Caine’s dad George claims that he is no special parent. He says he simply knew his son, didn’t force him to do what he didn’t want, and allowed him the space, time, and “stuff” to do his thing. Caine filled his hours with empty boxes while George worked in his Boyle Heights auto body parts shop, side by side. Voila! Caine’s Arcade was born. And what a stir it has created in this city of over-programmed, do-it-all kids and their super goal oriented parents.

Call it down time, call it play time. I call it critical to a child’s development. The importance of unstructured time— no sports practice, no enrichment classes, no tutors, no school work, no playdates, no screens—cannot be over emphasized. Real downtime is when creativity goes up. It is when children’s resourcefulness and creative juices are squeezed, it’s when minds hatch crazy-good ideas. I am quite sure Mrs. Bell, little Alexander Graham’s mother, didn’t schedule his days dawn to dark. I can picture him playing with wires and such (to which we, in our hyper safety conscious world, wouldn’t think of allowing our kids access!)

Children today are never bored. They have no time to be bored; they’re too busy. But it is in those unstructured times when there’s nothing else to do that ideas are born, ideas like using cardboard boxes to create an arcade. But when cries of I’m bored! send parents into fits of anger (With all those toys you can’t find one thing to do?) or guilt (I have to get my work done him so I ‘ll just find something for him to do), the gift of boredom is lost. We just can’t tolerate our child’s unhappiness or boredom, anyway.

On top of that, many of the toys we buy children today stifle their budding creativity. In the olden days, Legos were purchased by the bag, a whole bunch of different size pieces, used over and over again. Today you buy the Lego Castle or the Lego ATV. The child puts it together, copying the picture on the box (that is, if he can without your help). It’s done, and there it sits. Now what? The put-together toys that come without the template are the one that beg the child to create his own masterpiece. They are the ones that invite the child to keep inventing, playing long after the “playing stage” is reputed to be over.

I love loose parts. I know they wreak havoc on playroom clean up—all those pieces strewn about. But it is from loose parts that the imagination’s-wanderings come to life. And it is from loose parts that ideas and inventions are born. Loose parts come in all materials, all shapes, all sizes. They are lengths of tubes or bendy wire, holiday card fronts, scraps of fabric, of ribbon, of wood, empty food boxes, useless keys. Teachers know how to view other people’s trash as classroom treasures. So should you. They are the seeds of resourcefulness and creation.

And the next time UPS truck rolls up with your delivery, get ready . You can have the TV because the real fun is in the box.

The mom of a 17 year old shared the story of taxi-ing her newly minted driver-daughter and a friend to a party.  After the mom stopped at the corner sign, the friend exclaimed, “Wow! You came to a full stop.  My mom always rolls through them.”

Your kids learn to how drive long before they are learning to drive.  In the same way that you model behaviors of all kinds, so do you teach your child how be safe on the road, how to operate a lethal weapon called a car, and how to be a driver. 

The mandatory driving lessons and practice time behind the wheel teach a teen how to operate the vehicle. But how does she learn driving behaviors and habits, ones that will help keep her safe on the road? These are the lessons that your child starts absorbing as soon as she can climb into his car seat all by herself.

 For anyone who drives with a child in the car, there are five particular areas that are worthy of your attention, whether your child is 4 years or 14…because is he watching. 

1. Obey all the traffic rules. Sounds obvious, I know. But if you are in the habit of rolling through that stop sign, if you make risky left turns, if you speed up to make it through the yellow light, guess what you are teaching your one-day-to-be driver? You can preach the importance of obeying the traffic rules, but your own rule-following teaches the real lesson.
2. Never drink and get behind the wheel.  Everyone knows this one, and evidence shows that a parent’s admonitions, real life examples of resultant tragedies, and the parent’s own modeling are all crucial teachers. But if it’s okay for you to have just one glass of wine and then drive, it will be okay for your child to do the same. Don’t do it. And in front of your child, state that Mommy is not driving because I had a beer.
3. Do not touch your handheld device.   Even in Bluetooth enabled cars, drivers are distracted by their smart phones—texting, locating numbers, looking at calendars while driving. Your kids are watching you. Even if you text at a stoplight, not only are you tempting fate, but you are shouting the message that it is okay to do so. Don’t…ever!
4. Driving is not hands free.  Men shave in the car; women put on makeup with one hand. My husband saw a man practicing with drum sticks on the steering wheel as he drove.  A mom admitted to me, “I totaled a car because I was eating as I drove.” Don’t model multi-tasking while driving.  Your children need to see you give 100% of your attention and all of your body to the task at hand:  driving.
5. Drive patiently. Even those of us who are challenged by patience, must cultivate a driver personality that embraces it. Road rage leads nowhere good. Honking, calling other drivers names, berating the woman who cut you off is not likely the driver personality you want your child to imitate.

