On the Joyous Edge: Parenting Today's Children

Preparing Our Children for the World of Tomorrow

Scott McLeod, J.D., Ph.D., Associate Professor and Coordinator of the Educational Administration Program at Iowa State University, co-created the amazingly popular video Did You Know?, which asks the question - How do we best prepare our children for the rapidly changing and expanding world of tomorrow?

In this future world of rapidly evolving technological development and rapidly changing global demographics depicted in the video, our children will live in a profoundly different world than we live in today. What these changes mean to the future of individual children and societies is open to speculation.

There are, however, two general approaches we can take as parents, educators and as a society to guide and empower our children. One is to continue with more determination on the path we are currently on – pushing children to ever-higher standards of memorization, test-taking and compliance  to the demands of the state who determine our educational standards.

The traditional, standards-based approach to learning began during the industrial age when factories needed workers who could accurately follow instructions without thinking for themselves or challenging the status quo. These workers needed to tolerate mindless repetitive tasks without complaint.

The other approach to guiding our children requires an entirely new way of perceiving young people and what they need from us to prepare for the realities of tomorrow. The goal of this alternative approach is to empower our young people to think for themselves and to think out of the box from the way things have always been done.

The demands of the future require innovation. We will need leaders, visionaries, and free thinkers with the ingenuity to respond to the needs of a different world reality, one in which the old rules and ideals no longer apply.

Our young people will need to use their natural human talents of problem-solving, intuition, creativity, curiosity, exploration, the ability to think for themselves in the moment and then to respond powerfully and courageously to realities of their time.

This is not something we can teach them with textbooks or standards-based testing. We can’t even teach them entirely based on what we already know or the information we believe to be true.

We are preparing our children for a future that is so radically different from the present reality that we cannot even imagine what it will be like.

To help them develop these intrinsic skills, we must give them relevant opportunities to actually use these innovative, problem-solving skills in real-life situations during all of their growing up years. We cannot expect a young person to suddenly become creative and innovative upon graduation if he hasn’t continuously used and expanded these skills as he grows up.

One of the best ways to develop these intrinsic skills is through real life experiences in programs, such as San Francisco-based Spark , which creates real world experiences for youth through apprenticeships in the community.

Another option is an unschooling approach found in many home schooling families and democracy-based Sudbury Valley Schools.

Other options that encourage individual freedom, creativity and exploration include Montessori and Reggio Emilio schools.

These approaches also help children develop essential life values including empathy, authenticity, autonomy, personal responsibility and integrity and life skills such as communication, observation, and motivation.

As I ponder this new reality of the future, I recall the lines from The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran:

You may house their bodies but not their souls,

For their souls dwell in the house of to-morrow,

which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

As individual parents and educators and as a society, we must trust that our children already possess the ability to discover and learn, to think for themselves, and to create new possibilities based upon the unique circumstances of the moment.

Our children profoundly need for us, their parents, educators, and society-leaders, to act with courage to challenge the status quo and to make choices based on what is best for our children now, and not just on what has always been done or is easy.

We must provide meaningful opportunities for their learning, exploration, and growth.The healthy future of our children and our global community depends upon it.

If you haven’t watched the video, do it now. Then go to Scott’s blog at DangerouslyIrrelevent.org and learn more about his ground-breaking work in education.

What Happened to Their Humanity? Part 1

This is a question on everyone’s minds in Richmond, CA, where a group of approximately12 teens watched while several young men gang raped and beat a 15-year-old girl. This is truly a horrific story, shocking and disturbing to everyone that young men would violently injure and abuse this young girl.

The haunting question on everyone’s mind is, “What about the young people who stood around and watched? Why didn’t they do something to stop it? What happened to their humanity and their ability to take action to call authorities?”

When we hear stories like this, we believe once again that the next generation lacks basic human values. We feel judgmental of them and question their goodness.

But young people do not make these choices in a vacuum. Young people choose these actions based on many factors. It is not that they are inherently bad people. It is not that they didn’t know better.

We need to look to the emotional environments in which they have grown up.

If we want young people to act with humanity, we must treat them with humanity. We cannot yell at them, perceive them as failures, ignore their requests and ideas without damaging their natural moral values.

We must walk our talk as adults with children and everyone with whom we interact.

Children will never learn true humanity by being taught by a teacher or from a textbook.

True humanity comes from listening to the truth within their heart. We can help children use this natural ability by listening to the truth within their heart, no matter how insignificant or inappropriate it seems to us.

And by not unknowingly diminishing their humanity as people.

When we as educators, parents and society honor the goodness in children’s hearts, children will honor the goodness in their own hearts and in the hearts of others.

Fulfillment - 10: Easy - 1

Doug and I just returned from a spectacular camping / riding trip with our horses. The redwoods were breath-taking and the riding so much fun. I'll have more info about this in my next newsletter, but first I want to share another interesting insight with you from my parent survey.

The second survey question read, "On a scale of 1 to 10 (with one being low and 10 being high), how easy and fulfilling is your over-all experience of being a parent?"

Several parents responded by giving two separate numbers: one for fulfilling and one for easy. This is what they said:

"find parenthood itself really fulfilling ...I would never say it was easy."

