Tag: teaching

family

Mister Rogers

Andi

So many adults grew up with Mister Rogers gently singing to them and reminding them they were perfect just the way they were. I was a kid in the 90s, so I got all the reruns, but he was still prominent even then. However, he has impacted me more as an adult than he did when I was a child. With the new film coming out this month, I think talking about him is appropriate.

Fred Roger’s was a musician, an artist, and an ordained minister. His ordination was to minister to children through the medium of television. He apparently was witty and slightly snarky as well if you listen to his family and work mates. He was creative and driven, and worked hard to make his vision come to life. The documentary “Won’t You Be My Neighbor” contains many of these first hand accounts of his gentle character and clever humor.

Mister Rogers never wore a collar or said he was a minister in his show, but his faith drove what he did. He very firmly believed that God made you just the way you are. You didn’t need to change anything. You are worthy of love, because God loves you, and as a follower of God, it was his duty to love you. He believed children were very bright and able to grasp even complex concepts. That they have very strong emotions and should be able to not only express them but know how to process them. Talk about them. Understand them. Your strong emotions aren’t flaws to be subdued, but God made parts of you. So a homosexual was perfect and worthy of love. A child with a disability was perfect and worthy of love. A person of color was perfect and worthy of love. A person of a different faith than his perfect and worthy of love. He displayed this on his show and in his life in the way he treated other people. Always with respect and always with kindness.

He is one of the only people of faith I look up to and desire to imitate. The kind of faith he had is what the world needs. It doesn’t need the anger. It doesn’t need the hate. It needs the powerful love. And a person brave enough to show it.

He is also a model of good parenting in my eyes. Kids need to know their emotions aren’t bad, but they need to know what to do with those emotions. They need to know they are special, the way they are. As parents, we need to be teaching our kids how to process their feelings in a healthy manner. Children should also be given the comfort of knowing they have love for who they are.

It is beyond fathom for me to imagine any person on earth that disliked Fred Rogers, but they existed. He got questioned about his own sexuality because he was soft and talked about his feelings. People said he was evil because he told kids they were special without having to work for it. He was blamed for entitled children. Rumors started that he wasn’t actually a kind gentle man, he was a hardened Marine who was covered in tattoos and killed lots of people. None of these were true, but I find it interesting the worst rumor they could come up with was tattoos and military service. There were enough people that hated him that there were protesters outside his funeral. People said he was going to hell, not because he was gay because he wasn’t, but because he tolerated gays. He told them he liked them, and God loved them, and apparently that is abominable. That’s the kind of man this was. He was hated for loving people.

This shows me two things: that someone is always going to dislike you and how to respond to those that do. Even someone as magnificent and unproblematic as Mister Rogers had people calling him evil. The kinds of people pointing fingers at you may be different, but there will be someone who doesn’t like you. But despite knowing some mocked him or hated him, Mister Roger’s never stopped treating each person he met with kindness. It had to get discouraging at times, and his family has said there were times he’d get upset, but no matter what he’d process the emotion, and step out to the world with a smile and a hug.

He is an example to us of what faith should look like, how to teach children, and how to face with world with grace.

Additions:

I think Tom Hanks is probably the only person, on earth, that could portray Fred Rogers.

I’m sure some people wonder why I love Mister Rogers so much, but I don’t care for Daniel Tiger. Despite the fact the characters are named after Rogers neighborhood friends and his own tiger puppet. I am aware. But the trouble is Daniel Tiger is trying to be Mister Rogers. They are attempting to recreate the magic for a new generation, but they just can’t. No one can. And Mister Rogers Neighborhood doesn’t need to be updated in my opinion. His voice is captivating and his singing is charming. My overly active kids enjoy the original show and pay attention to it as much as any of their other shows. Daniel Tiger is certainly not the worst show, it has some good parts, but it is also lacking in some as well. Perhaps I’m just being biased as well.

family
Andi

We had an instance this morning that I thought perfectly exemplified our choice and consequence we do with our kids.
I got up to make some breakfast and my husband was already in the kitchen getting himself a bowl of cereal. The 3 year old hopped up and asked for some cereal. I told him, “I’m fixing to make eggs and toast. Would you like some cereal, or would you like eggs and toast?” He chose a bowl of cereal. So my husband gave him some and I made eggs for myself and the 1 year old. But when the younger and I were eating the 3 year old decided he wanted my breakfast. He tried taking Bubba’s plate. “But you chose to have cereal for breakfast” I told him.
He had the choice of cereal or eggs, and he chose to have cereal. Even after he changed his mind, he still had cereal for breakfast. He ate and he’s happily playing through his day. Nobody ever raised their voice, nobody screamed, nobody was spanked or disciplined. It was a calm interaction, and a learning experience.
Because we’re trying to teach him to make a decision, be confident in his decisions, and to handle the consequences of his decisions. (And yes, a 3 year old can begin to understand this concept) Right now, its little things, like eating the cereal he chose and not being able to swap with Bubba mid breakfast because he thought Bubba’s eggs looked good. But hopefully we are preparing him for future big decisions.

family

Choice of an Odd Cup

Andi

I think it’s important for children to have the freedom of choice. I think this for a couple reasons.

