So Much Like Me

When I interact with Anna, sometimes I am blown away by how much she resembles me in so many ways. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. I married someone who is not a carbon copy of me, but has a lot of the same interests and has the same personality traits – loves books, very talkative with friends and speaks fluently the second language of his second country, doesn’t blow up in anger, conservative in personal morals and liberal on social issues. Some people even told us that we look similar. Anna inherited the best features from her papa – blue eyes and curly hair, but otherwise she looks exactly like me, when I was a child. She also behaves a lot like me, when I was a child (at least, according to the family lore). Most of the time, she is in a good mood, cooperative and reserved. She prefers adults or older kids, and she doesn’t like to stray away from us. We never had the problem of her just disappearing to be close to some action. She is not fearful or shy, but she is not adventurous or gregarious either. I think I could describe her as “an observer” – she likes to watch something rather than participate herself. She prefers to play by herself, and has yet to ask for a playdate or for going outside to see her friends in the neighborhood. She is better with children when they are 1:1 than when she is in a bigger crowd. In other words, so far she appears to be a happy introvert – just like me. She got some character features from her father too, and it’s amusing to see them shine through. She has a very strong feeling of what is wrong and what is right. Yesterday we read a Disney spoof book called Little Red Writing Pooh. At some point Pooh starts eating honey meant for grandma. Anna jumped up and said, No, Pooh, stop! This is grandma’s honey! This made me laugh, because she clearly inherited this sense of rightness and ownership from her papa. She is also pretty neat and organized for a toddler – another trademark that didn’t come from me. I wonder if we will have a teenager who likes to keep her room clean. Well, remembering myself, I am not exactly holding my breath on this one

How about you? Does your child behave like you? How do you feel, when he/she doesn’t? I admit – I don’t know how I would deal if my child wouldn’t be so much like me. Would I be able to appreciate her uniqueness or would it feel like I have a stranger in my house? I guess I will not find out, since we don’t plan to go for more children.

Tot School, Preschool or Kindergarten?

When I started to troll the web in search of fun and educational activities with Anna, I was blown away with the number of great blogs I found. A lot of smart, crafty, spiritual women (sorry, I am yet to found even one blog on the topic written by a man ) put a lot of thought and passion into decisions on how to raise and educate their children. I found a lot of those blogs by stumbling on Tot School – where many families contribute every week and describe how they raise and educate their children under 4 years old. I participate with my other blog, but, honestly, I don’t have any method in my approach. Until very recently, I didn’t do any prep work for any of our “learning sessions”. I don’t have any curriculum or any theme of the week. To be honest, I believe that this finesse is mostly for parents who need structure to their days than for children.Young children learn best through play and attention from adults, and I think that Anna gets enough attention from both parents. In my “teaching” approach I rely most on observing her and following her interests. If she wants to continue to play with Legos while “it’s time to color”, I’ll let her. I am trying to pick books in the library on very different topics – animals, plants, travel, school life – to see what will catch her fancy. Again, it seems too early for her to have any real “passions” – everything is interesting to her.. for the first 10 minutes. The only continuing theme in her life is books – many-many-many books that she wants to read every day.

Unlike many of the blogging moms, I don’t plan to homeschool. Anna already goes to preschool for 2 mornings a week. We will extend it to three once she turns 3 in October. This year she was in the class with 3-5 year olds because of the size of the school and her great language skills. Her teachers were blown away that she was consistently the best in class in all activities that involved “academic subjects” – phonics and math. When I was trying to find suitable  software games for her, nothing under K-level caught her fancy – they were all too boring in their focus on shapes, colors, simple numbers and letters. The book that she is reading in the first picture is this post is Spectrum Math Grade K. I didn’t bring it from the library for her. I wanted to see for myself what is taught on K-level. She grabbed the book, went to her room and said that she wants to play by herself and teach her favorite kitty some numbers. She cannot do all the exercises in this book, but she is frighteningly close to the end of K-level in what she knows in math and language. At the same time – she is completely not interested in writing. Her motor skills were always a little behind, and I am blown away seeing tots under two holding their pencils or even scissors correctly. Anna still cannot do it, even at 32 months. That’s why we are focusing more on crafts now – while I will continue to encourage all her math and language activities (a lot of those are self-led nowadays), I want to bring out her artistic self more and let my intellectual curiosity combine with formidable creative thinking of my husband. Then she will be one very fine young lady indeed

Attachment Parenting vs… What?

