Post by Danielle on Nov 9, 2015 16:49:11 GMT
I saw this article on Yahoo today and, of course, I have an opinion on it.
Ask any group of parents what they want for their kids and you’ll hear a variety of answers: success, wealth, to have a life a bit better than ours. Just check out the weekend schedules of your parenting peers, who race from the soccer game to the tennis tournament then back across town for chess club. We all want to give our kids the best of everything—but there is a fine line between enjoying activities and being overwhelmed. Turns out finding that balance isn’t so easy.
When my son was little it seemed like each new stage he reached meant more activities and groups to participate in. When he was 6 months old you would find us at playgroups twice each week, trying new parks and trading tales of the milestones our babies had reached. By 2.5 years old, he was old enough for preschool Tuesday and Thursday mornings.
In the beginning we did lots of fun things that weren’t too organized. Library reading time was always a hit, and we stayed afterwards to grab a huge bag of books to check out. We started to do some easy hikes with friends, visited nature centers and threw rocks in the creek. But as he got older, the questions started coming—from all angles. When will he go to preschool? Does he do gymnastics? Do you speak another language to him at home?
It started to feel like I was failing at modern motherhood, simply by just letting him play.
From that point on, the choices became almost unmanageable. Should he try chess lessons or science camp? Karate or Spanish? Private year-round swim lessons? Parents now have such an incredible array of activities available for their children it becomes easy to lose sight of the true purpose of childhood: to be a kid. It started to feel like I was failing at modern motherhood, simply by just letting him play. And he loved to play, especially pretend. But what about a passion? Wasn’t it my job to help him find one—or possibly several?
“The reality is that passion shifts as kids grow, and that’s a good thing,” shares Mom.me contributor Katie Hurley, LCSW, in her book “The Happy Kid Handbook: How to Raise a Joyful Child in a Stressful World.” “Every child has a spark, and you don’t need to focus on what you perceive as your child’s talents to find it.” Hurley goes on to say that while your child may be very interested in a particular sport or hobby, she might have no skill set in this area.
“So how do we help our children find their areas of interest and what does it really mean to support them?” Hurley asks. “Supporting our children as they reach for their dreams (their dreams of the moment, anyway) is a balancing act.”
I struggled with this balance between wanting my son to play and have fun, yet worrying that somehow he would fall behind the others if he didn’t take this class or play that sport.
So how do we find this balance? Maybe we all need to listen to our inner child to find the answers our kids need. The first time I listened to my inner child, my son was in pre-K at a co-op school I loved. And he loved it too, for the first year.
But as the second year progressed there was more structure, more academic expectations and not as much fun, creative play. Every day when I picked him up there was something that had “gone wrong” with his day. My heart wanted to pull him out, but I struggled with the fact that every other kid his age was in preschool. It was an expected part of childhood, yet one that had started to feel constricting.
So, instead of the sandbox full of pushing and shoving, we went to the beach and dug holes for hours. Instead of having to “clean up” after free-time, we built huge block cities and left them up for days. We drove across bridges just to see what was on the other side. One day we stopped to watch a field full of cows grazing—and they watched us back. We pretended to be royalty, the garbage man, pirates, soldiers or knights. I wasn’t really teaching him anything at all, but he was learning to wonder. And I think wonder is what leads to passionate pursuits at any age.
As he got older, my son tried lots of different activities. Some were a big hit, while others didn’t stick. Every new pursuit left a small imprint on him, pushing him in a new direction each time. The kid who never had any interest in learning a musical instrument saved his money and bought a guitar. Just this past summer, he decided to give woodworking a try and built a few side tables, lamps and shelves. And while we don’t expect him to play before a sellout crowd or design his own line of furniture, it’s pretty cool to see where his interests take him when he follows his own lead.
Looking back, that decision to pull him out of the preschool a few months early was one of the best things I did as a mom. Back then, I thought my son had to try all the things, to have a childhood experience full of awesome achievements and activities. What I learned, though, was that he really just needed to experience childhood itself. —Sherri Kuhn
I have said for many years to just play with your kids. They need the freedom and the time to develop their minds, their imaginations and their ability to think. Too many kids are over structured and don't develop their ability to play. In fact, new research is linking the stress of over programmed kids to poor school performance and increased childhood anxiety, but that's a topic for another thread.
