and the roulette numbers scream 10 to 30 percent of children are in need of psychological help. That’s ridiculous; that’s fraud. Who needs a new boat?
Personally, my greatest concern is what I call false reporting which I see all too often. My own intent was to show spanking as an option. Anyone who says spanking and hitting, especially a professional, is assault or even in the same ball park needs a college refund. What I wrote and what was reported about what I wrote are two very different things. Getting it right is important. Getting it wrong is common. But read them for yourself and decide.
Thursday, June 23, 2005
Donuts and More
Finding Too Many 'Holes' in Your Child Care Story
A letter to the editor by Jared V. Harper:
I read with interest the article about Pam Williams of Madison County (Living, "Helping: Area woman honored for her contributionto child care," June 18) who was named Child Care Provider of the Year.
It certainly sounds like she is welcoming to the children in her care, and that her charges have fun playing, dancing and putting on Christmas programs. However, the photo on the front of the Saturday Living pages showing Williams and three little girls eating doughnuts raised some concerns.
The caption states, "Pam Williams smiles as three kids ... eat doughnuts for breakfast Tuesday. Williams was named Child Care Provider of the Year within a 12-county area by the Child Care Resource and Referral Agency of Athens."
Doughnuts do not provide a nutritious breakfast. They are basically composed of white flour, fat and sugar. As a conscientious child care provider, Williams should be feeding these children foods like whole grain cereals, milk, juice, whole wheat toast, cheese grits, etc. that contain the nutrients children's bodies need for proper growth and development. There's the old adage "You are what you eat."
Jared V. Harper
Jared Harper has never cared for children. He doesn’t know very much about feeding a group. What he fails to understand is that menu and diet are a balance. Getting kids to eat is the first agenda, the second agenda is training them to eat, and the third, for the gold medal, is making kids choose good stuff over junk.
Choosing good stuff over junk means letting kids have junk in the first place – enough of it so that it won’t be a big treat. When something as pleasant as eating a treat is only a once in a while thing, children crave it. They need the calories that sweets offer especially if they are active children. Some children will crave treats so much, they will actually steal food and hoard it.
By offering treats as a matter of daily course, the adult is sending a message to children that, yes, it’s a genuine part of life, one you should experience, and one that has value as a treat, but it’s not worth craving because there will be more of it around the time corner.
The best way of dealing with treats is to vary the menu. Donuts once a week won’t collapse a nutrition program, in fact, it may enhance one. Donuts will actually stimulate a picky appetite, energizing a child for more, so by lunch time, kids are famished and will eat nearly anything.
My favorite story is one where children are given carrots, carrots, carrots as a snack, and all the fun, fatty foods are ignored as junk not fit to eat. As the child grows thin, he becomes feint and has no energy, so the pediatrician tells mom and dad, “This child needs more calories. He is suffering from affluent mal nutrition.”
Kids need calories, and there are children who are so thin and so picky, the sheer weight of a donut may actually be good for a child. Fat is cushion food – a cushion that will help in time of illness.
The ordinary problem is too much fat, because it’s easier to eat donuts than other foods. Add the fact that most kids don’t get outside enough to exercise, and a parent has compounded the problem. It’s a balance.
Balance is important. The childcare that makes everything a chore like eating is a dull place to be. Food is supposed to be fun and kids should always enjoy eating.
Here’s a guide to a day’s childcare food. You choose one:
Breakfast: Grits and cheese, prune juice, milk
Lunch: Institutional meat loaf, canned green beans, applesauce, whole wheat bread, milk
Snack: Graham crackers, juice
Or
Breakfast: Donuts, sliced apples, milk
Lunch: Baked chicken, apples, bananas, oranges, quesadillas, milk
Snack: Home made chocolate chip cookies, milk
Difference? Edibility.
Actually, the second menu is much better for the child than the first one.
First- no child will drink the prune juice but nearly every child will eat a dozen apple slices.
Second, grits are a non acceptable food because they are not whole grain. Cheese in the morning counts for nothing on the USDA Childcare Food Program, and will actually constipate a child.
Donuts tell a picky child that the food is safe, fun and easy to eat. It makes him comfortable and sets the eating course for the day.
No child likes meatloaf. It’s one of those “do I have to eat this” foods. They do, however, like skewered meat balls.
Canned green beans have little nutritional value – they amount to water soaked food silt. But apples, bananas, oranges all have food value and are not destroyed by heat, pealing or handling. Applesauce is a substitute food for picky eaters. Unless you make it from scratch, it’s mostly water.
Whole wheat bread is good, but kids won’t eat a lot because it’s heavy, course, and feels a bit like chicken feathers when you get an untrained mouthful. They will pick out the center. Quesadillas, on the other hand, are fun and the extra cheese is not constipating when it’s served with the apples.
Graham crackers and juice are a mistake mender. They will reverse the action of the pluggers served at lunch, and plumb the child. They have a palatable index not unlike cardboard, and they are cheap and a no brainer to serve.
Chocolate chip cookies from scratch take time and effort and actually contain more nutrition –calorie for calorie - than graham crackers.
People are funny about food. There is a snobbery about some things like donuts, but not graham crackers. Donuts are better than most fast foods and better than coke. So many children come to school having had last night’s pizza, chocolate cake or the bottom line chocolate cereal in front of TV, it’s hard to tell a provider that a winner breakfast should be something egregious as grits and cheese.
So what did you have for breakfast? I had my usual – natural peanut butter, 1 slice of rye bread, a teaspoon of dry cinnamon and a handful of walnuts. Rachel had spinach, feta cheese and walnuts, Molly and Stacey had two eggs each, and Edith had chicken salad. Tis a far far better thing we eat than they shall ever serve.
Pass the donuts, please!
A letter to the editor by Jared V. Harper:
I read with interest the article about Pam Williams of Madison County (Living, "Helping: Area woman honored for her contributionto child care," June 18) who was named Child Care Provider of the Year.
It certainly sounds like she is welcoming to the children in her care, and that her charges have fun playing, dancing and putting on Christmas programs. However, the photo on the front of the Saturday Living pages showing Williams and three little girls eating doughnuts raised some concerns.
The caption states, "Pam Williams smiles as three kids ... eat doughnuts for breakfast Tuesday. Williams was named Child Care Provider of the Year within a 12-county area by the Child Care Resource and Referral Agency of Athens."
Doughnuts do not provide a nutritious breakfast. They are basically composed of white flour, fat and sugar. As a conscientious child care provider, Williams should be feeding these children foods like whole grain cereals, milk, juice, whole wheat toast, cheese grits, etc. that contain the nutrients children's bodies need for proper growth and development. There's the old adage "You are what you eat."
Jared V. Harper
Jared Harper has never cared for children. He doesn’t know very much about feeding a group. What he fails to understand is that menu and diet are a balance. Getting kids to eat is the first agenda, the second agenda is training them to eat, and the third, for the gold medal, is making kids choose good stuff over junk.
Choosing good stuff over junk means letting kids have junk in the first place – enough of it so that it won’t be a big treat. When something as pleasant as eating a treat is only a once in a while thing, children crave it. They need the calories that sweets offer especially if they are active children. Some children will crave treats so much, they will actually steal food and hoard it.
By offering treats as a matter of daily course, the adult is sending a message to children that, yes, it’s a genuine part of life, one you should experience, and one that has value as a treat, but it’s not worth craving because there will be more of it around the time corner.
The best way of dealing with treats is to vary the menu. Donuts once a week won’t collapse a nutrition program, in fact, it may enhance one. Donuts will actually stimulate a picky appetite, energizing a child for more, so by lunch time, kids are famished and will eat nearly anything.
My favorite story is one where children are given carrots, carrots, carrots as a snack, and all the fun, fatty foods are ignored as junk not fit to eat. As the child grows thin, he becomes feint and has no energy, so the pediatrician tells mom and dad, “This child needs more calories. He is suffering from affluent mal nutrition.”
Kids need calories, and there are children who are so thin and so picky, the sheer weight of a donut may actually be good for a child. Fat is cushion food – a cushion that will help in time of illness.
The ordinary problem is too much fat, because it’s easier to eat donuts than other foods. Add the fact that most kids don’t get outside enough to exercise, and a parent has compounded the problem. It’s a balance.
Balance is important. The childcare that makes everything a chore like eating is a dull place to be. Food is supposed to be fun and kids should always enjoy eating.
Here’s a guide to a day’s childcare food. You choose one:
Breakfast: Grits and cheese, prune juice, milk
Lunch: Institutional meat loaf, canned green beans, applesauce, whole wheat bread, milk
Snack: Graham crackers, juice
Or
Breakfast: Donuts, sliced apples, milk
Lunch: Baked chicken, apples, bananas, oranges, quesadillas, milk
Snack: Home made chocolate chip cookies, milk
Difference? Edibility.
Actually, the second menu is much better for the child than the first one.
First- no child will drink the prune juice but nearly every child will eat a dozen apple slices.
Second, grits are a non acceptable food because they are not whole grain. Cheese in the morning counts for nothing on the USDA Childcare Food Program, and will actually constipate a child.
Donuts tell a picky child that the food is safe, fun and easy to eat. It makes him comfortable and sets the eating course for the day.
No child likes meatloaf. It’s one of those “do I have to eat this” foods. They do, however, like skewered meat balls.
Canned green beans have little nutritional value – they amount to water soaked food silt. But apples, bananas, oranges all have food value and are not destroyed by heat, pealing or handling. Applesauce is a substitute food for picky eaters. Unless you make it from scratch, it’s mostly water.
Whole wheat bread is good, but kids won’t eat a lot because it’s heavy, course, and feels a bit like chicken feathers when you get an untrained mouthful. They will pick out the center. Quesadillas, on the other hand, are fun and the extra cheese is not constipating when it’s served with the apples.
Graham crackers and juice are a mistake mender. They will reverse the action of the pluggers served at lunch, and plumb the child. They have a palatable index not unlike cardboard, and they are cheap and a no brainer to serve.
Chocolate chip cookies from scratch take time and effort and actually contain more nutrition –calorie for calorie - than graham crackers.
People are funny about food. There is a snobbery about some things like donuts, but not graham crackers. Donuts are better than most fast foods and better than coke. So many children come to school having had last night’s pizza, chocolate cake or the bottom line chocolate cereal in front of TV, it’s hard to tell a provider that a winner breakfast should be something egregious as grits and cheese.
So what did you have for breakfast? I had my usual – natural peanut butter, 1 slice of rye bread, a teaspoon of dry cinnamon and a handful of walnuts. Rachel had spinach, feta cheese and walnuts, Molly and Stacey had two eggs each, and Edith had chicken salad. Tis a far far better thing we eat than they shall ever serve.
Pass the donuts, please!
Wednesday, June 22, 2005
History? Bingo!
While browsing around the internet, I took a look at Bill Bennett’s web page. Aside from the gambling fiasco, I admire him tremendously because what he says about children is uplifting, helpful and heartening.
On his web page was a particularly good insight into what history should be for Kindergarteners through twelfth grade; I would add preschool. It was written by John Holdren, the Senior Vice President of Content and Curriculum for a program called K12, a home schooling program that parents can get through the Internet by going here . Bill Bennett is the chairman and co founder of K12.
