What is enough? Big question! It can be applied to money, salary, job satisfaction, house size, clothes, health. . . . As we start a new school year, probably the most important question for parents to ask is, “what is enough for our kids and our family for these next nine months?” We want to support our kids to be their full selves—to be happy, resilient, competent, and prepared to face the future. But what does that look like? And at what cost?
There is so much pressure in our culture to over-do. We think we have to get our kids into the right preschool to ultimately get into the right college! In order to “build their resume,” they have to be stellar students, sports stars, music virtuosos or . . . . Really?! There is peer pressure on us, too. If your kid is not in “enough” extracurricular activities–and a standout at that–are you being a “good” parent?Truly, it seems that much of the drive for competitive sports or the arts comes from the fear that our kids won’t get into the “right” college. Loren Pope, author of Looking Beyond the Ivy League, calls today’s college search a “national frenzy, the family’s chief worry . . . and based on a past society where prestige and status got the jobs.” Instead, he says, “in tomorrow’s pioneering society, new careers will go to risk-takers, those who can use knowledge – not those with the greatest store of it – people who can see and make connections.” Giving kids the space in their lives to be creative and just be kids is the best strategy to developing risk-takers, to nurturing their ability to observe and make connections on their own.
So, how are you doing as a family? In the book we are highlighting this month, Putting Family First, Dr. Bill Doherty includes an eight-question quiz, “Are you a Frantic Family?” As you will learn if you take the quiz, Doherty focuses not so much on what you are doing as on what you are not doing. In other words, is there time in every one of your family members’ lives for connecting, spending time with each other, and just relaxing?
David Elkins of Psychology Today has a good perspective on this topic in “Are We Pushing Our Kids Too Hard?” He says what kids really need is:
- Meaningful relationships–with family, with extended family, and friends
- Time by him/herself to be able to play in a natural, creative way, ultimately learning to be self-aware.
Granted, extracurricular activities can be opportunities for connection and building meaningful relationships. Much of what my 25-year-old son now values about his years in organized soccer is the in-between discussions on the drive home after a frustrating game and memories of kicking the soccer ball around in the back yard with Chip and me. Plus sports can build self-confidence, and a little stress can be good to maximize potential. But kids today are getting an overdose to the point of interfering with their health and brain development. In his groundbreaking book, The Over-Scheduled Child: Avoiding the Hyper-Parenting Trap, Dr. Alvin Rosenfeld talks about what happens to the family unit when it tries too hard to over-enrich children, describing an unhealthy state of perpetual motion. It all comes back to Aristole’s “everything in moderation”!
So are the activities you are about to sign up for this school year in service of the full, rich life you and your children long for? How many extracurricular activities will be juggled? How much time will you be driving to and from and organizing for all these activities? How much time will you spend on chores and house maintenance? How much time will your kids be spending on homework (or be resisting your nagging about homework)?
In “Tips for Getting Your Family to Slow Down, Share Time,” Peggy O’Crowley has some great suggestions:
- Write it down. Everyone’s activities go on a big calendar.
- Downtime and transition time need to be on the schedule, too.
- Everyone consults the calendar daily to prep for the next day. (Wish I had done this! A Sunday night review by all of the entire upcoming week would be helpful as well.)
- Homework time needs to be when your child’s energy and focus is at its best.
- Keep track of homework with a folder for each kid.
- If life feels too busy, stressed, disconnecting, choose what to drop.
I have one last suggestion as you embark upon the new school year, although it may seem contradictory. I challenge you to clear a day every month and add National Family Night to your calendar. Founder Alvin Rosenfeld says a good life is most highly correlated with having at least one good relationship. Make your goal a “good life” for your child, not getting into Harvard!
Wishing you enough,
Dr. Kathy
P.S. For little kids, you might start the school year off by reading The Berenstein Bears and Too Much Pressure. It’s never too early to start the conversation about taking care of yourself!
