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?

Should Australian schools be peanut-free? May 17, 2012

It’s allergy awareness week this week.  I was moved to write about this after hearing that parents in the US were picketing in protest and declaring that a peanut-allergic child should be home schooled.  One parent even said that he’d like to smear peanut butter all over the allergic child’s locker.  The cause of all this outrage?  Students had to wash their hands before entering the class in the morning and after lunch.  At one stage they were also having their mouth washed out.  What’s so terrible about hand-washing you might ask?  Well the parents complained that it was taking away from study-time.

How would that allergic child feel, knowing that her classmates’ parents were waving banners around, protesting her presence at the school?  I’ve shared some of my thoughts and experiences as the parent of a peanut allergic child on Wendy Harmer’s website, The Hoopla.

http://thehoopla.com.au/schools-peanut-free/

Cheers,

Katrina

The magic of music April 29, 2012

All this year, Birdy has been asking me if she can learn the violin. I hate saying ‘no’ to this, because I remember how passionately I wanted to play the guitar when I was 5. For about a year I begged my parents for a guitar and I will always remember the sheer joy of waking up on my fifth birthday and finding a guitar on my seat at the breakfast table. It’s still one of the happiest memories of my childhood. Unfortunately my fingers were too small to start lessons and by the time they had grown, the one and only guitar teacher had left town. It would be another ten years before that guitar saw any real action, but I kept the love alive for all that time. So when Birdy asks me if she can play the violin, the sentimental side of me wants to say yes, but the rational side of me knows I can’t afford to pay for music lessons while I’m not working.

I have to confess there’s another reason I’m not willing to let Birdy start the violin just yet and that is because I know it’s going to be painful. This was vividly brought home to me when I heard her school band absolutely slaughtering Abide with Me on Anzac Day. We almost need to have another special day to commemorate the pain and suffering that was inflicted at the Anzac service, it was SO bad. I know that if Birdy starts learning an instrument like the violin, the first few years are going to be ugly. Personally, I’d rather defer that pain until a time in my life when I’ve had more sleep.

One of the most common questions that parents ask music teachers is what age should children begin music lessons and what instrument should they start on. One of my friends runs a music teaching business and she once told me that it’s helpful if children can read and know their alphabet before you’re trying to teach them to read music (unless you’re doing the Suzuki method). But in general anywhere between 6 and 10 seems to be a good age to start. (Unless you want your child to be a concert musician, in which case it’s probably too late.) Personally I’m a fan of learning the piano first because it’s less painful to listen to – you can’t play it out of tune – but also it’s so much easier to understand because you can see visually exactly where every note is in relation to every other one.

Amanda Niland is a Lecturer at the Institute of Early Childhood at Macquarie University and Commissioner of the Early Childhood Music Education Research Commission. She says, “We all learn best when we are intrinsically motivated, that is, when we really want to learn something. So the best time to start instrument lessons is when children show an interest or ask to learn.” But they also need to be committed enough to practice if you want them to learn an instrument. Can you see your 4 or 5 year old practicing every day? If not, it might be best to wait a little longer or start a more general early childhood music program.

“Children are naturally attracted to music and respond to it joyfully even as very young babies,” Amanda says. “The earliest communication between mothers and their babies is inherently musical: adults use a singing-like voice to which babies respond with great interest. Adults rock, pat or jiggle their babies rhythmically, which babies find soothing and satisfying. Children are born with musical potential, which is then developed through experiences with music in their daily lives.” There’s no doubt that there are benefits for children in learning and practicing music in formal lessons. There is some evidence that learning music long-term and from an early age can improve children’s IQ. But even without that, there are many benefits: the discipline of practicing, fine motor skills, learning to perform in front of others, creativity, confidence, self-expression and listening skills.

With all this in mind, I decided to take Birdy along to the Australian Girls Choir. It’s cheaper than learning an instrument, but still a step towards more formal music education. If you’ve never heard of the Australian Girls Choir, just go on u-tube and check their version of Thriller from last year. It’s seriously cool. So I was all excited about it, but unfortunately at the end of her trial class Birdy decided she didn’t want to do it. She just wasn’t as excited about it as I was. At first I was gutted, but then I realised that learning to play and appreciate music is just like learning to read or to dance – what you do at home is just as important as what happens in a formal lesson.

