Inspiration Can Come From Anywhere

Have you seen this video?




My daughter and nephew were playing it a few weeks ago. I have to admit, I laughed quite a bit.

Well, it seems this video has become inspirational. As we spent some time driving last week, the two of them started up with singing in a similar fashion with the things they could see around them, and then my son got in on it. I was cracking up! Anything they saw or commented on could be a part of it and it has become a regular activity since. Yesterday, we were stopped next to a vehicle and my son sang that the lady is driving a nice car. My nephew sang back, "No, she isn't." (LOL. Oh, man, the times you wish you had a voice recorder constantly on...)

Sometimes All It Takes Is a Little Nudge

This summer has been the summer of LOTS of video game time. My past restrictions got overruled, habits got put in place and there has been a lot of indoor time. And I meant a lot.

Compare this to last year, when the boys, at the very least, spent half to all of their days outside... I was starting to think I need to just make them get outside when hubby voiced his comment about how they don't go on their bikes or scooters any more. So, that was it, that afternoon, when the last child had finished his allotted computer game time, I kicked them all outside. (Well, I joined them, too...)

That's all it took! Since then, they boys have spent hours outside on their bikes and the (little) girls take turns with the one scooter or just play. All it took was a little nudge.

Gifted Children

I'm not sure how I ended up there, but I started following a gifted homeschooling forum on Facebook. I hadn't delved into the whole "gifted education" thing for quite some time, being too busy with all kinds of other stuff. I only have a few more years with my daughter's schooling and I want to make sure to make the most of it. I do feel like I haven't given all that I should have to her, but that doesn't mean I can't make up for it!

At the same time, I have thoughts of, "Does it really matter to think of her as 'gifted'? Does it help? Does it hinder? Wouldn't it be good to just remember her strengths and weaknesses and target them? What about her brother? He's not the same kind of learner, but that doesn't mean he's not gifted. Hard to tell. But, again, does the label matter? Or does remembering the label remind me that my kids do fit with some of the typical gifted traits and to work with them?"

My dd has always shown herself to be gifted. Never formally tested, but I was, and labelled, and know my own history and see it all in her. Struggling at 4 months to do things most kids don't start really attempting until later. (Oh, I have a memory of taking her in for her vaccination and she was fascinated by the bell the nurse used to distract her. While the nurse and I were talking, this little baby reached out very determinedly, slowly and picked up that bell with its thin stem. When she did it and deliberately shook the bell, she surprised the heck out of the nurse.) She struggled at various stages to do more advanced things; we could see the thought processes going on but she couldn't make her body always do what she wanted it to do! Oh, the meltdowns! (Oh, yes, high sensitivity, from the get-go!) She knew things should work in a certain way and they didn't. First words at 8 months. (Nope, not "mama" or "dada", but "chat" (French: cat). And yes, her cat is very much her beloved.) Extensive vocabulary by 18 months. (We had been keeping track and it just got to be too much! Over 200 words for sure.) Started reading at age 3 by just observing me tutor a grade 1 child, using Reading Reflex. (She learned it all much, much faster than the grade 1 student, too!) Perfectionist. So much more. Hubby asked somewhat early on if I thought she was gifted and I said yes without hesitation.

