It is a tough job being transparent to the all seeing of a child. What this means for me is working on walking the talk with the kids. Pausing and looking more at what I do, and the genuine affect it has on my children. It is scary the power we have in molding these little people.

My dear friend, and date for the Waldorf night, saw this clearly. She is afraid to put the following quote on her fridge: “Am I worthy of imitation?” And frankly, so am I. Google “am i worthy of imitation” and you get umpteen references to the bible. From what I’ve been told though, nothing associated with God is easy.

I’ve found myself quite tired recently, and so my old coping patterns come up… like bullying through my day, moving from one task to the next to keep me going. I end up shunting my kids around town, or not really being available to them at home. When things become too much for me, I shut down into my own busy jobs and miss good quality time with my children. Their attention is my number one job, and I know we can’t be on for them every second, but I feel I could do better.

One day my daughter came up to me all excited, asking me to come look at something she spent a lot of time building. I said sharply: “Not now.”  I was trying to figure out our health insurance situation and was almost at some clarity. The look on her face, the sadness and the disappointment, caused me to pause. In my pre-attachment parenting days, I would have felt the right to keep on going with what I was doing. Although these are feelings she should learn to manage, I do see it as my job to guide her through those emotions. But when I’m the ‘busy’ or ‘automatic pilot’ me, there is no connecting to me.

A pause can get you straight to the cause

Sure, I could be saying I stopped what I was doing to give her my all. But at this point I’m happy with having learned to pause, bend down to her height and look at her while I say, “I know you are excited to show me, and I’m excited too. I’ll finish what I’m doing shortly and be right there to see it” saves her moving into a fit and gives her the chance to say, “I’m sad Mama.” followed by an “I know you are Sweet Pea” from me. Then we calmly go on with our day, with only a short pause to discuss and acknowledge her sadness at not getting what she wants in that moment. Sure beats a long meltdown with my four-year-old daughter on the floor screaming or sitting alone in her sadness.

Written By: Nicole LeBlanc Charlwood

Lack of movement connected to poor learning.

I was telling my mom today that we are researching schooling options for our kids. She pointed out a good series of articles she had read in the Toronto Star. Check out the Atkinson Fellowship Series of articles, and watch for the marshmallow test.

We all want smart kids, and these articles discuss how well education systems help to reach this goal. As parents though, self-esteem is of more concern – we feel being smart is a by-product of children feeling secure physically, emotionally and otherwise. We are concerned that the public system is archaic and too stressed for resources to provide teachers with what they need to educate our children well.

Allana Mitchell writes: ”[Teachers] are having a biological influence on children that is in scale akin to a baby’s growth in the womb. No other profession has this sway over the fundamental cellular structure of so many human beings.”  We need to value our teachers more.

Neuroscience is changing how we look at our children and their development. It is exciting to see teachers taking inspiration from the growing field of brain sciences. We have a boy and a girl. This week I’ve talked with friends who have boys in the public system, which is not serving them because boys learn differently and learning is designed more with girls in mind. With our daughter, we are concerned about her self-esteem and how competitive environments are shown to quash a child’s long-term self-motivation. It saddens me that we may have to look to private options and that we are so far behind in Canada. But despite all the hurdles the system will face if it is to change, there does appear to be light at the end of the education tunnel.

The Fear of Having Stupid Children

The Globe and Mail has some words of caution in What’s So Wrong With Raising Little Einsteins.

Written By: Nicole LeBlanc Charlwood

But to do so most parents, including myself, have to be willing to let kids get riskier and dirtier. I am reminded that parenting for me is often about letting go, not trying to control a situation more.

Here are Bev’s Conditions for Growing Wise:

1. Belonging – to family, neighbourhood and the global community.
2. Risk – Intellectual, emotional, physical, social and spiritual. [Play's Place in Public Education]
3. Passion – Children need passionate role models.
4. Power – you get personal power by making decisions based on your values and your desires. You give up personal power by letting others make decisions for you. We are giving up to much power to fear.
5. Presence – Stop worrying so much about your to-do list. Nurture, don’t control imaginative play. [Joseph Chilton Pearce]
6. Productivity – Learning new things.
7. Support – There are 12 people everyone should have in their life. I’ll get it out to you later..
8. Solitude – kids are over-scheduled and need down and alone time to process learnings and gather energy.
9. Mentors & Roll Models
10. Humour – not laughing at the child, not sarcasm which is beyond comprehension when young
11. Gratification Deference – teaching kids to wait for gratification
12. Re-Seeding – reinforcing learnings

Play feeds all of these needs. It is a sculptor of the social brain and drives neural development. Struart Brown, M.D.