On one hand, they need to develop strong decision making skills and how to be confident in those decisions. They also need to understand that sometimes, their choices come with consequences, and that they can’t have everything. When they’re young this is as simple as you can only choose one toy to buy, you can’t have all of the toys. These are learning tools for them. They now have the toy they chose to play with and are confident it was the best. And I enforce that they made a good choice, without mocking it or telling them it was a dumb toy, all while encouraging them to remember that their choices have consequences now while the consequence is something tiny. Life is full of this choice and consequence sequence. They are learning how the world works in these scenarios.

Another part is that I want them to grow up with confidence in themselves. Giving them the ability to choose who they hug and kiss, what kind of clothes they wear, when they want to discuss something, tells them that they can proudly express themselves and they have power over their own bodies. Even as their parent, I ask to kiss them. I give them the choice to be rocked/cuddled to sleep or go to bed on their own.

This doesn’t mean I turn my kids loose in the world and tell them to choose whatever they want. For one, that would be incredibly overwhelming. That would overwhelm me and I have a grown up brain. Their prefrontal cortex is still developing so I do have to help them sometimes make good choices. In the arena of say, what they wear, let’s say they need new tennis shoes. I wouldn’t take them to a shoe store and just tell them to go pick something. I would take them to the tennis shoe section, and allow them to pick from that smaller selection. This teaches both limitations and decision making. They do have to make a choice from a wide range, but they also can’t choose a dress shoe either. Or say with bedtime. They don’t get to run wild all night, we have a set bedtime, but they get to choose whether or not they want to be rocked to sleep or not. Either way they still have to go to bed, they choose how.

The world works that way for all of us, even as adults. We often have to make choices within certain limits, and no matter what, we all have to deal with the consequences of our actions. For a kid that may only be the short pain of a skinned knee after not heeding a warning from an adult, but it teaches them how to handle the world when they get older.

This becomes humorous sometimes when a kid chooses the oddest things. Like the hallowen cup my kid chose. He could’ve had a vampire, or Frankenstein’s monster, things that actually had brains. But no, he chose the pumpkin, the one cup that made no sense to have a brain lid.

So in a roundabout ancedote, when you give your kids freedom of choice, you get some interesting cups in your cabinet.

family

The Montessori Toddler

Andi

I have had an interest in the Montessori method for a while, but on the whole, was still rather ignorant of all it entailed. So I found the book The Montessori Toddler by Simone Davies and started gathering information.

Many of the methods used in Montessori are things I already implement in our home to some degree. In some areas, the author takes things to a further degree than I have or to a more involved level. So in some areas I thought, this was simple, I already basically do that. But in others I thought, goodness no, there’s no way we could do that.

As with any parenting book, you can take the pieces that will work in your family dynamic and mold them to fit into your life. For instance, I can’t completley redesign the set up of our home to emulate a Montessori style room. For one thing, we don’t have the money to buy everything I’d want. But I can take the idea of learning activities displayed in a simple manner for the child to choose from and put them on top of the kid’s bookshelf. This didn’t cost me extra money, I just reorganized how our learning tools were kept.

There are 4 principles that jumped out to me and one element we couldn’t implment I’ll touch on briefly. If any of them piques your interest, I suggest grabbing a copy of the book and giving it a read through. It’s probably available at your local library and is sold on Amazon.

I’m going to get the one unsustainable element out of the way first. In a Montessori classroom they do not have any fantasy for children under the age of 6. The reason for this is because young children cannot usually distinguish between reality and fantasy. While this is true, we could not enforce such a rule in our home. There was already an enormous amount of fantasy and fiction in our home before we had children and they have been exposed to it from the beginning. In addition I have already seen a positive effect fiction has had in my child’s life. Exposure to a fictional robot triggered a strong fascination with space. Because Mars rovers look like robots, he eagerly soaked up all knowledge about them, and the planets, and astronauts, and space shuttles. He will tell you he’s going to the stars if you ask where he’s going. We’ve built rockets out of boxes, out of building blocks, and out of legos. So many crafts and activities that use dexterity, hand eye coordination, concentration and imagination were accomplished because of his love of a fictional robot. If this exposure means he really thinks lions can talk then that’s a hurdle I’m willing to jump. He will learn magic isn’t real soon enough. But there is no one size fits all approach in parenting. So if no fantasy works for you, go with it! That’s part of unique family differences.

