Kas Winters

"Mother of Family Ideas"

Make a Domino Run

by Kas Winters

Use dominoes, plastic blocks or even wooden blocks if you have some. They need to be stable enough to keep from tumbling over while you are setting them up. Make simple lines or get creative and have dominoes cross over and around. They can even be set up to do things like making a bell ring.

Guess What? You're Your Child's Librarian!"

by Steve Barancik

www.best-childrens-books.com

If it were up to me, children would come with warning labels. The labels would read something like this:

Congratulations. You are the current caretaker of a small child. Your child comes complete with his/her own brain.

Your child's brain

• is one of a kind

• is moderately malleable

• has almost an infinite capacity for growth

Don't screw it up.

Children don't yet come with warning labels, but it's still important for parents (and other adults) to take responsibility for their child's growing brain. To my mind, that means providing an environment rich with books.

Let's talk about children who are not yet reading

 Hopefully you read to your child. Regularly. Often. Hopefully you read around your child. Regularly. Often. What better way to convey that thinking adults never stop taking in information? Most children are eager to grow up. If you model that grown ups read, your child will likely take a real interest in reading. By reading to your child - and around your child - you're giving books a much needed leg up in their eventual, inevitable battle against video games and mall-crawling for the mind of your child.

Are all books created equal?

I've heard it said that there are no bad books. Anyone who believes that has never read a Disney "Based on the movie" book. Books have a way of worming their way into your child's library, via well-meaning friends and relatives. Sometimes they're not books you would choose. Children are sometimes drawn to books that make you cringe. You might not like a book's message or the beliefs it espouses. So do you sneak into your child's room in the dark of night, grab the book and show it the garbage can? Do you tell your child, "No, we don't read that one." I don't. To me, it feels like censorship. I like to treat a bad book - or a book I don't agree with - as an opportunity. Scientist Daniel Siegel, the brain researcher and much published expert on parent-child bonding, says (and I paraphrase) that the best predictor of the strength of the parent-child bond is whether the child has a sense of what the parent was like as a child. I choose to interpret that liberally. I take it as meaning that a parent who caringly shares (in an age-appropriate fashion) his or her own thinking - rather than posing as an impenetrable, rule-driven authority figure - will form a closer attachment with their child. When you share with your child, you're giving of yourself.

Steve, where are you going with this? I think the books you don't like provide a great opportunity to share of yourself. Let me give a few examples. Somehow, a My Little Pony book slithered out through the gates of Hell and into my child's bookcase. When she brings it to me I make gagging noises. I collapse to the floor. I wipe my hands when forced to touch it. In short, I put on a great show.

The Effect: My daughter learned quickly that this is not worthwhile reading, and that the real payoff is the show Dad puts on! She has never even thought to ask for any of the plethora of Hasbro My Little Pony products. She thinks they're stupid!

A subversive friend presented my daughter with the book, Clever Cat. This is a well-done picture book with a rather subversive message: Play dumb and others will do your work for you. I read the book when asked. I even play along with the subversiveness, conveying that I too get the message: this might be a great trick for getting stuff and making life cushy! But then, afterwards, I ask my daughter to join me in pondering the question, "Do you think this would work for people, not just cats?"

The Effect: We work through, together, the likely effects of playing dumb. We come to the conclusion, together, that it probably wouldn't work out so well in the long run.

The dreaded Disney "based on the movie" book. These are not stories, they are highlight reels. If you and your child have seen the movie, the book only serves to remind you of it. If you haven't seen the movie, the books make no sense. Characters speak who haven't even been introduced! There's no context for much of what's going on! If you don't know (from seeing the movie) that Dory has Fish-Alzheimer's, what she says makes no sense! As a writer and screenwriter, I actually tried explaining these concepts to my five year old. She kind of got the specifics. But she got the broader message: a book can be bad, it can be stupid. There are rules to be followed in creating one.

The Effect: My daughter learned early on that there's such a thing as critical thinking. I like to think it will serve her well.

A proselytizing relative inflicts HIS belief system on YOUR child with a book. It happens. It can be a twist on a religion that isn't yours. It can be "Why Mommy's A Democrat," or whatever the Republican twist is on that. (Both being forms of child abuse and stupidification, if you ask me.) When confronted with a book that espouses a world view that I don't agree with and that I hope my child won't accept as Truth, I take an intellectual approach. I'll read it, and then I'll say, "That's not what I believe." Then I'll point out a couple differences between what the book says and what I think. Then - and this is the most important part - I'll say, "What do you believe?"

The Effect: My child learns about me. But, more importantly, she learns that her opinion is just as important as mine. Too, she learns that it's good to have an opinion.

To sum up Reading is good, but all reading material isn't. If you ache for your child to grow up to be thoughtful and happy and successful, then promote reading by reading to your child and reading yourself. When confronted with a bad book, turn it into a positive. (Remembering that a book your child is not allowed to read is likely to become the most attractive book ever!) Bring good books into your home, but use the bad books that sneak in as an opportunity for growth. My website urges parents to put real thought into their children's reading habits.

MORE ARTICLES

about Children and Learning

 by Kas Winters

Whenever children are playing, working or doing anything at all, they need to be supervised. Adjust any activities to the age and abilities of the child. Pay attention to the materials, tools and location of the activity. Put thought into safety before the fun begins. If there's one thing I've learned from years of overseeing children's activities, it's that there's always something that a child will think to try that never occurred to me. So the key is to make things as safe as possible and then watch them the entire time.

Every Day Learning

by Kas Winters

Children learn from simple repetition and when they are least expecting it! In our family, having a child beside you when you are doing anything is part of everyday living. That's when the teaching takes place. We measure together to follow a recipe or build something from wood, read road signs as we travel, sing songs and play alphabet and rhyming games while riding in the car, talk about colors throughout the day and figure change when a purchase is made. As children get older, these times are used for more serious learning discussions about everything from geography to religion, from everyday math to science.