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Parenting Press®Welcome to the July 2009
“News for Parents”
This electronic newsletter has dozens of ideas that we at Parenting Press hope you’ll find helpful and interesting. To suggest a story topic or to comment on article content or format, please use the link after each article; we welcome your feedback.
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IN THIS ISSUE
- WHAT’S NEW?
- FEATURES
- POTPOURRI
- COMING ATTRACTIONS
- Visit an Internet Library
- Read the Comics Online
- Saving Soles
I. WHAT’S NEW?
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Is Your Child “Smart But Scattered?”
How can we help kids overcome such common problems as forgetfulness, disorganization and impulsivity? A new book, “Smart but Scattered,” uses research into child brain development to help adults understand core, brain-based habits—executive skills—that we use to prioritize, get organized, stay focused and control our emotions.
There is nothing more frustrating than watching a child—especially if it’s yours—struggle with the typical tasks of everyday life. If other kids don’t forget permission slips, lose coats and shoes or fall apart in public, why does yours, especially when you know the child has the brains and heart to succeed?
The reason: your child may lack skills. Scientists who study child development and the brain have discovered that children who are “smart but scattered” simply lack certain habits called executive skills. These are the fundamental skills required to execute tasks:
- Getting organized
- Planning
- Initiating work
- Staying on task
It’s important to know that we cannot control anyone’s biological capacity to execute tasks. That groundwork develops in the brain before birth, so each of us has different innate brain-based organizational skills.
Whatever our capacity, however, these skills develop during the first two decades of life, and we adults can boost a child’s ability. What we do will vary depending on the age and developmental level of the child, our own strengths and weaknesses, and the issues which trouble us most. What is key is starting as soon as possible. Rather than assuming your child is a late bloomer, begin work to develop executive skills now, even if your child is only in preschool.
Why might a child lack certain executive skills? As most of us know, one possibility is attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
“Smart but Scattered” points out that many researchers now believe that ADHD is fundamentally a disorder of executive skills. Many children experience delays in the development of the ability to inhibit their responses, though, and most do not have ADHD.
Other kids are emotionally scattered: their emotions send them off on tangents and make it difficult for them to effectively problem-solve. Some children react instantaneously to what’s happening so that they cannot stay on task. Weaknesses are often clustered: poor emotional control may come with weak inhibition response.
So how can we help a child? It’s important to do three things:
- help the child manage the tasks that are challenging right now
- help the child improve the obviously weak skills;
- encourage the child to practice the skills that will increase his or her potential
We can do this with 10 principles:
- Teach skills. Most kids don’t acquire them through observation.
- Match the demands of the task to the child’s actual developmental level in this area.
- Physically guide your child until the rule has been internalized.
- Change the environment, the task or the way you interact with your child.
- Take advantage of the child’s desire for control.
- Match tasks to your child’s capacity and interest.
- Provide incentives.
- Provide just enough support to ensure success.
- Provide support and supervision until a task is mastered.
- Decrease support, supervision and rewards gradually.
By changing the way you interact with your child, you can promote the development of executive skills. Reviewing what may happen at an event and rehearsing how to handle it is useful with any weakness, and especially helpful when children are inflexible, or have difficulties with their emotions or impulses.
Response inhibition is the capacity to think before you act. If you jump to conclusions, you act before you have all the facts, or blurt out whatever comes to mind. That’s a weakness in response inhibition. Developing this skill is important because it is fundamental to the development of all other executive skills, and to eventual academic and life success. Response inhibition may also be the most challenging skill to develop, especially during adolescence, when kids are likely to make rash decisions based on emotions and the actions of peers.
Working memory, the capacity to keep information in mind while performing other tasks, is something kids often need help developing. If you have a kindergartner who can’t follow a routine with one prompt per step, or a fourth grader who can’t remember a routine chore after school without a reminder, it’s time for emphasis on working memory.
As authors Peg Dawson and Richard Guare, both affiliated with the Center for Learning and Attention Disorders in Portsmouth, NH point out, intelligence has nothing to do with how well we decide what to do and control our behavior to get it done. It’s also important to recognize that our capacity to get organized and stay in control is not unlimited and it’s not something that we control. It is innate—it’s something we’re born with, just like being right- or left-handed. There are common patterns: people who have certain strong executive skills usually have the same weaknesses, and children are likely to demonstrate the same weaknesses as their parents. If we or our children have a weakness with certain executive skills, we have to work to overcome or compensate for that weakness. The earlier we start, the better off we’ll be. With children, the more help we provide early in life, the more successful the kids will be in living an independent life, capable of meeting daily responsibilities and the occasional crisis.