Amanda Niland agrees, “In music as in every other aspect of learning and development, children learn most through play. If you would like your children to include active music-making in their lives, then it is essential that their early musical experiences are enjoyable.” So just listening to music, singing nursery rhymes, making your own instruments, playing games with rhythm and clapping, or where you have to guess what song the other person is humming, all these things just as important as paying a lot of money to learn an instrument. I like to think of it as home-schooling music lessons. And with all the money we’re saving, we can afford to splurge on the occasional Play School concert or Babies Proms!

Did you learn an instrument as a child? Did you enjoy it or was it a burden?  Have you started your child learning an instrument?  How have they responded?  What do you think is a good age to start?

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?

Happy Little Vegemites February 26, 2012

Kevin Rudd won’t be the only person waking up with a looming sense of dread on Monday morning.  Every Monday, thousands of parents rouse from their sleep only to be gripped by exactly the same feeling. Today, Tomorrow, the Next Day, The Day After That, and The Day After That, we have to conquer the seemingly insurmountable challenge that is the school lunchbox.  And every day, we wonder whether or not we can win over our harshest critics.

Food has become so political these days and nothing is more political than the food you feed your children. There’s so much to think about – allergies and intolerances, nutrition, the obesity epidemic, additives and food chemicals, fair trade, food miles, organic versus non-organic, animal cruelty, religious beliefs, the environmental impact of the packaging and then just the sheer amount of food that gets wasted. Whatever happened to just packing your kids off with a vegemite sandwich and an apple every day for 13 years?

We had an information night at our school the other night and there were a lot of questions among the parents as to whether or not they are allowed to pack things like peanut butter sandwiches. So the whole lunchbox packing issues has become a bit of a hot potato – a gluten free, fat-free, cruelty-free, low-GI hot potato.

Then there’s the issue of what they will actually eat. These days schools and preschools expect you to offer a fully balanced meal to your child. Each lunchbox must contain protein, whole grain carbohydrates, fruit and vegies. Have you seen the size of the lunchboxes kids go off to school with these days? They’re broken down into six or seven different compartments so you can include all the food groups twice. I’m all for healthy eating but the problem is most of it just gets wasted. They don’t actually eat it. And to complicate matters further, lots of schools and pre-schools have jumped on the ‘nude food’ bandwagon, which means you can’t wrap or package the food. So by the time it comes home the carrot sticks are dried out, the rice crackers have gone soft and the strawberries have turned to slush. There’s nothing more frustrating than spending half the morning preparing all this good, healthy, expensive food, only to empty almost the entire contents of the lunchbox into the bin when it comes home. So when people talk about food miles, what they really mean is the fact that food travels the 2 metres from the crisper to the bin, via the schoolyard and back.

So I’ve been looking for ideas on how to pack good lunchboxes and I found a magazine article that suggested things like vegetable muffins, home-made chicken schnitzel, home made sushi squares and mini quiches and frittatas. So not only are you supposed to pack an exciting fresh healthy lunchbox, you’re expected to spend all weekend cooking as well! Forget it.

Of course there’s always the trusty canteen. Every day now Birdy asks if she can buy something from the canteen. Our canteen is reasonably healthy but it’s a pretty expensive way to feed your kids, compared to packing a cheese sandwich. But then your child tells you that everybody else is buying from the canteen and she is the only poor neglected waif who doesn’t get any money to buy something from the canteen. But I said to my husband that if we let her start buying things from the canteen in kindy then she’ll expect it for the next 6 years and then the next one will expect it and before you know it you’re spending $10 on the kids’ lunches. So I think we’ll save that for a Year 6 privilege.

But in the meantime, another bunch of grapes travels from the fridge to the bin via Birdy’s lunchbox. I’m hoping that the reason the lunchbox keeps coming home full is just the sheer excitement of being at school for the first time, but if it doesn’t get better, I think I’ll have to revert to the classic lunch of the 1980s – the Devon and tomato sauce sandwich. After a couple of days of that she’ll realise that carrot sticks and sultanas aren’t so bad after all.

How do your kids go with their school lunches? Do you have any tips that have helped to get your child eating well? Love to hear any suggestions you have for healthy lunch or snack ideas.

