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Parenting Press®Welcome to the March 2011
“News for Parents”
Dear Friends of Parenting Press:
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IN THIS ISSUE
- WHAT’S NEW?
- FEATURES
- POTPOURRI
- COMING ATTRACTIONS
- Tiny Gardens
- The STAR Parenting Approach
- Handling Manipulative People
I. WHAT’S NEW?
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Thinking Styles Shape How Children Learn
Kids learn better when material is presented in the informational style their brains prefer. As Susie Leonard Weller, author of Why Don't You Understand? Improve Family Communication with the 4 Thinking Styles (Parenting Press, 2009), points out, “Effective teachers know how to explain a new concept in at least four different ways.”
Because parents are the most important teachers for their children, she recommends that they also learn every possible way to support learning. Often, she explains, they get stuck trying to explain something to children who learn in a style different than that of the parents’ learning style.
“The more parents persist in teaching in their preferred way, the more the child’s emotions escalate and spiral into higher levels of frustration. To stop this negative cycle, parents need to become proficient at teaching their children in a whole-brained way.”
Weller, whose book describes four distinct thinking styles, says that “logical” learners typically:
- need a reason to learn the material
- prefer facts that are precise
- want to achieve and be successful
- focus on reaching goals
- tune out if they’re not interested in the topic
- like to debate their points of view
- become impatient when they don’t quickly grasp material
- become irritated with too many details or stories
By contrast, it’s common for “creative” learners to:
- need to explore and experiment
- like to imagine “what if?”
- want time to daydream
- enjoy variety
- become bored easily
- need to move to learn
- dislike rules and details
- struggle to focus and complete projects
“Practical” learners are likely to:
- need to practice new skills and use new information
- prefer consistency and step-by-step instructions
- prefer practical applications for knowledge
- be more comfortable when what is expected is explicit
- are uncomfortable with changes in assignments
- are stressed by surprise quizzes
- dislike feeling rushed to complete tasks
- feel lost if there aren’t enough details in step-by-step directions
“Relational” learners usually:
- need to talk with others
- prefer a comfortable and safe environment
- want plenty of encouragement
- enjoy group learning
- becomes restless with too much lecturing
- struggle with logical analyses
- perform better when they receive individual attention
- want the information to feel meaningful
Weller, who also teaches for the Community Colleges of Spokane, Wash., acknowledges that parents have to practice becoming at ease in using different learning styles, especially those learning styles that are significantly different from their own. “For example, both of my children prefer to do their homework while sprawled on the living room floor, listening to music. I grew up in a very structured household, being taught me that the proper way to study is at a desk, with no distractions. Since we often parent our children in the way our parents taught us, I’ve struggled to let go of old messages about the best environment to learn.”
Rather than criticize our children’s learning styles, she goes on, we have to find ways to work with these styles. For example: when a child protests, “Why do I have to learn this?” the parent can cite examples of how the information will be used later in life, if not almost immediately. Sometimes the answer is as simple as, “Because you won’t be allowed to print in third grade, you’ll have to use cursive.” For kids who need to practice new skills such as the multiplication tables, a parent might come up with a variety of things to multiply throughout the day: “If we have 10 steps from the house to the sidewalk, and we go up and down those steps three times a day, how many is that?” or “If each of us is going to get two cookies for dessert, how many cookies have to be put out on a plate?” Imaginative kids can be encouraged to be creative as they complete assignments; the News for Parents editor suggested her son create “Little sister for sale” ads for the mock newspaper assigned by his fifth grade teacher, and when he was learning to diagram, he identified the parts of speech in sentences such as, “My little sister is noisy.”
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How Library Activities Can Help Kids Make Friends
If you were with us for last month’s issue of News for Parents, you may have read Eileen Kennedy-Moore’s advice on helping children make friends. This month we have more suggestions from Kennedy-Moore, whose picture book for children is What About Me? 12 Ways to Get Your Parents’ Attention (Without Hitting Your Sister). This time her focus is how your library can serve as a place for kids to make friends. As she notes, the best libraries are the hubs of their communities, drawing people together and serving a wide range of interests and concerns.
To make use of these tips, start by determining what is currently offered in your neighborhood library, any library systems open to your family, and your child’s school library. Many already offer story hours, puppet shows, musical performances and such special events as reptile visits and craft projects. If there doesn’t seem to be much going on in the library most convenient for you, schedule a time to talk to the librarian or the events coordinator for the entire library system. Most libraries have tight budgets and are short of staff these days, so consider volunteering to organize activities that you believe will be valuable for your children.