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Icky, Sticky, Squirmy Worms
What’s more fun than watching worms? In Seattle, where “News for Parents” is created, homeowners are no longer allowed to put fruit, vegetable and garden waste in trash bins, so many of us have taken up composting. One variation on this is vermiposting, where worms are used to eat cores, peels and stalks. Even better than the reduced amount of garbage is the fertile soil the worms create with their castings, or excrement.
One of our neighbors enriched her flower beds with an easy, informal composting method: every time her countertop jar was full of potato peels, apple cores and broccoli stems, she dug a foot-deep hole and dumped in the vegetable waste. Once the dirt was replaced, the worms already in the flower bed started migrating to this food, enriching the soil as they ate. By always using a new hole, our neighbor eventually attracted worms to her entire flower bed.
If you’d rather have a worm bin, they are easy to construct. If you have a yard, a bin with hinged lid can be built with a sheet of plywood and a length of 2 x 4. For those without yard space, the Whatcom County, Washington extension office offers instructions for creating a worm with a rubber bin at “Cheap and Easy Worm Bin,” http://whatcom.wsu.edu/ag/compost/Easywormbin.htm. This web page also suggests what to put in your worm bin: worms like bread and grains, cereal, coffee grounds and filters, tea bags, fruits and vegetables. They do not like dairy, fat or dog or cat feces.
More information about worm composting and an online game about worms is on a State of California web site, The Adventures of Vermi the Worm. It’s even more fun, especially for kids who like wrigglers, to screen worm bin contents. The “News for Parents” editor recently had a 3-year-old visitor who was delighted to use his sand shovel to scoop what looked like dirt onto a metal screen (half-inch square mesh) and then gently press most of it through to a bucket. Left atop the mesh were the uneaten pieces, rocks—and worms! Usually the worms go back into the worm bin, but this time our guest was taking a few home to keep as “pets.” The bucket of screened soil, now fertilized with castings and free of pebbles, went to the greenhouse for use with seedlings.
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Nothing Boring about Board Games
Games were invented as amusement, and they can also teach kids important lessons about waiting your turn, honesty, following rules and working together. Adults and teenagers can model winning and losing graciously, and how to modify the rules to meet different goals. Summer is the best time for outdoor games, and because we occasionally have days when we need to be quiet or inside (perhaps because of a broken bone or thunderstorm), it’s also good to have a mental inventory of board and card games.
“I love board games as an alternative to screen use. They get everyone away from solitary screens (computers, phones, electronic games) and unlike group television or DVD viewing, they are interactive,” says Shari Steelsmith, author of Go to Your Room! and Parenting Press’s weekly parenting tips.
“What I’ve noticed: nobody likes to read game instructions and be the first one to figure out how to play a game. It works better to invite over someone who already knows how to play and let that person teach the group. What commonly happens is that one in my family will play a new game elsewhere and then return home and teach the rest of us,” she continues.
“Winning and losing graciously can be difficult for children younger than 9, and even for some older children,” Eileen Kennedy-Moore reminds us. Kennedy-Moore, the author of What About Me? 12 Ways to Get Your Parents’ Attention (Without Hitting Your Sister) and the mother of four children born within eight years, adds, “Cooperative games, where all players win or lose together, can be a way to help sensitive children learn to tolerate losing. They’re also a fun way to spend time together.”
Competitive games can be modified for younger or weaker players. Steelsmith, whose youngest is now 11, says her family used to pair up the younger child with a parent or an older child to solve this problem. Even today, she notes, “We still do this when one player has a particularly strong advantage: we’ll pit two other players against that one.”
The “News for Parents” editor is a avid Scrabble player, and when her second child was young, they often played without keeping score. Instead, the goal was to cover the board. This encouraged branching out with long, but lower-score words.
At the Kennedy-Moore household, players can work together to move a single pawn around the board, or play can continue until all game pieces reach home, with finished players taking turns helping players who are still on the journey. In games where players build towers or win tokens, players can pool their resources, creating a single, collective project or pile, to represent the work of all players rather than individual players. Players can try to beat their collective record on the next round of the game. Cooperative games, where all players win or lose together, can help sensitive children learn to tolerate losing, goes on Kennedy-Moore, who recommends Harvest Time and Snail’s Pace Race.
Cooperative games are also good for children’s birthday parties, she says, “Lots of active fun and no tears.”
You can have one child sit in the middle of an old sheet while the other children hold onto the edges and shake it.
“Or have pairs of children lie down, head-to-head, then roll across the room while holding hands. They have to work together to get anywhere!”
For more ideas for cooperative games, Kennedy-Moore recommends Everybody Wins: 393 Non-Competitive Games for Young Children by Jeffrey Sobel.