Parenting a child who drives a car requires a kind of trust and letting go for which nothing can prepare you. You can’t control the world—all the other drivers— in order for your child to be safe. But by your own driving behavior, you can teach your child to be a sane and smart driver, a lesson he will not learn in driving school. It’s not too soon. Start now.

The omnipresence of Christmas trappings fuels what is known as the “December Dilemma.” Many a Jewish parent recalls lusting after Christmas trees as a child, and that memory is enough to push her over the edge, all the way to the Christmas tree lot. Some go so far as to call said tree a Chanukah Bush or a Holiday Tree, claiming it is just part of the winter season.

Truth be told, it isn’t only the Jews who want what isn’t theirs at the holidays. Parents have shared with me stories of their Christian kids wanting to celebrate Chanukah because it lasts 8 nights. I once read an article about non-Jewish kids who were feeling deprived because they were not having Bar and Bat Mitzvahs. Their parents’answer?   The Faux Mitzvah! A big party with a d.j. that mimicked the Bar Mitzvah reception, but given for no reason at all. No joke.

(If I were a clergywoman, I would continue here about why Christmas trees and wreaths are a part of Christian observance and why Chanukah and its 8 nights celebrate a victorious freedom fight. But I write from the perspective of a child development and behavior specialist.)

No parent, regardless of religion, wants to be the cause of her child’s disappointment. So, in much the same way that parents have a hard time saying no to their kids about many things (No pierced ears, no ipad, no nights at the mall…), unless there is a strong religious conviction, some Jewish parents just give in and get the tree. It’s better, they conclude, than being on the receiving end of the whining and the – “That’s not fair!” cries.  But what is the lesson? It certainly isn’t to tolerate disappointment.

Children need to learn that you can enjoy something without owning it.  Think about the library. You can borrow books, ten at a time, read them over and over for two whole weeks, and then return them.

The Parenting Center I founded was another example. Magnificently stocked with the most interesting, unique, uncommon toys I could find, it was play heaven.  Not a day would pass that a parent wouldn’t ask where I had purchased the Tree Blocks or another toy that she must have for her child.  I explained, “It’s really okay for your child to use those sand tools just while he’s here at school. He doesn’t need to own them.” (And I wouldn’t share the source, just to drive home the lesson.)

As young children grow, their interest in and experience with the winter holidays changes. They learn that everyone celebrates everything differently—Christmas, Chanukah, Kwanza.  It is well within the range of normal development for children to want for their own anything (and everything) that appeals to them. Knowing that lots of Jewish families are experiencing the December Dilemma, I offer the following tips.

·     Keep your own feelings in check. If you feel sad or even guilty, as if you are depriving your child of something, your child will absorb those feelings. You need not feel guilty that Santa isn’t a part of your celebration.

·     Honor your child’s feelings. Take this opportunity to walk your child through her/his feelings of disappointment.  Life is filled with times when we can’t “have it all”.  Understanding that and giving your child the opportunity to reflect those feelings and help him develop coping skills is a gift. It will teach a tolerance for disappointment which is a critical, life-long lesson.

·     Play reindeer games. Help your child to learn that you can love and appreciate something without bringing it into your home. You can go to a Christmas tree lot and play hide and seek, as you smell the fragrant trees. You can get yourselves invited to a friend’s house to trim their tree. You can count the number of wreaths you see on front doors.  You can pile in the car in your pj’s and search for Christmas lights all over the city.

·       Use all eight days. Take pains not to position yourselves as Jews who are “missing out” on something.  Rather, be creative in your celebration of Chanukah, creating all kinds of family experiences, rituals and traditions. You have 8 days to celebrate, and on each of these you can do something different and special (a dreidel night; a baking night; a game night; a making-gifts-for-others night; a party night; and a few gift nights, too.)