A couple ago, I made some remarks regarding attachment parenting in my post on Raising an Optimistic Child book that an esteemed author of The Wonder Years replied in her comment. I thought that I will write a post with my views on attachment parenting, and now finally I have 30 min to do so.

Even before Anna was born, I read multitude of books on child development and raising young children. As I mentioned before, I like to know my theory before even attempting practice, and being an only child, I had very little exposure to babies before my own unexpectedly came along. As I was reading, it quickly became obvious that “the theme du jour” in parenting advice world is “attachment parenting”. It mostly applies to children in the first year of life and stresses physical closeness between a mother and her child – breastfeeding, babywearing and co-sleeping.

It’s not that I disagree with an importance of close relationship between a mother and her baby. What I disagree with is a sort of doomsday scenarios that some of these books and articles picture. It sounds sometimes that your children will be somewhat “damaged” unless you follow the gospel of attachment parenting. I know women that were depressed just because they didn’t have a perfect birth prescribed by attachment parenting and insisted that now they will be unable to bond with their infants properly.

I already profiled “Baby Whisperer” book earlier in my posts, and that was the book that really meshed with my own view of parenting. I think it can be described as “common sense parenting”. I followed the premise of that book – think of what you want and don’t start on the road where you don’t want to be. So, we never co-slept, because I wanted to still have a bed with my spouse, not a family bed. I never wore my baby – I have some back problems, and I couldn’t find anything that was comfortable both for me and for Anna (Interestingly, my husband loved Baby Bjorn, and Anna spent a lot of time there while he was running errands or hiking with her). I breastfed my daughter for the first 15 months of her life and didn’t mind the fact that she didn’t sleep through the night until 18 months. That was who she was, and I accepted that as part of her. I went back to work full time, when she was 3 months old, and my husband took full-time parenting responsibilities confidently and successfully. We never had to “sleep-train” her, to break her out of pacifier (never gave her a pacifier), to potty train her in three days (a subject of a separate post). We never baby-proofed our house. We just paid enough attention to our child and taught her not to touch things that were “not her toys”. So far I am happy with the results. Our daughter seems to be healthy and happy. She is introverted (not shy, just prefers to play by herself), but she interacts well with her peers in preschool, and she seems to be securely attached without all the “necessary” ingredients of attachment parenting. We just connected to who she is and responded to what she needed – love with firm boundaries.

Culture of Appropriate Praise

This post will be the last one in my series on Raising an Optimistic Child book. I will write about the chapter that I found interesting and relevant. It’s called Create a Family Culture of Appropriate Praise. The authors made a point that praise benefits both the giver and the receiver. The receiver gets a boost to his self-esteem and, if commended for doing something well, his sense of competence. The giver gets an equally valuable reward: seeing the faces he cares for light up and strengthening the relationship. If praise is withheld, the blow is dealt to children’ sense of self-worth and competence. Then the authors went into more details about three types of appropriate praise saying that each is necessary at the right time and can be damaging if it’s the only type of praise received.

• Praise for achievement (what he does). Whenever you think that your child does something well, tell him. However, achievement praise loses its power if it’s used indiscriminately – if, for example, “that’s fantastic!” covers everything from finishing dinner to riding a bicycle alone for the very first time. Indiscriminate phrase for achievement can actually promote narcissism and extreme self-absorption, inability to make friends or behave appropriately in social situations, irrational anger at others, and a lack of interest in learning.
• Praise for process (how he does it). The research showed that “process praise” – for effort, inventiveness, keeping at it - is the most effective kind. Process praise is not focused on outcomes, yet it helps children actually do better at tasks. He learns that how he does something is important. He will keep using the techniques and ways of thinking he got praised for and that are most likely to bring about a sense of mastery and success – both major factors in preventing and healing depression.
• Praise for person (who he is). People need to know that they are valued just because of who they are, without having to strive for this recognition. You can say to your child, “You are a great kid!” This is a relationship-building praise, but it’s also a statement of your feelings toward your child. The subtext is: “I love you and I am not going to abandon or desert you.” Since there is nothing a child fears more than abandonment, this is a vital ongoing reassurance.