I could never have written this better nor said as much in as little space. I wanted to share it because this is exactly what we do; what we present at the Garden School with history and all our subjects. Like Bennett's K-12, we go about teaching children things they can take with them for a lifetime - real things with value and substance and a heart that professes goodness. The premise that children should wait and wait and wait to learn about the world around them is bogus.
Read and enjoy:
History from the Start
John Holdren, K12 Senior Vice President of Content and Curriculum
The pharaohs of ancient Egypt
The Great Wall of China
Chariot races in the Roman Forum
Medieval knights in shining armor
The code of the Japanese samurai
Michelangelo painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel
Washington crossing the Delaware
Each a fascinating topic with a compelling story behind it. But in schools, children rarely encounter these topics until middle or high school. Typically, the elementary grades pass over the study of History in favor of Social Studies—lessons that, more often than not, focus only on the family, the neighborhood, the community.
While there is value to learning about local focuses, the Social Studies approach sells children short. It fails to acknowledge a child's natural curiosity about the world beyond the self and its surroundings.
K12 believes there is another way. Don't pass up the opportunity to teach History from the start. History is a gateway that opens young minds and imaginations to far-off lands, distant times, and diverse peoples. The stories of the past should be an integral part of every child's curriculum. Knowledge of the past prepares us to understand the present and shape the future. By knowing the main lines of human endeavor, and by exploring how people have lived and how civilizations have developed, young people are better prepared to do everything from reading a newspaper to appreciating a painting and casting an informed vote.
For young children, K12 emphasizes the story in history. Stories help children understand and retain basic ideas about distant people and times, about how diverse peoples and civilizations have changed over time, and how some have stayed the same. These stories include great men and women as well as common folk. They are stories of high ideals, enduring achievements, tragic failures, and ongoing struggles.
What should we include in the story of the past that we tell to young children? K12 History proposes a detailed sequence of topics, based in part on recommendations from E. D. Hirsch, Jr.'s Core Knowledge Foundation, and from Jessie Wise and Susan Wise Bauer's' The Well-Trained Mind.
While guiding children through an exploration of our rich human past, K12 History focuses on aspects that are key to understanding human civilization. Civilization, as distinct from prehistory, begins with the building of cities and the development of writing. Civilization around the world has taken many different forms over the past several thousand years.
To understand these variations, one needs to understand certain major themes, including the following:
How geography influences settlement
How human beings have ruled and organized themselves
What people have believed about the divine
What stories people tell in literature and myth
What has been accomplished in science and technology
There are many ways that K12 brings the past to life for our children—through picture books, historical fiction, primary sources, creative projects, and more.
Children are fascinated by stories. K12 uses the power of stories to help your children understand their world's past and its connection to their future.
On his web page was a particularly good insight into what history should be for Kindergarteners through twelfth grade; I would add preschool. It was written by John Holdren, the Senior Vice President of Content and Curriculum for a program called K12, a home schooling program that parents can get through the Internet by going here . Bill Bennett is the chairman and co founder of K12.
I could never have written this better nor said as much in as little space. I wanted to share it because this is exactly what we do; what we present at the Garden School with history and all our subjects. Like Bennett's K-12, we go about teaching children things they can take with them for a lifetime - real things with value and substance and a heart that professes goodness. The premise that children should wait and wait and wait to learn about the world around them is bogus.
Read and enjoy:
History from the Start
John Holdren, K12 Senior Vice President of Content and Curriculum
The pharaohs of ancient Egypt
The Great Wall of China
Chariot races in the Roman Forum
Medieval knights in shining armor
The code of the Japanese samurai
Michelangelo painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel
Washington crossing the Delaware
Each a fascinating topic with a compelling story behind it. But in schools, children rarely encounter these topics until middle or high school. Typically, the elementary grades pass over the study of History in favor of Social Studies—lessons that, more often than not, focus only on the family, the neighborhood, the community.
While there is value to learning about local focuses, the Social Studies approach sells children short. It fails to acknowledge a child's natural curiosity about the world beyond the self and its surroundings.
K12 believes there is another way. Don't pass up the opportunity to teach History from the start. History is a gateway that opens young minds and imaginations to far-off lands, distant times, and diverse peoples. The stories of the past should be an integral part of every child's curriculum. Knowledge of the past prepares us to understand the present and shape the future. By knowing the main lines of human endeavor, and by exploring how people have lived and how civilizations have developed, young people are better prepared to do everything from reading a newspaper to appreciating a painting and casting an informed vote.
For young children, K12 emphasizes the story in history. Stories help children understand and retain basic ideas about distant people and times, about how diverse peoples and civilizations have changed over time, and how some have stayed the same. These stories include great men and women as well as common folk. They are stories of high ideals, enduring achievements, tragic failures, and ongoing struggles.
What should we include in the story of the past that we tell to young children? K12 History proposes a detailed sequence of topics, based in part on recommendations from E. D. Hirsch, Jr.'s Core Knowledge Foundation, and from Jessie Wise and Susan Wise Bauer's' The Well-Trained Mind.
While guiding children through an exploration of our rich human past, K12 History focuses on aspects that are key to understanding human civilization. Civilization, as distinct from prehistory, begins with the building of cities and the development of writing. Civilization around the world has taken many different forms over the past several thousand years.
To understand these variations, one needs to understand certain major themes, including the following:
How geography influences settlement
How human beings have ruled and organized themselves
What people have believed about the divine
What stories people tell in literature and myth
What has been accomplished in science and technology
There are many ways that K12 brings the past to life for our children—through picture books, historical fiction, primary sources, creative projects, and more.
Children are fascinated by stories. K12 uses the power of stories to help your children understand their world's past and its connection to their future.
Monday, June 20, 2005
Summer Moves
Mrs. St. Louis’s grandchild Greta is moving with her family from one city to another. She’s a little worried about leaving her best friend. Making new friends will be easy for Greta because she’s a lovely child. She’s nine, but nine year olds worry about things like that. They have seen other kids struggling to get in with a new group and how tough it is because friendships have already taken root, and sometimes it seems there is no place for one more.
What she will experience is in time it will seem like everyone has been friends forever, but for now it looks cold and lonely.
What I want to tell Greta is that I remember when it all happened to me. Sometimes that’s helpful, and sometimes it’s not. I want to tell her I left my best friend when I was eleven. My family started moving every year or so until I got married. I want to tell her that there are some friends who will remain friends all your life no matter where you move.
My friend Cathy and I had grown up on the Island together. Moving away was really hard for me because I didn’t make new friends in the new place. There were a few boys in my new neighborhood, but not a single girl, so I was by myself a lot, and I was lonely.
Greta’s parents have been careful to choose a new place to live where there are lots of other children – both boys and girls. My parents never liked children so they always lived in exclusive neighborhoods where there were few of us. I remember thinking a lot about my friendship with Cathy and missing it. I learned to write letters. Phoning was not something we did very often in those days
Over the years, we moved again and again across the country, but it didn’t stop the friendship. I wrote to Cathy all the time, and she responded as well. Years went by and she came to visit when we were both fifteen. It was a wonderful month.
The years passed again and the letters came and went. Occasionally we would call at Christmas, but the feeling of the friendship always continued as if we still lived down the street from one another.
Cathy was my maid of honor when I got married. She spent a summer with me in New York. Then I visited her home in California back in 1974. After that we were busy rearing children. We didn’t see each other for nearly twenty years.
Cathy visited me in 2003. We’ve been friends for fifty years, and when we call or see one another it is as if we still lived down the street. And that’s the way children’s friendships start, continue and should be. A friendship, after all, is what a child makes it. It’s important from the beginning and should be something that parents encourage and treasure as much as the child because it is something that a child will have for the rest of his or her life even after the parent is gone.
A friendship is a child’s first real choice. It’s based on personality and taste. I like this person because… and there might be a because and there might not. Most friendships will come and go, but for those special ones, parents should take heed about just how important they are and how they will last with only a little encouragement.
I treasure my friendship with Cathy because our first little girl memories help make us what we are. They are part of our formation.
It doesn’t take a great deal of work to keep a child’s friendship alive. It takes a weekend once in a while, a phone call and help with mailing letters. With Internet, it’s almost do it yourself.
What she will experience is in time it will seem like everyone has been friends forever, but for now it looks cold and lonely.
What I want to tell Greta is that I remember when it all happened to me. Sometimes that’s helpful, and sometimes it’s not. I want to tell her I left my best friend when I was eleven. My family started moving every year or so until I got married. I want to tell her that there are some friends who will remain friends all your life no matter where you move.
My friend Cathy and I had grown up on the Island together. Moving away was really hard for me because I didn’t make new friends in the new place. There were a few boys in my new neighborhood, but not a single girl, so I was by myself a lot, and I was lonely.
Greta’s parents have been careful to choose a new place to live where there are lots of other children – both boys and girls. My parents never liked children so they always lived in exclusive neighborhoods where there were few of us. I remember thinking a lot about my friendship with Cathy and missing it. I learned to write letters. Phoning was not something we did very often in those days
Over the years, we moved again and again across the country, but it didn’t stop the friendship. I wrote to Cathy all the time, and she responded as well. Years went by and she came to visit when we were both fifteen. It was a wonderful month.
The years passed again and the letters came and went. Occasionally we would call at Christmas, but the feeling of the friendship always continued as if we still lived down the street from one another.
Cathy was my maid of honor when I got married. She spent a summer with me in New York. Then I visited her home in California back in 1974. After that we were busy rearing children. We didn’t see each other for nearly twenty years.
Cathy visited me in 2003. We’ve been friends for fifty years, and when we call or see one another it is as if we still lived down the street. And that’s the way children’s friendships start, continue and should be. A friendship, after all, is what a child makes it. It’s important from the beginning and should be something that parents encourage and treasure as much as the child because it is something that a child will have for the rest of his or her life even after the parent is gone.
A friendship is a child’s first real choice. It’s based on personality and taste. I like this person because… and there might be a because and there might not. Most friendships will come and go, but for those special ones, parents should take heed about just how important they are and how they will last with only a little encouragement.
I treasure my friendship with Cathy because our first little girl memories help make us what we are. They are part of our formation.
It doesn’t take a great deal of work to keep a child’s friendship alive. It takes a weekend once in a while, a phone call and help with mailing letters. With Internet, it’s almost do it yourself.
Sunday, June 19, 2005
St. Louis or What?
Well, we did it. We boarded the bus at 7:00 am and returned 12.5 hours later. We had a great time. Nine parents, six teachers, and thirty one students went along. The children were unusually quiet on the bus and adults were delighted.
We stopped about 1.5 hours into the trip for breakfast. It was leisurely and probably too leisurely for the amount of time we had. The kids ate two boxes of donuts and chewed on frozen orange juice. Parents raided the coke and water cooler. The kids wanted to play on a playground, but we didn’t come to play at a rest stop, so get on the bus guys!
We arrived in St. Louis and the kids spotted the arch way before I did. They were really excited to see this monument. It was brilliant sun, so the arch gleamed. They enjoyed the truck traffic, and the busyness of the city.
The big city traffic and had to make a second loop to find the right place to unload – about 30 minutes all together. Cities are never really people friendly. Off to the bathrooms! The children had to be patted down before they could use the bathroom, and it was at least 20 minutes before they returned to lunch site.