Want to help prepare your child for a satisfying future? Support him to tap into his creative side! That’s right, pull out the paint brush, sewing needle, guitar, clay, fabric, pipe cleaners. . . . Exercising the right brain will do wonders for maximizing brain flexibility and adaptability. Plus creating art with your kids is fun and also very “connecting.” And it is perfect for those lazy days at the end of summer that hover toward boring.
When I look back on my education, art is what I remember most fondly: the teepees, the catacombs, a bull-fighting ring, and the life-size, papier-mache lady sitting with a cup of tea. My high school art class was where I could be me, where I could explore and experiment without judgment.
Today, in many schools, the arts and creativity are relegated to the bottom of the education hierarchy–the first to go with budget or time crunches–with math, science, and literacy on top. Of course, these are important. The problem is that all these subjects utilize the left brain, leaving the right brain and the rest of the body in the dust.
Creativity expert Sir Ken Robinson, author of Out of Our Minds: Learning to Be Creative (2011), says, “schools are killing our kids’ creativity.”
Sir Ken Robinson champions radical rethinking of our school systems to cultivate creativity and acknowledge multiple types of intelligence. And he has good reason. Our world is rapidly changing, and companies must adapt fast with new products and services. IBM surveyed 3,000 CEOs about challenges facing today’s businesses. Promoting creativity topped the survey as the major priority for CEOs.
Who knows exactly what skills your kindergartner will need in 25 years? All we know for sure is, he/she will need to be creative and rapidly adaptable to thrive–at home, at school, and in the workplace. You can make a difference by making creativity a priority in your family, so your child practices accessing the right brain as often as the left. We must educate our children’s whole being for the future they face.
My favorite “Sir Ken” story is of a fidgety, “underperforming” eight-year-old. When Gillian visited a physician on the recommendation of administrators who planned to move her to Special Education classes, the physician asked to talk privately to her mom, turned on the radio, and left Gillian alone. Peeking in the room, the physician and her mom saw Gillian dancing. The physician prescribed, “Send her to dancing school,” and the rest is history. The girl, Gillian Lynne, went on to dance professionally and choreograph world-renowned musicals such as Phantom of the Opera and Cats. Today, this same girl would probably be put on Ritalin and told to “stuff” her desire to move.
One of the best ways to practice and strengthen our “innovative, creative muscle” is to spend time doing art. Being flexible and “going with the flow” is the only way art works. In The Creative Family: How to Encourage Imagination and Nurture Family Connections, Amanda Blake Soule not only shares many wonderful projects, but she also showcases the power of family art: Creativity in your everyday home life can be the gravitational field that pulls your family inward and closer. Think how fun and connecting a family drawing time would be or a family puppet show or a family hoe-down with everyone playing musical instruments, singing, and dancing! Creative living and the arts also can connect us to others, locally and globally. Riverdale teacher Debbie Gorenstein’s third graders participate in the Zimbabwean Artist Project, writing and illustrating stories in the African tradition. Their art is hung in a gallery side-by-side with illustrated stories from Zimbabwean women who sell their artwork as a major source of income.
Some of my favorite project ideas from The Creative Family include:
- Banging Wall: Hang a clothesline and hang pots from it. Give each child a wooden spoon.
- Homemade Book: Kids write and illustrate a story on 8 ½” x 11” paper folded in half. Poke two holes in seam and tie with dental floss. Make a cardboard cover with contact paper. Glue first and last page to hold book in place.
- Fairy Furniture: Go for a walk, gather natural items, and, with a glue gun, make chairs, beds, houses, forts…
- Making pants or shorts for your kids from Dad’s old shirts is “connecting” every day they wear them.
- Gather fabric of all sizes, textures, and colors. Your kids will invent with it for years to come.
I actually was inspired by Soule’s suggestions and just took my first process painting class. This art method was invented by Michele Cassou, author of Kids Play: Igniting Children’s Creativity, as a way of unblocking the creative potential. The basic tenants of the method are to remove judgment, be in the moment, and be unattached to the outcome. No one comments on anyone’s painting (like yoga or meditation or stream-of-consciousness writing), allowing each of us to tap into our own deeper, intuitive knowing.
