Home education: what, how and why? – a guest post by Jane Levicki

December 6, 2012

Although I’m not a home educator myself, I am very interested in the subject of home education, in dispelling myths, and in raising awareness of home education as an option. So I was very pleased when Jane Levicki agreed to write a guest post for me.

Jane has four children and has been home educating for eleven years. She is the Co-Editor of Education Outside School Magazine,  and blogs at www.manydifferentdrums.blogspot.co.uk

Just over eleven years ago I took my children out of school to home educate them. My son, then aged 8, had never been happy. While he was fine with the social aspect, he often found school boring and frustrating; he had no desire to read, fill in worksheets, or sit still for more than 30 seconds! We struggled through, because I knew no different, but when his sister started showing signs of stress in Year 1 (free play and the dressing up corner is left behind in Reception – Year 1 is serious school!) I knew I had to do something.

I had growing reservations about the school system anyway. I always expected to have to cope with stress in the GCSE years, but I was astounded and disappointed to find I had to do that when they were five! From baseline testing through to SATS it really did seem to be all about box ticking and conforming to the mould.

So I took them out of school and we entered the wonderful world of home education. And I found a new community of people who agreed with me and didn’t think I was mad!

I discovered that disillusion with the education system and unhappy children are a common reason for people to turn to home education and I met former teachers who had come out of the system along with their children! Some had coped with years of bullying. Others had realised that their child’s needs were just not being met, maybe they had Special Educational Needs, ADD, were Gifted, or simply needed to learn differently. The occasional family were home educating for religious reasons. One thing we all had in common was the desire to give back to our children the love of learning they were born with.

I imagine that most people think either that I stand over my children from 9 to 3 each weekday as they sit obediently at the kitchen table filling in workbooks, or that I let them run feral, rolling in the mud, or watching TV all day, while literacy is ignored and career prospects disappear.

Neither of those is true. People do ask me how I get my children to ‘sit down and do their lessons’, but home education doesn’t really work like that. Although some people do create a sort of ‘school at home’ environment if it suits them, that’s not very typical.

Much of their learning has been autonomous. This is an approach where the child directs his own learning, following his own interests while you support him. They learn what they need to when they need to. Some families are totally autonomous and never introduce any structure at all, unless their child asks for it. Many families opt for a blend of autonomy and some direction. This approach works well for us – I encourage as much autonomy as possible, but I also initiate projects and suggest activities.

boy with magnifying glassAnd even when I do, I am able to tailor those to the children. Learning can happen in all kinds of ways. Instead of getting the biology books out, you can go to the zoo or keep animals yourself, take walks and observe nature. Instead of printing out worksheets about money, you can pay your children a weekly allowance, take them shopping and help them open a bank account. Instead of boring reading schemes, you can just enjoy books together. Home education works best when you tap into your children’s aptitudes. I remember great fun pacing out the relative size of the solar system, cooking typical World War II dishes and trying out hieroglyphics!

Even as they enter teenage years, the choice is still there. They can do GCSEs or equivalents or focus more on their practical skills. They can enter sixth form or college or university. But they are not sitting on a conveyor belt, churned out at the end.

The Big Question – Socialisation!

Unless you’re going to keep your child locked in the house forever, they will socialise! Home education is a bit of a misnomer really because usually not much of the education happens at home. They are out and about in the real world – in libraries, shops, cafés, on public transport, in museums, the park; socialising all the time with children, adults and the elderly, shopkeepers, policemen, bus drivers. Sounds a lot more like good preparation for life than years spent with 30 children your own age, plus one adult who must always be obeyed, doesn’t it?

And as for making friends, well of course they do. They make friends with the children in their street and with the guys in their football team, drama club or Scout group. Plus there is a network of home educating communities all across the country organising group trips, activities and social events. In fact, some weeks you’ll have trouble finding them at home at all!

Perhaps best of all, they get to socialise in the way that suits them. My eldest son, now 19, has always been very much a social person. During the summer I would barely see him, he’d be out all day playing football with the other boys in the village. He made friends at his football team, basketball club and Scout group. When he went to college at 18, socialising was never going to be an issue! These days it can take us ages to get around the shops because he keeps bumping into people he knows!

My youngest child is also a social animal. She requires lots of contact with people and sleepovers when possible! My two middle children are much shyer but they have the opportunity to develop their social skills at their own pace. It hasn’t stopped them making friends, communicating with shop keepers, their drama teacher and football manager, or being offered babysitting jobs. In fact, being home educated has enabled them to develop their self-confidence and self-esteem from a secure base, which will see them very well for the future.

You sometimes hear the argument that children need to experience the harshness of life and learn to deal with bullies. Ridiculous! Anyone that has been even slightly bullied will tell you that it doesn’t make you stronger – it grinds you down. In addition, just because a child doesn’t go to school, that doesn’t mean he isn’t facing the ordinary disappointments and difficulties of life. I’ve seen my son cope with spending the entire match on the subs bench at the age of 12, my daughter not win the poetry competition. I’ve witnessed them not get the part they wanted in the play but take it like a professional and give it their best anyway.