My ds has always been "different". I'm not sure if the schools would have him labelled LD or not, but I recognize the possibility. (I do recognize, too, that there is Asperger's in my family and while neither one of us would be diagnosable, let's say I can see clearly how we've retained certain clear traits, lean toward that end of things, more so than dd.) He's got his own developmental pattern that is, well, uniquely him. :P He would skip milestones, for example, or would be "late" in hitting one, but when he'd hit it, he would hit the more advanced ones for his age, too. I'm thinking here of his speaking, walking and even drawing and reading. The darn kid was so occupied as a 9-10mo exploring how he could move his legs in various positions while on all fours, that it took him until 10 months to start crawling. (Oh, man, I wish I could demonstrate! It was very interesting to watch. But, it's a clue: this interest in "unusual" things, being focused on a particular area like that.) He was 15 months old before he started walking. Not because he couldn't; he was just too busy doing everything else. Same with talking. It took his slightly older cousin, 18mo and starting to come to our place each day, to spur ds to start walking and talking. Within a week or two, he was pretty much running. As for talking, the darn kid would add 4-5 words PER DAY for the next month! Yeah, the whole milestone thing of  "50-100 words by the time they are 2"... Ha! Oh, and it just hit me, his "different" way of doing things: first word around 9-10 months, then another word, but then when the third word was added, he dropped one of the first words. He only kept two active words in his vocabulary until he was 15 months, but had said 5-10 words by the time he was 1... He's a very different kid.

Ah, the drawing. I still have to locate his Buzz Lightyear drawing. He was not yet 3. He had moved from the typical scribbles to the typical round shapes, but with dots in them ("potatoes" he said they were). Went straight from that to a full out person: head with hair, eyes, mouth, not sure if there was a nose, but there was a body, arms with fingers (too many) at the end, legs and feet with toes. Yeah, he skipped a few milestones there. Oh, hey, and reading! Didn't seem to click, didn't seem to click, then he started reading and that was the end of it. I can't get him to stop. I can't say his reading level is very high, but he has a passion for comics... Lately, Baby Blues. (Is it normal for an 11yo to like Baby Blues so much?)

As I go through all of this, I realize how much I have not regarded his innate abilities as highly as I should. But what am I babbling about? I've been interrupted and lost my train of thought.

I guess I'm just reflecting on my kids, their abilities, the signs of their abilities. Is it important for me to tie it in with gifted education? Before writing this all, I looked up characteristics of gifted kids. One of the common ones was a need for novelty. Oh boy. That's both of them. I thought they were just being difficult, lacking in imagination. No, I think now they need more input, more variety.

I guess being aware of common traits and needs could be helpful, without my getting stuck on "gifted education" or whether my kids are or not. If certain traits are present and there are suggestions on how to meet those traits, surely that's a good thing?

What do you think? Do you have a child you suspect is gifted? Do you keep this aspect in mind when deciding what to do with them?

Behaviour Management

I wasn't planning on writing about this, but I saw an image in Pinterest with a little description that just completely broke my heart. :( I don't know that I will share it, because it feels like I'd be attacking the person who uses it in her classroom and I don't want to do that. I do, however, want to address the whole idea of behaviour management.

The picture in particular was part of a system where early elementary children were earning sort of points for their good behaviour and then they could trade in their accumulated points for a special activity at the end of the week. The ones with the most points get to pick first from the available activities, which means the ones who likely consistently have the fewest may never get to pick what they really want. And, of course, if they misbehave, they lose points. This is nothing new, I know. But I have been so long in the Montessori world/my own little world, that it breaks my heart to see people so happily talking about such systems and how "well" they work.

Do they work that well? I suppose it depends on your goal: do you just want good behaviour from the kids without changing what's causing the behaviour, fine, it works. But this is all just about controlling the child, giving carrots and sticks for them to behave how we want them to behave.

"What's wrong with that?"

Control is control. And if kids are learning from us, what are they then learning? These reward systems don't teach the children how to behave; they simply expect the child to behave and they'll get a reward if they do. The assumption is that the child already knows how to behave exactly right. So, what are they learning if they aren't learning to behave? That they can use punishments and rewards to control others, too. It is very easy to see in kids what they have learned about "behaviour management": those who get punished or otherwise controlled for not behaving the way adults want them to are the ones punishing or trying to control friends for not behaving the way the kids want them to. They also use the same sort of language on younger siblings that the parents do. We have to remember that when we are guiding them to behave in a certain way, they are also learning how we are guiding them. The child who is yelled at is more likely to yell; the child who earns treats is more likely to bribe a friend with a treat. (Yes, I have seen it!!! "I'll give you some of my ... if you...")