Mildred Parten, in 1932, identified six different types of play:
Unoccupied (play) – when the child is not playing, just observing. A child may be standing in one spot or performing random movements
Solitary (independent) play – when the child is alone and maintains focus on its activity. Such a child is uninterested in or is unaware of what others are doing. More common in younger children (age 2–3) as opposed to older ones.
Onlooker play (behavior) – when the child watches others at play but does not engage in it. The child may engage in forms of social interaction, such as conversation about the play, without actually joining in the activity. This type of activity is also more common in younger children.
Parallel play (adjacent play, social coaction) – when the child plays separately from others but close to them and mimicking their actions. This type of play is seen as a transitory stage from a socially immature solitary and onlooker type of play, to a more socially mature associative and cooperative type of play.
Associative play – when the child is interested in the people playing but not in coordinating their activities with those people, or when there is no organized activity at all. There is a substantial amount of interaction involved, but the activities are not in sync.
Cooperative play – when a child is interested both in the people playing and in the activity they are doing. In cooperative play, the activity is organized, and participants have assigned roles. There is also increased self-identification with a group, and a group identity may emerge. This is relatively uncommon in the preschool and Kindergarten years, because it requires more social maturity and more advanced organization skills. Examples would be dramatic play activities with roles, like playing school, or a game with rules, such as freeze tag.
According to Parten, as children became older, improving their communication skills, and as opportunities for peer interaction become more common, the nonsocial (solitary and parallel) types of play become less common, and the social (associative and cooperative) types of play become more common.
(Reference - Santrock, J. W. (2007). Parten's classic study of play. In A topical approach to life-span development (3rd ed.). New York, New York: McGraw Hill. (Original work published 2002).
This mother, while worrying and feeling guilty was, in fact, doing the right thing with her son - allowing him to drive his play. In doing this, she allowed him to develop his own interests and then to pursue them when he was ready. If you think of the Waldorf and/or Montessori curriculum, it is child-centred and allows the child to drive their learning, in part. That is what will produce a happy kid, so go play.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waldorf_education
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montessori_education
Ask any group of parents what they want for their kids and you’ll hear a variety of answers: success, wealth, to have a life a bit better than ours. Just check out the weekend schedules of your parenting peers, who race from the soccer game to the tennis tournament then back across town for chess club. We all want to give our kids the best of everything—but there is a fine line between enjoying activities and being overwhelmed. Turns out finding that balance isn’t so easy.
When my son was little it seemed like each new stage he reached meant more activities and groups to participate in. When he was 6 months old you would find us at playgroups twice each week, trying new parks and trading tales of the milestones our babies had reached. By 2.5 years old, he was old enough for preschool Tuesday and Thursday mornings.
In the beginning we did lots of fun things that weren’t too organized. Library reading time was always a hit, and we stayed afterwards to grab a huge bag of books to check out. We started to do some easy hikes with friends, visited nature centers and threw rocks in the creek. But as he got older, the questions started coming—from all angles. When will he go to preschool? Does he do gymnastics? Do you speak another language to him at home?
It started to feel like I was failing at modern motherhood, simply by just letting him play.
From that point on, the choices became almost unmanageable. Should he try chess lessons or science camp? Karate or Spanish? Private year-round swim lessons? Parents now have such an incredible array of activities available for their children it becomes easy to lose sight of the true purpose of childhood: to be a kid. It started to feel like I was failing at modern motherhood, simply by just letting him play. And he loved to play, especially pretend. But what about a passion? Wasn’t it my job to help him find one—or possibly several?
“The reality is that passion shifts as kids grow, and that’s a good thing,” shares Mom.me contributor Katie Hurley, LCSW, in her book “The Happy Kid Handbook: How to Raise a Joyful Child in a Stressful World.” “Every child has a spark, and you don’t need to focus on what you perceive as your child’s talents to find it.” Hurley goes on to say that while your child may be very interested in a particular sport or hobby, she might have no skill set in this area.
“So how do we help our children find their areas of interest and what does it really mean to support them?” Hurley asks. “Supporting our children as they reach for their dreams (their dreams of the moment, anyway) is a balancing act.”