I’m not saying that home educating has been a walk in the park. There have been difficult times, as with any aspect of parenting, but even through those I have not regretted it for a minute!

In the UK, education is compulsory, school isn’t. You don’t have to be a teacher or follow the National Curriculum. You don’t need to observe school terms, days or hours. You are not required to be monitored and your children aren’t tested. For more information on the legalities see www.education-otherwise.net

There are many great books about home education, but the one I would recommend as a great introduction is ‘Learning Without School’ by Ross Mountney.

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Posted by Jo

The puzzling contradictions in our attitudes to child welfare

November 27, 2012

With the media buzz about Jimmy Saville following close on the heels of the media buzz about the April Jones case, we’re all keeping our kids indoors and not letting them out of our sight, despite the many warnings of the disadvantages to our children of restricting their lives in this way. Only zero risk is acceptable when it comes to child welfare it seems. 

This week’s media buzz is around the case of the Eastern European children removed from their foster placement with a couple who turned out to be members of UKIP. Yet despite UKIP members and politicians making their views and attitudes known via blatantly homophobic and archaic comments about gay couple adoption, and policies that seek to “end the active promotion of the doctrine of multiculturalism by local and national government”, we’re all outraged at the idea that a couple who subscribe to these ideals are not considered suitable carers for these children. 

Explain this one to me. It’s OK to deprive children of the opportunity to play outdoors on the grounds of a minute risk that has actually been shown to have decreased since the 70s when kids were roaming all over the place, but it’s not OK to remove vulnerable children from the care of a couple whose political views are directly at odds with their background and cultural needs. 

Winston McKenzie – how is it OK for Eastern European children to be placed with members of your party, a party that does not welcome the presence of these children in this country, nor their ability to obtain benefits, (how much do you think it costs social services to keep these children in foster care, genius?), but not OK for children to be placed with a gay couple? 

I’m sensing a few contradictions amongst all this. 

But there’s one particular point I’d really like to make, because whenever the subject of fostering and adoption is in the media this seems to be missed by many, including UKIP leader, Nigel Farage, who is reported to have ‘demanded the children be returned’, and talks about the couple’s ‘right to foster’. 

There is no ‘right to foster’. This is not about foster carers rights; it’s about children’s rights and needs. Social services are serving the interests of the children. And this is the way it should be. No-one has an automatic right to foster or adopt. It might be tough, it might be unfair, but that’s the way it is. Get over it. 

In any case, no-one has said this particular couple can’t foster, just that this was not a suitable placement for them. Michael Gove might think “We should not allow considerations of ethnic or cultural background to prevent children being placed”, he might think these considerations are unimportant, irrelevant even, but I think he’s wrong. Meeting the long term needs of fostered and adopted children is complex, and their cultural and ethnic needs absolutely should be considered. It’s not as simple as he makes out. 

Perhaps, instead of asking, “Would you honestly want your child to be adopted by a gay couple?”, Winston McKenzie should encourage us to ask this; 

If you were from Eastern Europe, would you honestly want your children to be placed with a couple who are members of UKIP? Would you consider this to be a suitable match, a good placement for the potential long term? Or would you wonder if your children might be better off with another foster family?

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Posted by Jo

Toys for Christmas?

November 7, 2012

I have just read this article in the Guardian. Apparently the Toy Retailers Association have come up with a top 13 list of toys. The article implies that it is in fact a list of ‘must have’ toys to buy our children for Christmas this year. Given the timing of the list, this seems quite plausible, and a quick Google search brings up umpteen other articles on the same topic and with the same angle, including one that has appeared on children’s television channel CBBC’s website.

It seems that not only are adults being told what to buy for their children, but children are being told what to want. How many adults will fall for this blatant commercial manipulation? If this article‘s anything to go by, quite a lot. It reports that according to research by the Mothers’ Union, 72% of parents admit to buying gifts they can’t really afford, 46% have got into financial difficulty or debt in order to buy Christmas presents, and 59% admit to buying presents they didn’t consider age-appropriate.

For the last five years now I’ve found myself frequently asked the question, in the run up to Christmas, “What are you buying your child for Christmas?” My answer has always been vague and evasive, because (and here my secret is out) the answer is, very little, if anything. Here’s why:

a) He will gets loads of gifts from grandparents, aunties, and uncles, and he won’t know that none of them are from me, because he thinks they’re all from Santa anyway.

And I don’t feel in the least bit guilty about this. It’s not like I never buy him anything.  Why wait until Christmas? I don’t get extra pay at Christmas or anything. And I don’t use Christmas as a bribe or a threat. My child doesn’t have to earn things. The idea that I must buy him heaps of things at Christmas means I must either hold off buying things in order to store things up to add to an already large pile of presents at a particular time of year, or, if as I do, I buy him things as and when he grows out of something or I feel he needs or would benefit from something, I must then buy him other things at Christmas which he doesn’t really need. I don’t get it.

b) He won’t have any of the above ‘top 13’ toys or other demands for particular toys on his list because he never watches TV commercials.

Children only expect what they’re led to expect. I ‘ve often found the smallest and simplest presents have been his favourites.

c) There are very few toys he actually plays with anyway.