The authors also stress that there is such a thing as bad praise. One example they give is using “nonspecific” praise. For example, telling a child he’s “good” when you are really pleased he’s picked up his toys doesn’t let him know specifically how he can maintain your approval. Even praising a child for a fixed trait such as intelligence or being musical or athletic can backfire. The child has no control over these genetic characteristics. Researchers have found that labeling children as gifted or talented may also have a negative impact by causing them to become overly concerned with justifying that label. They may become less willing to risk academic setbacks by taking on challenges that enhance their learning and mastery skills.

I found the last paragraph especially interesting, because it seems that some parents appear to be in extreme rush to get their toddlers labeled as gifted. There is one parenting forum I encountered that is called “Advanced Toddlers and Preschoolers”. Half the posts there start with the same question, “… my 20 month child recognizes letters. Is he gifted?”. Even if he or she is, what difference does it really make? Young children still need the same things – opportunity to play, socialize with peers, enjoy outdoors. Their natural talents will develop much better that way. Oh, well, I am going to get off my soapbox now and go give my daughter a much-needed bath.

The List of 30 Top Children Books – mostly not for young children

I first found this list of Top Picture Books of 2009 at Chronicles of Infant Bibliophile. Apparently it was posted originally on the great blog called The Bookworm’s Booklist and came from School Library Journal. Since I came from a different country at a ripe old age of 24, I didn’t have any first-hand experience with English-language children literature. I am learning as I go – randomly picking books in the library, looking at Amazon lists, checking educational blogs for advice. That’s why I was very excited to find it:

#1: Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak (1963)

#2: Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown (1947)

#3: The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle (1979)

#4: The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats (1962)

#5: Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus by Mo Willems (2003)

#6: Make Way for Ducklings by Robert McCloskey (1941)

#7: Harold and the Purple Crayon by Crockett Johnson (1955)

#8: Madeline by Ludwig Bemelmans (1939)

#9: Millions of Cats by Wanda Gag (1928)

#10: Knuffle Bunny: A Cautionary Tale by Mo Willems (2004)

#11: The Story of Ferdinand y Monroe Leaf, ill. Robert Lawson (1936)

#12: Good Night Gorilla by Peggy Rathmann (1994)

#13: Blueberries for Sal by Robert McCloskey (1948)

#14: The True Story of the Three Little Pigs by Jon Scieszka, ill. Lane Smith(1989)

#15: Lilly’s Purple Plastic Purse by Kevin Henkes (1996)

#16: Owl Moon by Jane Yolen (1987)

#17: Caps for Sale by Esphyr Slobodkina (1947)

#18: In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak (1970)

#19: Miss Rumphius by Barbara Cooney (1982)

#20: George and Martha by James Marshall (1972)

#21: Bark, George by Jules Feiffer (1999)

#22: The Monster at the End of this Book by Jon Stone, ill. by Mike Smollin (1971)

#23: Bread and Jam for Frances by Russell Hoban, illustrated by Lillian Hoban (1964)

#24: Chicka Chicka Boom Boom by Bill Martin, Jr. and John Archambault, ill. Lois Ehlert (1989)

#25: The Little House by Virginia Lee Burton (1942)

#26: Corduroy by Donald Freeman (1976)

#27: The Tale of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter (1902)

#28: Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day by Judith Viorst, ill. Ray Cruz(1972)

#29: Sylvester and the Magic Pebble by William Steig (1969)

#30: Brown, Bear, Brown Bear, What do you See? by Bill Martin Jr., ill. Eric Carle (1967)

A few things should have tipped me off as to whether this list will be a good fit for my daughter.

• First of all, Where The Wild Things Are heads the list. Umm… It’s not a bad book, but the best picture book ever? Anna hates this book – she is not afraid of monsters, but it’s not something that she wants to read about.
  