 Let me put your mind at ease. You have not been lying to your child if you have allowed Santa Claus to be part of your Christmas celebration.  Santa is a cultural myth; he is part of our folklore.

 Almost all young children’s celebration of Christmas has included Santa Claus at some point. He is part of the magic of the holiday. And it is thrilling for children to believe that there is a guy with a white beard and a red suit, who flies through the sky in sleigh pulled by reindeer that carries enough toys for all the children in the whole world. He lands on your roof, finds the exact present you want, comes into your house via the chimney, leaves the gift, eats the cookies, gulps the milk, and climbs back up that same chimney, now off to the next house.  You’d have to believe in magic to buy that one!  How lucky are young children that they do. Oh to believe in magic and Santa again.

 Your child will ask if Santa is real. It might come when he is 5 or even much older, at 8 or 9. The impossibility of the story might just dawn on him, or his buddy who has an older brother might burst his balloon.

 But when your child comes to you, what do you say?  “Well, what do you believe?” Because he wants the magic, he’ll believe. But then that questioning, growing-up voice will persist. “But what do YOU believe?”

 I am not someone who wants to rain on a child’s parade, and I don’t think you are lying.  I think you are doing what your mother did for you, and what her mother did for her. You are passing down the folklore, keeping up the tradition, and allowing your child to fully enjoy the magic while he can.

 “When I was a little girl, I believed in Santa Claus. Now that I am grown up, I have different ideas about him. Each person gets to decide for himself if he thinks Santa is real. What I can tell you for sure is that the story of Santa is part of celebrating Christmas, just like Frosty and Christmas trees and lights and wreaths.”

 And when your 10 year old is on the verge of spilling the beans, bring him into your inner circle. “When Grandma was a little girl, her mommy told her about Santa, and when I was little, Grandma told me about Santa, and when you were little, I told you about Santa. And now you get to help me keep the story going and let your little brother believe in Santa. One day, he will figure it out, just like you did. But he’s just a little boy, so help me to pass on the story to him.”

“10 Unsettling Education Trends Started By Tiger Moms”

http://www.onlinecolleges.net/2011/08/10/10-unsettling-education-trends-started-by-tiger-moms/

Not only is the information powerful and important in the lives of parents and children, but it is incredibly thought provoking.

Let me know what you think by sending a comment.

Wait a second! Time out!  This doesn’t have to be the case.  The problem is the definition of learning.  And it is so much more than the three r’s and all that is associated with classroom activities. Learning is about thinking, exploring, questioning, expanding your horizons, having new experiences, and using and growing the skills you have cultivated all year long.

Learning , and learning in the summer in particular, wears so many different faces, that it doesn’t always fall into the category of “learning” (hear the groan?) as kids come to know it. Learning in summer offers much that the school year doesn’t.    Summer brings time that is unstructured, schedules that are less encumbered, environments that are untraditional and ripe for discovery, and opportunities to create and follow your own interests and lesson plans. It is a time of year that is ripe with real learning opportunities for kids of all ages, learning that is not limited to the three r’s and drill and kill.  Summer gives us the chance to stretch and expand thinking. So, let’s reframe and put a whole new spin on that word “learning.”

Wherever you are, learning opportunities abound.  As parents we can keep our kids’ brains active and sparking, new synapses forming all summer long.  Some of this happens with our help, and some happens if we leave our kids alone (and unplug the enemy screens.)  Remember, kids need time to play, with and without friends.  In those unstructured, unscripted, unplanned times, they are growing ideas! Isn’t that learning?

In the summer, the parent becomes teacher of a different sort, the one who sees opportunities and potential in everyday activities and adventures. Whether you are in your own home, running errands, taking a family field trip, there are learning opportunities aplenty. With a little creativity and a dash of resourcefulness, parents can help children to see that learning is fun and active, happens outside of the school walls, and is not limited to work books and forced reading.

The car is a learning environment.  Instead of relying on the car DVD and other tech devices, turn your child’s brain and senses on!  Old fashioned car games, giving points for answers found, involve the whole family.