Really. It’s taken me a few years to finally grasp this, but he doesn’t. For years he’s had a load of toys in the house he’s hardly touched. I sold some of them at last month’s NCT sale and he still hasn’t noticed they’ve gone.

He just plays with, well, stuff. If he’s playing at cooking he plays with the real crockery and utensils in the kitchen. Forget all that plastic rubbish I bought when trying to create a ‘home corner’. He ‘goes shopping’ with real shopping bags and food from the food cupboard. He makes miniature ‘soups’ with various ingredients donated by his father while he’s cooking. He makes all sorts of imaginary things outside in his messy play area. He invents things out of cardboard packaging. He and his friends make dens with old blankets and cushions. Right now he’s obsessed with football, and will play imaginary matches with commentary. If no balls are immediately available, he uses anything kick-able.

When he was younger he liked taking random things out of drawers and playing with them. (actually he still does) . He had a great time with the tape measure. I once found him playing with a roll of Sellotape. I took it off him, telling him it wasn’t a toy and we needed to save it for when it was needed. Later I thought how ridiculous that was. I’ll buy him toys, but I can’t stretch to an extra roll of Sellotape?!

The thing is, kids have great imaginations, and a great capacity to create play out of raw materials. Plus this makes for a good type of play that’s most beneficial to their development. Many commercial toys do all their thinking for them, and limit them to playing in certain ways. Hi-tech toys do not encourage creativity or leave room for a child’s imagination to get to work. A toy gun can only ever be a gun. A stick could be a gun, then later a fishing rod. Children with large numbers of toys will flit from one to the next, without spending much time on any, making for short attention spans.

I’m not saying we shouldn’t buy any toys, or that my child doesn’t have anything to play with. He has bats and balls, a scooter and bike, lego, drawing materials, a collection of toy cars picked up in charity shops, a dressing up box, a much used sand and water tray, for example. I’m just saying our approach to children’s Christmas gift buying, and toy buying generally, is worth thinking twice about. We often hear the complaint that a small child is more interested in the packaging than the actual toy. This is telling us something. Let’s take note, and send the media and the TRA packing.

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Posted by Jo

Is child’s play just for children?

October 26, 2012

Over the last few months I have become increasingly interested in the issue of the loss of freedom in childhood today;  the lack of free play children engage in due to the rise of screen technology, the trend towards over-scheduling children into organised classes and activities, the introduction of homework in primary schools, an increase in traffic, and an increased fear of ‘stranger danger’. By free play, I mean children playing imaginatively and creatively, without adult supervision and direction, with each other or independently, and without the use of screens. I have written more about this here and here.

My conclusion is that this type of play is of vital importance to children and needs to be promoted, facilitated, and preserved. This is something I’ve started to feel increasingly strongly about.

Also of vital importance, however, is spending time with our children. Yes, we need to give them space, but there’s a balance to be struck here. A recent study reports shocking numbers of children saying that they wished they could spend more time with their parents, and shocking numbers of parents admitting to spending shockingly little time giving their children their full attention, and somehow I suspect that this is not due to the children spending too much time engaged in free play.

There are many different ways to spend time with our children. We can engage in activities like baking or cooking together, reading, or playing board games. But whilst these things all have their value, they can be quite restrictive, controlled and adult led. A more free, child-led play, however, has a special quality. When we play with children we are joining them in their world, meeting them at their level, on their territory. The value and benefits of simply playing together cannot be over-estimated.

Get to know you

One of the many ways I feel play benefits my relationship with my child is that it enables me to learn more about him, especially now that he’s at school and spending more hours away from me, but even before a child begins school, there is a lot going on in their heads that may surprise us, and playing can give us some real insight.

Imaginative, make-believe, role-play based games can be really fascinating. If I let my child come up with the ideas and lead the way I can learn what has made an impression on him, what has been going on at school, and what he is needing to process and is trying to understand. Play is a great way for me to help him do this. Play can help him work through issues, things that might have upset him, that he’s struggling to come to terms with. We can re-enact things like going to the doctor, or getting hurt in the playground.

Get rough

Rough and tumble is important play particularly for boys who use this type of play to bond with each other and play out aggression. For parents who find this type of play worrying, what better solution than to practice with your child? We can help teach them some basic rules and to figure out their own strength, and when they need to hold back or stop. Lawrence Cohen, Ph.D, author of the fantastic book, Playful Parenting, has also co-authored a whole book on this one topic, The Art of Roughhousing.  In it he writes;

“Roughhousing is play that flows with spontaneity, improvisation, and joy. It is free from worries about how we look or how much time is passing. It is physical, and it promotes physical fitness, release of tension, and well-being. Roughhousing is interactive, so it builds close connections between children and parents, especially as we get down on the floor and join them in their world of exuberance and imagination.”

Get some therapy

Play can even be used to help children with particular problems they might be having, as play therapists around the world will attest. Maybe your child needs a little bit of extra nurture, reassurance of their value and your love. Maybe they need some help giving up a little control, or practice following instructions or taking turns.

For more on this, see my previous post on Theraplay.