So I pretended I was six years old, got a fat paintbrush, picked a color, and started brushing away without a plan or a critic. It was fun and rewarding. The big lesson for parents here is to find an artistic outlet to practice being free and creative, and for removing the critics and the rules that get in our children’s way of doing ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING. It is in this place of freedom that we and our children can feel fully alive and let our imaginations soar.
With admiration for all you do,
Dr. Kathy
P.S. My art coach, Kris Bally, will share the process painting method with Portland parents this fall. Check out our Portland Happenings for dates and times. Or, find a process painting class in your community.
“Summertime . . . and the livin’ is easy. . . .” Maybe for crooner Louis Armstrong, but what about you and your family? Has your rhythm slowed down? Do the days seem longer and the connections stronger?
What is it about summertime that it can serve as a balm to our too-busy lives? Perhaps it’s vacation time, the weather, the light, our emerging from our cocoons. I contend that summer brings out our best selves because we spend more time outdoors.
In his book, Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder, Richard Louv eloquently describes all the latest research showing the human costs of alienation from nature, which he notes are: “diminished use of senses, attention difficulties, and higher rates of physical and emotional illnesses.” Aside from what is lost when nature is not apart of someone’s life, he also focuses in his book on what is gained in the presence of the natural world, and his goal is to inspire parents to choose a path to a “nature-child reunion.”
Connecting with nature is a way for us all to:
- Connect to our bodies. This is important for all of us, but especially our girls, who are bombarded with messages about how they “should” look: skinny, tall, sexy. Kids who play in nature naturally learn to appreciate the functionality of their bodies, to fly down a sand dune, to make a big splash with a rock, to conquer a tree by climbing to the top.
- Foster our mind-body-spirit connection. We had this connection easily when we were young. In “Growing Back Into Our Body,” Cathy Gwin describes her toddler, streaking through the house after a bath, running like the wind with freedom and confidence. Later, as he took up fishing, he moved from how many fish he could catch to the thrill of fooling a large-mouth bass into biting a specific lure or casting his line to just the right spot.
- Reduce stress. The pace of life is so speeded up that nearly all of us feel the stress. Stress on a developing brain interferes with the ability to learn to manage strong emotions and self-soothe, functions of the frontal lobe. When I find myself burdened with the worries of the day (e.g. an article late for the newsletter), I can go on my porch and soak up all the green dotted with beautiful perennials here and there. I can connect deeper by plucking a few weeds and smelling the dirt on my fingers.
- Stay healthy. The current generation of kids might be the first one to have a shorter lifespan than their parents. Obesity and the subsequent complications of heart disease are top on the list of dangers. We are not letting our kids outside by themselves because we worry it is dangerous. We keep them indoors and substitute screen time. The average kid in the US spends 6 ½ hours/day on screens! The US Surgeon General recommends that we all get up and move at least 30 minutes at least five days a week. Nature compels us to move–to get to that next hill, to swim in the lake on a hot day.
- Care for the environment. In Last Child in the Woods, Louv shares the philosophy of beloved teacher/biologist/oceanographer Elaine Brooks who believed that “people are unlikely to value what they cannot name.” By connecting with nature when they are young, our kids will consider the impact on nature when faced with a “higher return on investment” when they get older. In “Loving the Earth by Living It: Demonstrating Environmental Concern” (Wings, Winter 2003), Scott Schlegel describes harvesting fruit from the backyard; picking ripe grapes and squishing them through a sieve to make grape juice; working in the elementary school garden while the kids either helped or played on the playground; and everyday recycling as a family.
- Live in the now. The only moment we truly have control over is the current moment. Nature helps us to be fully in the moment and revel in it. During a hike along a path lined with wildflowers, my mind would still. Pick a path with a stream and my son would run ahead for the next chance to throw a rock in. Being in nature and with nature just helps us to feel right again, to return to our natural selves.
