Practice and Perseverance

The first P in HAPPY parenting principles stands for Practice and Perseverance. I was hoping that it invalidates my previous reaction to an advice on choosing enjoyable activities, but the explanation of this principle still unfolds along the same lines – the child will develop “islands of competence” around activities that excite her enthusiasm and curiosity. “When children discover their strengths, they are more willing to confront even those areas that have proved to be problematic. The idea is not to raise a carbon copy of you or a precocious kid, but an optimistic, resilient, and ultimately autonomous human being.”

I think that in principle it sounds good. But I wonder how this principle applies to very young children. I think that every parent in a way tries to do things with their children that they themselves enjoy doing. For example, my husband loved Lego as a child, so he builds elaborate Lego structures for Anna. I was always a reader, and I love reading to her. My neighbor shared that she always sings to her girls (something that we sadly don’t do enough), another neighbor is often outside teaching his 3-year-old son to bat and to throw a baseball. In a way we create those islands of competence at a very early stage and shape our children in our own image. When I think of my daughter, I see that her “island of competence” is definitely her language and reasoning skills, but I would like her to learn how to use her hands as well, not just her head. Unfortunately, I am not exactly a role model here, and that’s why I am trolling crafts blogs in search of easy ideas that would encourage her to think creatively. That’s partially why we decided to send our daughter to preschool for a few mornings every week - I am hoping for different “islands of competence” formed by someone who is more passionate about art or imaginative play.

Accepting Success and Failure

After picnic kick-off I am returning to the Principles of Happy Parenting. The second principle for raising an optimistic child is teaching our children to accept both success and failure. Quoting from Raising an Optimistic Child: “Success means that your child can accept doing a particular task poorly and not believe that her efforts will always turn out badly. More than that, she can fail and still keep her sense of self, be a worthwhile person…. How you “frame” or – put into context – the outcome of a particular event for your child will largely determine her reaction and teach her how to interpret such situations in the future. Praising her for trying and for how she did something rather than for outcome will help her maintain her confidence and perseverance… All too often, adults become mesmerized by end goals and lose the ability to enjoy the process. Yet most of our life is spent in process – studying for a degree, exercising to get or stay in shape, traveling toward the destination. Young children have the gift of focusing intently on the present without worrying about the outcome. Model this approach by organizing your life as much as possible around what you enjoy doing rather than what you feel you “should” do or what you believe will lead to a certain goal. Life’s journey is almost all process, and most triumphs and disasters are but punctuation along the way.”

Thinking of the last few sentences of the paragraph above, I don’t think I agree with that even though I am in agreement on keeping successes and failures in perspective. In my mind goal setting and learning that you actually have to work hard and to things that are not always pleasant to achieve those goals are still important part of becoming an adult. I will try to teach my daughter to set goals and to work towards them, but not to despair if she is met with failure. Not so easy, because she inherited her father’s perfectionist tendencies and really hates to fail. She’d rather not try.

The Power Of Collective Mind

When I started to write my blog, I already had some following from the parenting forum I frequent. In a way, I had my online and IRL friends in mind when I shared the insights I gained from reading books and Internet articles. See, I am probably more of a theoretician that a practitioner in all areas of my life. I think of “what” and I need other people to tell me “how”. That’s why I enjoyed visiting other blogs and through one of my favorite blogs called The Wonder Years I came across ABC and 123site a few days ago just in time for their summer picnic extravaganza. ABC and 123 is also relatively new, but their idea of harnessing collective mind is positively brilliant. Heck, I wish I thought of this Anyway, I am writing this post as an introduction of my blog to their picnic, so I’d better get on with the suggested topics:

All about you and your family. You can learn basic facts but reading through “10 Fun Facts About Me” page

How did you come up with your blog title? I am boring. Couldn’t come up with something more engaging and I am really interested in teaching young children.

What types of activities do you most enjoy doing with your children? My daughter is 2.5 years old, but from the very early on we enjoyed reading together. It’s still something that we do every day. I also love going on field trips and help her discover the world around her.