One parent remarked that the windows seem so small from below, like specks, but when you get up there, they are huge. I remarked that it would be fun to take the kids up, but most of the adults cringed. The chaos would be incredible.
We lunched under the arch, which was absolutely beautiful on the crisp fabulous day right on the lawn. The kids were respectful about their garbage. It helped. We ate peanut butter, cheese, tuna, egg salad, ham and cheese, and chicken salad. We had carrots and dip, pickles, chips, home made chocolate chip cookies, apples and the rest of the cola and water. I was a little concerned that the kids weren’t eating as much as they usually did. It would be a long time before they would eat again. I urged them to eat, but they were too interested in the sights.
Then it was off to Grant’s Farm. It was really crowded that day because the zoo was closed for a black tie affair. The lines were very long, and we waited patiently on the bus about 45 minutes before we were able to enter the park.
The park was free and very well put together. It’s a gift from the Budweiser Beer people. We boarded a tram which is the only way to get from one end of the park to the other. The guides were spectacular and held two whole carts for our group so we could stay together. We engineered a plan that every adult was responsible for two children, and it worked splendidly. We got to see a lot of interesting animals and tour the park.
We saw Grant's cabin, which is the only log cabin we have that was built by an American president. U Grant was an exceptional man, a brilliant, good man who was devoted to his family and our nation at a terrible time of war. He was a model for his troops. My husband once said of him, "If I had known that such a man existed when I was a boy, he would have been my hero."
One really fun feature inside the amusement part of the park was the goat pen. We were able to buy baby bottles filled with milk to feed the tiny baby goats. Some of the children loved it and some of them were a little put off by bold goats looking to latch onto just about anything including shirts and shoes. It was all in fun and the kids enjoyed it. We got some spectacular pictures.
We had to wait in line for at least 45 minutes to board the tram again to leave the park. It seemed like ages that we stood in line, and by that time the kids were really tired.
We had a final treat on the bus, compliments of Morgan’s mom, and we had a juice bottle before we boarded the bus. It was really refreshing after all that sun and go.
Again we had to wait in traffic to leave the park. Then it was a mad dash out of Missouri, across the beautiful Mississippi, through the lovely green hills of southern Illinois for one more stop, and then home.
So if you add up all the waits, the lines, the traffic, you can see why we were 1.5 hours late coming home. All in all, it was a fabulous trip and the kids really enjoyed going. It’s the kind of thing our teachers will do for families because we know it’s important. Some of our kids won't travel at all as young children, and travel is something they love. So why not travel as a part of our school curriculum?
As I said to several of the parents, I want our kids to be able to say that they’ve been to all these places when they get to big school. “I know what the arch is; it’s a symbol of the gateway to the west. I know because I went there and had a picnic under it with my class.”
We live in Southwestern Indiana. The common statement is: you can drive two hours in any direction and be someplace. Isn’t that worth exploring?
Pictures will be available soon. We used the spectacular camera we won for being the highest donator school for Easter Seals, and the memory chip fits into my computer, so we can email pictures or print them out for parents still in the hard copy stage.
We stopped about 1.5 hours into the trip for breakfast. It was leisurely and probably too leisurely for the amount of time we had. The kids ate two boxes of donuts and chewed on frozen orange juice. Parents raided the coke and water cooler. The kids wanted to play on a playground, but we didn’t come to play at a rest stop, so get on the bus guys!
We arrived in St. Louis and the kids spotted the arch way before I did. They were really excited to see this monument. It was brilliant sun, so the arch gleamed. They enjoyed the truck traffic, and the busyness of the city.
The big city traffic and had to make a second loop to find the right place to unload – about 30 minutes all together. Cities are never really people friendly. Off to the bathrooms! The children had to be patted down before they could use the bathroom, and it was at least 20 minutes before they returned to lunch site.
One parent remarked that the windows seem so small from below, like specks, but when you get up there, they are huge. I remarked that it would be fun to take the kids up, but most of the adults cringed. The chaos would be incredible.
We lunched under the arch, which was absolutely beautiful on the crisp fabulous day right on the lawn. The kids were respectful about their garbage. It helped. We ate peanut butter, cheese, tuna, egg salad, ham and cheese, and chicken salad. We had carrots and dip, pickles, chips, home made chocolate chip cookies, apples and the rest of the cola and water. I was a little concerned that the kids weren’t eating as much as they usually did. It would be a long time before they would eat again. I urged them to eat, but they were too interested in the sights.
Then it was off to Grant’s Farm. It was really crowded that day because the zoo was closed for a black tie affair. The lines were very long, and we waited patiently on the bus about 45 minutes before we were able to enter the park.
The park was free and very well put together. It’s a gift from the Budweiser Beer people. We boarded a tram which is the only way to get from one end of the park to the other. The guides were spectacular and held two whole carts for our group so we could stay together. We engineered a plan that every adult was responsible for two children, and it worked splendidly. We got to see a lot of interesting animals and tour the park.
We saw Grant's cabin, which is the only log cabin we have that was built by an American president. U Grant was an exceptional man, a brilliant, good man who was devoted to his family and our nation at a terrible time of war. He was a model for his troops. My husband once said of him, "If I had known that such a man existed when I was a boy, he would have been my hero."
One really fun feature inside the amusement part of the park was the goat pen. We were able to buy baby bottles filled with milk to feed the tiny baby goats. Some of the children loved it and some of them were a little put off by bold goats looking to latch onto just about anything including shirts and shoes. It was all in fun and the kids enjoyed it. We got some spectacular pictures.
We had to wait in line for at least 45 minutes to board the tram again to leave the park. It seemed like ages that we stood in line, and by that time the kids were really tired.
We had a final treat on the bus, compliments of Morgan’s mom, and we had a juice bottle before we boarded the bus. It was really refreshing after all that sun and go.
Again we had to wait in traffic to leave the park. Then it was a mad dash out of Missouri, across the beautiful Mississippi, through the lovely green hills of southern Illinois for one more stop, and then home.
So if you add up all the waits, the lines, the traffic, you can see why we were 1.5 hours late coming home. All in all, it was a fabulous trip and the kids really enjoyed going. It’s the kind of thing our teachers will do for families because we know it’s important. Some of our kids won't travel at all as young children, and travel is something they love. So why not travel as a part of our school curriculum?
As I said to several of the parents, I want our kids to be able to say that they’ve been to all these places when they get to big school. “I know what the arch is; it’s a symbol of the gateway to the west. I know because I went there and had a picnic under it with my class.”
We live in Southwestern Indiana. The common statement is: you can drive two hours in any direction and be someplace. Isn’t that worth exploring?
Pictures will be available soon. We used the spectacular camera we won for being the highest donator school for Easter Seals, and the memory chip fits into my computer, so we can email pictures or print them out for parents still in the hard copy stage.
Thursday, June 16, 2005
Traveling In School With Children or Field Trips!
There has been a big scandal in Wisconsin about a child who was left in a van and died – suffocation and heat prostration.
Last year a child was left at school while his classmates were taken on a field trip. He walked home.
How do these things happen?
It’s surprising it doesn’t happen more often, and it would but most day care centers don’t take children on field trips or provide transportation.
Let’s look closely at what is really going on here:
When a day care – and most are running on a shoe string – provide transportation to and from the center, the cost of using a regular school bus is too much. They buy a van which is the worst and most unsafe form of transportation available because of the nature of the structure of vans.
The day care center places a driver in the van to pick up children at home whose parents can’t get a child to childcare. Surprising they can get to work and play, but can’t get a child to child care. And if they are not going to work, why is the child in day care?
The driver must have a chauffeur’s license to legally operate the van in most states. This is part time work – two to four hours a day five times a week. It probably pays minimum wage. You can guess what kind of employee you will get.
There is no second provider in the van with the driver, because one non-attending adult is a critical violation to begin with. A driver’s job is driving not childcare. If a child chokes, has an adverse reaction to something just eaten, rolls a window and tries to jump out, assaults or injures another child or himself, what can the driver do? But providing two adults in a van to haul children would cost more than it’s worth to offer transportation in the first place.
Reality check list:
If you can’t afford to do it right; don’t offer it.
In this case, the child was two; it was early in the morning; the child was probably tired; the child probably fell asleep and slumped or lay down on the floor under the seat. The driver pulls in at the day care, the children picked up exit the van and the door is slammed shut. End of story.
Reality check list:
There was no second adult to count heads, take attendance or monitor the children.
Because the parent did not accompany the child to the day care, the child could simply be lost along the way in a nap situation that did not register with the driver. The parent thought the child was safely delivered and did not check on her during the day. The driver simply forgot. His job is driving not childcare. The providers at childcare simply thought the child was absent for the day.
Reality check:
Childcare is just that Child CARE – from the moment a child leaves home to the time he is returned or from the time a parent drops off a child to the time he is picked up. Providers need to know where every child is every day, and in a situation where a child is passed from one adult to another, it can become a nightmare – nearly the responsibility of the child.
For a school like the Garden School that takes children on as many as forty field trips a year, there are hard and fast rules that must be constantly kept without fail. Teachers work as a team, not occasionally, but every single time the children are out of the building.
Rule one:
All children should look the same in matching school shirts. Don’t believe you can easily do a field trip in varied street clothes in a crowded area. It just doesn’t work.
Children must be properly attired with good supportive shoes and clothes that fit.
Take a written attendance. If it is a long trip, call roll to the written attendance.
Count heads before leaving the school.
Count parents and chaperones.
Take a sweep of the building much the way you would in a fire drill.
Once the children are on the bus, and it should ALWAYS be a real bus, count the children not once but three times by three different teachers. That way at least three teachers know how many children are present.
When you arrive, count again.
During the trip gather the children often for a head count.
When you use a facility, count the children.
Before and after lunch count the children.
Before leaving any site, take roll.
Numbers always count.
After ten years of taking children on trips as far away as Tennessee and Missouri from Southwestern Indiana, it’s not hard, but it is a matter of constant attention by a staff that is unified, experienced, and trained to work with children.
Last year a child was left at school while his classmates were taken on a field trip. He walked home.
How do these things happen?
It’s surprising it doesn’t happen more often, and it would but most day care centers don’t take children on field trips or provide transportation.
Let’s look closely at what is really going on here:
When a day care – and most are running on a shoe string – provide transportation to and from the center, the cost of using a regular school bus is too much. They buy a van which is the worst and most unsafe form of transportation available because of the nature of the structure of vans.
The day care center places a driver in the van to pick up children at home whose parents can’t get a child to childcare. Surprising they can get to work and play, but can’t get a child to child care. And if they are not going to work, why is the child in day care?
The driver must have a chauffeur’s license to legally operate the van in most states. This is part time work – two to four hours a day five times a week. It probably pays minimum wage. You can guess what kind of employee you will get.
There is no second provider in the van with the driver, because one non-attending adult is a critical violation to begin with. A driver’s job is driving not childcare. If a child chokes, has an adverse reaction to something just eaten, rolls a window and tries to jump out, assaults or injures another child or himself, what can the driver do? But providing two adults in a van to haul children would cost more than it’s worth to offer transportation in the first place.
Reality check list:
If you can’t afford to do it right; don’t offer it.
