Crisis in Kindergarten

The Alliance for Childhood recently announced their new
major report Crisis in the Kindergarten: Why Children Need to Play in School, sounding the alarm bell on education in our
schools. This is a must-read.

Their findings are profoundly alarming and need to be
recognized by parents of young children and all of us who care about children. Here
are some of the findings from their research.

Playtime in kindergarten is increasingly rare. Most of the
teachers surveyed said they spend 2 to 3 hours per day teaching and testing
children in literacy and math skills
. Standardized testing and test prep,
practices that most child development experts reject as inappropriate and
harmful, are daily activities in most of the classrooms studied.

Teachers in Los Angeles mainly use curricula that require
them to follow scripts for hours each day,
despite research showing poor
long-term results for this approach. In general, this type of early education
is much less effective than play-based methods. Yet the academic drills and
tests are winning out.

At the same time, kindergarten retention and serious
behavioral problems are increasing, not to mention the dramatic increase in
social and emotional challenges in children of all ages. Our children need for
us to move in a play-based, whole-child direction!!

As parents, you may feel powerless to do anything to change
your child’s kindergarten or preschool. This belief is exactly what allows
something that is hurtful to your child to continue. As parents and as people
who love children, we must boldly demand, yes demand, what we want for our
children
. An important part of being a parent is to be an advocate for your
child. It’s in your job description. (Read the fine print.)

Your other options are to find a program that is in
alignment with your values
and the kind of learning environment that is best
for your child or to start your own alternative.

Your first step is to go to the Alliance for Childhood
website
, and read their 8-page summary or the full report. Then choose
your next step. My first step is to share this with you.

Choosing to do nothing is not an option when you care about
the healthy emotional and intellectual development of your child. Share this
information with others. Partner with people who share your views and
priorities and create together
. Then let me know what you’re doing so I can
share this with others.


Enjoy your Child’s Gifts–Freshness

Ever notice as you age, you tend to dig a rut for yourself and put yourself in it. Sometimes it seems like part of the aging process. We have so many responsibilities and pressures we place on ourselves that we believe we have to do. Then the joy diminishes over time and we lose that sparkle of living each moment to its fullest. We begin to take life too seriously. We forget to play.

Enter your child: interested in new things, seeing the world differently, discovering new experiences, people, and perceptions. Your child has fewer internal rules, beliefs and structures. Your child is moving toward a future you cannot imagine and perhaps not understand.

Let your child remind you and teach you flexibility, courage, curiosity, exploration and discovery. Let your child give you a fresh perspective, a fresh approach to living, and fresh ways of doing things. It is one of their greatest gifts to us.

Keep Your Child Safe

Recent headline news in Mountain View,
my home town, is about a soccer coach who allegedly sexually assaulted three of
his young nieces when they were 7 – 9 years old. The incidents allegedly
occurred at family events or when their uncle was babysitting them.

Every parent who reads stories like
this shudders and frequently runs to tell their child not to talk to strangers,
hoping this will keep their child safe. But this is largely ineffective and
disempowering of children.

Talking to strangers and meeting new
people is a valuable life skill
for children and helps them develop
communication skills that will assist them throughout their life. Plus being
comfortable meeting and interacting with new people is the basis of networking
and expanding your base of influence as an adult. How many adults do you know
who struggle to find something to say to someone they just met?

It’s also important to remember that
most child sexual violations, like the one above, are by someone the child
knows
, a member of the family or a family friend. Telling your child not to
talk with strangers makes absolutely no difference in these situations. The
danger is rarely from strangers.

Keeping your child isolated or
over-protected is not the answer either. You cannot maintain either the
isolation or protection for the entire time your child lives at home. Isolation
and over-protection limit your child. In order to develop to her true
potential, she must be out in the world without your supervision, making
decisions for herself.

So what makes the biggest difference
in your child’s safety? The most important answer lies within your child. Your
child must be able to think for himself, to know what feels good to him and
what feels bad to him, and then have the inner strength to take action to take
care of himself.

In most situations of child abuse, if
the child had trusted and listened to himself, he could have prevented his own
victimization. When I look at my 18-month-old grandson Sebastian, he clearly
and strongly knows what he wants and will powerfully take action to have things
the way he wants. Every child is born with this information and inner-drive.

What happens to this natural drive?

We train them out of it. We teach them
to be compliant
and to do what adults tell them. This makes them easy targets
to people who would harm them.

How to Teach Gullibility to Children

No one wants their child to be gullible. Yet parents and teachers unconsciously do things that encourage it. Webster defines gullible as “easily deceived or cheated, naive.”

What makes a child gullible? A tendency to go along with what someone is telling you without thinking for one’s self. Not trusting one’s self.

Psychologist Stephen Greenspan,  author of Annals of Gullibility: Why We Get Duped and How to Avoid It,  recently appeared on NPR’s Science Friday to talk about his being duped in the Bernard Madoff's money-making  scheme, which fooled many clever people.

He made two very revealing comments during the interview.

1.    His mom always told him,”Don’t be so willing to do what your friends tell you.”

2.    He described himself as having “a tendency to be a nice guy and to do what people tell me.”

To listen to his interview, go here.

One secret to lessen your child's or students' gullibility is to support her child to think for herself and to encourage individual discernment, both at home and at school. When parents and educators try to do the thinking for children, they unknowingly diminish a child’s self-trust, autonomy, and awareness.

Denise Clark Pope in her book “Doing School”: How We Are Creating a Generation of Stressed Out, Materialistic, and Miseducated Students reports on a high-achieving sophomore in high school who explained “sincerely that, ideally, he wishes he could forget about the grades and just do the work the way he wants to do it. He wishes he could write papers the way he would like to see them written, instead of how the teachers want to see them.”

Kevin says with a sigh, “I wish I could say I’m an individual, and I am not going to sacrifice my individuality for a grade, you know…just write for writing’s sake.”

This is one place gullibility begins—when a young person feels they have to pay attention to others more than to herself. She becomes a people-pleaser and stops thinking for herself.. Then she is more easily prey for others who want take advantage of her naivete.

Vote Against No Child Left Behind

Jeanne Houston refers to No Child Left Behind as No Child Left Alive.  If you agree, you can act today to tell President-Elect Obama what you believe children need.

If you’re opposed to the pressure we place on children and educators to perform in the high-stakes testing of No Child Left Behind, go here to cast your vote.

We can guide and empower our new president to make dramatic, positive changes in the lives of children.