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Parenting Press®News for Parents — July
Dear Friends of Parenting Press,
Welcome to the July issue of our electronic newsletter for parents. Our goal is to provide you with interesting and useful information in a format that’s quick and easy to read—and FREE. We welcome your comments, both about the newsletter content and its format. To get the newsletter delivered, you can sign up for an e-mail subscription.
July 2008
IN THIS ISSUE
- WHAT’S NEW?
- FEATURES
- POTPOURRI
- COMING ATTRACTIONS
- MOKS, POFS, FOF and Such
- Understanding Autism
- The Power of One
I. WHAT’S NEW?
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NPR Features Award-winning Author
Helen F. Neville, the California pediatric advice nurse and parent educator who wrote Is This a Phase? Child Development & Parent Strategies, Birth to 6 Years is being featured this summer on Bobbi Conner’s Parent’s Journal. Neville’s book has also has recently won two awards: a silver medal in the 10th annual Book of the Year Awards sponsored by ForeWord magazine and an Honor Award in the 2008 National Parenting Publications Awards program (see www.parenthood.com). Jurors in the 2008 Benjamin Franklin Awards program wrote, “Bravo! Excellent project: clear concise, informative writing.”
Even better, Is This a Phase? was the subject of a rave review in Library Journal. This prestigious industry publication described it as “an authoritative reference covering a broad range of topics . . . that every parent needs. . .Neville’s book is accurate, reliable, and practical, with many charts and graphs that render the information accessible.”
Check parentsjournal.com for the NPR station in your area that will be airing the interviews with Neville. If you miss the shows, listen to the podcasts, also available on the Parent’s Journal web site.
Neville has been affiliated with Kaiser Permanente for three decades. She is also associated with Bananas, the Oakland, Calif. child care resource and referral network. She earlier co-authored Temperament Tools, also published by Parenting Press.
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Diagramming!
Is diagramming sentences a lost art? We hope not. It’s a wonderful foundation for understanding parts of speech and unscrambling the crazy sentences we all seem to write occasionally.
Many summers ago, the “News for Parents” editor made her children diagram sentences each morning, which you can appreciate was about as popular as cleaning the guinea pig cages. (Even though they were allowed to select the sentences, which were usually in the “My sister is a pest” and “My brother, who is annoying, ate all the ice cream” vein.) In the last year, however, both kids have separately volunteered thanks for those lessons, commenting on how much they have benefitted from the emphasis on grammar.
Much more fun than the workbooks we used is Sister Bernadette’s Barking Dog: The Quirky History and Lost Art of Diagramming Sentences, which both romanticizes diagramming and questions its validity.
Kitty Burns Florey starts with a history of diagramming—yes, someone had to invent it! As she explains, S.W. Clark in 1860 “published a tome called ‘A Practical Grammar: In which Words, Phrases, and Sentences Are Classified According to their Offices and Their Various Relations to One Another.’ What it doesn’t mention,” she continues, “is that the diagrams are balloons.” His elaborately sentimental sentences (“Our proper bliss depends on what we blame”) were presented in “wacky balloon versions” that Florey says look like “invading hordes of Goodyear blimps.”
A few years later, teacher Alonzo Reed and professor Brainerd Kellogg straightened out the balloons, introducing diagramming as we know it in “Higher Lessons in English.” This 1877 book was wildly popular, their system “sweeping through American public schools like the measles,” to use Florey’s expression. The pair wrote another five books together, and sales of all of them were significant, even by today’s standards: a total of about a half million copies a year.
Sister Bernadette’s Barking Dog (named for the dog featured in sentences assigned by Florey’s sixth grade parochial school teacher) shows how to diagram many famous writers, including Henry James, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Eudora Welty, but the author does not insist that diagramming is the only way to learn grammar.
As she points out, reading can be just as valuable: “. . .A lot of people. . .pick up grammar and syntax effortlessly through their reading—which, in the case of most competent users of words, ranges from extensive to fanatical.”
And if your kids do decide—as did Florey—that diagramming is fun, see Florey’s web site for a link to a web site that will provide how-to’s:
Gene Moutoux: Florey describes this retired high school and college instructor as a “guru” and his web site as “stellar.” It’s a little dry in tone, but exceptionally clear. He provides a sentence and then diagrams both its words and the parts of speech: “they laughed” and then “subject-verb.”