Steelsmith reports that her family enjoys Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader?, Quelf, Buzzword (“Sometimes difficult for the kids because it assumes knowledge of trivia from the 1970s and 1980s”), the Linkity word association card game, Apples to Apples, the numbers/tile game Rummikub and The Settlers of Catan, which Steelsmith says requires strategy and negotiation with other players.
“Settlers of Catan takes a good chunk of time to play,” she adds, “We often leave it up on the formal dining room table and let the game continue over more than one session.”
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Fun with the Button Box
from Fabric Leftovers, copyright C & T PublishingIt’s so hot your kids want to flop in the shade? They’re stuck inside because of a storm? You need another activity for car trips?
If your home has a button box, you have a perfect way to keep your children occupied quietly while they develop small motor skills. Kids approaching kindergarten and even younger ones who can be trusted to keep buttons out of their mouths can string buttons on heavy thread or yarn with a blunt needle or they can create bouquets of button blossoms. In Fabric Leftovers, author and crafter D’Arcy-Jean Milne describes how those of us who won’t poke ourselves can make posies with florist wire (or anything about 20 gauge) and buttons with at least two holes. Don’t like the button color or want polka dots? Add the spots with tiny drops of fingernail polish, says Milne. (Or, says Parenting Press founder Elizabeth Crary, try laundry markers such as permanent-ink Sharpies, which come in dozens of colors.)
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 4 — Communicating In Another Thinking Style
July 11 — “You Are Spoiling That Child”
July 18 — Whole Brain Decision Making
July 25 — When Is My Child Ready to Start Potty Training?
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Family Fun Ideas — Designing Bird Houses
from Treehouses and Other Cool Stuff, copyright David & Jeanie StilesBy July most birds are raising their families in nests, nooks and birdhouses. If you’d like to attract more birds to your yard, spend an hour at the library or online researching the birds native to your area, and what they prefer for homes. Then let your imaginations go wild!
Challenge each other to see how many different materials and designs you can use for bird feeders for the coming winter and birdhouses for next spring. Given the importance of recycling and reusing, what about creating a template for using abandoned corrugated plastic signs, like those that may be left over from local elections? Coffee cans? Gourds? Some birds like perches on their houses: can you use broken pencils? Enormous screws scavenged from old piers? A worn-out wooden spoon’s handle?
Half-gallon milk cartons make quick one-season houses, and they’re easy to fashion into bird feeders. So are the larger plastic pop bottles. Don’t overlook the pumpkins and hard-skinned winter squash, either extras from your garden or those that you’ve used only for decoration. When you’re done with them, they can be converted into bird feeders.
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Community Service — Quilt for a Hero
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. With projects like this month’s, they also learn practical skills such as measuring, sewing and ironing.
In honor of Independence Day and the military troops who are serving in war zones, consider organizing a quilt guild—which could be as small as a couple of families—or a quilt-a-thon to make bed or wheelchair-size quilts for American Hero Quilts. Another option: organize a fundraiser to help American Hero Quilts pay for thread, batting and its other supplies.
This charity, www.americanheroquilts.com, was established not far from Parenting Press, on Vashon Island. It continues to send many of its quilts to Fort Lewis, which has an 800-bed Warrior Transition Battalion, but the organization also sends quilts to military hospitals around the country and to the children whose parents have died while serving the nation. More than 500 people, both in the U.S. and in the United Kingdom, make quilts, do the quilting, raise funds or buy, wash and press the red, white and blue cotton fabrics that others then sew into quilts.
How can your kids help? A youth group such as scouts could select an appropriate patriotic theme and each member could sew a block for a quilt top. A group or school sewing class could organize a quilt contest, with entries to be donated to American Hero Quilts. An individual or a group could organize a one-day quilt-a-thon, with teams competing to produce the best quilt. Beginning sewers could make doll quilts of any kind to sell as a fundraiser. Or, working with a school class or club, kids could make a keepsake quilt (perhaps one with every child’s handprint or picture) to be raffled off or auctioned to raise funds.
For more information, see the American Hero Quilts web site. It has such important information as what fabrics, colors and patterns to use, and a contact e-mail to answer other questions.
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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. You’ll find 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 — Keep Your Family Safe in Cyberspace
The web sites you visit, and the profiles your kids create in MySpace and on Facebook can expose your family to identity theft, viruses and cyber-bullying. What can be even more dangerous for you all is the information and pictures others post online. For 39 pages crammed with information about cyber-crime, how to protect yourself, and how to detect and report problems, take advantage of our July special on Internet Safety and Your Family. Sold for $10 as a traditional book on Amazon.com, you can buy it right now as a downloadable for only $5. Simply click through to the Parenting Press shopping cart and type “Safe in July” in the “Promotional Code” box.
This offer applies to online orders received by Parenting Press July 1-31, 2009. No other discounts apply. You may order as many times as you like, and share the promotional code with friends.
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