Nurturing their first love… books February 20, 2012

My husband and I have tried very hard to nurture a love of reading in Birdy and I think it’s safe to say we’ve been successful. It’s possible we may have even overdone it just slightly.  Birdy came home incredibly excited after her kindy class had their first official visit to the school library.  She wasn’t just looking forward to going to the library, she told us that she had been ‘shivering’ all day because she was ‘just sooo excited’ about borrowing her first book. So we may have a future library monitor in the making.

We haven’t really seen any reading progress in the first few weeks of school, but I think the nervous anticipation is partly about realising that they are learning to read and that soon they will be able to read books by themselves.  I’ve actually put my hand up to be one of the parents who help out with reading in class.  I’ve only done it once so far but already it’s been a great way to suss out what goes on in the classroom.  (I know who all the naughty kids are now and who are the smartypants as well.)  But it’s been amazing to see the huge variation in what kindy kids know when they start school.  Some of the children know all their letters and what sounds they make, and some also understand the concept of sounding out words, whereas other children still can’t recognise all the letters of the alphabet.

 Most of us know that the best thing we can do for our kids is to read to them every day.  Generally we do that before bed to help children wind down, but sometimes, if mums and dads are a wee bit tired and want the kids in bed as soon as humanly possible so they can have that glass of red and catch up on the latest episode of Rafters or whatever people watch these days, we might be a tad more inclined to pick the absolute shortest book we can find or, dare I say it, even skip over the story a little?  Whole pages have been known to disappear from The Cat in the Hat on a Friday night.  I mean seriously, how long is that book?

So if we want to make reading time a fun time, rather than an ‘I’m-so-over-it-I-just-want-you-asleep’ time, we should probably try to read at other times of the day, as well as at bedtime. That way we might be more inclined to talk about the pictures, help them understand the story, do the silly voices and all the other things that make reading time fun.  And while small kids are often quite happy to read the same stories again and again, they also get excited about new books.  So take the time to go the library once a week or buy a new book to mark a special occasion.  When I was a kid, Mum never gave me money for lollies, but when the Ashton Scholastic catalogue came to school, we went nuts!  There may not have been money for treats or new clothes, but there was always money and time for books.  We could even get out of washing up if we stuck our head in a book, that’s how much importance my Mum placed on reading.

Something I was surprised to learn as a new parent is that children actually need to see you reading too.  Just reading aloud to them isn’t enough, they need to see you absorbed in a book or a magazine.  It’s like eating.  It’s all in the modelling.  You can’t offer your child a carrot stick and then sit down and eat a Mars Bar in front of them.  You need to show your child that reading is enjoyable and important by making time to sit down and read for pleasure.

On the flip side, if you don’t have time to read a story, words are everywhere so just read whatever is around you.  Point out words on traffic signs and bus advertisements and menus.  You’ll be sending your child a message that reading is a life skill, not just a form of entertainment.

I’ve heard some parents say their child just isn’t interested in books.  I wonder if they just haven’t found the right type of book for that child. Talk to a librarian or their teacher about what might work.  Some boys just love really simple books with pictures of trucks and cars and motorbikes and not too many words.  Finally, and I realise this might sound a little “out there”, one way to make books more absorbing is to bring the characters to life by talking about them as if they’re real.  “Charlie and Lola live in London.” Or “Wendy the Chicken had to go to hospital too.”  Books are most compelling when we care about the characters and what happens to them, so talk about them as if they’re your child’s friends.  One day they’ll probably say, “Mum, Moonface isn’t real, silly”, but until then… make it work for you.

What are your tips for teaching kids to read and nuturing a love of books?  Do you have any fave books your children loved to read again and again?  Do you find yourself sometimes rushing through stories at bedtime?  Do you have trouble finding time to read for yourself?

Too cool for school February 5, 2012

If you’re over 25 and you’re on facebook, there’s a good chance you’ve been seeing lots of photos of kids posing proudly in their school uniforms, wearing clothes and hats that hang off their tiny frames.  It’s that time of year, when so many little ones are starting school for the first time, including my eldest daughter Birdy. Among my friends there has been quite a lot of discussion about it.

 To say Birdy has been excited about starting school would be a major understatement.  Every day for the past two weeks she’s been asking me how many days were left before school started.  Then at night she would pray for the days to go quicker.  I was really trying to play it down, because I know that if you build these things up too much, they can get a bit overwhelmed when the big day finally comes.  I certainly didn’t need to remind her that she was about to start school, put it that way.