Now moving to the amazing things I drew from this book. First is the principle of freedom within limits. Second is child involvement in everyday life. Third is the use of consequences instead of punishment and fourth is preparing the parent.

Freedom within limits is an idea that I love because the child is safe and learning boundaries, but still has some control over their lives. That doesn’t mean they can run willy nilly wherever they want or they do whatever they want whenever they want. That means they have a safe boundary inside of which they have the freedom to explore as they please.

Allow all feelings but not all behaviour

That’d be the difference between asking, “what do you want to eat for lunch?” And “would you like to eat macaroni and cheese or alphabet soup for lunch?” Or instead of giving them a full closet of all of their clothes and asking them to choose what to wear, only put out weather appropriate clothing and allow them to choose from that. They still get to choose, but from within a set boundary of choices. It allows the child to express their feelings and process all their emotions, but keeps them from harming themselves or others. So instead of preventing them from crying about being buckled into the carseat, you can acknowledge the emotion but they still have to be buckled in.

Letting the child be involved in daily life will encourage them to be involved later on. Kids love to do things and mimick what the adults around them do. My son gets angry if I put his dirty diaper in the trash and don’t let him do it. Instead of trying to distract them so you can clean the house, get them involved in the cleaning. It may take longer than it would’ve taken you, and it may not end up as precise as you would’ve done it, but it helps kids learn to help around the house and is good for their overall developement.

If we start to feel frustrated when it is taking too long, rather than get irritated we can acknowledge that this time we are going to help them, and try again tomorrow.

The author suggests toddlers can do even more than I’d already let my kids do and giving them child sized materials to use. Such as a small broom and dust pan. I have a toy vacuum that has a roatating brush inside that spins when its pushed. It goes in the closet with the big vacuum and comes out so they can vacuum when I do. One area for instance she suggested that I was not already doing was with the laundry. Constantly moving the kids, telling them to get off the bed or go play got tiring. So I tried letting them help fold their own clothes and put them away. The laundry did not look as pretty, but it wasn’t as stressful as times past. Of course supervise, but let them do as much as you are comfortable with them doing around the house. It will not only make them happy at this young age, but establish good habits as they grow older.

Using consequences instead of punishment is not a new idea, but maybe it’s new to us because it may not have been the way we were parented. I had already decided not to use threat and force to make my children comply with me out of fear, so this more gentle approach to discipline fell right in line with what I was doing. This section was more of an affirmation for me that I wasn’t crazy for parenting in this manner.

The word discipline comes from the Latin word disciplina meaning “teaching, learning”. So we should consider what we are teaching our children and what our children are learning from the way we discipline them.

The discipline should be directly related to the issue. Don’t take ice cream away because they were screaming for instance. It would look more like having to put a ball away and not play with it anymore because they were asked not to throw it inside the house and they continued doing it.

Lastly is the preparation of the parent. This section really spoke to me. I often find myself irritated and strung out and snappy with my kids over menial things a then feeling guilty about it immediately after.

It is difficult to be respectful to our children when we allow them to go beyond our limits.

If we aren’t respecting ourselves and our own limits, we won’t be able to respond kindly to our chlldren. We need to mentally prepare ourselves each day, and in the long term be doing things to fill our emotial tanks. So if that looks like waking a little earlier to have some alone time in the quiet before the kids wake up, or sitting down to crochet, or picking up a good book to relax with in the evening then make those part of your daily routine. You need some time set aside for yourself as well. Whether that means your partner keeps the kids so you can get a coffee or go to Target alone, or you going out to an art exhibit with your partner or friends, set that time aside and take it. We all know the phrase you can’t poor from an empty glass because it’s true.

Another tidbit from this section was that only you are responsible for filling your tank. Other people may be able to fill it, but they are not responsible for it. They aren’t inside your head. Only you know where your limits are and when your tank is running on fumes. You have the responsibility to recognize when you are close to losing your temper and stepping away to cool down. You need to take the initiative to say, I need some time alone and going on a bike ride.

This book was helpful, clearly written, and very well put together. This is such a small tibbit of the information it offers. I couldn’t begin to recount everything that is discussed. I liked it a lot, and would suggest it to any parent.

I did draw a few quotes from the book to try and give you a glimpse of what it entails, but of course if it interests you, I suggest finding a copy.

If you would like to purchase this book to read for yourself, I have provided a link directly to it on Amazon. It is worth buying for the wealth of knowledge it contains!

https://amzn.to/3548dtA