What is your favorite picnic activity and food? We are Europeans, so apples, cheese, bagette and wine sound about right for a summer picnic. OK, make that apple juice for our daughter.

Favorite activity posts (I assume my own )

• Take your child to the library
• Board games for toddlers
• Every day is Earth Day
• Play is fundamental
• Toys that teach – nestling blocks

Have a Go

The first principle outlined in HAPPY Parenting is called Have a Go. Basically, it means that we have to give our children the right mixture of support and challenges when introducing them to new activities. I also wrote another post about the idea of helping your child to try new things explaining the concept of Zone of Proximal Development.

Our daughter is not a risk taker, so we have to work pretty hard to convince her try things outside of her comfort zone. It took quite some time to get her to swing on her own. Her father did a good job breaking this task into components and explaining her how to pump her legs and to “listen” to the swing direction. He also praised her lavishly every time when she as much as tried to swing a little without his pushing. Finally, all these pieces “clicked”, and now she is able to swing without help. Our next challenge is a tricycle

Principles of HAPPY Parenting

I have finally finished to read the book featured in this post. Overall I liked the book despite its heavy emphasis on early attachment and clear dislike of any other childcare arrangements other than stay-at-home parents. Also, half of the book I kept thinking, Gee, I am so glad I am not depressed, because it appears that no child can grow to be a well-adjusted member of society if he/she is growing with a depressed caregiver. The chapter that I found most interesting personally was a chapter about optimistic parenting skills. The authors introduced the five keys to an optimistic outlook, which are best learned early. They promote a sense of mastery and competence by taking on realistic challenges, succeeding and persevering. In order to instill this sense of mastery in children, the book introduces the following principles of HAPPY parenting:

• Have a go
• Accept both success and failure
• Practice
• Plan for best outcome
• Yes! Making optimism and upbeat confidence a lifelong habit.

Since I am short on time (as always), I will do a short write up on these principles in upcoming posts. Stay tuned

Reading in Russian… sort of.

We have some Russian books at home supplied generously by my parents. Apparently, last time they were here they gave my daughter “gentle suggestion” to ask me to read her Russian books. I admit – it was exciting for me to meet again the friends of my childhood. By the way, a lot of them are familiar to the Western children as well – the book featured here is called “Golden Tales of the World” and contains stories of Little Mermaid (real story, not a happy-end Disney version), Jungle Books (again, real story), Little Red Riding Hood, Peter Pan, etc. I decided to start with those and then add true Russian fairy tales, which are usually darker and most of them also come as poems. Now, Anna doesn’t really understand Russian. So I usually read one sentence in Russian then translate it in English and highlight one or two words. That lasts about 5 minutes, then she asks to just keep reading in English. I am afraid that at this point nothing short of immersion program will make her fluent in Russian, but I am glad that she is interested in learning more about my language and culture. I will continue to teach her as long as she is interested, but I am not too interested in “pushing it”. I know fairly well from reading on the subject that minority language cannot be maintained without “critical mass” of listening and reading in it, so I am not kidding myself about my chances of success here.

A Daily Dose of…

It always feels that time is at premium in my house. As a working parent, I am pretty lucky that I am able to spend a lot of time on a daily basis with my daughter. I am getting up before 6 am and start my working day at 7 am, so I am home by 5 pm and switch into “mommy mode”. I am not really interested in spending the remaining precious hours shuttling my toddler from one scheduled activity to another. The only exception is her Gymboree Music class on Monday. I am simply not very musical, and I wanted Anna to fare better than myself in this regard. But I am trying to make sure that my daughter gets her daily dose of:

• Books. This is the easiest. I enjoy reading, and my daughter enjoys listening. She wants to read books for hours at a time. I actually have to limit this activity somewhat, so we can fit other “daily doses” in.
• Time outside. We live in a wonderful climate of Northern California, and it would be a sin not to take advantage of it. Both of us try to make sure that Anna spends some time on the playground or in the backyard. Hopefully she will join her papa in his gardening pursuits soon enough.
• Art. OK, I admit this is a wishful thinking at this point. Perhaps it has to do with the way our stuff is organized or perhaps it has something to do with her natural inclinations, but Anna is not the one who spontaneously reaches for art supplies. We have to “schedule” art times for her, and it tends to slip, since she would rather read or play outside than color or cut. If someone has any ideas on how to foster her enthusiasm for art, I welcome them.
• Unstructured play. I have a sneaking suspicion that a lot of unstructured play is actually happening during nap time, because I hear a lot of talking and giggling coming out of her room when I am home during her nap times. But we also try to spend some time playing together. I admit that I am looking forward to the time when she will play better by herself – maybe then I will get a daily dose of time to myself as well.

Is there “a Daily Dose” in your house? What is it?

Nancy Tafuri books

Our library has a big selection of books by Nancy Tafuri, and both Anna and I enjoy reading them. It’s interesting that Anna can listen to the whole story of The Ugly Duckling and understands the happenings in the story, but she doesn’t connect with that long and sad story emotionally. It’s overwhelming for her to think of a poor little swan duckling that everyone teases. This swan story is very different and very warm, both in its text and its illustrations. That’s my favorite part of Nancy Tafuri’s books – beautiful, detailed, bright illustrations of animal life. The stories are simple, with only a sentence or two on a big page, and Anna “pretends” to read them by herself, since they can be easily memorized. I think the ideal target audience is somewhere between 18 months and 3 years, and eventually we might revisit this books as Anna really learns to read by herself.

Talking about feelings isn’t everything

I stumbled upon an interesting article published by CNN – Mothers’ talk is key to kids’ social skills. The article went first through a usual affirmation that talking about feelings and labeling them is important in social understanding and in developing social skills later in the childhood. What I found really fascinating, however, is the information in the very end of the article. I quote, “…social understanding does not guarantee good behavior, the authors said. Children who showed the most sophisticated social skills in this study also behaved the most negatively toward their mothers in the team task of steering a model car around a race track… This negative behavior probably came about because if children feel that they can label their feelings, they’re more comfortable expressing a wide range of emotions…”

I know that Western culture puts a big emphasis on expressing ones’ emotions, but I am not at all sure that we are going in the right direction by telling our children that it’s OK to be angry or sad. We also need to teach them at a young age how to deal with negative feelings. Recognizing them and talking about them is a good first step, but we also need to teach them actions – deep breathing, choosing an enjoyable activity, listening to a lively music, a burst of physical activity. We also need to model appropriate behavior. If we raise our voice when frustrated, they will too. If we spank in anger, they will eventually hit in anger too. If we are sad and helpless, they will feel it’s their fault and will eventually learn to be depressed and helpless as well. The emotional health of our children is tied really strongly to our own emotional state, so we need to be able to take care of themselves too while taking care of our young children.

Raising a Competent Toddler

The most offensive word for my 2.5 year-old daughter is a b-word. B, of course, stands for baby. It’s amazing how much she wants to grow up. She came from her preschool very excited last week and told us that the teacher was measuring them and she grew an inch. She keeps talking about growing into a big girl with big breasts and then into mommy. I can see why adult world has so much allure for her. Adults get to eat things that are not allowed to her (such as candies with alcohol in it), drive cars and stay up late. They are also all knowing and all powerful to her innocent eyes. And she wants to be powerful too. She tries so hard to be a big girl – she got a lot better in voluntarily cleaning up her toys, she wants to help in cleaning the table after dinner, and she is beyond excited when she is able to help in dinner preparation. However, chores are still beyond her ability of following up. I tried to get her to water the flowers in the front yard, but her enthusiasm only lasted 2 days. Still, every time she gets to make a decision and to accomplish something on her own, she makes a small but important step on the road to true competence. I hope that one day she will grow into a big girl who is able and willing to take responsibility for her own success.

For additional reading – here is an interesting article that I unearthed on the subject of raising competent children – Competence.