In this case, the child was two; it was early in the morning; the child was probably tired; the child probably fell asleep and slumped or lay down on the floor under the seat. The driver pulls in at the day care, the children picked up exit the van and the door is slammed shut. End of story.
Reality check list:
There was no second adult to count heads, take attendance or monitor the children.
Because the parent did not accompany the child to the day care, the child could simply be lost along the way in a nap situation that did not register with the driver. The parent thought the child was safely delivered and did not check on her during the day. The driver simply forgot. His job is driving not childcare. The providers at childcare simply thought the child was absent for the day.
Reality check:
Childcare is just that Child CARE – from the moment a child leaves home to the time he is returned or from the time a parent drops off a child to the time he is picked up. Providers need to know where every child is every day, and in a situation where a child is passed from one adult to another, it can become a nightmare – nearly the responsibility of the child.
For a school like the Garden School that takes children on as many as forty field trips a year, there are hard and fast rules that must be constantly kept without fail. Teachers work as a team, not occasionally, but every single time the children are out of the building.
Rule one:
All children should look the same in matching school shirts. Don’t believe you can easily do a field trip in varied street clothes in a crowded area. It just doesn’t work.
Children must be properly attired with good supportive shoes and clothes that fit.
Take a written attendance. If it is a long trip, call roll to the written attendance.
Count heads before leaving the school.
Count parents and chaperones.
Take a sweep of the building much the way you would in a fire drill.
Once the children are on the bus, and it should ALWAYS be a real bus, count the children not once but three times by three different teachers. That way at least three teachers know how many children are present.
When you arrive, count again.
During the trip gather the children often for a head count.
When you use a facility, count the children.
Before and after lunch count the children.
Before leaving any site, take roll.
Numbers always count.
After ten years of taking children on trips as far away as Tennessee and Missouri from Southwestern Indiana, it’s not hard, but it is a matter of constant attention by a staff that is unified, experienced, and trained to work with children.
The Yale Report
Way back in May, about a month ago, I did an audio press conference from Yale about the national disgrace that preschoolers are more than three times more likely to be thrown out of school, expelled, than children ages k-12.
The report said that they don’t know why more four year olds are thrown out than children aged three.
They said they thought that California best suited children with their inability to expel any child for any reason. Interesting.
I think these reports are worth looking at so that parents know better what the experts are saying.
You can read the report yourself by clicking here.
The report said that they don’t know why more four year olds are thrown out than children aged three.
They said they thought that California best suited children with their inability to expel any child for any reason. Interesting.
I think these reports are worth looking at so that parents know better what the experts are saying.
You can read the report yourself by clicking here.
Wednesday, June 15, 2005
Remembering
My husband, Terry, and I were talking about the Newburgh Festival and how much fun our kids used to have spending their weekends combing the attractions, meeting people and having a ball. Because we both grew up with a tremendous amount of freedom, we gave our children the same, so from the time they were about five, they had more or less the run of Newburgh.
“Don’t fall in the river we eat at six,” was our family motto. It was (and is) a safe place to grow up, and the run of the town taught them a lot. They made friends easily and learned how to care for themselves. They learned how to buy something they wanted, how to be polite all on their own, how to go to the library and borrow a book. They figured out how to cross town to the pool and be responsible enough to come home when the weather got bad.
I was always home, and they knew home base was within a few blocks. When they did come home, there would always be a fresh supply of cookies and someone to listen to their tales of adventure.
During the festival days they could walk to the school - about half a block away and take the double-decker bus to the festival with their friends or a sibling. They could spend their time as they pleased among the rides and attractions and food booths where they dined on luxurious things like carnie pizza and hamburgers. Every so often they’d gravitate home with a handful of little plastic trophies and a hand out for more pocket change. I remember saving for weeks so they’d have enough to spend.
Those were sweet days; independent days I’m sure my grandchildren will never see. The world has closed up a lot since then. Sending kids out alone is not done much anymore even to the school playgound seems dangerous now. We’ve become frightened, so we keep our kids in the back yard under strict supervision.
At the same time fun has changed. Instead of combing the river’s beach for kid-interesting stuff like dead birds and washed up treasures and tumbling down embankments covered in rocks and weeds, today’s equivalent is air conditioned buildings where kids play video games and tumble on mats.
Years ago a stubbed toe, a giant splinter, a cut foot was ignored or wrapped in a leaf left to be tended when the child finally got home. Today, analgesic washes are a moment away from the injury.
Games have changed as well. Today children’s games are viewed – passively. The only action is pushing a button. The real test of good judgment is absent.
Terry reminded me of all the games that used to grace a festival - games of chance and skill that would probably bore today's child. Could you throw a ball? Could you remember? Did you have enough grace to get that ring over the bottle or that quarter in the little square or could you shoot the duck?
Yesterday the big stuffed toy was the grand prize. Today it’s a stack of cards that can be cashed in at the counter. Getting that huge stuffed dragon handed to you over the game counter because daddy could throw a baseball was about as exciting as Christmas.
Joy for children comes in what is a very small thing to an adult, but joy is constant - a string of little moments, and joy should always be constant yesterday and today.
I remember the first time I had my fortune told. I went into this little closet draped in fabric - very exotic and very beautiful. I really wanted to be there. The old woman, she was probably 35, took my hand and looked into her crystal ball. She was wonderful and kind and she told me that I would grow up to be this or that; I don’t remember, but I remember the moment; it was all very magical and fanciful and a lot of fun, and I remember thinking about her and what she said for a long time.
I wonder about that kind of fun for kids today. I wonder if that kind of experience would still be fun or if it has become ho hum. I wonder if the memory would stay with them, or if it would dissolve.
It would be interesting to put on an old fashioned festival and see. Maybe we’ll do that at the Garden School the last week we are in school this summer. Thoughts?
“Don’t fall in the river we eat at six,” was our family motto. It was (and is) a safe place to grow up, and the run of the town taught them a lot. They made friends easily and learned how to care for themselves. They learned how to buy something they wanted, how to be polite all on their own, how to go to the library and borrow a book. They figured out how to cross town to the pool and be responsible enough to come home when the weather got bad.
I was always home, and they knew home base was within a few blocks. When they did come home, there would always be a fresh supply of cookies and someone to listen to their tales of adventure.
During the festival days they could walk to the school - about half a block away and take the double-decker bus to the festival with their friends or a sibling. They could spend their time as they pleased among the rides and attractions and food booths where they dined on luxurious things like carnie pizza and hamburgers. Every so often they’d gravitate home with a handful of little plastic trophies and a hand out for more pocket change. I remember saving for weeks so they’d have enough to spend.
Those were sweet days; independent days I’m sure my grandchildren will never see. The world has closed up a lot since then. Sending kids out alone is not done much anymore even to the school playgound seems dangerous now. We’ve become frightened, so we keep our kids in the back yard under strict supervision.
At the same time fun has changed. Instead of combing the river’s beach for kid-interesting stuff like dead birds and washed up treasures and tumbling down embankments covered in rocks and weeds, today’s equivalent is air conditioned buildings where kids play video games and tumble on mats.
Years ago a stubbed toe, a giant splinter, a cut foot was ignored or wrapped in a leaf left to be tended when the child finally got home. Today, analgesic washes are a moment away from the injury.
Games have changed as well. Today children’s games are viewed – passively. The only action is pushing a button. The real test of good judgment is absent.
Terry reminded me of all the games that used to grace a festival - games of chance and skill that would probably bore today's child. Could you throw a ball? Could you remember? Did you have enough grace to get that ring over the bottle or that quarter in the little square or could you shoot the duck?
Yesterday the big stuffed toy was the grand prize. Today it’s a stack of cards that can be cashed in at the counter. Getting that huge stuffed dragon handed to you over the game counter because daddy could throw a baseball was about as exciting as Christmas.
Joy for children comes in what is a very small thing to an adult, but joy is constant - a string of little moments, and joy should always be constant yesterday and today.
I remember the first time I had my fortune told. I went into this little closet draped in fabric - very exotic and very beautiful. I really wanted to be there. The old woman, she was probably 35, took my hand and looked into her crystal ball. She was wonderful and kind and she told me that I would grow up to be this or that; I don’t remember, but I remember the moment; it was all very magical and fanciful and a lot of fun, and I remember thinking about her and what she said for a long time.
I wonder about that kind of fun for kids today. I wonder if that kind of experience would still be fun or if it has become ho hum. I wonder if the memory would stay with them, or if it would dissolve.
It would be interesting to put on an old fashioned festival and see. Maybe we’ll do that at the Garden School the last week we are in school this summer. Thoughts?
Tuesday, June 14, 2005
Flag Day
Here's a tribute to Mr. Gus who fought for us:
He walked in briskly taking control of the room. There was a lot of energy radiating from his six feet three inches and two hundred and twenty-five pounds. His size fourteen boots braced his athletic build as he viewed his assignment.
Forty children age three to six played vigorously across the huge playroom, laughing, putting puzzles and Legos together and drawing. They looked diminutive in comparison to this Marine, but they were the target – the target of his affections.
Sergeant Gus Nienaber agreed to teach the Kindergarten-First Grade as a substitute teacher. Mr. Gus is, after all, a licensed teacher too. He arrived back in the states from Iraq too late to find a high school history teaching job for this year so he subbed for Miss Rachel, a five feet, hundred pound size zero rock climber who normally calls this classroom her niche.
As a Marine, with the distinction of being the gunner in the tank that led the Jessica Lynch rescue, he is disciplined and a gentleman. As a teacher, he blends the world of knowledge and experience with a worldliness that marks a true professional.
“OK, you boys in dress up – find something manly to do.” The three boys sporting everything from velvet cocktail dresses and heels to Elfin magic hats and cat suits, quickly left the costumes behind and headed out to the building zone.
Dress up is something boys love as well as girls, but somehow, when there’s a man around, the boys would rather play with him and do boy stuff than the ordinary fare. Make believe is a classic tool for increasing the imagination, but make believe is not limited to any single play station.
“I’m Mr. Gus,” said the tall good looking Marine to parents and children in a voice that seemed to climb out of the boots. He held out his giant hand and shook hands with the most delicate young children. They loved it. His gregarious, affectionate, approach is something we are painfully missing in the early childhood arena.
We watched this young man perform one task with the children after another: math, reading, handwriting, science, literature, art (Mr. Gus is a fine artist). We realized what very young children miss during the day – men. Men are an incredible asset to rearing very young children, an asset that unfortunately is simply absent.
There was nothing this devoted young man wouldn’t do. As a teacher, he should be able to go into any classroom and teach, and last week, he proved that he is well equipped to teach any child.
One of his math objectives was to teach balance, so he had the children begin a Popsicle stick house that when finished will weigh nearly a hundred pounds and have thousands of Popsicle sticks. “I don’t care what it looks like; that’s not important. If they have a good time thinking about building and balance, it will be a good thing, that is if we can clean up the glue.”
Part of any good early childhood curriculum includes story time. Mr. Gus provided story time, and while reading the “Paper Bag Princess.” Mr. Gus hesitated suddenly, “Ronald,” he offered the name as a question. “You girls; never go out with anyone named Ronald.” It was just plain funny, off the cuff, the girls roared with laugher. It was the tone of the week – communication and laughter the kids really participated in.
