Homework time! June 4, 2012

My eldest daughter started kindy this year.  I’m very new at being a school parent and it’s been a steep learning curve for us all.  But now that we’re four months into the school year I think we’re finally starting to get the hang of doing homework.

I don’t think we ever had to do homework at such a young age.

I know we had to do the occasional project and I remember that we used to go home with spelling words to learn in the primary years, but we certainly didn’t have homework in kindy.

It can’t hurt to get into good habits of learning and being disciplined. 

I was talking about this with my husband.  He said he didn’t do any study at all in all his 13 years of school.  If he had assignments, he did them the night before.  He still struggles to be organised and disciplined and I think it’s held him back a little in some areas of his life.  So he certainly wants to see our children form good habits around study and discipline.

The other good thing about homework is that it gives parents a chance to see what their kids are learning and how they’re going with it.

My daughter just gets two pages to complete and they get the whole week to complete it.  Homework books come home on Monday and they have to be handed back in on Friday so it’s not too bad.

For first term we were really quite haphazard with doing homework.  The first time she brought back homework, Birdy was so excited she did it straight away.  But she was also sometimes diving in when I wasn’t able to supervise properly – like when I was cooking dinner or feeding the baby.  So sometimes she was starting it, but not finishing it, or working in pen and making mistakes and crossing them out, or not following the instructions properly – it was all over the place.

It all came to a head about two weeks ago. 

It was Friday morning and her homework still wasn’t finished.  She was supposed to be finishing it while she was eating breakfast.  I turned my back for five minutes and when I came back, she was cutting up bubble wrap and dipping it in blue paint to make a cloudy sky picture.  Very creative and all, but not getting the homework done!

That was when I thought: this just isn’t working!  Something has to change.

Birdy’s homework last week. To draw and label a farm animal.

Now we have a designated homework time.  Homework has to be done between 4pm and 5pm on Tuesday afternoon.  No play dates.  No TV.  No playing outside.  And either myself or my husband has to sit with her the entire time and supervise properly.  Not half supervising while talking on the phone or cooking dinner but really giving it our full attention.  So we tried it for the first time last week and the difference was amazing!  She still did all the work herself, but it was so much better, so much neater, and it was all finished in one easy sitting. Then when it was finished I said, “Well done, you can watch TV for half an hour now!”  So I hope we can stick with that routine and make homework easier for everyone.

Do you think kids get too much homework now?  Do you struggle to get them to complete it?  Do you think it’s a helpful skill for kids to learn to do homework, or is too much pressure on children and their parents?

Then there were 2 April 16, 2012

When the second child comes along, it’s quite common for the first child to have a few issues!  A bit of jealousy that Mum’s so wrapped up in the baby, sometimes a bit of attention seeking behaviour.  So far we’ve had an incredibly smooth run.  Birdy has been nothing but adoring of her baby sister, which has been lovely.  But I do remember very early on, when I finished feeding Molly, that Caillie said to me, “C’mon Mum, now you have to look after this kid!”.  So even though she seems quite independent, she still needs to feel like I’m looking after her.

The Fairy Princess Castle

I think the age gap of five years between my children may have made things easier.  It helps that she can look after herself a little, or make a fairy princess castle out of sticky tape and a shoebox while I’m feeding the baby.  It also helps that she can understand her emotions and tell me how she’s feeling.  We haven’t had to deal with crazy attention-seeking tantrums or a fit of jealous rage where she hits the baby over the head with her barbie doll or bites it’s ear off when I’m not looking.   But because we haven’t had any obvious signs of jealousy I’ve probably been a bit slack about making sure Birdy knows she’s still just as special.  And I got a bit of a rude wake up call the other day.

We were just hanging out having a chat when she said, “But Mum you love Molly more than me.”  And I was like, “What did you say?”  “You love Molly more than me.”  I was so shocked I had to drag my mouth up off the baby-food covered floor before I could speak.  So naturally I said, “No I don’t, honey.  I love you both the same.  I just have to spend more time with Molly right now because she’s a baby and babies need lots of looking after.”  Part of the problem could be that I tend to smother Molly with physical affection.  Unlike her father and sister, Molly just loves to be kissed and cuddled, whereas the only way to get a cuddle out of Birdy is through a long absence or dreadful illness.  (I’ve thought about pretending to go to work just so I can get a cuddle when I arrive home!)  I still don’t know whether Birdy genuinely thinks I love Molly more or whether she was just testing me out, but the fact is that I never leave Molly.  Birdy goes off to school and to swimming lessons and to her friends’ houses, so there are lots of times I hang out with just Molly, but not so many times I do things just with Caillie.