Now with the sun here to greet us, what can your family do this summer to increase your moments in nature? Start small, as easy as a picnic in your backyard. Check out Jody Bellant Scheer’s article on “Creating Family Magic” for ideas. Doesn’t matter what you do. Just make nature connection happen as often as you can—summer, winter, spring and fall! A love of nature may be one of the most important attributes you can give your kids to thrive as happy adults. Perhaps you’ll be lucky enough one day to have your child look up to you, as Mary Pipher describes in The Shelter of Each Other her then four-year-old doing during a family campout, and declare: “I’m melting into richness!”
With admiration for all you do,
Dr. Kathy
What if there were something you so liked to do that it made you feel completely alive? What if others saw that deep, meaningful part of you and appreciated and fostered it in you? What if you had an opportunity to share your passion with the world?
Often, as parents, we focus on homework, grades, chores, healthy eating, and exercise with the hope that our child will grow hardy and strong. According to Peter Benson, founder of the Search Institute and the 40 Developmental Assets, those focuses should be secondary to paying close attention to and fostering our child’s spark. Benson’s research, in fact, has shown that focusing on our child’s spark, that activity that makes him/her feel fully alive, is the single most effective avenue leading to a thriving youth.
According to Benson, there is a magic formula for a thriving youth:
SPARK + 3 ADULTS WHO SEE THAT SPARK + OPPORTUNITY = THRIVING YOUTH
He says that kids who have all three of the above components actually thrive in all the ways that matter to the people who love and care about them: Sense of purpose rises, achievement goes up, compassion and generosity explode, and interdependence and interconnectedness blossom.
To help you understand the significance of “sparks,” let’s break down the three components of Benson’s magic formula:
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1. SPARK: Youth for the most part know their spark. This is not the barrier. When Peter Benson asks youth, “What is it that gives you joy, energy, that fills you up?” two-thirds can name their spark quickly and another 25% can figure it out pretty easily with a few probing questions.
2. ADULTS WHO SEE IT: Young people yearn for authentic relationships. Having people see them through the lens of their passion is very connecting. A great combination is to be supported by a parent, a teacher, and a community person—such as a neighbor, coach, scout leader or youth minister–who all see and appreciate this passion.
3. OPPORTUNITY: Having a community that values youth and creates places they can manifest passions–be it creative arts, sports, volunteering opportunities–is the final key. This is where we parents can really help our youth by opening doors through sports teams, places of worship, recreation centers, arts camps, and more.
The ten most common sparks youth report, in order of frequency, include:
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1. Creative Arts (65% girls and 43% boys)
2. Athletics (16% girls and 37% boys)
3. Learning (e.g. languages, science, history)
4. Reading
5. Helping, serving
6. Spirituality, religion
7. Nature, ecology, environment
8. Living a quality life (e.g. joy, tolerance, caring)
9. Animal welfare
10.Leading
And sparks are not just related to teenagers. In a Search Institute survey, eleven-hundred parents reported that the age when their child’s spark first appeared is:
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Birth to 3: 11 %
3-5: 17 %
6-9: 25 %
10-12: 21 %
13-15: 18 %
16-18: 8 %
With the pressure of school performance at bay for the next few months, summer is the perfect time to explore sparks. Kids want their parents to be the captain of their spark teams. Parents can help with extending into the community and drawing in other champions. Lena Mejie did a fantastic job of finding mentors in her extended family and community to match her twin teens’ interests as outlined in “Mentoring: How Two Adolescents Prepare to Come of Age as Persons of Character.”
Are you willing to step up to the challenge? Imagine what it would be like if all 2500 of you receiving this email stepped up to this challenge. It would ROCK YOUR KID’S WORLD in a very positive direction—a direction that would benefit us all.
Being the spark team captain says loud and clear, “I believe in you.” Or as Maya Angelou sums it up so well, “Love is knowing a person’s song so well you can hum it back to her in the days she can’t remember the melody.”
With admiration for all you do,
Dr. Kathy
P.S. For more detailed information, Visit the official Web site about sparks at www.ignitesparks.com.
Collaboration, working with others to achieve something, is a common buzzword in business. How about applying it to your personal life? Can you imagine your family working collaboratively?