Most young men would have fled in the first two hours. Mr. Gus seemed to love it and finished out the week with a smile on his face and a stack of refrigerator art, a lot of hugs and a lot of parents who think this young man hung the moon.
He walked in briskly taking control of the room. There was a lot of energy radiating from his six feet three inches and two hundred and twenty-five pounds. His size fourteen boots braced his athletic build as he viewed his assignment.
Forty children age three to six played vigorously across the huge playroom, laughing, putting puzzles and Legos together and drawing. They looked diminutive in comparison to this Marine, but they were the target – the target of his affections.
Sergeant Gus Nienaber agreed to teach the Kindergarten-First Grade as a substitute teacher. Mr. Gus is, after all, a licensed teacher too. He arrived back in the states from Iraq too late to find a high school history teaching job for this year so he subbed for Miss Rachel, a five feet, hundred pound size zero rock climber who normally calls this classroom her niche.
As a Marine, with the distinction of being the gunner in the tank that led the Jessica Lynch rescue, he is disciplined and a gentleman. As a teacher, he blends the world of knowledge and experience with a worldliness that marks a true professional.
“OK, you boys in dress up – find something manly to do.” The three boys sporting everything from velvet cocktail dresses and heels to Elfin magic hats and cat suits, quickly left the costumes behind and headed out to the building zone.
Dress up is something boys love as well as girls, but somehow, when there’s a man around, the boys would rather play with him and do boy stuff than the ordinary fare. Make believe is a classic tool for increasing the imagination, but make believe is not limited to any single play station.
“I’m Mr. Gus,” said the tall good looking Marine to parents and children in a voice that seemed to climb out of the boots. He held out his giant hand and shook hands with the most delicate young children. They loved it. His gregarious, affectionate, approach is something we are painfully missing in the early childhood arena.
We watched this young man perform one task with the children after another: math, reading, handwriting, science, literature, art (Mr. Gus is a fine artist). We realized what very young children miss during the day – men. Men are an incredible asset to rearing very young children, an asset that unfortunately is simply absent.
There was nothing this devoted young man wouldn’t do. As a teacher, he should be able to go into any classroom and teach, and last week, he proved that he is well equipped to teach any child.
One of his math objectives was to teach balance, so he had the children begin a Popsicle stick house that when finished will weigh nearly a hundred pounds and have thousands of Popsicle sticks. “I don’t care what it looks like; that’s not important. If they have a good time thinking about building and balance, it will be a good thing, that is if we can clean up the glue.”
Part of any good early childhood curriculum includes story time. Mr. Gus provided story time, and while reading the “Paper Bag Princess.” Mr. Gus hesitated suddenly, “Ronald,” he offered the name as a question. “You girls; never go out with anyone named Ronald.” It was just plain funny, off the cuff, the girls roared with laugher. It was the tone of the week – communication and laughter the kids really participated in.
Most young men would have fled in the first two hours. Mr. Gus seemed to love it and finished out the week with a smile on his face and a stack of refrigerator art, a lot of hugs and a lot of parents who think this young man hung the moon.
Monday, June 13, 2005
Evansville Courier and USI Professor
In Patricia Swanson’s Courier and Press article on June 6, 2005, she writes USI Education Professor Robert Boostrom believes a main goal of education is to teach children to think. The very next paragraph denounces standardized tests.
I agree with Boostrom about the curriculum deficiency, but I’ll unabashedly add that independent, creative, active thought begins about age three. That’s where ideas take hold. That’s where the love of ideas forms, and from what I’ve seen, it’s not happening.
Ideas will naturally draw in a thousand fascinating facts, but you can’t reverse that because a truckload of disconnected facts will never amount to anything. Ideas don’t start in the college classroom any more than they begin with standardized tests.
Teaching very young children to develop the habit of asking questions about things they want to know about begins in the early childhood classroom. Questions make teachers think too and should.
The crisis of education doesn’t begin with standardized tests; it begins with poor early childhood education and bad habits.
Judy Lyden
The Garden School
This is the letter I sent to the editor of the Courier and Press. I wonder if they will print it?
When you read what is generally written in the paper about kids, you realize how few people really know about kids and how they grow. It’s easy to copy copy and publish a lot of trendy half truths and clichés that fit into a particular agenda or headline, but putting oneself into a child's mind is not so easy. The big questions begin with "why" and "what" and the answers are slow in coming.
In a recent audio press conference I did for a study that came out of Yale, the professor could not tell his interviewers (press) just why a four year old is more likely to be thrown out of school than a three year old. Duh. I wanted to scream into the phone that a three year old is probably misbehaving for the first time; it's easy to curb, but the four year old is a practiced veteran who knows he's not even allowed to be put in time out. Makes a difference.
Children perceive the world differently than adults, and few adults realize just how differently that view is. Their reference points are first, innocent, and secondly limited. What is true to a child is often not true to an adult. A child's truth is often more concrete. Therefore, when an adult plants his fist with the demand, “believe it, darn it,” a child might look with horror and resentment because it just doesn’t seem true, fair or real. His innocence is shocked, hurt and he loses respect for the adult who is insisting.
Understanding how children think means perceiving with a child’s eyes, and that means remembering one's own youth; it means seeing innocently again; it means a kind of unconditional love that throws all prejudices away. It means seeing each child as Christ and giving up a piece of yourself every day in every way. That's what I see at the Garden School, and that's why the Garden School is just a little different kind of place than most, but that's just more traditional nonsense.
I agree with Boostrom about the curriculum deficiency, but I’ll unabashedly add that independent, creative, active thought begins about age three. That’s where ideas take hold. That’s where the love of ideas forms, and from what I’ve seen, it’s not happening.
Ideas will naturally draw in a thousand fascinating facts, but you can’t reverse that because a truckload of disconnected facts will never amount to anything. Ideas don’t start in the college classroom any more than they begin with standardized tests.
Teaching very young children to develop the habit of asking questions about things they want to know about begins in the early childhood classroom. Questions make teachers think too and should.
The crisis of education doesn’t begin with standardized tests; it begins with poor early childhood education and bad habits.
Judy Lyden
The Garden School
This is the letter I sent to the editor of the Courier and Press. I wonder if they will print it?
When you read what is generally written in the paper about kids, you realize how few people really know about kids and how they grow. It’s easy to copy copy and publish a lot of trendy half truths and clichés that fit into a particular agenda or headline, but putting oneself into a child's mind is not so easy. The big questions begin with "why" and "what" and the answers are slow in coming.
In a recent audio press conference I did for a study that came out of Yale, the professor could not tell his interviewers (press) just why a four year old is more likely to be thrown out of school than a three year old. Duh. I wanted to scream into the phone that a three year old is probably misbehaving for the first time; it's easy to curb, but the four year old is a practiced veteran who knows he's not even allowed to be put in time out. Makes a difference.
Children perceive the world differently than adults, and few adults realize just how differently that view is. Their reference points are first, innocent, and secondly limited. What is true to a child is often not true to an adult. A child's truth is often more concrete. Therefore, when an adult plants his fist with the demand, “believe it, darn it,” a child might look with horror and resentment because it just doesn’t seem true, fair or real. His innocence is shocked, hurt and he loses respect for the adult who is insisting.
Understanding how children think means perceiving with a child’s eyes, and that means remembering one's own youth; it means seeing innocently again; it means a kind of unconditional love that throws all prejudices away. It means seeing each child as Christ and giving up a piece of yourself every day in every way. That's what I see at the Garden School, and that's why the Garden School is just a little different kind of place than most, but that's just more traditional nonsense.
From Jeff
In case some of you didn't read the comment, I thought I'd publish it as an article. I know Jeff, and he and his wife Colleen are excellent parents. Austin is one of our best question askers.
Meshing old and new is always good,
I am a big fan of the new and technology and all the neat flashy lights and whistles, but I also love getting out in nature with just me and my backpack. I asked Austin about the fieldtrip. I heard about rain and birds and bugs. Gotta enjoy nature. I also think it is a good idea to sit down and make root beer or whatever. Someone who knows they like root beer can go and buy it. Someone who knows how it is made can create their own brand or special blend. Learning how and why things work teaches critical thinking skills and sparks creativity. No one changed the world by saying "this is ok just the way it is." Everytime Austin asks a question, I try to answer it. I know alot, but not everything by far. I encourage Austin to ask questions and if I dont know the answer, we can find out together. A bonding and learning experience all in one neat package. I see people who discourage their childern's questions because they think as a parent they should know it all and discourage the questions to cover their ignorance. Trust me, seek the answers together and you both will be enriched for life.
Jeff
Meshing old and new is always good,
I am a big fan of the new and technology and all the neat flashy lights and whistles, but I also love getting out in nature with just me and my backpack. I asked Austin about the fieldtrip. I heard about rain and birds and bugs. Gotta enjoy nature. I also think it is a good idea to sit down and make root beer or whatever. Someone who knows they like root beer can go and buy it. Someone who knows how it is made can create their own brand or special blend. Learning how and why things work teaches critical thinking skills and sparks creativity. No one changed the world by saying "this is ok just the way it is." Everytime Austin asks a question, I try to answer it. I know alot, but not everything by far. I encourage Austin to ask questions and if I dont know the answer, we can find out together. A bonding and learning experience all in one neat package. I see people who discourage their childern's questions because they think as a parent they should know it all and discourage the questions to cover their ignorance. Trust me, seek the answers together and you both will be enriched for life.
Jeff
Saturday, June 11, 2005
Meshing the Old and the New
We went to Lincoln’s Boyhood Home on Friday with the kids. It was, as it always is, SPECTACULAR. I’m sure the kids think it’s a great walk, but they can’t quite see what the attraction is, and neither can Miss Molly and Miss Stacey who are very modern young women. It was hot, it was buggy, it was smelly, and the attraction was a simple example of primitive pioneer life. What could be duller.
Of course, I could move up there and live as is. So could Mrs. St. Louis, but Edith and I are very fond of do it yourself ways of life. We like the quiet, the wait and see kind of living you used to get years ago. We like to make our own food, grow our own houseplants from single leaves, and make our clothing occasionally.
We think our attitude towards making and doing is why our kids at the Garden School learn as much as they do; because we introduce things slowly and from scratch, and we build slowly and we repeat over and over. But that’s not popular. New teaching models itself on a flash in the pan kind of presentation – a quick glimpse at the text, an inane example and then presto bingo, the kid memorizes it for the test and forgets it tomorrow.
That’s not knowledge; that’s stupidity.
The older I get, I realize that old vs. new is producing a real cultural clash. As I watch the conservative and liberal teaching titans battling it out in the public childcare arena, I see how the old more traditional ideas are quickly being suffocated to death with cries of “unnecessary, forgettable, and certainly not doable.”
While conservatives are yelling that nothing should ever change, that values from the eras of their own growing up should satisfy everyone, liberals are screeching that everything should change, change, change, now, now, now. It never worked anyway, and we need a fresh breath of air.
Who’s right?
Neither, in my poor thinking. Neither because you can’t grow without change, and you can’t change without substance. Substance comes from tradition. With a rejection of all things that are traditional, or an ignorance of all things traditional, there is no platform, no starting point, no way to obtain and retain substance.