The single most valuable aspect of playing with our children though is simply bonding and connecting. Staying connected with our children is essential for successful parenting, and playing with them is one of the best ways to achieve this. Putting the household chores and everything else aside and giving a child our undivided attention also tells them how special and important they are to us. Just half an hour a day can make a world of difference.  Sure, kids need space, they need free play without adults muscling in or hovering, and they need to be able to play independently too, but the value and benefit, indeed, in my opinion, the necessity of playing with our children should not be forgotten.

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Posted by Jo

Advocating for children’s play – away from TV screens

October 12, 2012

An open letter to the manager of David Lloyd Leisure.

Dear Manager,

When the excellent new children’s area opened at my local David Lloyd club over a year ago, I wrote to you remarking that I felt the area was very much spoilt by the presence of television screens, and requesting that their inclusion be reconsidered. I pointed out that there were no other soft play facilities in the city, that I am aware of, that have TV screens, and that I felt their presence was disruptive to the children’s play.

Your response reported that the TVs had received ‘mixed reviews’ from parents, but that some liked having them there.

Over the last 18 months I have used this facility regularly. My child very much enjoys the time he spends there – it has become familiar to him, as have the staff, and other children who go there regularly, making him feel comfortable and relaxed there and able to enjoy all it has to offer. As well as taking part in some of the organised activities, he very  much likes spending time in the play area with other children. He is an only child, and this social aspect of the club is of great benefit to him.

However, I have repeatedly observed during our visits there, the negative effect of the TV screens on this social aspect of the children’s play. One of the screens is visible from all angles of the main play area, including from the soft play structure. On every visit, I have observed how these screens distract from and interfere with the children’s play. Their attention is repeatedly drawn towards the screen. Some children are unable to draw themselves away from it, and end up leaving off their play with the other children to sit in the play structure staring at the screen, despite being often unable to hear the sound. Those children who are able to re-focus their attention away from the screen do so only to have it drawn back at frequent and regular intervals. This is disruptive to the flow of their play and their thoughts.

If you observe the children’s play closely enough you will see that they are doing more than simply enjoying the physical aspects of the climbing structure and slide. They are often engaged in some sort of imaginative, creative, make believe play. They devise their own rules and roles, negotiate and interact with each other, create fantasies. This type of play is extremely beneficial to children, yet sadly something for which there are fewer opportunities today, with the introduction of homework at younger ages, more scheduled activities, fear of allowing children to play out, and of course, screen technology.  I therefore feel opportunities for this type of play are valuable and should be facilitated as much as possible. However, it’s certainly not facilitated by the constant distraction of TV screens.

I have also observed other parents at the facility. Contrary to your assertions, I have not seen any that appear to welcome the presence of the TV. In fact I often see parents struggling to get their children to finish their meals because they are distracted by the TV. On a number of occasions I have asked parents if they object to my turning the TV off. They have always been more than happy for me to do so. However, I find that the staff appear to have been instructed to ensure the TV is on at all times. When I have pointed out that I, and others, do not want it on, they have simply put it on with the sound down – as I have illustrated above, this is not conducive to the social interaction and creative, imaginative play that the children are trying to engage in.

I also wonder if your staff are aware that the CBBC channel is actually intended for children aged 6 to 12. Yet the majority of children using the facility are younger than this, and many of the programmes on this channel unsuitable for them.

As I mentioned in my original correspondence with you, children are unable to self-regulate. If a TV screen is there they will watch it, whether or not they find the content disturbing, and whether or not there are better things to do. There have been many studies that show the negative effects of background TV on children’s play and attention spans.

Childhood today is already encroached upon enough by the existence of screen technology.  Please ask yourself again if the TV screens in the children’s area at your club are really necessary, or indeed wanted by the parents, or beneficial to the children.

Yours sincerely

A long-time club member, concerned parent, and advocate of children’s play.

 

*After receiving this letter, the manager of the club telephoned me to say that they would be turning the TV off in the children’s play area on a trial basis.

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Posted by Jo

Why classroom behaviour modification methods are on my sad list

September 27, 2012

There are a number of aspects of mainstream education in the UK that I’m not comfortable with. The starting age, the lack of play based learning for under 7s, the lack of outdoor learning, homework for primary school children, reward systems, class sizes, age segregation, the one size fits all approach and if you can’t do it now we’ll just push harder instead of backing off and coming back later. OK, that’s quite a few already.

But what has really got under my skin this week are the reports brought to me by my child, who talks very sparingly about what happens in school, of the happy/sad face chart in his new classroom.

The teacher, I’m told, has a chart on the classroom wall with a happy face on one side and a sad face on the other. When a child ‘misbehaves’ she writes their name under the sad face. If they misbehave again they get a tick next to their name. For each tick received they miss five minutes of their playtime. If they are especially ‘good’ they get their name written under the happy face, or moved from the sad face to the happy face.

This isn’t the first time I’ve heard of this type of method of course. There are several variations – traffic lights, sun and cloud, they’re all basically the same thing. So what’s my problem with them?

Well, where do I start?

I get that a classroom teacher needs to keep order in the classroom. I do. But is this really the best they can come up with? How exactly is this going to be helpful to a child who is having difficulty meeting the many expectations school heaps upon them?