Here's what we created during our most recent quality time session last weekend. This is my version of sacrificial love - doing craft!

To rectify that, I try to make sure that during at least one of Molly’s sleeps I do an activity with Birdy. We make something together, or cook something or read a book.  I’ve also staggered their bedtimes, which works really well.  I put Molly to bed at 7 and Birdy at 7.30 or 8 so that we have some time together to read stories together and talk about the day.  It’s worth taking stock of how you do things, working out how you can find time quality time within the routine that you have.  For me, walking home from school is a good way of spending time with Birdy while Molly is taken care of in the pram.  Also one of the biggest challenges for me has been meal times.  We always used to chat over dinner.  But now I’m nearly always busy feeding Molly and getting her in bed when my husband and daughter have dinner.  So I’ve decided to put a comfy chair in the dining room so I can sit with them and feed Molly while they have tea.  Whenever there’s a big change in your family it’s good to reassess how you do things, and a new baby is certainly a big change for everyone, including the older siblings.

How did it work in your home?  Did your older children become jealous or attention-seeking when the new baby arrived?  Does the age gap make a difference?  What did you do to make sure your older children weren’t neglected?

The No 1 Ladies Approach to Discipline March 15, 2012

So what does a ‘traditionally built’ female detective have to do with discipline?  Heaps actually!

Yesterday I was part of a panel chat about discipline on Erica Davis’ morning show on Sydney radio station Hope 103.2.  I talked about the idea of restorative justice versus punitive justice.   It probably sounds like an odd way of approaching behaviour management but for me the philosophy behind what you do is just as important as what you do.  Especially when it comes to discipline.  What we are doing needs to make sense with what we are actually trying to teach our children.

I first started thinking about these ideas when I was studying international relations and the use of state force.  You see, the use of force is limited under international law.  One of the new doctrines that was attracting a lot of attention at this time was the ‘responsibility to protect’.  The generally accepted idea is that it’s not OK for a nation state to use military force against another country unless it is in self-defence.  (Stay with me).  But then what about when something like the Rwanda massacre occurs?  This new doctrine says that the international community has a responsibility to protect a state’s citizens.  If people are being butchered by their own state, the use of ‘protective’ force is acceptable to safeguard the innocent.

So I took these ideas home and started applying them to my then one-year-old.  I decided to try not using ‘punitive force’, like smacking, but using protective force instead.  That means if my kid hits another kid in a George W. Bush style ‘pre-emptive strike’, (ie. aggression dressed up in the language of self-defence, “But she was going to hit me, I just know it!), then rather than smacking my kid I would intervene to protect the other child.  That could mean separating them (putting in a new border), making the ‘hitter’ play elsewhere (extradition), or physically staying present to make sure no more hitting occurs (peacekeeping troops).  Hopefully this also sends a clearer message to the child.  Rather than saying, “You’re not allowed to hit your cousin but I am allowed to hit you,” (like bombing Iraq) my actions will say, “Hitting is not acceptable, and I am here to protect you both.” (The UN).

Enter Mma Ramotswe, fictional proprieter of The No 1 Ladies Detective Agency and enforcer of common sense justice.  Mma Ramotswe is a self-taught private detective (self-taught from the esteemed Clovis Anderson’s seminal instruction book, Principles of Private Detection) who goes about setting right the wrongs in her beautiful home country of Botswana.  Mma Ramotswe solves mysteries and rights wrongs but she almost never involves the law or shames the wrong doer.  Instead she finds ways to ‘restore justice’, to set right what was wrong without punishment.  This doesn’t mean there aren’t consequences for the criminals, but the answer usually involves them taking responsibility for their actions in some way.  Having read about 10 books in the series, I’ve found my thinking constantly being shaped by the idea of ‘restorative justice’, as opposed to ‘punitive justice’ which is designed to hurt the wrong doer and make them regret their action.  Unfortunately, punitive justice tends to create bitterness and resentment between people whereas restorative justice is about restoring trust in the relationship.  I didn’t even realise this concept had found its way into mainstream ideas about discipline until I saw it on the cover of Sydney’s Child last week.  Apparently restorative justice is now being applied among at-risk kids in high schools with massive success.  It’s harder work than just dishing up a punishment, and many of the kids would rather just take the wrap than face up to those they have wronged.  But the long-term results are impressive.