• Play “I’m Going on a Trip” and practice memory and alphabet skills. (Each person adds an item, going A to Z, and each turn repeats the whole  list.  Person #3 says I am going on a trip, and I am taking an Apple, a Basketball, and a Caterpillar. And then onto the the next person. I amgoing on a trip, and I am taking a…
• Play “I spy” using shapes in the world that is passing you by (Who can find a triangle shape?).
• Play “Out of State License” spotting.
• Play spotting games of all kinds:  Who can find a license that has a G in it? Who can find a license plate  whose numbers add up to more than 10?
• Play structure spotting games:  How many gas stations can you spot? Houses with cars in their driveway? Houses with more than one chimney?
• Play math word games:  Daddy can eat 3 pickles in 5 minutes. How man pickles can he eat in an hour.

You can spice up the “learning” in your everyday errands:

• At the grocery store:

1. Enlist your child’s help in writing the grocery list. Ask your child to write down the kitchen need as it arises.
2. Give your child her own child a list to fulfill at the store.
3. Involved your child in guessing the weight of produce, the total cost at checkout.
4. Ask the manager if he would show you and your child the meat refrigerator or the cold storage area where vegetables are kept.

• At the bank

1. Enlist your child’s help in filling out the deposit (withdrawal) form.
2. Talk with the bank clerk about the different ways that people use the bank.
3. Ask the manager to give your child a tour of your bank and chat about where the money goes…and where it comes from!

• At the cleaner, ask for a tour of the cleaning and iron machines.
• At the gas station:

1. Estimate how much gas your car will take, and watch the pump numbers soar.
2. Guess how much it will cost to fill up the tank.  (Yikes!)
3. Show your child under the hood of your car, where the oil goes, for example.
4. Ask the attendant to show your child how to change a tire.

• At the post office, ask to see where the letters get sorted.

And the learning continues with your discussion around the dinner table, as your child shares what he has seen.

Turn visits to museums, to parks, and to recreation areas in” hunts” of all kinds. Give your children a list of things they need to find:

• (At the art museum) Find an artist whose first and last names start with a P and who painted faces with the eyes in funny places. Find a painting that has only three colors.
• (At the Natural History Museum) How many animals can you find which are smaller that you are?  Larger?  Who has toes? Claws? Whose eyes are on the sides of their heads?  Whose are in the front? Who has fur? Hair? Feathers?
• (On a nature hike) Find something that an animal might eat.  Find something that is crunchy, something grows on a tree. Find evidence that an animal lives there. Play games using a blindfold, asking  Guess what it is of the person who can’t see. Be very quiet and pay attention to what a noisy place it is, naming the sounds you hear.

Summer is perfect for a long range project….because you have the time. Be only the consultant, not the director, in these pursuits.

• Put on a production. Your child writes the script, recruits the players, and puts on the show. She makes the lists and invites the audiences (homemade invitations), arranges the theater seating, even bakes the reception goodies.
• Hold an art show. Your child is the artist, hangs her work in the home “gallery.”  She creates and distributes the invitations; she cooks the reception goodies.
• Hold a recital.  Your child can perform his talent—a drum show, piano recital, karate demonstration.  He makes his guest lists, invitations, program, and reception treats. He arranges the room and the audience seats.
• Hold a creative writing/poetry reading.  Your child creates invitations and arrange the reading room and prepares the reception.
• Build something– a skate board ramp, a doll bed, a mouse house. Anything that requires thought, planning, directions, supplies, and elbow grease will keep your child’s wheels turning.
• Start any kind of a collection—rocks, shells, coins, stamps, baseball cards.  The organization and categorization (and stoage) require plenty of skill.
• Have a garage sale–at this one he’ll sell his toys, clothes, and stuff. He gets to make the signs, put prices on items, organize the items, run the bank…and count his money made!

And the business of everyday life at home, offers plenty of learning opportunities:

• Pay your bills with your child, letting him see what things cost and how  pay for them.
• Invite your child to cook with you—measuring  is a math skill.
• Ask your child to make place cards for the dinner table.
• Ask your child to help you clean out or organize almost anything! Sorting, alphabetizing, categorizing take thought and effort.

Starting with reframing your ideas about learning, whether it’s a project, a field trip, or just the business of daily life, summer is ripe with opportunity for reinforncing skills learned and adding new ones.  Who says the days of summer are lazy?!  They are just filled with expanding your child’s thinking and growing a his mind!