• The list is titled “Best Picture Books of 2009″, but the  “youngest” book on the list is published in 2004?  Were there no interesting and more modern books added in the last 5 years?
• No Richard Scarry on the list??? You’ve gotta be kidding me!
• During my library visit last week I checked out #5, #15, #22, #23. My daughter refused to read Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus. She is extremely morally straight (gets it from her father), and she doesn’t enjoy the books with naughty main characters. The humor of being able to say “No” to the penguin still escapes her. We are not Sesame Street fans, so The Monster in the End of the Book didn’t appeal to her either. #15 and #23 were simply too complex for her. She has very good comprehension for someone who is not even 3, but I could tell that she couldn’t grasp “the message” of these books.

Bottom line – the list is interesting, and I will probably try to check out other books. But I’d better look elsewhere for a good age-appropriate reading list. If someone knows good reading list for preschoolers (Anna’s comprehension level is 3-5 years old), please share the link.

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.

Should we teach our toddlers “stranger awareness”?

On the parenting forum that I visit someone has asked for an advice about teaching her son (4 year old) to be wary of strangers. I don’t think this topic is very pressing for us yet. After all, Anna is only 30 months, and I am not going to let her go somewhere by herself anytime soon. It breaks my heart that I am expected to teach my pure, trusting and fairly friendly girl to be suspicious of someone who talks to her in the street. Is it really necessary? Do all these stranger-awareness tactics even work? Or is it another checkmark on the parenting “to do” list that alleviates our ever-present worry about our children? What if our “don’t talk to strangers” talks instill social fear in our chidren, kill their natural curiousity and cause them to second-guess their own instincts about people? From watching my daughter interact with random people on the street, I think that she has a pretty good sense of who she wants to talk to. Do I really need to paint the world black and threatening for her?

I am not saying that I am not going to teach her basic common sense rules. For example, not getting into cars with strangers should be a no-brainer. She also has to know how to act in case of emergency – for example, if she gets lost or if a stranger tries to grab her. But I don’t think that I am going to go all out on “Don’t talk to strangers” road. However, for those who are interested, I stumbled upon this primer for raising a stranger awareness – Please Don’t Talk to Strangers.

Play is Fundamental

I was visiting one of my favorite blogs yesterday, The Wonder Years, and discovered a new great parenting site, PhD in Parenting. April is a month of Play on this site, and I decided to contribute to it. How important is play for young children (and, in truth, for every age from 0 to 100)? I quite agree with authors of Einstein Never Used Flashcards – Play is fundamental. Here are some ideas from this book on how to add more play back into your children overscheduled lives:

• Become an advocate for play. If we know play to be important, we need to let our actions speak loud. Let us transform preschool rooms back into indoor playgrounds that encourage and promote learning in a playful way. Let us schedule activities around play rather than squeeze play around our activities. Let us also acknowledge that young children need us to help them get going in their play by entering in and injecting important knowledge from the wider world. By doing so we will be sending the message that play is the answer to how we build happy, healthy, and intelligent children.
• Provide resources for stimulating play. Toys and play materials provide the stimulus for children’s exploration. When these things are interesting to children, children learn more from them. But you don’t have to buy fancy toys to reap the benefits of learning and social interaction. Consider some of low-cost alternatives. Use blankets and chairs to make forts. Inexpensive white paper plates and a little string are great for making things like masks. Stuffed animals can be characters in elaborate fantasy scenarios that you and your child concoct together. Seashells collected on trips make great toys, as do old tennis balls and old uniforms (try Goodwill stores), various inexpensive school supplies (those colored paper clips are great fun), used paper (ever make airplanes? or hats?), and coins. The trick is to look around your environment from your child’s perspective.
• Ask yourself some questions before buying that next toy. What activities will this toy inspire? What values will the activities teach? What social rules will my children learn to follow? Too often we buy what our children ask for and don’t stop to think about whether it will be good for them to have that toy. Yet we are in control, just as we control whether the television is on or not. We are not bad parents if our children are occasionally unhappy.
• Join in the fun. Joining children in play is perhaps the hardest challenge we have to meet. We are up for a board game or two, but we are not as good at joining in their world. We get bored easily ourselves. If we don’t really believe that what we are doing is important, we have a tendency to either control the scene or to opt out of their play. Yet, whenever possible, join in rather than thinking, Oh, good, she is playing alone. I can now make this call I need to make. Part of joining in requires that you give yourself permission to be a kid again, and to see the world from that point of view. Do you remember when jumping in the puddles was glorious? Do it again. You’ll find it rewarding.
• Let your child take the lead. Child-directed games will pique interest and learning. When we make play into work by controlling or limiting it, our children lose interest, and we lose opportunities to bond and to imagine with them. We need to strive to find the delicate balance between providing props for play and directing play. If we are going to present our children with an art project, we need to make it one where the children determine how the end product looks. A good thing to remember that it’s the process that counts, not the product. Try to be a sensitive play partner — reading your children’s signals about how much involvement they want from you. Parents who are good at being play partners don’t tell children what to do or constantly ask questions or hint to children about the way to play the game.
• Encourage your children to use their imagination. One way to get your child’s imagination going is to set up a pretend play sequence and then let them take it from there. For example, act out a visit to grandma’s house with your child, taking his lead.  Perhaps you can get her started by using the chairs to represent the seats in the car and encouraging her to drive you. Pretend play is fun not only for the children, but also for the adults.
• Evaluate your child’s structured activties. There’s no need for you to abandon all of the structured activities your children participate in. But when you make choices for your child, select what looks like more fun. Structure in activities is a good thing, but too much control is not. And ask yourself what the purpose of the activity is. It should primarily be for fun, and only secondarily for learning. The more we question our own motives and our own choices, the more we can close the gap between what we know is good for children and what we are actually doing with their time.