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Don’t Want to Diagram?
Diagramming: yuck! OK, we believe you. Language, and discovering where it came from, can still be fun. The King County Library System, headquartered in a suburb of Seattle, suggests these books:
Ox, House, Stick: The Story of Our Alphabet, written by Don Robb and illustrated by Anne Smith, is short—48 pages—and it explains how and why language evolved from spoken to pictures to written. For elementary-age kids who can read.
For parents and teenagers, librarians recommend Heavy Words Lightly Thrown: The Reason Behind the Rhyme, by Chris Roberts. Publishers Weekly says that Roberts, who works as both a London tour guide and a librarian, “transforms a catalogue of familiar nursery rhymes into a treasure trove of tantalizingly slippery archaisms, hidden etymological layers, arcane associations and buried meanings. Having explained how the Victorians sanitized nursery rhymes’ traditionally earthy content, Roberts attends to each ditty separately, printing obscure variants and tracing historical references, from British constitutional history to bygone pagan customs.”
Its review continues, “Roberts’s intimate knowledge of London history is perfectly suited to his discussions of ‘London Bridge Is Falling Down’ and ‘Pop Goes the Weasel.’ As any good historian of oral culture ought, Roberts intelligently admits that many rhymes have open-ended meanings subject to multiple interpretations. This is better than history lite—it’s history made delightful.”
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Carrying on a Conversation
How to start a conversation and keep it going is a challenge for many of us, especially kids. And kids who may have talked to everyone about everything sometimes get tongue-tied at adolescence or in the presence of the opposite gender. If this sounds like your house, here are a few tips from Jodi R.R. Smith, the author of two From Clueless to Class Act books, one for men and the other for women. You’ll find more of her ideas in her books and at her web site.
Most important, says Smith, recognize that being a good conversationalist is a learned skill. “Which means,” she says, “that with a bit of coaching and practice, anyone can mingle like a pro.”
Be prepared to speak first. “What brings you here?”and “How do you know [host]?” can get a conversation started. The cliche “Haven’t we met before?” sometimes even works, as does its less timeworn variation, “You look so familiar. . .”, although it has the disadvantage of allowing a “yes” or “no” answer.
Have a self-introduction. With your name, include a little information about yourself. It is this tidbit that will help you start a conversation or help the other person ask you a question. (i.e., “Hi, I am Jodi Smith, sister of the bride.” “Nice to meet you, I am Jodi Smith from Boston.”)
Have small talk in mind. These topics can be as simple as “Come here often?” or “Like this music?” They can be related to the event: “Do you water ski?” or “Did you work here last year?” Future plans are also easy: “Where are you going to school in the fall?” or “What are you taking when school starts?”
Think of a conversation as a game of catch. “Good conversations involve give and take. If you find that you are not talking at all or that you are doing all the talking, something is off in your game,” reminds Smith.
Use body language to keep a conversation going. “Your body should face the other person, shoulders squared to his or her, open body stance (make sure your arms are not crossed and that your hands are not hidden in your pockets!), and good eye contact. In addition to body language, you should also be using listening cues, such as nodding your head, or an occasional ‘um-hum.’”
Use open-ended questions to keep a conversation going. “These are questions that require at least a sentence as an answer,” continues Smith. Some examples: “How do you know the host/hostess?”, “What makes you say that?”, “What was your favorite vacation?”, “Tell me about. . .”
Listen. “Sometimes the best conversationalists are the best listeners,” Smith says. Rather than think about what you’re going to say next, focus on the other speaker and what you might learn from this conversation.
Smile. Seems obvious? “We would rather speak to someone who is smiling than with someone who is not,” and Smith also reminds us to be positive in our conversation. Tirades and whining seldom make for good interaction.
Finally, says the author, “Practice, practice, practice.” You can practice starting a conversation when you’re waiting in line or for the bus or browsing in a shop—or even on the telephone, with catalog sales reps, when you’re waiting for information on a product.
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Family History from Grandma’s Perspective
If you’re planning a visit with any of your children’s grandparents or great-grandparents soon, your older children may enjoy hearing about what life was like when these family members were young. (You know, back in the Dark Ages of the 50s or 60s or even the 20s or 30s!)
Conversations with grands and great-grands will be more focused if you or your kids use the questions in The Grandmother Book: A Book about You for Your Grandchild, by Andy and Susan Hilford (Andrews McMeel).