How is it helpful to be effectively told you are a bad person, and that, furthermore, the fact that you are a bad person is going to be publicly announced to the entire class – to all other children and staff in the classroom or anyone who might enter the classroom during your time of shame. Why not just give out a dunce’s cap?

What effect is this shaming going to have on your self-esteem? And what effect is low self-esteem going to have on your behaviour? Bingo. It’s going to make it worse. It’s quite possibly one of the causes of the ‘bad’ behaviour in the first place.

How is missing some or all of your playtime – a precious opportunity to do what you desperately need to be doing; getting outside and playing and letting off some steam – going to help your future behaviour? And how might you feel during that missed playtime? Positive, ready to make a real effort, feeling able to fit in, school’s a good place? Or resentful, bad, ashamed, school sucks?

My child highlighted another problem with all this when he told me, “Jimmy’s always on the sad face, he’s really naughty.”

Great. Jimmy is labelled, categorised. How is this going to help Jimmy? Will it make him more or less likely to make some solid peer connections that will have a positive effect on his behaviour? Or will he become ostracised? Will it improve his behaviour? Or will he just give up. After all, he’s always on the sad face, clearly he just can’t do anything right, he’s naughty.

When a child is given a label, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish talk about this in their book, “How To Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk”;

“If you labelled a child as a slow learner, he could begin to see himself as a slow learner. If you saw a child as mischievous, chances are he’d start showing you just how mischievous he could be…..the child who has been given the name begins to play the game. After all, if everyone calls Mary bossy, then that’s what she must be.”

Children behave well when they feel good about themselves and their environment, not when they have a dark cloud hanging over their heads all day long. And the very children that most need help, are the ones likely to end up under that dark cloud every day, giving them just what they don’t need.

Just because so far my child is not the one under the sad face every day, doesn’t mean I’m going to be OK with what’s going on in his classroom, the place he spends a significant part of his time. I chose to put him in a mainstream school so I shouldn’t complain? Actually, other than home education, there was no choice, no alternative school. Yet my child has a right to go to school, and he also, I believe, has a right to be treated better than this. Our children deserve more respect and understanding. And by understanding, as with the title of my blog, I don’t just mean understanding of their behaviour and the underlying needs behind it, but understanding of the negative effects of these superficial behaviour modification techniques. They may ‘work’ for some children (but at what cost?), but they are failing many. Teachers should know better, be better informed.

Oh, and perhaps if we didn’t stuff 30 five-year-olds into a classroom for six hours a day five days a week we wouldn’t need to resort to these methods in the first place.

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Posted by Jo

Starting school without any tears

September 3, 2012

One of the most harrowing experiences known to parents is that of having their screaming child physically torn from them by a stranger, then having to walk away to the sounds of their child crying and begging them not to leave. Just a necessary part of letting go? Teaching your child independence? Or an unnecessary, cruel and detrimental way of managing a delicate situation? I think the latter.

I made the mistake of allowing this to happen once, when my child was two and a half. I vowed I would never allow this to happen again, and have successfully avoided such a situation all but once, when I was taken by surprise one morning at school.

It first happened at a playgroup that clearly didn’t believe in settling in arrangements. They fully bought into the ‘just let them cry it out and they’ll be fine’ philosophy. There were hysterical children and parents everywhere. It was carnage. I subsequently withdrew my child from the playgroup’s register, returning several months later on the pre-agreed condition that I remain with him for as long as I felt he needed me to, even if this meant I never actually left and became a sort of volunteer parent helper with cutting out and sorting coloured pens.  As it happened, I remained with my child for his two mornings a week for about a month. When I finally left there were no tears, nor were there any on any subsequent occasions. He thoroughly enjoyed his time there, being a lively and sociable child who loves being around other children in this type of environment. He just needed time to feel comfortable and safe enough to be there without me. Trying to rush this was counterproductive.

Before making the decision to move him to the pre-school attached to the school he would eventually be attending, I was careful to speak to the staff there about their settling in arrangements. They were happy for me to do whatever I judged best. I planned to stay with him for at least a week, but 3 mornings proved sufficient. There were no tears throughout the year there.

In the summer prior to my child starting school he showed considerable anxiety about the impending change. It was a great comfort to him that I could repeatedly assure him that I would be staying with him for the whole time on his first day. Feeling safe and reassured by the knowledge that I would be there with him considerably lessened the anxiety and stress of the first day. There was no dread of a separation, no need to fear. He knew I would be right there with him. It worked perfectly. I sat in a corner of the classroom with a book. My child joined in with the other children, engaged with the teacher, in short, did everything the other children did and that he was expected to do, just ‘checking in’ with me occasionally.

On the second day I explained to him exactly what would happen when we arrived; “The bell will ring then you’ll all get in line. That’s when we’ll kiss goodbye, then you’ll go into school with the other children, and I’ll be back at lunchtime, just like at nursery”.

This way there were no surprises, he knew what to expect. From his behaviour and reaction on the first day I had made the decision that he was ready for me to leave. As with all the settings he had been to, once the decision was made and I had told him what would happen, it was important that I stuck to it, not letting him feel like there was any choice, any room for negotiation. So making the decision was the tricky part – I needed to be sure he was ready.