I struggled with this balance between wanting my son to play and have fun, yet worrying that somehow he would fall behind the others if he didn’t take this class or play that sport.
So how do we find this balance? Maybe we all need to listen to our inner child to find the answers our kids need. The first time I listened to my inner child, my son was in pre-K at a co-op school I loved. And he loved it too, for the first year.
But as the second year progressed there was more structure, more academic expectations and not as much fun, creative play. Every day when I picked him up there was something that had “gone wrong” with his day. My heart wanted to pull him out, but I struggled with the fact that every other kid his age was in preschool. It was an expected part of childhood, yet one that had started to feel constricting.
So, instead of the sandbox full of pushing and shoving, we went to the beach and dug holes for hours. Instead of having to “clean up” after free-time, we built huge block cities and left them up for days. We drove across bridges just to see what was on the other side. One day we stopped to watch a field full of cows grazing—and they watched us back. We pretended to be royalty, the garbage man, pirates, soldiers or knights. I wasn’t really teaching him anything at all, but he was learning to wonder. And I think wonder is what leads to passionate pursuits at any age.
As he got older, my son tried lots of different activities. Some were a big hit, while others didn’t stick. Every new pursuit left a small imprint on him, pushing him in a new direction each time. The kid who never had any interest in learning a musical instrument saved his money and bought a guitar. Just this past summer, he decided to give woodworking a try and built a few side tables, lamps and shelves. And while we don’t expect him to play before a sellout crowd or design his own line of furniture, it’s pretty cool to see where his interests take him when he follows his own lead.
Looking back, that decision to pull him out of the preschool a few months early was one of the best things I did as a mom. Back then, I thought my son had to try all the things, to have a childhood experience full of awesome achievements and activities. What I learned, though, was that he really just needed to experience childhood itself. —Sherri Kuhn
I have said for many years to just play with your kids. They need the freedom and the time to develop their minds, their imaginations and their ability to think. Too many kids are over structured and don't develop their ability to play. In fact, new research is linking the stress of over programmed kids to poor school performance and increased childhood anxiety, but that's a topic for another thread.
Mildred Parten, in 1932, identified six different types of play:
Unoccupied (play) – when the child is not playing, just observing. A child may be standing in one spot or performing random movements
Solitary (independent) play – when the child is alone and maintains focus on its activity. Such a child is uninterested in or is unaware of what others are doing. More common in younger children (age 2–3) as opposed to older ones.
Onlooker play (behavior) – when the child watches others at play but does not engage in it. The child may engage in forms of social interaction, such as conversation about the play, without actually joining in the activity. This type of activity is also more common in younger children.
Parallel play (adjacent play, social coaction) – when the child plays separately from others but close to them and mimicking their actions. This type of play is seen as a transitory stage from a socially immature solitary and onlooker type of play, to a more socially mature associative and cooperative type of play.
Associative play – when the child is interested in the people playing but not in coordinating their activities with those people, or when there is no organized activity at all. There is a substantial amount of interaction involved, but the activities are not in sync.
Cooperative play – when a child is interested both in the people playing and in the activity they are doing. In cooperative play, the activity is organized, and participants have assigned roles. There is also increased self-identification with a group, and a group identity may emerge. This is relatively uncommon in the preschool and Kindergarten years, because it requires more social maturity and more advanced organization skills. Examples would be dramatic play activities with roles, like playing school, or a game with rules, such as freeze tag.
According to Parten, as children became older, improving their communication skills, and as opportunities for peer interaction become more common, the nonsocial (solitary and parallel) types of play become less common, and the social (associative and cooperative) types of play become more common.
(Reference - Santrock, J. W. (2007). Parten's classic study of play. In A topical approach to life-span development (3rd ed.). New York, New York: McGraw Hill. (Original work published 2002).
This mother, while worrying and feeling guilty was, in fact, doing the right thing with her son - allowing him to drive his play. In doing this, she allowed him to develop his own interests and then to pursue them when he was ready. If you think of the Waldorf and/or Montessori curriculum, it is child-centred and allows the child to drive their learning, in part. That is what will produce a happy kid, so go play.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waldorf_education
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montessori_education