"easy - 1, fulfilling - 10!"

"being a parent is easily the hardest and most fulfilling experience I've ever had"

"I would say it's a 9 for fulfilling and a 3 for easy. I have 2 very active, curious, intelligent children who are often times difficult to parent because of these characteristics which I predict will make them incredible adults but require a lot of my energy and attention; they are definitely NOT easy to parent, even on a good day. Nevertheless, I find parenting them really fulfilling most days."

Does this sound familiar? I completely understand how fulfilling and easy can be two different experiences of being a parent.

Sometimes parents believe parenting is a hard job just by definition. In other words, it's not parenting if it's not difficult.

One mom shared, "I live for my family and sacrifice so much for them.  I don't believe you can be truly happy until you have sacrifice in your life.  It is not easy to be a parent.  Just like a marriage it takes work. You have to put effort into it."

Another mom candidly revealed, "I think for the most part, I wait until I'm really burned out or exhausted to start taking care of myself instead of others, and that doesn't seem like a sustainable approach to our family."

In my experience as a mom, teacher, and family coach, I have found parenting children of all ages can be MUCH EASIER and dramatically more fulfilling than most people experience or believe is possible.

They are two sympatico qualities. When parenting becomes easier, it also becomes more fulfilling. As it becomes for fulfilling, it also becomes easier.

In my F.R.E.E.Book Launch Party call this coming MONDAY, AUGUST 31, I'll discuss why it is essential to have parenting be easy and fun. Believe it or not, being a good parent REQUIRES that it be easy and fulfilling to you.

Note: I'm not saying parenting never has challenging moments. It does. However, it is important that parenting be easy and fun almost all the time with rare moments when it becomes difficult and then quickly passes.

You'll learn all of this and more when I share about -- "Beyond Parenting Techniques: The 5 Most Important Understandings that Will Immediately Bring More Joy to Your Child's Eyes and Transform Your Relationship with Your Child"

Register now for this content-rich call in which I'll reveal these essential understandings from my new book "Joyous Child Joyous Parent".

Plus I'll announce an unheard of, limited-time special bonus for early-bird purchasers of my book.

Go here now to register.

I so look forward to sharing this powerful, transformational information with you!

The Price of Violence to our Children

Paul Butler in his book Let’s Get Free: A Hip-Hop Theory of Justice reports the U.S. has 5% of the world’s population and 25% of its prisoners. He adds that a prison opens in the U.S. every week.

He argues the U.S. has gone too far in its “lock ‘em up culture” and that “The freedom we save will be our own.”

Add to this that every state allows juveniles to be tried as adults and more than 20 states allow pre-adolescent children as young as 7 to be tried in adult courts.

These statistics are shocking and deeply troublesome. When children are treated harshly when they are young, whether it is by the justice system, our educational system or their parents, they are more likely to struggle for happiness and success in life and to become increasingly angry, isolated or violent in adulthood.

When children are born, they are extremely sensitive to the emotions of the people around them and to the way they are treated emotionally. They feel our unconscious feelings even when we do not. They are so easily influenced by the adults in their life.

As adults, most of us forget how sensitive we were as children and have unknowingly put up emotional walls between ourselves and those around us to keep us safe emotionally. We’ve learned to put up walls to keep us from feeling those painful, uncomfortable feelings that come with harsh treatment and lack of understanding about our emotional needs.

Every day as parents, educators, and a society, we make choices that either allow our children to feel safe emotionally or we make reactive choices in our words and actions that affect their Emotional Wholeness and well-being for the rest of their life.

This is one of the most important ideas for all of us to deeply understand. What happens in a child’s life emotionally colors and affects the rest of his life. There is simply so way around this.

Healing can happen when difficult environments are changed or children are put in new situations that support their healing. Nonetheless, the more severe the emotional hurting, the more long-lasting the pain and the greater impact in their life.

Children are a high priority to almost everyone in the U.S. and around the world. We care deeply about children. Yet emotional pain is often caused by unconscious behaviors by adults who don’t fully understand the impact of their words and actions in a child’s emotional experience.

When adults react from fear and anger, whether it’s in a child’s home, school, or in our country’s justice system, both children and adults pay a high price. It is essential that we become more conscious and committed to nurturing our children’s Emotional Wholeness if we are to see them be as happy and successful as we all desire.

When children are nurtured emotionally, our world becomes a more harmonious, joyous place for everyone.

What will you do today to emotionally nurture the children in your life?

Meet Your Child’s Unique Needs

Everyone knows that every child is unique and that we need to relate to each child based on their uniqueness.

The two important questions are:

1. How do you do that?
2. How far are you as a parent willing to go?

I recently read an online newspaper article that brought the message home loud and clear to me. Perhaps you’ve already seen it. It’s a story about a piglet who was afraid of the mud and how her owners responded to her unique needs as a piglet.

I can’t resist sharing it here for several reasons:

1. I grew up on a farm in Iowa where my father raised this adorable Hampshire pigs.
2. It is just too cute not to pass on.
3. It exemplifies my point about responding to your child’s unique needs perfectly.

Here is the article.

And here is a photo.

Be creative and have fun nurturing your child's unique personality!

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.