That’s why I was fired from the paper; I had too great a love for tradition. It’s become my platform, and I was not supposed to draw from such non-real things as experience, expertise, or what I knew to be true. In the editor’s eyes, everything was true and tradition unnecessary, forgettable and certainly no longer doable or reproducible. Throw it all away and put on new clothes whether or not it’s true or has substance. It’s an ideology that doesn’t work for me. Sounds a little like modern dress – 25 cents of fabric on a stick.
Yet I must admit that a steady diet of old can also be as foolish. I once worked with a woman for whom tradition was more than a platform. It was a whole religion. While we were planning a new school curriculum, she fidgeted with great hostility. Her main focus was on school dress uniform not a policy on reading, not how to teach math, not science or history or even foreign languate. She was interested in resurrecting the old blue serge starched dress uniform from yesteryear that would dignify the student, and curriculum would follow this traditional gear.
So I asked her the big question: are students dignified by what they are wearing or what they know? Shouldn’t the curriculum tilt toward a plan that would teach a child to love reading rather than focusing on how the student would look?
Her answer was to lose it. That’s when Edith and I started the Garden School.
So how much of tradition does one keep and how much does one allow to change?
That’s a personal preference, a tradition we find in our culture perhaps more than other cultures. Personal preference is another name for free will. Free will, however, is only free if it serves right cause, and it is only free if it’s trained, otherwise it’s license and chaos.
Training begins in the beginning with parents and teachers who have at least and interest in knowledge. Collected knowledge, like a library, is not a new idea. It’s an old idea that can be traced to Babylon and ancient Egyptian libraries. What’s new under the sun is the Internet. If you use the Internet as a library, you are combining tradition with change, and it works. It certainly is easier to go on line and find out something than go to the library and sift through scores of old books.
Yet, if a teacher rejects the new, and only uses old texts to teach, and snubs all new works, what he is doing is taking the child from the modern culture. Eventually, the child will be made to choose between old and new. Children are sensitive, and they will choose an allegiance, and that allegiance should be to sense not nonsense. No one lives in old times. We all live in the present. Old texts have value, and some new works do too. Finding a balance between the old and the new is a useful search.
This week, The Garden School kids studied pioneers. We also made root beer. Originally, root beer was made by the pioneers as a treat. It is made originally from the root of a sassafras tree, sugar, water and yeast. The yeast grows in the sun and carbonates the drink.
Today we have learned that sassafras root is a carcinogen and not for human consumption, but the flavoring that can be bought at Wal Mart is just as good. That’s old and new coming together - and it works.
So why make it at all. Why not buy a couple of two liter bottles of root beer? Why all the fuss? Because doing teaches and so does making something, but you have to know that it’s possible, and how to do it, and be willing to do it. Kids should see teachers work, because the work of your hands is a form of saying “I love you; you matter to me.”
Check out the Lincoln link.
Of course, I could move up there and live as is. So could Mrs. St. Louis, but Edith and I are very fond of do it yourself ways of life. We like the quiet, the wait and see kind of living you used to get years ago. We like to make our own food, grow our own houseplants from single leaves, and make our clothing occasionally.
We think our attitude towards making and doing is why our kids at the Garden School learn as much as they do; because we introduce things slowly and from scratch, and we build slowly and we repeat over and over. But that’s not popular. New teaching models itself on a flash in the pan kind of presentation – a quick glimpse at the text, an inane example and then presto bingo, the kid memorizes it for the test and forgets it tomorrow.
That’s not knowledge; that’s stupidity.
The older I get, I realize that old vs. new is producing a real cultural clash. As I watch the conservative and liberal teaching titans battling it out in the public childcare arena, I see how the old more traditional ideas are quickly being suffocated to death with cries of “unnecessary, forgettable, and certainly not doable.”
While conservatives are yelling that nothing should ever change, that values from the eras of their own growing up should satisfy everyone, liberals are screeching that everything should change, change, change, now, now, now. It never worked anyway, and we need a fresh breath of air.
Who’s right?
Neither, in my poor thinking. Neither because you can’t grow without change, and you can’t change without substance. Substance comes from tradition. With a rejection of all things that are traditional, or an ignorance of all things traditional, there is no platform, no starting point, no way to obtain and retain substance.
That’s why I was fired from the paper; I had too great a love for tradition. It’s become my platform, and I was not supposed to draw from such non-real things as experience, expertise, or what I knew to be true. In the editor’s eyes, everything was true and tradition unnecessary, forgettable and certainly no longer doable or reproducible. Throw it all away and put on new clothes whether or not it’s true or has substance. It’s an ideology that doesn’t work for me. Sounds a little like modern dress – 25 cents of fabric on a stick.
Yet I must admit that a steady diet of old can also be as foolish. I once worked with a woman for whom tradition was more than a platform. It was a whole religion. While we were planning a new school curriculum, she fidgeted with great hostility. Her main focus was on school dress uniform not a policy on reading, not how to teach math, not science or history or even foreign languate. She was interested in resurrecting the old blue serge starched dress uniform from yesteryear that would dignify the student, and curriculum would follow this traditional gear.
So I asked her the big question: are students dignified by what they are wearing or what they know? Shouldn’t the curriculum tilt toward a plan that would teach a child to love reading rather than focusing on how the student would look?
Her answer was to lose it. That’s when Edith and I started the Garden School.
So how much of tradition does one keep and how much does one allow to change?
That’s a personal preference, a tradition we find in our culture perhaps more than other cultures. Personal preference is another name for free will. Free will, however, is only free if it serves right cause, and it is only free if it’s trained, otherwise it’s license and chaos.
Training begins in the beginning with parents and teachers who have at least and interest in knowledge. Collected knowledge, like a library, is not a new idea. It’s an old idea that can be traced to Babylon and ancient Egyptian libraries. What’s new under the sun is the Internet. If you use the Internet as a library, you are combining tradition with change, and it works. It certainly is easier to go on line and find out something than go to the library and sift through scores of old books.
Yet, if a teacher rejects the new, and only uses old texts to teach, and snubs all new works, what he is doing is taking the child from the modern culture. Eventually, the child will be made to choose between old and new. Children are sensitive, and they will choose an allegiance, and that allegiance should be to sense not nonsense. No one lives in old times. We all live in the present. Old texts have value, and some new works do too. Finding a balance between the old and the new is a useful search.
This week, The Garden School kids studied pioneers. We also made root beer. Originally, root beer was made by the pioneers as a treat. It is made originally from the root of a sassafras tree, sugar, water and yeast. The yeast grows in the sun and carbonates the drink.
Today we have learned that sassafras root is a carcinogen and not for human consumption, but the flavoring that can be bought at Wal Mart is just as good. That’s old and new coming together - and it works.
So why make it at all. Why not buy a couple of two liter bottles of root beer? Why all the fuss? Because doing teaches and so does making something, but you have to know that it’s possible, and how to do it, and be willing to do it. Kids should see teachers work, because the work of your hands is a form of saying “I love you; you matter to me.”
Check out the Lincoln link.
Thursday, June 09, 2005
Learning is Always Fun
There is a misconception about early childhood education that always makes me laugh then cry. In fact there is a misconception about all of education that makes me want to tear my hair out and scream “elephant.” It’s a private joke.
Where did anyone get the inane idea that education has to be dull? When was the last time you learned anything while bored to death?
When people visit the Garden School, they are always stunned by the fact that children are having fun, so it can’t be a real school, and what they are learning can’t have any substance.
Let’s develop an image – a pun intended. I love images because they say more than any other kind of communication and they are fun. Let’s say you want to learn to use a modern camera. That camera takes all kinds of pictures and short movies. You have a lesson at the camera shop at 3:45. It’s paid for by your company, and you’re really excited to do this.
You have visions of going to the park with a group of people, your camera in hand, and shooting what will probably be award winning short, short, short. You even dress for it; you wear shorts and your favorite t shirt.
You arrive at the camera shop and the rest of the class is there in business suits, business casual and there you are in your shorts and you feel like an elephant. The class is led by a sweet smiling lady who says virtually nothing to a tiny classroom in the back of the shop where you sit in a desk five inches from the next guy. You are shown a film about cameras in general.
Then you are given a work sheet to do. You must look through the instructions manual that came with your camera and fill in the blanks on the work sheet. You didn’t bring yours, so you get a dirty look from Mrs. Sweetie. When you are finished, you may go to the bathroom and you are reminded to wash your hands.
When you return, you are given a pair of scissors and told to cut the two eye holes from paper camera in front of you. You cut yours too big and you are scolded by Mrs. Sweetie who now looks like an elephant.
In a long drawn out spiel that sounds more like an environmental address, you are told where you should never go to take pictures because you might disrupt mother nature. You are told that you may not dispose of any batteries illegally, how you must wash your hands before you use a camera that it is inappropriate to take pictures that are naughty, and the spiel goes on in the hot classroom about stuff you will never do until you begin to nod off. Once again, Mrs. Sweetie is on your case.
Finally, you are told to raise your paper camera to eye level and practice taking pictures of the guy next to you who leans into you like you’ve been married for years and drools on you. He’s toothless.
You have just visited the modern classroom. The equivalent episode in a child’s classroom is about as dull. Personally, I never could stand it. I was never in trouble, just bored to death. I was Mrs. Sweetie’s nightmare till we took the IQ test in second grade and every siren in the city went off.
Learning should ALWAYS be fun, and kids should have an exciting time as often as possible, because learning is fun. Teaching a child where to find an answer by showing him all the possibilities and how many ways that information can be used is what teaching is all about.
Not every child will like every lesson, and that’s the nature of things. And not every child approaches material in the same way. Some kids are auditory and like a story and others like visual, a picture. The job of a good teacher is to know that.
Today, we are going to try to make root beer. We are still looking for the kit. But making root beer is fun and it teaches the properties of yeast which is something we have used for thousands of years. Kids should know where to find yeast and be able to harness it. It’s a bit of world information they should have.
Most little kids don’t know what a bakery is much less anything about them. The idea behind this kind of discovery is to acquaint children with the idea that our world does not come out of a closet already made. Who, what, when, where, how much are all questions they should be asking about everything.
A school that’s alive with discovery will not have desks as the center piece. Desks isolate. Children don’t learn by isolation, they learn by doing. Movement is the vehicle for learning. Discussion is the human exchange, and excitement is the gasoline.
Mrs. Sweetie has been invited to the Garden School next week for our class on water pistols. We’re studying the properties of water – mostly air borne, and we’re doing a sub chapter on how fast or slow clothes dry.
Where did anyone get the inane idea that education has to be dull? When was the last time you learned anything while bored to death?
When people visit the Garden School, they are always stunned by the fact that children are having fun, so it can’t be a real school, and what they are learning can’t have any substance.
Let’s develop an image – a pun intended. I love images because they say more than any other kind of communication and they are fun. Let’s say you want to learn to use a modern camera. That camera takes all kinds of pictures and short movies. You have a lesson at the camera shop at 3:45. It’s paid for by your company, and you’re really excited to do this.
You have visions of going to the park with a group of people, your camera in hand, and shooting what will probably be award winning short, short, short. You even dress for it; you wear shorts and your favorite t shirt.
