Experiencing the Moment

My friend, Anita, recently wrote me about her adventures of accompanying her five-year-old granddaughter and daughter-in-law to private school enrollment interviews and classroom visits.

Eliana came out of one school interview jumping and twirling around and exclaimed, ''That was so much fun!''

A week later at another interview session Eliana was the last to leave the classroom. Her grandmother described Eliana as quiet and contained. After they were in the car, Eliana's mother asked Eliana about the difference in her reaction to the two different school sessions.

Eliana told her mother and grandmother, ''At this school I can put my happiness and joy inside the class.''

''Which school do you like better?'' Eliana's mom asked.

''I like this school because here I can just be myself. This was better.''

Reading Anita's story made me think. How many times do we misinterpret our children's excitement as happiness, when in fact it might be exactly the opposite?

''Excitement may not be as satisfying as being where you can feel yourself in the right place of learning,'' Anita wrote.

Eliana knew. If we are in the right place at the right time, we experience a deep and quiet contentment, an intense satisfaction.

When we are in a place that doesn't engage our inner being, we may feel that we are only being entertained. The excitement generated from being thrilled or amused may keep us from being ourselves, from thinking our own thoughts, from making our own decisions.

We may all be able to do something to excite and entertain children and make them squeal with delight.

It takes a special person to create a place where, as Eliana says, ''I can put my happiness and joy inside.''

Creating the right place at the right time requires knowledge of the needs of the people who will be using the space. It requires careful observation of the activities that hold significance. It requires preparing a place for people to engage in these meaningful activities.

Our fundamental needs can be considered as material and spiritual. Material needs include food, clothing, shelter and protection. Spiritual needs include appreciation of beauty and the arts, and communing with a higher power. Humans have inherent tendencies to be involved in activities, to have a sense of belonging, to feel a sense of growth, to explore, to orient themselves to new circumstances, to create order, to communicate needs and emotions, to use their imaginations, to repeat activities and to strive for perfection. There are many requirements for a place where we can put our joy.

To develop the right space we need to observe the activities of people being served. Perhaps because I love to cook and eat, I think of restaurants when considering environments. Savvy restaurant owners carefully watch the needs and activities of the people they serve. Well-run restaurants take careful note of what dishes their customers enjoy, what music they prefer to listen to, what decorations they appreciate. Fast food restaurants design environments for customers who want to meet the basic need of hunger quickly and inexpensively. Five-star restaurants cater to the need for nourishment, but they may focus more attention on the esthetic needs and tendencies of their customers.

Successful restauranteurs plan spaces based on their observations of customer needs and desires. Designers consider table placement, colors, flowers, music, lighting, menus, table service and more to meet customer material and spiritual needs, along with people's tendencies towards activity, communication, belonging, use of imagination, etc.

The teacher in a vibrant classroom considers the requirements of students in much the same manner as a restaurant manager with his customers--by understanding the fundamental needs of children, by observing children's activities and by preparing an environment that supports those needs and actions.

That's how we can create the right space at the right time, a place for our children to put their joy and happiness inside. A place to experience the moments of their lives.

Next week: Special Qualities of the Adolescent

Kids Talk™ is a column dealing with early childhood development issues written by Maren Stark Schmidt. Mrs. Schmidt founded a Montessori school and holds a Masters of Education from Loyola College in Maryland.

She has over 25 years experience working with young children and holds teaching credentials from the Association Montessori Internationale. She is also Creative Director for a video-based reading series for children ages three to six, The Shining Light Reading Series. Contact her via e-mail at maren@shininglightreading.com.

Complete Collection of the Shining Light Reading Series Now Available on DVD
Visit www.shininglightreading.com for more information.

Ask your local newspaper to carry Kids Talk. Call, write or e-mail your local newspaper editor and recommend Kids Talk.

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©2008 KIDS TALK™
25877 East Bright Avenue
Welches, OR 97067
503.550.3143
maren@kidstalknews.com

Kids Talk is published in conjunction with Scribe Marketing

Use a Purple Pencil

Harold, the hero in Crockett Johnson's classic book Harold and the Purple Crayon, uses his imagination and crayon to create an adventure. Off Harold goes, using his waxed stick to draw a path, along with a moon to use as his navigational aid. During his escapade, Harold's crayon creates a forest, an ocean and a hot-air balloon. Harold explores until he is ready for bed, then sketches his way home.

Since my first reading of Harold's exploits, purple lines have held magic for me. In contrast, red marks signal my creativity to stop. Conventionality weighs heavy on a red pencil. Purple seems positive, imaginative and quirky. When I needed to mark on my students' papers, I chose to emulate Harold.

With my purple pencil I'd only mark the items that were correct on spelling and math work. Mistakes were left alone. With necessary writing, as in editing a research paper or story, I'd place a purple suggestion next to the words to be corrected.

To do a rewrite, I'd ask the student to get his or her favorite colored pencil, and we used that color to edit and rewrite the piece. Otherwise, it all got done, yep, in purple pencil.