If you’re not convinced, just think about how you feel when you have stuffed up in some way or have let someone down.  What would your prefer?  To be punished, or offered forgiveness?  Adults are not immune from punishing each other.  We do it by withholding affection or intimacy, by avoiding those who we perceive have wronged us, or by giving someone the silent treatment.  (Is this really so different from isolating a child by sending them to their room or putting them on the naughty chair?)  If you’ve ever been on the receiving end of this kind of treatment then you’ll know it hurts like hell.  Especially if you don’t know what you’ve done to deserve the snub.  Different people will respond to that kind of treatment in different ways.  Either they will detach from the relationship so they don’t continue to be hurt, they will confront the person and demand an explanation, or they will try even harder to please the person who is punishing them.  If on the other hand, you already know and have acknowledged what you’ve done wrong, then why do you need to be punished?  What you need at that point is to be restored to the other person, which only comes about through the process of seeking forgiveness and extending grace.  It’s as simple as saying, ‘That’s OK’, ‘Don’t worry about it,’ ‘Thanks for your apology’, ‘I appreciate that.’  I’m not saying that there’s never a time to send a child to their room or put them on the naughty step, but you need to be clear on why you are doing it and be sure that it makes sense in the context of what you’re trying to teach them.

At this point, the advocates of the punitive model usually say, ‘Ah but it’s different, because with children you have to teach them right from wrong by punishing them.’  But is that really so different to adult relationships?  When adults hurt each other, we don’t usually do it deliberately.  We usually hurt each other, or behave badly because we don’t yet know better.  We didn’t realise that thing we did or said or failed to do would be hurtful to that person.  We didn’t understand the way they think or feel, what they expected of us, or what their particular sensitivities were.  Once we have learned and communicated without blaming then we can improve that relationship.  Children usually also stuff-up because they didn’t quite realise what was expected of them, or they didn’t know how to deal with their feelings.  Children, like adults, need to experience the consequences of their mistakes, but we don’t have to make those consequences disproportionate to the original problem.

It is self-evident that you don’t get punished for doing the wrong thing, you get punished for getting caught.  (If you do the wrong thing, but don’t get caught, there’s no punishment.  Also if you are punished unfairly for something you haven’t done, it creates resentment.)  This can lead to deceptive behaviour, lying or far worse a child (and later an adult) who only behaves well when people are watching.  Punishment says, “If you do that behaviour, you will be punished, so don’t do that behaviour again.”  It’s a model based on obedience and good behaviour as the goal.  What I want my children to learn, more than obedience or how to behave, is empathy.  Punishment does not easily model empathy.  When we punish, we switch off our own empathy temporarily.  We leave our child crying on the naughty chair or in their room instead of comforting them, or we smack them with the deliberate intention of hurting them, even though we ourselves would not like to be treated that way.  So the child in response has several choices; to also switch off emotionally and accept the punishment, to rebel against the punishment or to try harder to please us in the future.  Learning to please others is not the same as developing empathy or consideration for others.  Clinical psychologist Lyn Worsely talks about how even babies as young as six weeks who have experienced trauma will look to their caregiver for cues and create fixed expressions that aim to please their parents.  It may be compliant but it’s not necessarily healthy.  And it can lead to anxiety down the track.

So now when I’m faced with a conundrum, rudeness, an injustice or a behaviour I don’t like, I ask myself “What would Mma Ramotswe do?”  (WWMRD?)  How can this problem be solved in a way that respects everybody’s autonomy, encourages each person to take responsibility for their own actions and treats the child as a person in their own right, rather than a puppet, expected to dance when we pull their strings (which, by the way is the American approach to international diplomacy!)

Mma Ramtoswe isn’t perfect.  She isn’t even real.  She doesn’t have all the answers.  She makes mistakes.  But she’s prepared to admit it as the following passage demonstrates:

Mr J.L.B Matekoni looked suprised. 

‘I can’t imagine you making any mistakes,’ he said.  ’You’re too clever for that.  You would look at all the possibilities and then choose the right one.  Every time.’

Mma Ramotswe snorted.

We all make mistakes.  We don’t usually need to punish each other.  We just have to admit when we’re wrong.