This is how it worked for me. It won’t work like this for everyone. Every child is different and will react differently. But I firmly believe that time invested at the beginning saves a lot of tears in the long run, and makes for a much more happy and settled experience for a child, helping develop a positive attitude towards school. The conventional wisdom is to leave quickly, even if your child appears distressed. But as with many aspects of parenting, the conventional wisdom is not something I go along with!

Attachment theory and neuroscience already inform us in no uncertain terms of the detrimental effects of leaving a child aged under three without an attachment figure. But with our early school starting age pushing children into school when they’ve just turned four, and consequently pre-school at three, we need to consider if it’s reasonable to expect a child, at such an age, to be comfortable being left in an unfamiliar environment with unfamiliar adults and unfamiliar rules and routines. Yes, it’s often simply fear of the unknown. So why not simply stay until the unknown is known?

I get tired of hearing the old story, “They stop crying as soon as you’ve left”. For me, this doesn’t mean they’re OK. It just means they’ve stopped crying. Children can have a myriad of feelings, fears, misgivings, and anxieties without expressing them through crying. What’s the point of expressing them if no-one’s going to listen?

Martha Heineman Pieper, Ph.D., & William J. Pieper, M.D. put this nicely in “The Smart Love Parent”:

“When parents come to pick up their child, they may well be told that the child stopped crying almost immediately and was “fine” the rest of the morning. The flaw in this reasoning is that the child’s behaviour, rather than her feelings, is being used to measure success at separating.”

As with any parenting decision that goes against the traditional majority, we shouldn’t be afraid to stick to our guns, to stick to what we know is best for our children, to trust our instincts. Speak to the staff and explain your position beforehand. Make your child’s school experience start as you want it to go on – happy and stress-free.

3 Comments | My stories, School & nursery | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Jo

Looking for discipline techniques that ‘work’? Forget it!

August 16, 2012

“If we don’t use rewards or punishments, what’s the alternative? What else can we use that works“.

I remember asking this question myself when I first began to make the shift in my attitude towards parenting. But the problem lies in the question itself. What do we mean by ‘works’?

Usually, I think we mean ‘get our children to do what we want, now’ or ‘Get a child to stop an unwanted behaviour, and sooner rather than later.’ So we’re measuring the success of a particular method by the immediate and perceivable outcome. Conventional discipline techniques like the naughty step are all about gaining obedience in the short-term. So when we ask, ‘What’s the alternative?’ I think we’re still too hung up on short-term obedience, or in finding ways to manipulate and change behaviour.

There are different strategies we can use to try to avoid power struggles and upsets, and gain cooperation. There are different ways we can respond when a child’s behaviour is unacceptable. But there are no quick fix solutions. We need to think long-term, and seek to guide our children into acceptable behaviour over time, not overnight. If, instead of looking for things that ‘work’ in the immediate term, we pay attention to the relationship, to being connected, and to meeting our child’s emotional needs, this in time will lead to fewer difficulties, and a fresher, more effective approach to the challenges we encounter – and often it’s a change in our own attitude, expectations, and approach that’s needed, rather than a change in our child’s behaviour.

Let go of control.

Too often we try to exert unnecessary levels of control over our children. Make sure there’s a good reason to say no. Often there is. But sometime it’s possible to come up with a compromise or solution that allows your child some autonomy. Save rules for things that really matter. Be mindful of safety without using it as an excuse. Respect a child’s need for what little freedom and autonomy we can afford them. Life as a young child is restrictive enough already.

Don’t be a helicopter or try to micro-manage. Step back a little and chill out. Allow that kids can be messy, forgetful, impulsive, and may not always like or enjoy what you expect them to.

Don’t expect, or even desire, blind and instant obedience.

Have realistic, age appropriate expectations.

Don’t expect a two-year-old to happily share toys with other children. Don’t expect a young child to follow you quietly round the supermarket without ever running in the aisles, attempting to touch anything on the shelves, or whining. Be reasonable, get real, and plan accordingly.

Furthermore, many unwanted behaviours will change over time as part of a child’s natural development, and don’t need to be interfered with by adults with “behaviour modification techniques”. Hitting will stop when a child develops greater impulse control and anger management. We can take steps to prevent it, step in quickly when it happens, gently teach and guide, but we can’t change things overnight.

Change the situation, not the child.

 “It takes a truly adaptive parent to sense the futility of harping on behaviour and to stop railing against what the parent cannot change……It takes a wise parent to focus on what the child is reacting to: the circumstances and situations surrounding the child.  In other words, a parent must first let go of trying to change the child.” Gordon Neufeld, Ph.D., and Gabor Mate, M.D., “Hold On to Your Kids“.

Strive to prevent difficult behaviour from happening in the first place. If your child can’t manage certain situations, avoid them, or change them. Maybe they just can’t handle the supermarket. Can you shop online? Make it more fun for them? Leave them with dad and do it on a Saturday?

If something’s going wrong on a regular basis look at the circumstances surrounding it and for ways to change them.