 Are they kidding? Sadly, they are not.  And more and more parents are drinking the Kool Aid, believing that this is actually a good idea. The poop at the park is that force feeding your toddler academics before he has even started preschool is the key to getting your child into the “best” preschool, which is the ticket into the “best” elementary school, which will lead to the “best” high school and in turn, the Ivy League. And then what? The best life? If only there were such guarantees.

 Child development experts throughout our country are mourning the shrinking role, if not the disappearance of play in early childhood programs as well as in kids’ lives.  Most parents associate play with not work  (and in their minds not learning). They conjure up images of toys and mud pies and wildly running around. But play is the work and business of childhood. It is precisely how children learn. It is through play of all kinds that children gain the foundational experiences that will enable their meaningful learning of academics later on when it is developmentally appropriate. It is through play that children develop language, pre literacy, thinking skills, mathematical concepts, social skills, self control, self confidence…to name just a few of the direct outcomes. We know, too, that drill and kill (the tutoring that Kumon type programs offer) is not aligned with the young child’s neurological development. The right hemisphere of the brain, which thrives on sensory and emotional input, plays the dominant role in the young child’s learning, later and gradually joined by the left hemisphere and more traditional academic pursuits.

 Hearing your child recite letters, regurgitate number facts, and essentially “dance for grandma” (to steal a phrase from A Chorus Line), bursts these parents’ shirt buttons. Here is proof of their child’s so-called advanced learning. He is in the running! But what does it really prove?  That your child can memorize?  Memorizing is not necessarily learning. And there is absolutely no sound data demonstrating that the performing child remains at the front of the class beyond the kindergarten years or the correlation between early rote learning and later achievement. None.

 We weep about what our young children are not developing as they are subjected to early academics, twice weekly visits to the tutor, and nightly homework (twenty minutes for math and reading skills required by Kumon!)  But parents don’t know any better. Everyone else is doing it. Welcome to competitive parenting. Whose kid will reach the “top” first?

 The drill and kill skills will not give your child any advantage in his life pursuits let alone get your child a job. In fact, it’s the kids in India who will get those jobs! It will rob him of the time needed to explore and discover, to cultivate his social, independent, and personal skills, to learn to think outside the box in ways  that will set him apart from the number crunchers in far off lands.

 I can promise you that force feeding letter and number recognition to the two or three year old child will neither hurry his learning nor get him into Harvard. It might make you feel like you’re keeping him in the parentng race, but at what cost?  Where is David Elkind’s The Hurried Child when we need it?

 I fully believe that you really like your child, that there are times when you get along like peas and carrots, that you say you can read each other’s minds. But your child, whether young or old, needs you to be her parent. She has enough friends, and so do you.

I know that you don’t get to spend much time with your child; both of your schedules are packed 24/7.  So you want what little time you have together to be pleasant. I know it’s just easier to say yes, and everyone will be happy…for the moment.

I was told the story of a 15 year old girl who was invited to a party at a school mate’s house.   Her mother, as she has always done, called the party giver’s parents to check on the plan. The father shared that he was okay with beer and vodka, “… but I draw the line at weed.”  (No joke!)  His response to the supervision question was, “I’m not the kind of dad who checks on the kids all the time, but I will be at home.” Upon hearing the news that she would not be going to the party, the girl was furious, really furious.  It lasted many hours. But the next day it was as if it had never happened. “In fact,” Mom said, “she was unusually friendly and warm.”

Being a parent requires you to make some tough calls, to be unpopular, even hated sometimes. You will be the meanest mom in the world and threatened with a child who wants to live with another family, maybe run away. You will feel like a salmon swimming upstream when you’re told that alllllllllllll the other kids’ parents said they could, and you still say no.  But this IS your job.

Children are not like self-basting turkeys; they just can’t grow themselves.  Children will seek all the good stuff they can get—be it extra tv time, cookies from the platter, or minutes at the mall. And they count on you to stop them, to rein them back in. It is their job to test the limits; it is your job to stop them.  And as children get older, more than ever they rely on you to be their brakes, especially when faced with peer pressure. “No, my dad will kill me if I get home after curfew.”