The after school meltdown March 5, 2012

Illustration by Chris Roe

Last week I wrote about how Birdy doesn’t do too well with eating her lunch at school.  And the worst part of this isn’t the wasted food or the frustration of emptying another lunchbox into the bin – the worst bit is the after school meltdown.

We try to walk to and from school as much as we can.  After school she’s usually quite tired so if she hasn’t eaten or drunk much that’s when the probability of a meltdown skyrockets. Ever since she was a toddler, Birdy becomes miserable if her blood sugar gets low. She used to wake up totally feral from her afternoon nap.  Sometimes the only cure was a cup of warm milk or a tiny bit of something sweet to snap her out of it until I could get some real food into her.

The most recent meltdown was over chocolate.  We were walking home and she asked me if she could have a little bit of chocolate when we got home.  I said ‘Yes, when we get home you can have two squares of chocolate.’  Last time, when she’d had three squares of chocolate, she’d had trouble falling asleep at night so I thought I’d let her have a smaller amount this time.  Well instead of ‘thanks Mum’ we had tears and screaming and throwing things on the ground because she wanted three squares not two.  This went on for quite some time, right outside the shops where all the other mums and kids from the school were congregating.  It was so much fun!  NOT!  I didn’t give in to the tantrum, and needless to say she didn’t get any chocolate, but boy, it took us a very long time to get home!

The other major tanty was in the first week of school, which was also the first week of swimming lessons.  We made the mistake of going home in between school and swimming. Once we got home she didn’t want to go out again and threw a massive tanty in the house, in the car, and on the way to the pool, screaming that she was NOT going to do swimming.  She was extremely tired so in one sense it was fair enough that she didn’t want to go.  And if she’d simply said, “I’m too tired to go swimming” I might have given her the week off, but after the massive barney I felt I had to send her.  Otherwise she might have got the message that all you have to do to get out of swimming is throw a massive wobbly.  Once she got in the water she fine – I think the sensation of the water on her skin was actually quite soothing.

So how should we deal with tantrums when they happen?  According to child psychologists, when a kid has a tantrum its because they’ve lost control of their emotions, so the first thing you have to do is help them get back in control.  That means we have to stay calm and not lose control of ourselves and also not get anxious about what other people are thinking.  The easiest way to help them calm down is to ‘bring them in close’ physically.  This is a tactic I learned from child psychologist Louise Porter and it definitely works, but it can take time.  It’s much harder to do it successfully when you’re in a hurry.  So firstly you have to drop the expectation of being on time, or getting home quickly and deal with the situation first.  Once they’ve calmed down you can address their physical needs (tiredness, hunger, cold, overstimulation) or whatever has prompted them to feel out of sorts in the first place.  Then when everybody is feeling calm you can reaffirm your message and boundaries (you have to go to swimming, or you can’t have the chocolate or whatever the issue is).

Obviously its better if you can prevent the tantrum in the first place.  Aaron Wright from Breakfast with Aaron and Erin sometimes talks about the idea of “Setting up for Success” and that’s definitely the best way of preventing tantrums. So on Fridays when Birdy is really tired after a big week of school we now sometimes drive home instead of walking.  I’ve also started taking along cold snacks or drinks to have on the way home as fuel for the walk.  I’ve never really had to deal with tantrums much before now, but I think it’s helpful to look for the pattern of when and why they happen and try to change the circumstances around them.  For us, the pattern has been straight after school, when she was tired and hungry.   Thankfully the hungry part is an easy one to fix.  And so far it’s working.  Since I started arriving at school with a snack or a cold apple juice, we haven’t had a meltdown again, so let’s hope it continues.  Of course kids aren’t the only ones who have meltdowns, so it’s a good reminder to look after ourselves as well.  We need to make sure we don’t neglect our physical and emotional needs.  If we’re tired, hungry, dehydrated or not getting any time out, we’re probably just as likely to lose our cool as they are.

Do your kids throw wobblies?  What are the triggers?  How do you set up for success?

Junk mail diet breeds shop-a-holic babies October 18, 2010

Last week I wrote about Free Range Kids and the idea that parents these days can be a bit too paranoid and overprotective.  But that whole conversation made me realize that there are some things we’re probably not protecting our kids from that we should be.  And the thing that springs to mind is advertising.

I’ve noticed the negative effect advertising can have on children in quite a dramatic way this week.  You see we recently painted our mailbox, (it’s now a lovely purple colour) and in the process our No Junk Mail sticker got moved to the side of the mailbox.  Which means that if the person delivering the junk mail comes down the hill, we’re spared the junk mail.  But if they come up the hill, we receive copious amounts of it, mainly in the form of catalogues.

