Hakuna Matata

As part of her internship program, Ms. Sidra Tareen, our HGSE guidance intern, started a blog to house her learning as well as strategies and tips for managing worries. Please check it out and subscribe to it for updates.

Here is the link to: Hakuna Matata Blog

How to Disagree - Wisdom from Kid President

Quoting Mandela, Gandhi, and Meowth!

What Our Children Need

This is such a great article about what our children really need from us!  We want to grow children with imagination and creativity, who know how to build relationships, and who care for the environment.  Play is the work of children and too often we leave them alone with gadgets and electronics (and you know I love technology...but I love to play so much more!).  Please do take a moment, this article is worth a read~

4 Things Your Children Absolutely Do Not Need (and What to Give Them Instead)

The Importance of Play

I love my teens! Everyone hears about how much I love these years with them, being able to converse and share interests. But I won't deny that I miss playing with them. Although we still find time to play cards and board games, I miss the magical play that transforms a playground into a jungle, a couch into a life raft, or a Barbie dollhouse into Hogwarts! In these cold winter months, I want to remind us to put down the phones and iPads, turn off the televisions, leave the laundry baskets for a little while and play, play, play with our children.

A couple of great quotes from a Peter Gray article (in British spelling and all):

"The most important skills that children everywhere must learn in order to live happy, productive, moral lives are skills that cannot be taught in school. Such skills cannot be taught at all. They are learned and practised by children in play. These include the abilities to think creatively, to get along with other people and cooperate effectively, and to control their own impulses and emotions."

and

 "All young children are creative. In their play and self-directed exploration they create their own mental models of the world around them and also models of imaginary worlds. Adults whom we call geniuses are those who somehow retain and build upon that childlike capacity throughout their lives. Albert Einstein said his schooling almost destroyed his interest in mathematics and physics, but he recovered it when he left school. He referred to his innovative work as “combinatorial play”. He claimed that he developed his concept of relativity by imagining himself chasing a sunbeam and catching up with it, and then thinking about the consequences. We can’t teach creativity, but we can drive it out of people through schooling that centres not on children’s own questions but on questions dictated by an imposed curriculum that operates as if all questions have one right answer and everyone must learn the same things."

Link to the complete article: Give childhood back to children: if we want our offspring to have happy, productive and moral lives, we must allow more time for play, not less by Peter Gray

Growing Future Generations

Last night, I had the privilege of participating in a forum for pre-teen and teen parents.  It was a wonderful group of thoughtful folks talking about how to raise decent human beings.  This is important work because, as I often joke about, these are the folks who will provide my geriatric care, run my town, and govern my country in the days to come.  Coincidentally, Parenting.com sent out this "quiz' yesterday.  Admittedly, some of it made me cringe and some made me chuckle.  It is worth a look and a little discussion.

Quiz: Make Sure You're Not Raising a Brat - Parenting.com

Playing

People ask what I do all day.  Well, apart from thinking together with parents, teachers, and children, I spend time playing with kids.  We play cards during lunch groups, we play singing games during guidance lessons, we dig in the mini tupperware sandbox while contemplating the complexities of friendships.  Much of the work we do together is done through playing together.  Sometimes it's role-playing to gain understanding of social dynamics or practice how to assert oneself.  Sometimes it's learning cooperation over competition in a group game.  Something about talking at kids - it's not being very effective.

As we approach April vacation, I hope we all take the time to play together - a lot; play-dates at the park, Apples-to-Apples after dinner as a family, a l-o-n-g game of monopoly through the week.  

From Taking Play Seriously by Robin Marantz Henig (Published February 17th, 2008):

"Scientists who study play, in animals and humans alike, are developing a consensus view that play is something more than a way for restless kids to work off steam; more than a way for chubby kids to burn off calories; more than a frivolous luxury. Play, in their view, is a central part of neurological growth and development — one important way that children build complex, skilled, responsive, socially adept and cognitively flexible brains."

So - what are we waiting for?  Let's go play!