Social creatures, we thrive on connecting with others and living in community. This natural instinct harkens back to our origins, when hunting and farming together maximized success as a species. Somehow we figured out a long time ago that when we work together we can improve our lot in life. Fast forward to today, the Information Age. Yep, collaboration is king now, too. Consider emailing, a form of virtual collaboration. Or “google” any technology problem you have, and there’ll most likely be a blog solution.
Here’s how it works: By engaging with others, we learn from them, are exposed to greater possibilities, stretch ourselves, develop new skills, and can tackle challenges we might not have been able to surmount on our own. In short, the result of collaboration is greater than just a sum of the parts.
Twyla Tharp, acclaimed choreographer and author of The Collaborative Habit, Life Lessons for Working Together, says, “Collaboration is people working together–sometimes by choice, sometimes not. Sometimes we collaborate to jump-start creativity; other times the focus is simply on getting things done. In each case, people in a good collaboration accomplish more than the group’s most talented members could achieve on their own.”
What if you brought the idea of collaboration into your family life?
In our families, we are together “by choice, sometimes not.” And we certainly have many “things to get done” to function every day. Starting at a young age, children can learn to collaborate within their family. Their involvement and contribution can impact how smoothly a day runs, how harmonious the home is. Just think about the possibilities if you applied these three key principles of collaboration to your family life!
- Respect: According to Tharp, “The most important ingredient in collaboration is a respect for one another. Mutual respect makes blunt disagreements bearable . . . [and] creative disagreements spur new ideas.” When respect is present, differences are valued, even desired, and add to the energizing, creative brainstorming that leads to fresh ideas and fun. The Number One parenting tool, respect–especially when your children become teens–is the basis of our upcoming class, “Connect by Coaching Your Kids: It Starts with Respect.”
- Commitment to a Purpose: “A clearly stated and consciously shared purpose is the foundation of a great collaboration. A powerful purpose makes daily annoyances smaller,” says Tharp. Perhaps your family could come up with its own unique family mission statement and goals and make a commitment to having those at the heart of all your family activities. If truly created through family collaboration, your kids will learn to appreciate how their contributions to the family matter and will “buy in” with their actions. And the lessons learned will go a long way! Collaborative practices can be a gift to your children–for resiliency, creativity, and on-going learning in their future jobs and families of their own.
- Clear Communication: “Collaboration,” notes Tharp, “depends upon very precise communication–speaking to the right person at the right time in the right way.” Imagine putting this principle into practice at home! Consider the power of “pausing,” thinking through what you are going to say before you say it–and how that can change your family dynamics. Our “Compassionate Communication” class is a great way to learn this skill—and we happen to have a Weekend Workshop on Compassionate Communication coming up on May 20-21.
Family members who collaborate make living together look easy. Every member is fully valued for his/her input into family activities. There are clear expectations and routines so that everyone knows, for example, that on Saturday morning everyone is going to clean the house together. Not only does the house get cleaned, but, working side-by-side, conversation can easily turn to deep sharing and connection.
How about one more step–taking collaboration into your children’s school?
PTA by its very nature is a collaboration of parents and staff working to create a better learning environment for kids. PTAs that appreciate the qualities and gifts of ALL their members are open to new ideas and have a bigger impact on the well-being of everyone. Check out this inspirational story about a PTA building a climbing wall.
Tharp says, “In a healthy environment, a good collaboration will extend your strength.” What if you took your passions, your talents, and maximized them in collaboration with your PTA? What could you introduce to help kids feel “connected to their school,” an incredible predictor for reduction of risky behaviors in our youth?
Now is the time to introduce new ideas to the PTA to consider for next year. Consider initiating a Parent Resource Committee to keep parents informed of pertinent topics, educational materials, and programs. Or pool your parent interest, talent, and passion with a survey. Are parents/staff interested in:
- A safe, social climate, focusing on healthy relationships
- PTA-sponsored, parent-led after-school clubs
- Girls/Boys Night Out to welcome incoming 6th or 9th graders
Good collaboration brings out the best in everyone and results in better outcomes than can be achieved alone. In what ways can you bring collaboration into your life?