My purple pencil was not a punitive pencil. The purple pencil was for catching my students doing something right.

Tisha (by the way, I don't use my students' real names if I think I might embarrass them or otherwise!), a new first-grader in my class, was teary-eyed about the 50-word spelling dictation we did every week. Assuring Tisha that I only expected one word out of the 50 to be correct on the first attempt, she went to work. Spelling dictation acted as a tool to help me see what reading and spelling rules were needed. Every correct word designated a spelling rule that a student understood.

As I checked papers I'd use my purple pencil to mark the correct spellings and then place a plus sign and the number correct at the top of the page.

Spelling all 50 words correct indicated a 12th-grade spelling level. With eight rotating lists, the spelling challenge was to get one more word right each week. A big mountain for a first-grader to begin, but I felt these 400 words gave my students an overview of what a literate person needed to know.

Week after week, Tisha's number of correct words increased. During her second year in my multi-age classroom of first-, second- and third-graders, Tisha continued her spelling journey. Tisha and many of my third-year students were spelling 25 words correctly, which put them at a sixth-grade spelling level. After Christmas Tisha told me that she wanted to get all 50 words correct on a dictation before the end of school.

Tisha worked and reached her goal the first week in May. Very impressive for a young lady whose native tongue was not English.

Tisha's classmates enjoyed boasting of Tisha's accomplishment to visitors. A lunch guest asked Tisha how she managed to learn to spell so well.

''Well,'' Tisha answered. ''I tried to get one more word right each week because Ms. Maren only worries about the words that are right.''

Needless to say, I learned a lot from Tisha.

How easy it is to find everything wrong with a child's work or behavior, to mark up life with a red pen and a minus sign. A purple pencil and a plus sign accomplish so much more as we travel the path of learning. It's fun, and it works. Ask Harold. Or Tisha.

Next week: Experiencing the Moment

Kids Talk™ is a column dealing with early childhood development issues written by Maren Stark Schmidt. Mrs. Schmidt founded a Montessori school and holds a Masters of Education from Loyola College in Maryland.

She has over 25 years experience working with young children and holds teaching credentials from the Association Montessori Internationale. She is also Creative Director for a video-based reading series for children ages three to six, The Shining Light Reading Series. Contact her via e-mail at maren@shininglightreading.com.

Complete Collection of the Shining Light Reading Series Now Available on DVD
Visit www.shininglightreading.com for more information.

Ask your local newspaper to carry Kids Talk. Call, write or e-mail your local newspaper editor and recommend Kids Talk.

Would you like to send Kids Talk to friends and family or receive Kids Talk e-mail updates in your own inbox? Sign up for FREE here:
Click here for a FREE subscription.

©2008 KIDS TALK™
25877 East Bright Avenue
Welches, OR 97067
503.550.3143
maren@kidstalknews.com

Kids Talk is published in conjunction with Scribe Marketing

The Neglected Needs of Teens

Around age 12 with the onset of puberty, the human being undergoes physical and psychological metamorphoses. The child changes into an adolescent, and life will never be the same, for parent or child.

The young adolescent needs opportunities to step outside his or her familiar community of home, church and school, while still using these networks as the foundation for the developmental tasks of the next six years. The young teen needs the chance to have the following experiences:

• Strengthen personal identity
• Develop the intellect
• Articulate self-expression
• Build community
• Serve others
• Learn the ways of society
• Learn the ways of the natural world

The adolescent between the ages of twelve to fifteen years is concerned with taking the critical first strides into adulthood. Unfortunately, for our teenagers adolescence is not treated as a steppin stone to adulthood but as another step in childhood. If 20 is the new 30, then 15 is the new 8.

Psychologist Robert Epstein in his book, The Case Against Adolescence, tells us that teens, contrary to popular opinion, are competent as adults in most intellectual activities. Problems with teens arise due to the restrictions placed on them in our society.

Our culture tends to extend childhood with our school and labor laws, isolating teens from adults and the one-on-one mentoring relationships that are fundamentally necessary at this age. Epstein makes the point that after puberty, education needs to be combined with outside employment in meaningful and imaginative ways. The factory school system no longer meets the needs of our young teens.

Isolating the competent teen from adult mentorship and purposeful work creates a situation that makes many young people angry or depressed. At a time in their lives when adolescents need to enter a world of new opportunities and responsibilities, our laws regarding schooling and jobs divorce teens from the adult world.

Epstein with fellow psychologist Diana Dumas administered tests to examine 14 areas of competency in both adults and teens. They found that teens were as competent or nearly as competent as adults in these 14 areas, which included leadership, handling of responsibility, and interpersonal skills. The tests also showed that adults significantly underestimate the abilities of teens.

Our adolescents' most critical need, Epstein states, is to have more options to the rights, privileges and responsibilities that adults have, e.g. the rights to work, marry, own property, sign contracts, start businesses, make decisions about health care and live on their own.