You arrive at the camera shop and the rest of the class is there in business suits, business casual and there you are in your shorts and you feel like an elephant. The class is led by a sweet smiling lady who says virtually nothing to a tiny classroom in the back of the shop where you sit in a desk five inches from the next guy. You are shown a film about cameras in general.
Then you are given a work sheet to do. You must look through the instructions manual that came with your camera and fill in the blanks on the work sheet. You didn’t bring yours, so you get a dirty look from Mrs. Sweetie. When you are finished, you may go to the bathroom and you are reminded to wash your hands.
When you return, you are given a pair of scissors and told to cut the two eye holes from paper camera in front of you. You cut yours too big and you are scolded by Mrs. Sweetie who now looks like an elephant.
In a long drawn out spiel that sounds more like an environmental address, you are told where you should never go to take pictures because you might disrupt mother nature. You are told that you may not dispose of any batteries illegally, how you must wash your hands before you use a camera that it is inappropriate to take pictures that are naughty, and the spiel goes on in the hot classroom about stuff you will never do until you begin to nod off. Once again, Mrs. Sweetie is on your case.
Finally, you are told to raise your paper camera to eye level and practice taking pictures of the guy next to you who leans into you like you’ve been married for years and drools on you. He’s toothless.
You have just visited the modern classroom. The equivalent episode in a child’s classroom is about as dull. Personally, I never could stand it. I was never in trouble, just bored to death. I was Mrs. Sweetie’s nightmare till we took the IQ test in second grade and every siren in the city went off.
Learning should ALWAYS be fun, and kids should have an exciting time as often as possible, because learning is fun. Teaching a child where to find an answer by showing him all the possibilities and how many ways that information can be used is what teaching is all about.
Not every child will like every lesson, and that’s the nature of things. And not every child approaches material in the same way. Some kids are auditory and like a story and others like visual, a picture. The job of a good teacher is to know that.
Today, we are going to try to make root beer. We are still looking for the kit. But making root beer is fun and it teaches the properties of yeast which is something we have used for thousands of years. Kids should know where to find yeast and be able to harness it. It’s a bit of world information they should have.
Most little kids don’t know what a bakery is much less anything about them. The idea behind this kind of discovery is to acquaint children with the idea that our world does not come out of a closet already made. Who, what, when, where, how much are all questions they should be asking about everything.
A school that’s alive with discovery will not have desks as the center piece. Desks isolate. Children don’t learn by isolation, they learn by doing. Movement is the vehicle for learning. Discussion is the human exchange, and excitement is the gasoline.
Mrs. Sweetie has been invited to the Garden School next week for our class on water pistols. We’re studying the properties of water – mostly air borne, and we’re doing a sub chapter on how fast or slow clothes dry.
Wednesday, June 08, 2005
Something to Think About
The most interesting thing about the fast food controversy these days is that children don’t eat it.
Take forty kids out for fast food, set a few ground rules for the restaurant and watch them. What adults will notice is a genuine food fight. It’s subtle, it’s ongoing, it’s filled with emotion, but the idea at the end is: I’m not eating that stuff.
“Forty ‘kiddy meals’ please.” Go the distance. Buy every child the best child thing on the menu with a take along toy that ends up in his folder at the end of the day. Choose a place with the crawl around playground as well as a reward for eating – stuff, and it’s still a battle.
“Children, here are the rules: you must finish your little hamburger and fries, and drink your drink. Then you can play on the playground.” This is the third time the rules have been stated. An adult could eat the hamburger in a child’s fast food dinner in two or three bites, so the reasoning is sound.
Charlemagne is the first to balk. He drops a shoe and for twenty minutes fusses trying to put it on, taking out the laces, bothering the child across from him and the one next to him until he says, “Mrs. Clonmacnoise, my lunch is cold.”
Casey is bolder; he simply takes the cheeseburger and drops it on the floor. He’s five. He’s never dropped anything on the floor before, and probably won’t again. He eats half the fries and downs the drink. “I’m done; can I play?”
How do Geneva and Olympia manage not to eat? It’s easy; they cry. Weeping quietly and incessantly for ten minutes, they rub their eyes profusely until someone notices. They are doing the female balk. “I don’t like hamburgers or fries,” they weep. When Mrs. Clonmacnoise shrugs, they follow up bright eyed, “Can I play now?”
Some children will roll the food into tiny bits and disperse it among the crowd. Some will fire it across the restaurant when no one is looking. Some will hide it in their clothes. And the boldest of the bold will just take the whole thing completely uneaten and dispose it in the giant garbage bins that stand by the dozen for the purpose.
At the end of twenty minutes, the homemade equivalent of what would be eaten in fewer than five minutes at school is still fifty five percent on the table and another twenty percent on the floor. Children in tears over nothing and only six or eight of forty original children are allowed to play on the playground because they followed the initial directive – eat your lunch.
Looking around at other tables, Mrs. Clonmacnoise realizes what is amiss. Children with parents are not expected to eat. Original packages not even opened are still on the tables and children are nowhere to be seen. Parents sit reading or visiting with friends while children run off to worship at the idol of play.
Eating across America has become the secondary benefit of the restaurant. Now it suddenly makes sense considering how children have few manners and little respect for food.
One would think the abundance of food would lead us to thinking intelligently about nutrition and food choices. Instead, we have turned food into an unrespectable thing that gets zero tolerance in the hands of a child.
What was once something we prayed over has become nutritionally unsound and in the eyes of children, disposable. Its value? A pass card to the playground.
So what are we teaching here? That nothing is what it seems, that the very basics of life – food - is unimportant, that family socialization is unimportant, that the bigger hype of something public, something circus, “the thing” to climb on is the center of our emotional stage.
Take forty kids out for fast food, set a few ground rules for the restaurant and watch them. What adults will notice is a genuine food fight. It’s subtle, it’s ongoing, it’s filled with emotion, but the idea at the end is: I’m not eating that stuff.
“Forty ‘kiddy meals’ please.” Go the distance. Buy every child the best child thing on the menu with a take along toy that ends up in his folder at the end of the day. Choose a place with the crawl around playground as well as a reward for eating – stuff, and it’s still a battle.
“Children, here are the rules: you must finish your little hamburger and fries, and drink your drink. Then you can play on the playground.” This is the third time the rules have been stated. An adult could eat the hamburger in a child’s fast food dinner in two or three bites, so the reasoning is sound.
Charlemagne is the first to balk. He drops a shoe and for twenty minutes fusses trying to put it on, taking out the laces, bothering the child across from him and the one next to him until he says, “Mrs. Clonmacnoise, my lunch is cold.”
Casey is bolder; he simply takes the cheeseburger and drops it on the floor. He’s five. He’s never dropped anything on the floor before, and probably won’t again. He eats half the fries and downs the drink. “I’m done; can I play?”
How do Geneva and Olympia manage not to eat? It’s easy; they cry. Weeping quietly and incessantly for ten minutes, they rub their eyes profusely until someone notices. They are doing the female balk. “I don’t like hamburgers or fries,” they weep. When Mrs. Clonmacnoise shrugs, they follow up bright eyed, “Can I play now?”
Some children will roll the food into tiny bits and disperse it among the crowd. Some will fire it across the restaurant when no one is looking. Some will hide it in their clothes. And the boldest of the bold will just take the whole thing completely uneaten and dispose it in the giant garbage bins that stand by the dozen for the purpose.
At the end of twenty minutes, the homemade equivalent of what would be eaten in fewer than five minutes at school is still fifty five percent on the table and another twenty percent on the floor. Children in tears over nothing and only six or eight of forty original children are allowed to play on the playground because they followed the initial directive – eat your lunch.
Looking around at other tables, Mrs. Clonmacnoise realizes what is amiss. Children with parents are not expected to eat. Original packages not even opened are still on the tables and children are nowhere to be seen. Parents sit reading or visiting with friends while children run off to worship at the idol of play.
Eating across America has become the secondary benefit of the restaurant. Now it suddenly makes sense considering how children have few manners and little respect for food.
One would think the abundance of food would lead us to thinking intelligently about nutrition and food choices. Instead, we have turned food into an unrespectable thing that gets zero tolerance in the hands of a child.
What was once something we prayed over has become nutritionally unsound and in the eyes of children, disposable. Its value? A pass card to the playground.
So what are we teaching here? That nothing is what it seems, that the very basics of life – food - is unimportant, that family socialization is unimportant, that the bigger hype of something public, something circus, “the thing” to climb on is the center of our emotional stage.
Monday, June 06, 2005
Food and Children
What’s fattening? Most of us know what we shouldn’t eat, but we do it anyway because we like the taste, not because we need the calories.
When we buy, we buy the low fat, the sugarless, the low cal this or that, but do you know what you are buying and how these foods affect a child?
Sometimes we translate our diet menu onto our family diet, and that’s a mistake because adults have different needs than children.
The two components we are missing in the adult-to-child transfer are the need for calories because: A child is growing, and a child is moving.
If the average adult moved as much as a child, there wouldn’t be a need for diets. When athletes followed toddlers all day, they dropped by sundown.
So why are so many children obese today? Probably because they eat too many low fat foods. Ever ask yourself what they replace the fat with? Sugar. Could low fat foods be encouraging type two diabetes?
Children can handle fat; it’s a brain food, but too much sugar can cause the body to be unable to use it all because kids are rarely outside running. This results in obesity.
When you study a child’s diet, you have to take into consideration their body type. According to William Sheldon, a psychologist that gave his life to the study of body types, there are three body types and most of us are a combination of all three.
One body type is the endomorph. This child is heavy by nature, fairly proportioned in limb and in hands, feet and head. The child is outgoing, gregarious and makes his world a party – especially with food.
The second body type is the ectomorph. This child is lean as a bean pole, has tremendously long legs, and regular sized head and hands. This child is quiet, smart, and could pass by the spaghetti pot once a week, take a huge inhale, and fill up.
The last child is the mezomorph. This child is square, stocky, short legged, robust, and fuels when he eats. He’s aggressive, open, loud and eats twice what the others eat so that he can go, go, go.
So who is your child and what is he eating?
The parent of the obese child, the endomorph, will swear the child is not eating much. But when you look at the child eat, you see the method of ingesting food lacks thought, direction, and good sense. Certain endomorphs will pull food from the garbage can or scrape unmentionables off the floor like candy and gum even when they’ve been stepped on.
The endomorph will take huge bites like the mezomorph, but will not stop when full. The endomorph will continue to eat throughout the day.
Endomorphs will eat nearly anything, and top it off with a sweet drink, a pretty paper plate and a stack of invitations to invite friends. Strangely, it’s the sweet drink that’s the culprit here. Juice and nearly juice for an endomorph are empty calories. Better for this child to eat fruit whole. Anything but milk and water is probably not a good idea. By limiting sweets – not removing them - and by serving full fat foods, a parent can arrest the obesity.
Getting an ectomorph to eat is nearly as difficult as getting an endomorph to stop. Ecotmorphs are smart enough to eat when they finally have to do it, but the very idea of stopping play to eat is about as icky to an ectomorph as telling an endomorph to stop eating and go play.
Picky eaters all come from the ecotmorph group. Putting a little plate of food in front of an ectomorph is all a parent has to do to get most of them to eat because they think. They are never fat because food is an add on not a focus.