Meltdown? Maybe they didn’t get enough one to one time with you today. Can you build some in tomorrow? Maybe they’re over-tired. Perhaps that after-school playdate wasn’t such a good idea. Every situation is different, and a different set of circumstances led to things turning out how they did. Things will go wrong sometimes. Learn from these without letting yourself or your child feel bad about it, and emerge stronger and wiser the next time.

Stay connected and give attention when it’s needed

“…I hate the phrase, “He was just looking for attention.” For years, the standard advice has been to ignore such behavior. I don’t get that. We don’t say, “He keeps asking for food, but just ignore him: he’s only saying that because he’s hungry.” We don’t say, “Your cup is empty; so I’ll make sure you don’t get a refill.” If someone is looking for attention that bad, I figure they must need some attention! If we give them enough of the good kind, they won’t be so desperate that they’ll settle for the bad kind”. Lawrence Cohen, Ph.D., “Playful Parenting”.

Forget the old philosophy of not rewarding ‘bad behaviour’ with attention. If your child is attention-seeking, give them some attention. Then give them some more the next day so they won’t have to resort to ‘bad’ behaviour to get it in the first place. Simple.

Difficult behaviours stem from disconnection. Staying connected with your child is the single, most effective way to avoid these.

It’s not discipline techniques we need, conventional or not. It’s the bigger picture, the whole approach and attitude to parenting as an ongoing journey. There are no short cuts. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to any given situation, to any particular child or particular behaviour or issue. We’d all love there to be a magic step-by-step procedure to stop our children hitting, to make them share with other children, to make them get ready for bed every night without any fuss . Programs like Supernanny would have us believe there is. But there isn’t.

2 Comments | Behaviour & coping strategies, Connection; being an attuned parent | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Jo

Going with the flow of technology?

July 31, 2012

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends zero television for under twos, and no more than one to two hours a day for older children.

Rather shockingly, after a quick bit of research, there don’t seem to be any such guidelines from any equivalent UK body, although back in 2007 psychologist Dr Aric Sigman made recommendations to the government of zero television for under threes and just thirty minutes to one hour a day for children aged three to seven, increasing after this to up to two hours a day for sixteen year olds. He asked the government to produce guidelines to this effect.

Newspaper articles are always giving us various shocking figures regarding how much TV the average child views every day, every week, in a year or in a lifetime, but these statistics often don’t include time in front of screens other than TVs, something which would surely make for even more sobering reading.

Miranda Sawyer’s recent article in the Guardian struck me as incredibly complacent. That unquestioning, ‘go with the flow’ kind of attitude that I so detest. “He could play computer games before he could read. Now he reaches for his Nintendo DS like I reach for my mobile; he fills in idle moments on Fifa..” she says of her six-year-old. And she just accepts this?! A six-year-old? I must be leading some sort of sheltered existence because I admit this actually shocks me. Not just the idea of a child being so addicted to something at such an age, but that their parent could be so blasé about it.

The thing about these devices is that, unlike TVs, which are bad enough in the way they’re cropping up in more and more public places, kids can take them everywhere, so they can interfere not only with their play at home, but when they’re out and about, on camping trips, at parties, at a friend’s house, on a visit to relatives, picnics, everywhere. Not much good the National Trust and other organisations bleating about getting kids outdoors more and away from screens if they’re just going to take the darned things out with them.

When we went to a barbecue recently, my child, having been told we were going to a party, was a bit taken aback on arrival by the absence of a bouncy castle and face painting. But with plenty of other children there and a large garden to explore he soon became happily occupied with playing hide and seek, ball games, and just being kids.

But there was one child who had brought some hand-held device. He played with the other children for a short while, then sat, squatting on the grass, engrossed in his device for the remainder of the party. I can’t even begin to list all the things this child was missing out on. I kept looking over at him, then at the other children playing, with a mixture of horror and amazement that such a situation has seemingly become acceptable in our society.

There is plenty of evidence of the harm screen time can do to children’s development. After all, this is what the recommendations of psychologists and organisations like the AAP are based on. Short attention span, aggression, obesity, impaired language development, reduced academic performance, poor sleep are just a few of the potential problems, perhaps the ones easiest to dismiss. A more potent warning for me is that of children becoming dependent on screens for entertainment and losing their natural ability to create their own play. But it’s what children are missing out on that really kills me, what they could be doing if they weren’t glued to a screen of some sort.

Many seem to think technology is just something we must accept for our kids as part of our modern society. Things were different when we were kids, things change. Technology will be part of our children’s lives, there’s no escaping from it. We must embrace it.

But somehow I’m just not comfortable with this view. There’s an appropriate time for kids to start engaging with this sort of technology, and I don’t think as soon as they’re able to press buttons or control a mouse is necessarily that time. We all know how easy this stuff is to learn, so what’s the hurry? It’s another erosion of childhood, something else that keeps kids from being kids, and something else that we, as adults, need to protect them from.

TV and computer games are addictive, habit-forming, and kids can’t self-regulate in the way adults do (and we’re bad enough with the frequency we check in with our smartphones) so it’s up to adults to put limits on the amount of time they spend on these things. Every parent will have their own views as to what is and is not an appropriate amount of screen time for their children, and when they do or do not allow it, but if Miranda Sawyer’s article is anything to go by, those government guidelines that Dr Sigman called for five years ago are long overdue.