Teen misbehaviors are culturally driven and are created by the true needs of the teens not being acknowledged and nurtured. Behaviors--such as being disrespectful, having self-indulgent personal spending ($200 billion per year is spent by our 13- to 17-year-olds on makeup, music, clothes, etc.), using drugs and pursuing risky sexual activity--stem from not having the right to enter the adult world when teens are emotionally and psychologically competent to do so.

In our culture, we need to begin a conversation of how we can meet the needs of our adolescents. We need to figure out how we can help our teenagers join the adult world. We need to let teens prove themselves responsible enough to earn the freedoms they need to become fully functioning adults.

What we are currently doing is not working. We are allowing our capable adolescents to be treated as eternal children. Therein lies the problem.

Next week: Use a Purple Pencil

Kids Talk™ is a column dealing with early childhood development issues written by Maren Stark Schmidt. Mrs. Schmidt founded a Montessori school and holds a Masters of Education from Loyola College in Maryland.

She has over 25 years experience working with young children and holds teaching credentials from the Association Montessori Internationale. She is also Creative Director for a video-based reading series for children ages three to six, The Shining Light Reading Series. Contact her via e-mail at maren@shininglightreading.com.

Complete Collection of the Shining Light Reading Series Now Available on DVD
Visit www.shininglightreading.com for more information.

Ask your local newspaper to carry Kids Talk. Call, write or e-mail your local newspaper editor and recommend Kids Talk.

Would you like to send Kids Talk to friends and family or receive Kids Talk e-mail updates in your own inbox? Sign up for FREE here:
Click here for a FREE subscription.

©2008 KIDS TALK™
25877 East Bright Avenue
Welches, OR 97067
503.550.3143
maren@kidstalknews.com

Kids Talk is published in conjunction with Scribe Marketing

Learning from Bumps and Bruises

As I visit with preschool administrators around the country a common theme emerges: the dynamics of smaller families are affecting children's abilities to learn how to endure the bumps and bruises of everyday life.

Many school principals and teachers hear from upset parents the first few days and weeks of school because children go home and complain about preschool. Used to being the center of attention of adults who listen and take care of their every request, these children are frustrated by the interpersonal demands of a preschool classroom.

''I told my friend I wanted to use the crayons, and she didn't listen.''

''I hurt my knee on the playground, and I didn't get a Shrek bandage.''

''I didn't eat a snack because they didn't have my favorite cookies.''

''I didn't get a turn on the swing.''

Teachers report that parents are increasingly reluctant to let children endure any discomfort. These parents are more likely to remove their children from preschool than in previous years. Teachers say that parents in the quest to raise a perfect child have forgotten that important, yet basic, lessons are learned the hard way. We break a treasured toy. Friends don't listen to us. Friends won't play the game we want to play. We skin our knees on the playground. Lunch isn't our favorite hamburger with fries. Somehow in these interactions we learn important coping skills.

At the moment of our discomfort most of us are usually not happy campers. In retrospect, though, we may see a pattern of rough moments that have polished our character into a gemstone. The hurts endured--a friend sitting with someone else, of being hungry and not liking the foods offered—are growth experiences. These situations help us become resilient.

I'm reminded of six-year-old Caiti who visited my home. We found only one thing in the kitchen that Caiti could eat on her wheat-free diet. Crunchy peanut butter. I knew that Caiti preferred smooth.

''I'm sorry, Caiti, but I only have crunchy.''

''That's fine," Caiti said. ''I'll deal with it.''

Caiti exhibits the kind of flexibility that comes with getting a few bumps and bruises and knowing that somehow it's all going to be okay. Not everything is going to go your way in life, and we do our children a disservice when we try to protect them from every disappointment or discomfort.

''Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail,'' wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson.

There will be ups and downs in our children's lives. It is the small irritations that smooth and polish character as our children learn to take the good with the bad, and to get up every time circumstances knock them for a loop.

Remember that any unnecessary help is a hindrance to a child's development. Everyday jostlings teach our children to have the flexibility and strength to keep moving forward in order to enjoy and appreciate the experience of being alive.

Next week: The Neglected Needs of Teens

Kids Talk™ is a column dealing with early childhood development issues written by Maren Stark Schmidt. Mrs. Schmidt founded a Montessori school and holds a Masters of Education from Loyola College in Maryland.

She has over 25 years experience working with young children and holds teaching credentials from the Association Montessori Internationale. She is also Creative Director for a video-based reading series for children ages three to six, The Shining Light Reading Series. Contact her via e-mail at maren@shininglightreading.com.

Complete Collection of the Shining Light Reading Series Now Available on DVD
Visit www.shininglightreading.com for more information.

Ask your local newspaper to carry Kids Talk. Call, write or e-mail your local newspaper editor and recommend Kids Talk.

Would you like to send Kids Talk to friends and family or receive Kids Talk e-mail updates in your own inbox? Sign up for FREE here:
Click here for a FREE subscription.

©2008 KIDS TALK™
25877 East Bright Avenue
Welches, OR 97067
503.550.3143
maren@kidstalknews.com

Kids Talk is published in conjunction with Scribe Marketing