I’ve heard ectomorph adults tell me that if they never had to eat again, it would be a good thing.
The mezomorph is a trip to feed. They are the food contest people, and it doesn’t even have to taste good. A mezomorph will eat anything and all of it without thinking. They won’t know they are full until the plate is empty. Then it’s a matter of debate. My mezo son ate 35 tacos once. He ate a sea slug. When I asked him if he liked it, he said no. I asked him why he ate it, and it was more or less because it was available.
You won’t find a fat mezomorph child because they always work off the food they eat. The mezomorph child fuels. He fills up his machine, revs his motor and proceeds. He is good natured to eat anytime, any place, anything, and it’s gone in three seconds like a dog, and then he’s looking for more. But he won’t eat between meals if he’s not hungry. Why fill up before empty?
For the endomorph parent, the things to cut from a child’s diet when obesity strikes:
All sweet drinks including soft drinks that are calorie free. It encourages a penchant for sweet, and a constant flood of sweets is not good. For a while, try drinking water or milk, and limit milk to four glasses a day. Obese children will drink all day to keep their stomach full.
Low fat foods because of the added sugar. Low fat is for high cholesterol people. Children need the fat but not added sugar.
Second helpings and seconds on treats. It speaks for itself.
Children need treats, so limit them to foods a child can handle. One child’s ice cream, one child size piece of pie or cake.
When we buy, we buy the low fat, the sugarless, the low cal this or that, but do you know what you are buying and how these foods affect a child?
Sometimes we translate our diet menu onto our family diet, and that’s a mistake because adults have different needs than children.
The two components we are missing in the adult-to-child transfer are the need for calories because: A child is growing, and a child is moving.
If the average adult moved as much as a child, there wouldn’t be a need for diets. When athletes followed toddlers all day, they dropped by sundown.
So why are so many children obese today? Probably because they eat too many low fat foods. Ever ask yourself what they replace the fat with? Sugar. Could low fat foods be encouraging type two diabetes?
Children can handle fat; it’s a brain food, but too much sugar can cause the body to be unable to use it all because kids are rarely outside running. This results in obesity.
When you study a child’s diet, you have to take into consideration their body type. According to William Sheldon, a psychologist that gave his life to the study of body types, there are three body types and most of us are a combination of all three.
One body type is the endomorph. This child is heavy by nature, fairly proportioned in limb and in hands, feet and head. The child is outgoing, gregarious and makes his world a party – especially with food.
The second body type is the ectomorph. This child is lean as a bean pole, has tremendously long legs, and regular sized head and hands. This child is quiet, smart, and could pass by the spaghetti pot once a week, take a huge inhale, and fill up.
The last child is the mezomorph. This child is square, stocky, short legged, robust, and fuels when he eats. He’s aggressive, open, loud and eats twice what the others eat so that he can go, go, go.
So who is your child and what is he eating?
The parent of the obese child, the endomorph, will swear the child is not eating much. But when you look at the child eat, you see the method of ingesting food lacks thought, direction, and good sense. Certain endomorphs will pull food from the garbage can or scrape unmentionables off the floor like candy and gum even when they’ve been stepped on.
The endomorph will take huge bites like the mezomorph, but will not stop when full. The endomorph will continue to eat throughout the day.
Endomorphs will eat nearly anything, and top it off with a sweet drink, a pretty paper plate and a stack of invitations to invite friends. Strangely, it’s the sweet drink that’s the culprit here. Juice and nearly juice for an endomorph are empty calories. Better for this child to eat fruit whole. Anything but milk and water is probably not a good idea. By limiting sweets – not removing them - and by serving full fat foods, a parent can arrest the obesity.
Getting an ectomorph to eat is nearly as difficult as getting an endomorph to stop. Ecotmorphs are smart enough to eat when they finally have to do it, but the very idea of stopping play to eat is about as icky to an ectomorph as telling an endomorph to stop eating and go play.
Picky eaters all come from the ecotmorph group. Putting a little plate of food in front of an ectomorph is all a parent has to do to get most of them to eat because they think. They are never fat because food is an add on not a focus.
I’ve heard ectomorph adults tell me that if they never had to eat again, it would be a good thing.
The mezomorph is a trip to feed. They are the food contest people, and it doesn’t even have to taste good. A mezomorph will eat anything and all of it without thinking. They won’t know they are full until the plate is empty. Then it’s a matter of debate. My mezo son ate 35 tacos once. He ate a sea slug. When I asked him if he liked it, he said no. I asked him why he ate it, and it was more or less because it was available.
You won’t find a fat mezomorph child because they always work off the food they eat. The mezomorph child fuels. He fills up his machine, revs his motor and proceeds. He is good natured to eat anytime, any place, anything, and it’s gone in three seconds like a dog, and then he’s looking for more. But he won’t eat between meals if he’s not hungry. Why fill up before empty?
For the endomorph parent, the things to cut from a child’s diet when obesity strikes:
All sweet drinks including soft drinks that are calorie free. It encourages a penchant for sweet, and a constant flood of sweets is not good. For a while, try drinking water or milk, and limit milk to four glasses a day. Obese children will drink all day to keep their stomach full.
Low fat foods because of the added sugar. Low fat is for high cholesterol people. Children need the fat but not added sugar.
Second helpings and seconds on treats. It speaks for itself.
Children need treats, so limit them to foods a child can handle. One child’s ice cream, one child size piece of pie or cake.
Sunday, June 05, 2005
Simulation or the Real Thing
In a recent article published by the Evansville Courier called Computers going to preschool, Ben Feller, the Associated Press Education Writer writes about the internet in preschool as a positive learning tool.
As a preschool teacher, I object to this very adult activity introduced to the preschool child at school. Internet is fine to play with at home; it becomes a good mommy and me activity, but at school it easily becomes anti social, passive, and a stupefying button pushing take-me-away toy a little like TV.
The question is: Is this what very young children are supposed to be doing with their play time?
Very young children don’t know how to read and write, so for the most part, they are helpless. They are learning what letters are supposed to do, so until they read, it makes using the internet an adult led activity, and that’s what good preschools are trying to help children escape from -- dependent play. Kids need to invent play not once again be pulled into an adult forum.
Will they learn to read on the computer? Perhaps a child will learn to play some games and maneuver through some things, but try to translate it to the same level book. I think you will be surprised because computer reading is an altogether different kind of reading than the book.
Points of reference in very young children vary. So taking them to a web site only adds confusion. Children learn from listening; they are not visual learners, so pictures must be added to the sound of a familiar voice for the child to grasp the content. Kids will love the attention, they will love the pictures, but they won’t make the connection between a small picture from a website and an idea. Ideas build imagination.
"Young students don't differentiate between the face-to-face world and the Internet world."
That’s the problem. Children can learn to understand the world a little at a time in the regular course of stories and questions and answers, but if you micro it into the monitor and serve it up at light speed, the world becomes just another toy.
"They were born into the age of the Internet. They see it as part of the continuum of the way life is today."
Bunk. Very young children do no such thing. They simply take the monitor and the funny box with the light and consider it something that distracts mommy and daddy from them. When they get to play on the funny box, they’re delighted because mommy or daddy is finally paying attention to them.
Life is always beautiful and delicious, and children should learn this from going outside to play. Dependency on high tech is an add on not a preliminary even when they see mom and dad tirelessly play at the funny little box. Children need other things first, and they won’t get those things from a computer.
“One of their favorite computer activities is writing an e-mail to a grandparent,” said Alexander, author of a children's guide to the Internet. "It's great for letter recognition," she said. "Everybody likes to get mail and little kids don't have great tolerance for waiting. So the whole idea that they can write grandma and get an e-mail back a half-hour later saying, 'I got your note' - they love that."
As a preschool teacher, I object to this very adult activity introduced to the preschool child at school. Internet is fine to play with at home; it becomes a good mommy and me activity, but at school it easily becomes anti social, passive, and a stupefying button pushing take-me-away toy a little like TV.
The question is: Is this what very young children are supposed to be doing with their play time?
Very young children don’t know how to read and write, so for the most part, they are helpless. They are learning what letters are supposed to do, so until they read, it makes using the internet an adult led activity, and that’s what good preschools are trying to help children escape from -- dependent play. Kids need to invent play not once again be pulled into an adult forum.
Will they learn to read on the computer? Perhaps a child will learn to play some games and maneuver through some things, but try to translate it to the same level book. I think you will be surprised because computer reading is an altogether different kind of reading than the book.
Points of reference in very young children vary. So taking them to a web site only adds confusion. Children learn from listening; they are not visual learners, so pictures must be added to the sound of a familiar voice for the child to grasp the content. Kids will love the attention, they will love the pictures, but they won’t make the connection between a small picture from a website and an idea. Ideas build imagination.
"Young students don't differentiate between the face-to-face world and the Internet world."
That’s the problem. Children can learn to understand the world a little at a time in the regular course of stories and questions and answers, but if you micro it into the monitor and serve it up at light speed, the world becomes just another toy.
"They were born into the age of the Internet. They see it as part of the continuum of the way life is today."
Bunk. Very young children do no such thing. They simply take the monitor and the funny box with the light and consider it something that distracts mommy and daddy from them. When they get to play on the funny box, they’re delighted because mommy or daddy is finally paying attention to them.
Life is always beautiful and delicious, and children should learn this from going outside to play. Dependency on high tech is an add on not a preliminary even when they see mom and dad tirelessly play at the funny little box. Children need other things first, and they won’t get those things from a computer.
“One of their favorite computer activities is writing an e-mail to a grandparent,” said Alexander, author of a children's guide to the Internet. "It's great for letter recognition," she said. "Everybody likes to get mail and little kids don't have great tolerance for waiting. So the whole idea that they can write grandma and get an e-mail back a half-hour later saying, 'I got your note' - they love that."
But are they writing that letter to Grandma as much as say they are drawing a picture and having mommy mail that? No. They can’t read or write, so how is it their work? But they can draw, and this is a table and crayon activity.
School work too is a dubious thing. Does anyone know that computer math and paper math don’t mesh? A child who has mastered a program on the computer for math will often not be able to translate his work to paper. It’s just not the same.
Choose one: My child spent five hours on the computer today.
My child ran and played for five hours at the park today.
Which is better for a child? In a time when obesity and lack of social graces are chief components in a child’s failure to thrive, adding a computer in the preschool years is tantamount to dropping a forty pound weight on him.
At the Arnold & Porter Children's Center in Washington, 4- and 5-year-olds have the option to spend time on a computer, working in small teams.
"It helps them become more relaxed, more adventurous, and more willing to take risks as they learn," she said.
"Kids have a tremendous ability to expand their learning, and a computer is just one tool," said Mark Ginsberg, executive director of the National Association for the Education of Young Children. The potential danger, he said, is putting 3- and 4-year-olds in front of a computer lesson that demands graphic skills or word-recognition knowledge for which they are not ready.
The potential danger is making a three year old sedentary. Developmentally appropriate activities for three year olds are mostly active not passive learning. Active learning means using the senses and moving.
Computers are great for kids who can read, but for children learning to be, a computer introduced into a classroom too early could be very destructive because computers don’t get a child into the real world. What a computer does is simulate the world on a TV screen, and that can be very confusing to a very young child.
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