 But I wanted to open a conversation with her, so I said something like, “Wow, I can’t believe you’re starting school tomorrow.” And she replied that she couldn’t believe it either.  She said that she just couldn’t believe that she was really five.  She said she still feels like she’s 4 on the inside.  So there was definitely a bit of disbelief there on both sides.  On the actual morning, the alarm went off and I said, “Birdy, first day of school today!” She literally leapt off the bed and had her school uniform on within seconds.  I’m still groaning and trying to get my butt out of bed, but she was already dressed before I’d even rolled over.  Let’s hope that continues.

 When we got to the school gate, I was feeling fine, although I have to tell you there were a few sympathetic smiles between the parents and a few rather teary looking eyes. Of course, I was totally together.  Afterwards, a few of the parents went out for coffee and I thought, “Well I handled that quite well.”  It wasn’t until I was at home by myself and the house was just so quiet, that I started to fall apart.  I had this ridiculous sense of being redundant.  Because everyone knows a 5 year old is totally independent and ready to move out of home and no longer needs a mother at all!  A totally irrational response, I know, but talking to the other Mums at pick-up time, I wasn’t the only one who found myself feeling a little teary and irrational that day.

As for Birdy, she loved it.  On the way home, she said, “I love my school Mum!” And she said that she had so much fun.  But she was bit confused.  She said, “Mum part of me feels like I’m 5 because I’m going to school, but part of me feels like I’m still 4 because we just played all day like we did at pre-school.”  I think she was expecting it to be a bit more difficult, but they haven’t done any actual schoolwork yet.  On the second day of school she was just as excited to go back.  But already she was playing it down, trying to be cool.  At the school gate she dropped my hand and took a couple of steps away from me when she saw some big kids arriving at the gate.  Already, I’m not cool enough for her!

Having your first child start school feels like the beginning of a whole new era.  For some of my friends, who have their youngest child starting school, its also the end of an era.  I’m very excited about Birdy learning to read and making her own friends.  But more than anything I’m looking forward to the community aspect of it.  On the first day I met 2 or 3 other mums, and they all lived within one or two streets of me, so I’m really looking forward to getting to know more local families.  And hopefully I might bump into them at the shops or the library or the local park and get a bit more of a sense of community. I’m not signing up for the P&C just yet, but I’m certainly looking forward to getting more involved in school life.  I just hope Birdy keeps bounding out of bed like she did last week!

 Did you have a child starting school last week?  How did they go?  And how did you go?

Preschool pick-up March 4, 2011

Scribbling stolen from husband and used without permission

Birdy’s Preschool

For the past four weeks I’ve been learning how to be a pre-school parent.  I’ve learnt that I have to wash Birdy’s little sleeping bag every week.  I’ve learnt that they bring home enough artwork every day to decorate the Vatican within a year.  I’ve learnt that if you don’t get to the car park at 20 to 3 you’ll spend the next 25 minutes circling the car park like a hungry vulture.  And I’ve learnt that its a very bad feeling to be the very last parent to arrive at the end of the day. (Negligent mother alert!)

I was really excited about Birdy starting Preschool.  Unlike many of my friends, I wasn’t at all nervous or upset about the idea of being apart for the whole day and I wasn’t really worried about how she would settle in and make friends.  (I had enough to worry about with all her medical dramas.)  But since then I’ve had an emotional reaction that I didn’t anticipate: I actually feel left out.  Well, just a little.

For the first time in her life, Birdy is having all these amazing experiences without me!  I’m not part of it at all.  Yes, I get to hear about what happened at Preschool, but I don’t actually get to experience it with her or witness it. This was brought home to me over the past two days because Birdy got to be one of the first ‘special helpers’ at Preschool yesterday and today.  She was really proud of this achievement.  Yesterday she went to bed talking about it, and today she woke up at 6 am still talking about it.  I would have dearly loved to see her handing out the morning teas and tapping the students on the head when it was their turn to go to the bathroom.  Instead I have to simply imagine all these things in my minds eye.

Today Birdy came home with a special sticker on her shirt that said:

You have been a TERRIFIC SPECIAL HELPER this week at Preschool.  You have led the class from place to place, called your friends by name to go inside and done special jobs for the teachers in group time. A job well done.