Your child needs to know that you love her so much that you will tolerate her explosive protest when you lay down the law and you will not change your mind because of it.  Nothing can be more important to you than her well being, her safety, and her learning the rules of the road.

This is the job of a parent…not a friend.

Most children really do want their parents to be proud of them, proud for a variety of reasons. While we don’t actually remember the many times that they were, it is the composite of all those moments that contribute to the child feeling significant in his parents’ eyes. This is just one of the ways that a child feels connected to his parents.  But how well children remember the times when their parents are not proud. Being disappointed in your child, communicating that he hasn’t met your expectations is powerful stuff. And it becomes etched in his psyche forever. As such it should be the exception, not the rule.

Like wild fire, the Wall Street Journal article Why Chinese Mother’s Are Superior by Amy Chua flew through cyberspace last week.  I was sent this article by many clients, each of whom was eager for my reaction. Frankly, I got pretty sick of talking about it in my parenting groups, with individual clients, at the gym, and wherever I went. I saw Amy Chua on The Today Show, on CNN, everywhere.  Enough!

Then today as I was preparing a presentation on The Plague of Perfectionism, I realized that so many of my perfectionism caveats hit the nail on Tiger Mom’s head.  I had to respond.

Here are just some of the characteristics of people who suffer from perfectionism:

• Have exceptionally high expectations and goals for themselves and condemn themselves when they don’t achieve them.
• Have anxiety about making mistakes
• Are highly sensitive to criticism
• Have trouble making decisions
• Avoid trying new things for fear of failure
• Procrastinate or leave work unfinished out of fear it won’t be good enough.
• Focus on their mistakes, rather than on what they did well.

The similarities between children who are perfectionistic and children who have been raised in the dens similar to the Tiger Mom’s are undeniable. Stories abound of those raised with such pressure and stress who crashed and burned as teens, who ran in the other direction as soon as they left home, or who reached adulthood incapable of achieving without the structure or motivation provided by their parents (or another adult.) These are children who grow up to have little sense of their success being of their own making.  They were doing what they groomed to do, following someone else’s dreams.

Of course there are those who make it, who experience the success prescribed by their parents. But at what price?  Growing up is a journey, a long, wild, and wonderful journey. It can be a full quarter or third of a person’s life. Should it be filled with unrelenting efforts to achieve, with pressure and stress and a constant drone of work, achieve, perform, strive, climb, more, more, more?

The pathway of childhood should be cobbled with so many things—the acquisition of skills and tools to be used in future learning, with experiences of all kinds, with joy and happiness and adventure. Along the way, children will cultivate the values and characteristics promoted in their homes.  Children need the freedom to explore and find their own pathways. Growing up is not a forced march.

 I have been hearing about this book since its release, but shame on me for not reading it until now. It is my loss. Don’t let it be yours.

 Of Thee I Sing, a beautifully, joyfully illustrated book, will drop you to your knees. Each pair of pages proclaims a trait that Obama admires in his girls. “Have I told you that you are creative?” he declares on one page. And on the facing page there is a simple, elegant reference to a great American.  Paired with creativity, for example, is Georgia O’Keeffe. The writing is rich and stark, poetic and simply descriptive and delicious, and rolls off your tongue.  This book is educational and emotional, said this author who was in tears at its conclusion.

 Each of the Americans he portrays is someone about whom your children must know. Each has made a profound contribution to society as we know it today. And each embodies a quality we all want to cultivate in our children.

 As you must know, having read many of my blogs, I am a promoter of families and family life. It is the family that has the deepest and most lasting impact on children. And so I see the family meal (breakfast, lunch, or dinner) as being the ideal vehicle for presenting Of Thee I Sing. Each trait paired with  an American is perfect for starting a family discussion, regardless of the age of the people seated at the table. Everyone will be able to relate on his own level. 

I once learned that Joe Kennedy, or maybe it was Rose, used to bring an article from the Times to their dinner table each night for discussion among the Kennedy children. While that might be a “high fallutin’ ” approach, the idea is good one. It is through the banter of meal times that children absorb their parents’ beliefs and values. It is during family meal conversations, when each member has the floor, that children feel their opinions and ideas matter. 

 In the coming year, in addition to making family meals happen, why not make the most of them?  Let Of Thee I Sing be the icing on your cake.