“Gifted” Preschoolers

Even before my daughter was born, I wanted her to be happy, healthy and smart – in this exact order of priority. I believe that she has all the chances to be a smart and successful human being – she has two loving parents, a stable home and good genes. However, I sort of cringe when someone tells me that she must be gifted, just because she can talk in paragraphs, and has her colors, shapes, letters and numbers down pat. I cringe even more when I visit parenting forums and see other parents claiming that their babies or 18-month old toddlers are gifted. It’s almost like we are trying to get our children into a rat race even before they are able to walk. I think many people don’t appreciate how rare true giftedness is, and how often it comes at a cost of being isolated and misunderstood. I read a lot about intellectual development, just because I am fascinated with how humans learn. I will definitely write more posts on this topic, but I wanted to share a good article on “Gifted” toddlers – it’s titled “Is Your Child Gifted“.

I don’t want to belittle my daughter’s accomplishments and I celebrate every success with her. But I don’t think of her as “gifted”, I think of her as “privileged”. She is lucky to be born into a loving middle class family when one parent can afford to stay home with her. She is lucky to be an only grandchild on both sides and to have all grandparents alive, well (unfortunately, living too far away) and adoring her. She is lucky to get an exposure to two foreign languages (German and Russian) at such an early age. She is lucky that she lives in the house full of books without constant TV hum in the background. She is lucky to live in a pleasant climate of Northern California, when she can spend time outside every day. She is lucky that I wake up every time at 5:30 am, so I can be home in the afternoon for her. She is lucky that she lives in a place with zillion of programs for kids, with good museums, theaters and libraries. I just hope that her luck continues and she thrives the way she thrives today.

Lessons for New Parents – Secrets of the Baby Whisperer

I participate in paperswapbook.com, and this is one book that was requested from me yesterday. I feel a little sad parting with it. I truly believe that this one book had the most impact on my parenting choices in the first year, and, believe me, I read a fair share of books on the topic. Some people find advice given in this book controversial, but it didn’t seem that way to me. Quite the opposite, mostly it was just plain common sense. Why give your child a pacifier, when it’s something that she can independently control? Why drive around with your infant in the car in attempts to get her to sleep, when you don’t really want to do it for the next 12 months of your life? Why co-sleep, if you still want to have an intimate and kids-free time with your husband? It made perfect sense to me to follow suggestions in this book on how to teach my child to self-soothe. I also liked the idea of really listening to what my baby was trying to tell me with her crying, her cooing and her body language and respecting her choices. And I am all for structure for young children. I see how Anna thrives on routines even now when she is a 2 year old. One of the best things we did in her first year is to establish a reliable night time routine that we still follow two years later (except because of all the book reading it extended to 60 min from initial 30 min). I highly recommend every new or expecting parent to look up this book and read it. Whether you use these ideas or not, it’s entirely up to you, but it all worked like a charm for us.