We are keeping that sticker forever!

The other aspect of Preschool that I was unprepared for is the post-Preschool meltdown.  At the end of the day, Birdy is so tired she can’t concentrate on anything!  Although she hasn’t yet had a complete and total meltdown after Preschool, she has been right on the edge on a number of occasions.  As I work during the mornings, I am feeling the loss of our afternoons together.  Birdy is no longer capable of playing games, or doing anything much at all after Preschool.  She just collapses like a zombie onto the kitchen floor while I offer her her favorite comfort snack of a cup of warm milk and biscotti.

I have to say that we seem to have scored the most amazing Preschool in Sydney.  I’m just inspired by all the love, care and attention shown to the kids.  And by all the thoughtful touches that make the experience so special for the children – the stickers describing something they did that day, the sharing bag, getting to be a special helper.  If the first four weeks have been anything to go by, I have a feeling that this year of innocent, joyful discovery will fly by before any of us have a chance to fully appreciate it.

Did you enjoy your child’s first year of Preschool?  Or are you looking forward to it?  Do you have any memories of your own Preschool?

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?

The Accidental Ballet Mum August 5, 2010

I never pictured myself as a ballet Mum.  I never intended to enroll my daughter in ballet at all, let alone at 3 and a half.  But like lots of things in parenting, my child had other ideas.  So I had a choice: either to stick with my own pre-conceived ideas about what I expected my child to be or to throw the book out the window and go with the flow.

Ask my daughter what she’s going to be when she grows up and the answer is the same every time:  A ballerina.  I don’t think there’s much chance she will be an actual ballerina (Hey, my niece wants to be a mermaid, so she’s one up on that!) but as she’s been giving the same answer for about six months I figure it’s time my husband and I stopped rolling our eyes and smirking at each other every time she says it.

Birdy’s favourite game is to play ballet lessons.  When my sister was visiting recently, I would come home from work everyday to find them playing ballet lessons, (which was rather hysterical, considering my sister’s never even done highland dancing, let alone anything resembling ballet).  Finally I found a class that fit with our schedule and we went to our first real ballet lesson this week.

First we had to buy a leotard.  Well even before that, Birdy had to learn how to pronounce it.  She practiced saying it even though she didn’t actually know what a leotard was.  She just knew it was something you had to have for ballet.  Then off we went to the shops.  While we were there, Birdy told every person we passed that we were going to buy a ballet dress and a leotard.  I mean every person.  Other mums.  The 21 year old guy serving in the bookshop.  People waiting in the toilet queue.  Her excitement was completely uncontainable.

When we finally found the dance clothes and tried them on, she was beside herself.  Captivated by the image of herself in the leotard, ballet dress and slippers, she clapped her hands together with joy.  “Oh Mum I will be so beautiful at my ballet lesson.  I’m so excited.”  From then on, she proceeded to tell every person we passed that we had just bought a leotard and ballet slippers.  She couldn’t have been more excited if I’d just bought her a trampoline.

And so finally we made it to the magical world of the ballet class.  I was immediately drawn into the theatre of it all.  The costumes, the fancy French words, the play-acting.  Even the teachers’ New York accent added to the sense that we were being drawn into an alternative reality, where jumps are referred to as something that sounds like a cooking method, and where grace, elegance, gentleness and patience are the most prized virtues of our time.  And it dawned on me that ballet offers something that modern life lacks: ritual, ceremony, peacefulness, repetition, the joy of doing something just for the sheer pleasure of doing it, a chance to concentrate on nothing but physical movement.  Both the girls enjoyed the feeling of accomplishment they got from taking part.  As soon as the class was over my niece asked me “Can we come back to this ballet class again tomorrow?”  She’d sensed that she was part of something special.

I still don’t really think my girl is cut out to be a ballerina.  But I love the fact that her eyes light up just at the sight of her ballet slippers.  And isn’t that what we all want for our kids?  To help them find the thing that lights them up on the inside and lets the authentic them shine out.

What gets your kids really excited?  Have they found an activity or interest they really love?  Have you had to change your ideas and expectations of what you would like them to do?  What was your favourite activity or interest when you were young?  Has it influenced what you want for your children?