It starts out asking about the popular culture of a grandparent’s childhood and youth: what car the family drove, what radio programs and movies the grandparent remembers, vacations, Halloween costumes, pets, what a soda cost.
It’s cute, and it’s flippant; for example, there’s a reference to whether Grandfather was a “studmuffin” and one page for high school photos is titled, “You went out in public like that?” Besides such language, which makes the book inappropriate for the very young, there are no allowances for adoptions, divorced or single-parent families or parents who are gay or lesbian. The emphasis is on traditional middle-class, middle-America activities, including college, engagement parties and honeymoons.
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. The topics planned for July are:
July 5 — Teaching Our Children to Work, Part I
July 12 — Teaching Our Children to Work, Part II
July 19 — Expressing Primary Feelings Can Prevent Angry Outbursts
July 26 — When Your Child Gets Defiant
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Family Fun Ideas — No-Stress ‘Staycations’
If you’re like the “News for Parents” editor, you occasionally want to shout, “World! Quit turning! Give me an extra day. . .or two. . .or three.” That’s one reason to consider spending your vacation or at least a series of three-day weekends at home this summer. Take time off from work and spend it with your family and catching up, so you’ll feel calmer and better organized when you do return to your workaday routine.
You can spend your “staycation” sleeping out (under the stars on the deck or in a tent in the backyard)—or sleeping in. You can blow bubbles, fly kites, take the teddy bears on a picnic, create a puppet show for friends, or walk to the park for Sunday band concerts. With older kids, rent a canoe or a rowboat, start a water balloon fight, or bring berries home from a U-Pick field.
If you’re determined to get something extra accomplished, create a “jobs” jar, with tasks written on paper that you fold up into a tiny square. Drop the squares in an jar and let a child pull out one whenever you feel ambitious. Set the alarm clock and see how much of the job you all can complete in an hour. And then it’s off for more “staycation!”
When there’s a rain squall or you’re ready for air-conditioned shelter from the humidity, consider a museum. The web site www.museumstuff.com lists everything from art and astronauts to toys, technology and wildlife. You can search by state, country, or type of museum. There’s even an “unusual collections” category: the Marz’s Bandaid Collection and World Carrot Museum, a museum of scams and frauds, the Museum of Questionable Medical Devices, and collections of vintage telephone equipment and vacuum cleaners.
Want to keep costs down? Check what admissions your credit cards, union and association memberships and other affiliations entitle you to. The Tacoma (Wash.) Art Museum recently announced that it is open at no charge the first weekend of every month to those who have a certain Visa card. It only took a couple of clicks of the newsletter editor’s mouse to discover that this same credit card provides free admission for two to participating museums in 18 states on certain days of every month.
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Community Service — Raise Funds with Recipes
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 other 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 we’re suggesting a project that’s more for moms and dads (but we’re sure that sugar-loving kids will endorse it). Each year preschools, schools, musical groups and teams usually struggle with fund-raising. It seems as if everyone does an auction, or sells gift wrap, or organizes marathons. Here’s another idea to discuss with the fund-raising chair as you plan fall activities: a cookbook/tasting combo.
Select a theme (cookies, perhaps) and ask families to send in their recipes to be compiled in a cookbook. Kick off cookbook sales with a buffet of favorites, each one made by the family that submitted the recipe. You can sell “all you can eat” tickets or charge per sample.
Cookbooks can be duplicated and spiral-bound at copy shops. Dress up your publication with a picture of each family preparing its recipe. These photos can be taken by older kids, who can also do the desktop publishing, sell tickets and cookbooks. . .and, of course, be recipe samplers!
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Raise funds with a Parenting Press Book Fair
Would your school or group like a new fund-raiser?
For years Parenting Press has been offering its carefully written books on child guidance, problem-solving and dealing with feelings through preschool Book Fairs. Now our Book Fairs are being expanded to schools, churches, child-care programs, parenting groups—any organization that can use parenting and children’s books.
More information about our Book Fairs is posted online. We have posted a copy of the brochure, an explanation of how much you can earn with a Book Fair, a step-by-step guide to make Book Fairs easy and fun to organize and downloadable promotional materials.
III. POTPOURRI
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Special of the month—Celebrating the Moon Walk
This special has expired.
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