The first time we received a catalogue it was kind of a novelty. I thought it might be fun to cut out the pictures of bikes and dolls as a little activity. But what happened almost immediately was that Birdy started browsing.  “Mum, can we get this nightie?”  “Can I have that doll?”  “I don’t like my blue bike, I want that pink one with Barbie on it!”  And it wasn’t just for five minutes.  A whole week has gone by and she is still asking for the Dora Explorer nightie she saw in the catalogue.  Advertising turns our kids into little consumers who think that they need all this stuff.  And it’s also an introduction to the power of branding because they don’t want just any bike it has to be the one with the Disney Princesses.  And that’s all just the ripple-on effect of one Big W catalogue!

So other than a No Junk Mail sticker, what are some ways to protect kids from the power of advertising?  Well, I would just avoid all magazines and commercial television.  There are so many good shows on ABC2 and on DVD that you never have to go near a commercial channel.  But even then, the ABC puts their entire product catalogue in the DVD jacket, so the minute you bring home a new DVD you start getting requests for another one.  Of course the other thing we can do collectively is try to hold accountable corporations that target children with their advertising.  For example, there’s been a lot of discussion in the media about the latest Witchery clothing campaign aimed at children because it makes the kids look like adults.  If parents actually start to speak up about advertising aimed at kids, we might be able to encourage a bit more corporate responsibility.  One way to do that is through grass-roots organisations like Collective Shout and Kids Free 2 B Kids.

There’s a book by Tanya Adrusiak called Ad-proofing Your Kids that talks about the importance of being media literate and talking through with your children what the advertisers’ intention is.  She says you should discuss things like: Who created this message?  What is the point of view?  What does it want me to do?  How does it make me feel?  Why is it on during this program?  She says most advertising is designed to make us feel that we’re lacking, particularly in the area of beauty and body image, so the less children are actually exposed to those messages in their early years, the better.

However, Tanya also points out that while children are very influenced by advertising, until the age of 8 they just don’t have the capacity to understand the persuasive intent of advertisers.  And she argues that if people are being advertised to, they have the right to be aware of it.  And for that reason she feels any advertising aimed at young children is wrong.  I couldn’t agree more.

Are you concerned about the effects of advertising on children?  How do you protect your children from it?

Free Range Kids Fly the Coop October 8, 2010

Photo by Lisa Jay

Birdy and I have been feeding our neighbours chickens this week.  It’s been a fun experience, but I’ve also found that I’ve become a little paranoid about how I am going to catch them and get them back in the coop if they ever escape.  In an uncanny coincidence, Sydney received a visit from Lenore Skenazy – a New York based columnist and author who advocates Free Range Parenting.  She’s been tagged “America’s worst Mom” after she let her nine year old son catch the subway home by himself and wrote a column about it.  Since then she’s written the book, Free-range Kids: How to Raise Self-Reliant Children Without Going Nuts with Worry.

According to The Australian, Skenazy’s main point is that she “wants parents to think about the benefits, rather than just the costs, of letting children take risks”.  She argues that we do too many things with them and for them.  She says kids should be allowed to walk to school by themselves, ride their bikes or go to the park without their parents following them around.  I mean when I was young we were all free-range kids.  Everybody walked to school and rode their bikes to their friends’ houses and made their own way home before it got dark.

I think there are two main causes behind the shift in attitude.  One is a community change and the other is about the media and perception.  When we were young there were always people around, neighbours knew each other and the default position was that most people could be trusted. With more people commuting and more families having two parents working, (or being single parent families) there just aren’t as many people around in the community looking out for our kids.  And there aren’t as many kids around because so many of them are in daycare or after school care.  So it doesn’t feel safe for kids to walk around if the streets and parks are empty.  Also, a new study from the University of Western Australia has found that parents’ fears are limiting their child’s physical activity and independence.  They found that even though the chance of a child being abducted, robbed or assaulted hasn’t increased substantially over the past 50 years, (the abductions that do happen are usually in the context of a custody dispute) parents are more anxious, because the few abductions that happen receive so much press coverage.  They also found that parents are worried about how other parents perceive them.  In actual fact, we should be more worried about our kids being inactive or overweight or socially inept because that’s a much more realistic threat to their wellbeing.