As Kennedy-Moore points out, “Activities can contribute to a child’s growing sense of identity. When asked to tell about themselves, most children will say things like, ‘I play soccer,’ or ‘I take ballet.’ A display of books about such common after-school activities can reinforce these interests and encourage reading.”
After-school programs can be a way to reach out to young readers and help children find others with similar interests. Some possibilities that you might volunteer to handle:
Interest-related book clubs. “These will be most appealing to children if they offer related hands-on activities,” says Kennedy-Moore, a clinical psychologist and mother of four. “A manga book club could feature instructions on drawing and the opportunity to share and publish members’ drawings. In a mystery or spy book club, members could make presentations on secret codes, lateral thinking brain teasers, or two-minute mysteries to solve as a group. A science fiction book club could incorporate clean and tidy science experiments like building circuits.”
Board games. A library could schedule regular chess or checkers tournaments, have occasional game days with everything from Junior Scrabble to chess, or simply keep a supply of board games for kids to play. For best results, Kennedy-Moore recommends that each session start by asking kids what it means to be a good sport and why sportsmanship is important. She suggests the library may need a policy about what happens when kids cheat or otherwise do not practice good sportsmanship.
Collectible card days. On given days, kids could be invited to bring in their collections of cards, talk about the collections and view other kids’ collections. “Do not allow trading of collectible cards because one party is likely to feel cheated or have a later change of heart,” the author advises.
Skill-building workshops. Nonfiction books can serve as the basis for four or six-week series of presentations in which children learn a particular skill like origami, calligraphy, photography, cartooning, first aid, or babysitting basics. “These also reinforce the idea of the library as a learning resource,” reminds Kennedy-Moore.
Puzzle corner. “Having a 500-piece puzzle out that patrons can work on is an informal way to draw people of all ages together.”
“Unscrew it!” Schedule occasional “take-apart” events, or if space permits, have a permanent “disassembly” area in the library, where kids can use simple tools to take apart broken small appliances, film cameras, and electronics. Teenagers or adult electronics buffs can meet with kids to explain the different parts or a display can label parts for self-identification. (Remember to protect the area and its small pieces from unsupervised preschool and younger children.)
Drama club. Kids can create their own scripts using favorite books, and then present plays. Or, following the lead of books like “The Jolly Postman,” they can combine characters from several nursery rhymes, fairy tales or classics into a single play. (Imagine Jack and Jill meeting Hansel and Gretel, or Cinderella, Snow White and Rapunzel all at the same ball with Robin Hood and the Emperor who had no clothes or the March sisters from Little Women meeting Pollyanna and Anne from Anne of Green Gables.)
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Facilitating Networking without Goofy Games
How do you create and run an introvert-friendly event? How can you apply your awareness of personality types to create events sensitive to diverse styles? Those are among the questions that Devora Zack asks in “Creating Events That Work for All,” one of the final chapters of her networking guide. Especially if you’re working with a committee of adults or kids on projects such as those mentioned in the earlier story on library events, you may find Zack’s tips helpful.
First, she says, don’t brainstorm with the usual meeting and whiteboard for jotting down suggestions. Instead, provide paper and pencils and ask participants to jot down their ideas in a minute or two. “Prepare to be surprised by how many more ideas you get” when you read everyone’s notes, she says. People who may be intimidated by speaking up can put some very creative ideas on paper.
Second, create structure to integrate people of different types and backgrounds at the event. One suggestion: place cards with descriptions instead of names at each place setting: “speak pig Latin,” “play Ping-Pong,” “have a guinea pig.,” “know how to juggle,” “love to cook” and such. When you invite people to find appropriate cards to sit by, you guarantee a mix at each table and each place card is a conversation-starter, Zack explains. Other techniques, not all of which you’d use at the same event, include: Put a collection of colored pens by the nametags and ask people to add a symbol of themselves. As participants mingle, these also offer a starting point for conversation.
A third option requires that you gather a little information about participants in advance, perhaps with a simple question or two on registration blanks about where they attend school, current pets and favorite color. You can add this data to more general information (“love the snow,” “play soccer” “hate Harry Potter”) on 16-square “bingo” style cards. Unless your group is very small, you’ll want four or five originals, with photocopies for each attendee. You can allow five minutes for people to mingle and get signatures from others in applicable squares.