In any case, the blog post about the behaviour management system in question talked about inherent problems with such systems:

*some kids try to cheat (and I would guess these are typically the children who need the most guidance in social skills and perhaps have problems at home or some underlying issues, the ones who never earn enough for the special activities... they are doomed from the beginning of the week, know it, and since the focus is on the points...)

*other kids get excited about trying to see just how many points they can get during the week--the focus becomes the reward and not the behaviour

Do we not live in a society where so many complaints are made about the youth (14-25-year old's, maybe older) of today who have an attitude of "What's in it for me?"? Could it not be possible that the reward systems that have been prevalent in recent decades are part of what has created such an attitude? If the reason to behave is to get something out of it--rather than behaving because it helps those around you, keeps your relationships better, etc.--then are the youth with such attitudes really doing something other than how they have been trained?

Alfie Kohn (I love his books!!) writes about the problems with reward systems in Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A's, Praise, and Other Bribes. (Yes, I am an Amazon affiliate. This link will take you to the US site; I think I have more US readers than Canadian readers. I will at some point have Canadian and American shops set up with the books I recommend, all nice and organized so you don't have to find the individual posts with them.) I think it is a must-read for every adult who interacts with children. He talks about the very problems the teacher shares (oh, should I recommend the book to her? :D): cheating, focus on reward (the teacher in question didn't see that as a problem though! :( )... How many of the kids who are struggling will simply give up because they can't get the reward that they want? I think my heart goes out to them most of all. These kids need guidance, not simply, "Behave and you'll get your points." They need to be treated like people. He wrote it sometime ago and I don't know that he addresses the prevalent attitude among youth, but perhaps an updated version of it should! There is so much great stuff in the book; you will never see rewards the same again.

"What then, are we supposed to do to get our kids to behave?" How about talking with them? Working with them? Helping them think about how others feel? Here are a couple of books I would highly recommend:

I did not follow the program all the way through, but have had in mind lately to return to it and to the one for older kids:

 

What I remember most from the first book (it's been a few years since I touched it) was the language and scenario playing that they give you. It worked fantastically! Just little things like helping children distinguish between their wants and another's wants and how they can be different and it's okay... Very helpful. So many behaviour problems can be fixed by kids simply learning more about themselves and other people. Giving points and rewards for "good behaviour" doesn't address the misunderstandings and lack of knowledge that they have!

Another fantastic book, I love this book so much:

 

A must-have book, one to read and re-read and reference throughout the years.

As adults, we certainly don't have other adults rewarding us for individual good "parenting behaviours"  (good grief, could you imagine????). What do we do if we're struggling? We learn different ways of doing things. That's what kids need. And they need to learn them for the sake of learning them, for harmony with others, not because they get to have a cool activity at the end of the week. (Barbara Coloroso takes the same approach and even applies it to money: don't give kids an allowance because they've done chores. What happens if they've decided they don't want the money anymore? They'll stop doing the chores!)

Maria Montessori would add to all of this: normalize them. Yes, you need to step in when their behaviour is destructive or problematic, but then put them to work. Get them involved in meaningful (to the kids) activity, activity that requires their focus. There's a lot of talk about how to help kids' self-esteem and when I think of the Montessori Method and the focus on work that engages the kids and builds them, there is the building of self-esteem right there. Self-esteem is not just about words: it is about ability and knowing you are able. The more kids are focused on what they are doing and the stuff they are learning, how can they not think of themselves as other than able? With the Montessori Method always about meeting the child at their level and pushing them a tad further, it goes a long ways to helping build them. And the activity somehow calms them, levels them, and just that reduces so many behaviour problems.

There is so much else that can be done than punishment and reward system to guide children in their behaviour! It's not necessarily easy to change what we grew up with, and even after we have changed, we might resort to the good old tactics we know so well, but in my opinion, whatever we can bring into it to treat our children like people and not little creatures to control, the better.