So I did a little experiment yesterday.  We were at our local shopping centre, a very small local place with about 10 or 20 shops.  And there was a reptile show on.  Birdy wanted to watch it, but we were in a hurry.  So I said to her, “You stay here I’m going into the fruit shop and I’ll be back in a minute.”  I knew she wouldn’t move, but if she did she would have known exactly where to find me.  So I left her there for a minute while I grabbed some bananas.  My logical brain told me that the chance of somebody stealing her in the exact minute that I was gone was next to nothing.  And what I learnt from that little experiment was this.  I wasn’t actually worried about anything happening to Birdy.  I knew she’d still be sitting there when I got back. But I was worried about what the other parents would think of me.  And that’s one of the points that Lenore Skenazy is making, that as parents we should worry less about what other parents think and more about what’s good for our child.

So am I a fan of the free-range kids movement?  Well I think Skenazy has a point, but she also goes a little too far to prove her point.  This year she started Take Our Children to the Park and Leave Them There Day to encourage parents to leave their kids to play unsupervised.  But you don’t need to abandon your kids to allow them to play independently.  You just need to step back a bit, and not jump in at the first sign of trouble, so they learn to negotiate their own problems.  Every time I see a parent hanging onto their 2 year old as they go down the slide I find myself thinking, “Just let go, what’s the worst thing that can happen?”  And there’s no doubt that even very small kids get more satisfaction out of the experience when they climb up themselves, slide down by themselves, go flying off the end land on their bottoms and then look at you and say, “See I don’t need any help Mum, I can do it myself!’

BTW,  I’ll probably consider letting Birdy catch a train on her own when she’s 25! 

What do you think about the idea of Free Range Kids?  Do you let your kids go to the park or walk to school by themselves?  What age is it OK to start doing that?  Did you have a lot of freedom as a child to ride your bike around, explore the neighbourhood, visit your friends and find your own way home?  Are children over-supervised and wrapped in cotton wool or is the world less safe these days?

The hardest word. September 2, 2010

A friend of mine shared this status update on Facebook this week.  It caught my eye because I’d already decided to write about apologies.  She was listening to her 2 boys in the bath.   The conversation went something like this…

CALEB: Toby, you need to say sorry for hitting me.

TOBY:  No.

CALEB: Say sorry, Toby.

TOBY:  (Mumbled) Sorry.

CALEB:  Say it properly and look at me when you’re saying it.

TOBY:  Sorry, Caleb.

This story made me laugh because its so hard to get kids to say sorry to each other, it’s even tougher to get them to say it nicely and almost impossible to make them really mean it!  I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve witnessed some mother, standing over her child, at the park or the zoo, trying to make them apologise to some other random kid and they just will not open their mouth.  It’s hard enough to get your child to apologise to their sister or cousin, let alone to a total stranger!

Of course it’s good to encourage your child to apologise, but they probably won’t get it right every time.  Once they get used to the ritual of saying sorry and making up, then you’ve got to take it to the next level and teach them what it means to actually be sorry.  I recently heard a preacher talk about this in the context of repentance and forgiveness.  He said we can’t have true reconciliation until we recognize what we’ve done wrong and understand the impact it’s had on the other person.  That means really owning it.  Not just saying “Sorry”, but saying “Sorry I hit you.  That must have hurt and I shouldn’t have done it.”

I sometimes wonder if small children actually know what it means to feel sorry.  I think they have to be taught it.  So by asking, ‘What are you sorry for?’  ‘What did you do wrong?’   ‘How did it make the other person feel?’ you’re actually helping them to recognize what it means to be sorry.  I’ll never forget a few months ago a little boy pushed Birdy over and his mum made him say sorry – he said it grudgingly as kids mostly do.  And Birdy looked him straight in the eye and said very crossly, “I don’t believe you.”  And I thought that was progress, because she was recognizing that just saying sorry isn’t enough, you have to be sorry.  Without real repentance, behaviour won’t change.

Of course, once they have mastered the concept of being sorry, the next step is understanding what it means to forgive.  One way we can help them is to practically demonstrate forgiveness when they do wrong.  So once our kids have apologized, to us or to their friends, we have to let it go.  We shouldn’t keep lecturing them or saying why they were wrong.  If they say sorry, we should give them a cuddle and that should be the end of it.  Learning to forgive is just as important as saying sorry, but it’s much harder to do.