Finally, Zack suggests a version of musical chairs. Each time you stop the music, announce a topic (“Where did you spend your last vacation?” “What was your first pet?”) and ask each participant to turn to a stranger, introduce himself and ask for the answer to that question.
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Seductive Delusions: How Everyday People Catch STDs
Here at News for Parents, we get to review books on many different topics, and this is one we whole-heartedly recommend for adolescents, their parents and teachers.
Seductive Delusions is a hard-hitting guide by physician Jill Grimes that intersperses individuals’ stories with four- to six-page “fact sheets” about the sexually transmitted diseases discussed in the case histories. If you work with young people who are beginning to date or are sexually active, or kids whose peers are sexually active, Grimes provides straight talk they may find valuable, especially because she strives to avoid moralizing. “This is not a book that says you’re bad if you have sex. . .[rather it] says look, here are the facts about what you risk medically if you have sex.” This content is also important to share with parents who may be unaware of their children’s sexual activity, of the symptoms of STDs, of the variety of STDs widespread among Americans today, or of the fact that some STDs cannot be cured.
Because Grimes wants readers to be able to identify with the characters in case histories, these are typically about 10 pages long, and full of dialog between main character and doctor or between friends. They read like fiction except for very specific descriptions of symptoms. The characters are high school, college and graduate students and recent grads, to emphasize that STDs don’t occur only in what the author calls “outcasts.”
“Universally, there is a seductive illusion that if we choose the ‘right’ people, there won’t be any adverse emotional or physical consequences from sexual activity,” writes Grimes. “No one seems to believe that these fundamental principles apply to them or their group of friends. Although we hear about new ‘hookups’ between superstars every week, when was the last time we heard of an actor or supermodel catching an STD?”
Given the public health emphasis on condom use, the doctor also uses her stories to point out that these decrease (not completely prevent) the transmission of semen-carried diseases, but that they offer less protection against diseases transmitted by direct contact and that overall, condom failure rates approach 20 percent.
II. FEATURES
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Tips for the month
Each Saturday, Parenting Press posts a new parenting tip and the previous week’s tip is moved to the archive.
In some parts of the country, the weather agrees with the calendar that spring is on the way. So we’re more likely to be outside—and that means it’s more important than ever to review safety precautions with our families. This month we’re looking at four tips on the topic of safety:
March 5 — First Aid Skills for Kids
March 12 — Help Your Child Interact Safely with Dogs, Part I
March 19 — Help Your Child Interact Safely with Dogs, Part II
March 26 — Making Kids Bike-Safe for the Summer
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Family Fun Ideas — Splish! Splash!
What’s more fun than water? If you live where the snow and ice have melted, why not pull on those rubber boots and set out as a family to stomp in puddles? Maybe even splash a little at the shore of a nearby pond or stream! Tie strings to your favorite boats and rubber ducks and pull them along the shore or through the largest puddles, or make impromptu boats with large leaves that are sturdy enough to hold a pebble or two of “freight” and see how far they go.
Still too cold to get outside? Consider old-fashioned fun: fill a dishpan or washtub with warm water and dunk for apples! (Of course, this is a family activity, with adults on hand whenever water is involved.)
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Community Service — Feed Our Feathered Friends
Our goal with this column is to suggest ways that you can model the concept of sharing and giving back to your community. There are practical advantages to community service, too. Kids can use these projects to meet school or youth group requirements for community service and to start building resumes that they’ll use when applying for first jobs or college.
This month, consider a buffet supper for the birds who winter with you, or those who are returning from their winter away. Tie strings to large pine cones and then little kids can smear them with peanut butter and then roll them in bird seed or bread crumbs. Bigger kids can string popcorn or assemble bird feeders. Suspend everything in your yard, or (with permission) in your neighborhood’s community garden. You’ll find instructions for turning soda bottles, plastic jars, milk cartons, milk jugs or wood scraps into bird feeders with a quick search on the Internet. A couple of examples: add wooden spoons to a plastic soda bottle for a quick and easy feeder or shingle a recycled half-gallon milk carton with Popsicle sticks for a house-style feeder.
III. POTPOURRI
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Special of the month — 14 Ways to Protect Your Baby from SIDS
This special has expired.
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