I know there’s going to be peer pressure and pester power as my child gets older, but if he ever has a DS or similar, and I intend that he will go as long as possible without one, then one of my limits will be that he doesn’t take it out with him to parties.

When I first became a parent someone once warned me never to say ‘My child won’t do that’. But after observing that child at the party, and the contrasting example of the other children’s capacity to make their own entertainment, I’m going to stick my neck out here;

My child won’t do that. I will personally see to it that he doesn’t.

Because I will not be blasé, I won’t go with the flow, and I won’t just accept it.

Leave a Comment » | Media & current affairs, Parenting issues and choices | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Jo

Free range kids

July 19, 2012

I’ve been noticing a fair bit of stuff in the press lately about how today’s children don’t get outdoors enough, and spend too much time in front of screens or in scheduled activities. There has even been a phrase coined for this phenomenon –  ‘Nature Deficit Disorder‘ –  for which the National Trust blame the increase in gadgets and traffic, and to which they attribute the rise in obesity and mental health problems amongst children.

All very depressing, but what really caught my attention was this article about the Playing Out Project in Bristol, where two mothers sought and gained permission from the local council to close their street to traffic at an agreed time to allow the children to play out on it. The project is now spreading across Bristol and elsewhere. The benefits of this type of play discussed in the article were to me both obvious and a revelation at the same time.

Sure, I remember some great days out, some great family holidays. But the bulk of what really defines my childhood memories are those of just playing out, with my friends, in my village. Favourite hiding places, favourite trees, favourite games. Roaming the village and surrounding woods and fields, unchaperoned by adults. I don’t make this latter point because we took the opportunity to get up to mischief (not that we were perfect either), but because the absence of adults gave us a certain autonomy. We were free to express ourselves, to play games without fear of disapproval or ridicule, to get lost in our own children’s world without the self-consciousness of knowing adults were watching and listening. We climbed trees, made dens, strayed in and out of each other’s houses and gardens, went in search of conkers or blackberries, but most of all played all sorts of make-believe games, sometimes just two of us, sometimes quite complex, organised games with larger groups of mixed ages.

Now, having a child of my own but living in a large city, I’m lucky again to live on a no-through road where the kids play out regularly. My child doesn’t have as much freedom as I did, but reading about the Playing Out Project made me appreciate that the little freedom he does have – being able to step outside his own front door unchaperoned, and play freely on his own street – is an unusually large amount, at least for kids who live in urban areas. And just as I have always taken my own childhood experience for granted, so I have been taking my child’s for granted now. Free range childhoods have become something in danger of extinction, something to be campaigned for and saved.

But what has really dawned on me is that it’s not just about loss of exercise, fresh air, or knowing that apples grow on trees. It’s about the loss of free play. Unsupervised, unorganised, unscheduled free play. It’s not just about getting outdoors, it’s about free range, unobserved, unstructured, spontaneous, creative, imaginative, cooperative play.

A constant source of admiration and wonder for me is just how long the kids can and will play out, with no adult supervision or organised activities, but with just their own initiative and imagination. They make use of whatever materials happen to be available. There have been Saturdays this summer when my child has played out on the street from 10am to 5.30pm, just coming in briefly for lunch. What does he do out there all this time? Sure, the adults facilitate the play to some extent, providing chalk, scooters, balls, and materials to create a messy play area, although even this was not originally intended for the kids, they just made it theirs. But often they’ll just create. Last weekend they spent a good deal of time playing with an empty wheelie bin, for example. Sometimes they come in requesting specific materials to further their ideas. My child came in the other day and asked for a rucksack and an umbrella because he was ‘going camping’. I provided the requested items then watched with interest through the window while he and his friends all trekked with their backpacks 25 metres down the road then stopped to ‘set up camp’ with old blankets, and sat there for some time pretending to read magazines and newspapers under their umbrellas.

This is real play. This is what those kids the National Trust talk about are really missing out on. In real play they learn teamwork, cooperation, negotiation, how to be inclusive, how to share, how to deal with disagreements and fall outs, how to put their ideas forward, how to handle rejection, how to interact with others, how to socialise. The list is endless. And kids need space to do all this. Not just physical space, but space of their own, that they can organise and control themselves, not be subject to the organisation and control of adults.

Kids don’t need to just get out to the park, out on a walk, or some other adult organised and chaperoned activity, but out, on their own, in their own neighbourhoods, on a regular basis. Let’s get behind the campaign for free range childhoods, for reclaiming the streets, for getting kids away from screens and back into the creative, imaginative play that kids do best. The nature of free range play is unique and worth fighting to preserve.

For more on the movement for free range kids, kids play and childhood generally see:

http://playingout.net/

http://rethinkingchildhood.com/

http://www.sustrans.org.uk/freerangekids/about-free-range-kids

http://www.playengland.org.uk/

http://outdoornation.org.uk/

Leave a Comment » | Media & current affairs, Parenting issues and choices | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Jo

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