Do you insist that your children apologise?  Do you think they understand what it means to be really sorry?  Have you found any useful ideas to help them understand concepts like being sorry and forgiveness?

When I’m feeling… August 21, 2010

Photo by Lisa Jay

Birdy and I have been enjoying a beautiful picture book recently.  It’s called The Saddest King by Chris Wormell.  In this fictional kingdom, happiness is compulsory by order of the King.  Until one day, a small boy breaks the law, he cries.  He gets dragged before the King, and explains that he wants to be sad because his dog has died.  In the end it’s revealed that the King’s happy face is just a mask, and that deep down he’s very sad too because his dog died.  Together they have a good cry and the message of the book is that it’s OK to be sad, sometimes you just have to be the way you feel.

I’ve been realizing the importance lately of teaching children to recognize their emotions and stories are a great tool to help kids do this.  When you look at the pictures together you can ask your child to identify the expressions on the characters’ faces.  This will help you to gauge their emotional literacy.  On the most basic level, kids should be able to identify whether somebody is happy or sad.  But it’s helpful for them to learn about more complex emotions too – frustration, anger, love, jealousy, worry, satisfaction.  Helping them to identify these emotions in a story can expand their emotional vocabulary and enable them to identify their own feelings more accurately.

The reason I think stories are such a useful tool for identifying emotions is that they link the emotion to its cause.  In the well-known book Giraffes Can’t Dance, Gerald feels shame because the other animals laugh at his bad dancing and he feels left out.  In Where the Wild Things Are Max feels angry because his Mum calls him a Wild Thing and sends him to bed without his dinner.  Helping your child to see the link between the characters’ feelings and whatever it was that prompted them is a skill that will set them up for life.

Another way to help your child to learn about their emotions is to draw or cut out different facial expressions.  Ask your child what they think the person is feeling and what might have made them feel that way.  Tell them about a time you felt that emotion yourself, what caused it and how you dealt with it.

Also you can help your child identify how their physical needs affect their moods.  For example, my daughter Birdy always gets grumpy when her blood sugar is low.  A quick drink of milk or a snack of fruit will snap her out of it.  For other kids it might be when they’re cold or tired or have been inside for too long.  You may start to recognize a certain emotional response they fall back on, like hitting when they feel threatened or not sharing when they feel jealous.  Helping them to recognize the emotions that drive their behaviour can guide them towards finding more positive ways of expressing themselves.  After all our emotions are there to tell us something about ourselves.

By the way, I’ve only recently learned the importance of this because I’ve realized my own inability to express my feelings.  That might sound odd, given that I tend to wear my heart on my sleeve, but I tend to talk about what I think, rather than what I feel.  Even when asked about my feelings I tend to answer in ‘thinking’ language – maybe because in my world it is normal to express ideas and opinions, but not emotions.  I consider this to be a handicap because it takes me a long time to work out what I’m feeling and why, and I usually only come to a conclusion via a long and tortuous discussion of some other, more incidental ‘issue’.  See.  There.  I just said ‘conclusion’.  It’s a thinking word, not a feeling one.

Another book series I’ve found helpful for children is the When I’m Feeling… series by Five Mile Press.  We got the When I’m Feeling Sad book for Birdy after our dog died, and it explains what sadness feels like, what kind of things can make us feel sad and some comforts that might help us feel better.  It’s also got notes for parents in the back.  But like most things, books can only teach so much.  What kids will really learn most from is what’s modeled to them.  We have to be prepared to gently share our emotions with them, so they understand that its OK to feel sad or frustrated or lonely or excited.  If we pretend everything is OK all the time, we can’t expect them to ask for help when they really need it.

Are your children good at expressing their emotions or come out in other ways?  Have you noticed any patterns in their behaviour?  Have you discovered any useful tools for teaching children about their emotions?  Do you sometimes find it hard to express or share what you are really feeling?

Keep your pants on! June 11, 2010

I’ve got a bit of a problem.  I wouldn’t mind some help with it.  You see, my delightful daughter just will not keep her clothes on.   She loves nothing better than to take off every stitch of clothing and run around the garden naked.

You might think the cold weather would deter her, but no.  The other day I was washing up at the kitchen sink while Birdy was swinging in the backyard and I was sort of watching her out of the corner of my eye.  Anyway, when I finished and went outside, there she was still swinging, but with no pants on!  She’d taken herself to the toilet and just not bothered to put her clothes back on.  Even though it was quite chilly outside, she was happily swinging away, nudey rudey!

Actually it’s quite the norm in our street.  Half the kids in the neighbourhood run around the backyard with no clothes on.  Some of them even do it in their front yard and nobody seems to mind.  But I’m just curious about at what age that becomes no longer socially acceptable.  At 2 or 3, it seem to be OK for kids to run around in their birthday suits, whether it’s their birthday or not.   But she’s three and a half now, and I’m just wondering when I have to start cracking the whip, stamping the foot and saying, ‘Right, that’s it.  No more stickers without your knickers’ or words to that effect.

Because no matter how much myself, my husband or my sister tell Birdy to keep her clothes on, she just seizes any opportunity to be free of them.  And I don’t want to crush her earthy, independent spirit, but at some point it’s going to have to stop.  Either that or we’ll have to move to a remote Pacific Island where its more socially acceptable to wear very little.

Do your kids like to be nudey rudey?  Have you managed to control their exhibitionist tendencies?  At what age is it no longer acceptable for kids to run around the backyard with no clothes on?

GUEST POST: Regression: Dealing with how it is February 16, 2010

BY ALISON MURRAY

No, I’m not talking about statistical linear regression or the downward spiral of society. I’m talking about potty-training. Splodges, puddles and soggy underpants.

See, you go through the whole rigmorole of potty-training – star charts, prizes, adulation, and then… SUCCESS!!! They finally get it. They know when they need to go and they go in the right place. Hooray! No more nappies and no more wet undies, or at least only on the odd occasion.

How can it be, then, that having finally arrived and having put all that behind you, it can suddenly and inexpicably become an issue again?

This is something my husband and I have been surprised by in the past couple of weeks. Our three year old daughter was fully toilet trained during the day and never an ‘accident’ did we see. We were just thinking about how to encourage her to stay dry at night so we could lose the nappies all together. Then, a couple of weeks ago as I helped her put her pants back on I noticed that her undies were damp. “Oh” I said, “These are a bit wet. Never mind, lets get some dry ones on.” A couple of hours later, I made the same discovery. And a few hours later, the same again. I became rather less understanding about it and said “Look, you know better than this. You need to go before you’re busting, okay?”

My husband and I are both teachers and have been well schooled (no pun intended) in the way that both positive and negative attention reinforce behaviours. We’ve been trained to emphasise positive affirmation of good behaviour rather than focussing on the negative, with the understanding that kids will often settle for negative attention so long as they’re getting it at all. It certainly became apparent to me in the past couple of weeks that my cross words, exasperated sighs and growls of frustration were not helping El to remember to go to the toilet in time. In fact, the problem became worse, rather than improving.

I knew we probably needed to go back to what DID work – giving step by step encouragement, reminders to go frequently, and celebration and rewards for every success. And yet, I felt a strange reluctance to do this. I didn’t want to congratulate her on something which I felt should now be taken for granted. And even though it did nothing to change the situation for the better, I still wanted to let her know how cranky I felt about all the extra washing she was creating for me. I didn’t want to show grace.

You know what though? A few days ago I finally got to the point of accepting the situation and adjusting myself to deal with it, and life has been so much easier! Not only have there been fewer accidents, it’s also worked against the friction that was building in our relationship over the whole issue.

The first day that I really set myself to have a proactively positive frame of mind we went for a shopping trip. When I asked El to go to the toilet before we left she resisted and I had to make a conscious effort to change my attitude and speech so that, rather than saying: “You need to go because otherwise you’ll wet your pants and I’m sick of washing them!”, I said instead (with an encouraging and conspiratorial grin) “But El, your mission today is to have zero wet undies (forming a big zero with one hand), and the best way to do that is to use the toilet when you have the chance!”

Do you know, I actually saw the stubborn expression melt off her face, replaced by a smile and a light in her eye that said “I’m up for that challenge!”

While at the shops she told me twice when she needed to go and as I helped her on to the toilet the second time I congratulated her on her still-dry underpants. “Great job, telling me in time! Well done, darling!”

She beamed back at me and said “You happy, Mum? That makes you glad?”

“Yes”, I smiled back at her, “that makes me very glad!”

Maybe she should know how to keep her undies dry without reminders now, and maybe she shouldn’t need to be affirmed every time she uses the toilet, but I guess grace is all about giving something that isn’t deserved. And while it might not always come naturally, accepting ‘how it is’ and responding with grace makes life that much sweeter for all concerned.