TED Video: Stuart Brown, M.D. from the National Institute of Play – Play is more than fun.

I am also reminded about a talk David Suzuki gave at a local high school a few years ago. He said that his parents are responsible for who he is today. One of the most important things his mom did for him was to let him run into the house all excited about some discovery from outside, and not require him to take his muddy boots off.

Written By: Nicole LeBlanc Charlwood

Our first stop was a visit inside an ambulance and our 3-year-old daughter learned about 9-1-1. It hadn’t struck me to teach this yet, but she is capable of hitting the right numbers so it can’t hurt to know. The scary siren and flashing lights sent us off to kick soccer balls, with some free lessons thrown in. The kids are stopping the ball like pros now which will come in handy on our sloped property.

Soon bubbles were being made with good instruction on just the right speed to produce the biggest and best results. By far, my kids spent the most time at this location. If the fire truck had shown up, it would have been impossible to lure them away. A dad that I recognized from my local business days was heading downtown and offered some advice: make sure to hit the indoor food market. Always ready for a snack, it sounded good to us!

A short walk down the hill brought us to the food market. Free world food, organic fruits and veg, cookie making, and smoothie sampling nourished our bellies. We were given an extra large helping of a wonderful mango salad after my one-and-a-half year old son managed to kick his Croc into it. At first I wasn’t sure if the young woman serving it was laughing so hard because she was about to have a nervous breakdown or because she saw it for the humorous mishap that it was. We all giggled together as we cleaned the top layer of the salad off. We quickly moved along to the sushi, African sticky rice (a big hit with my kids) and pakoras and got out of there with our dignities. While planting seeds we learned about the relationships built between the Nelson Food Cupboard and local farmers, to help supply families in need with good food. My daughter asked: “Why don’t some people have food?” That’s a really good question, was all I could say. I can see working at the Food Cupboard with the kids in our future.

We were all ready to head back out in the sun and explore “The Hub” of the festival. Word on the street was, you could get free helium balloons which brought my daughter to her toes with excitement. Will the gifts never end? First, we needed to figure out how to get our little one down for a nap. My daughter and I enjoyed the outdoor music and walked the alley to remove much of the distraction until he went to sleep. “Now focus Mom, we are looking for balloons.” The balloon blowers had the most stressful job of the day as far as I could see. The line was never-ending, kids are anxiously hovering around you in no particular order, asking over and over for their chosen colour to be passed. After being patient and my trying to get people to communicate about who came first, she finally got a green balloon for herself and a pink for her brother. Word on the street now was that there was to be a fabulous puppet show.

What a gem that turned out to be, and performed by a dad we know. But clearly not very well because we didn’t know he was a puppeteer. Just like the Barenaked Ladies kids album, it was a pleasure to enjoy something as much as, if not more than, the kids did. “An endearing tale of a young man who escapes a life of Royal Servitude, only to be faced by the challenges of surviving in the Real World, made difficult by the fact that he can’t Remember Anything.” Lucas Myers is a great story teller and going to be opening a puppet theatre in his home, so stay tuned.

We headed back outside and as luck would have it, my daughter managed to release the second balloon into the sky. Oh, my. Although free financially, not free from the sad feelings of loss. I tried to soothe her with ice cream, but who really made the difference was her older and caring friend who handed over her balloon. Very sweet.

The day finished on a very high note, with the making of music shakers and a parade with the Moving Mosaic Samba Band. They gave the kids capes, taught them a song and led them down to Baker St. and around the block. I wasn’t sure whether to be proud of my daughter when she decided to walk out ahead of the band leader. An awesome mélange of sounds: whistle blowing, rice and bell shakers of the kids, and band’s percussion instruments. A great way for the kids to learn the beauty of  working with a group of people.

“We are kids
We like to rock.
We’re going to shakey shake
On Kid Walk!”

Free activities from marching in a parade, to colouring an enormous mandala, to planting seeds. Free international and mostly organic food, bubble blowing and hoola hoop lessons, free face painting – really good face painting too, free puppet show, free tour of an ambulance, the list goes on and on and on. It is amazing to me how much our community is willing to give and share. Thanks to everyone who organized the day, we really enjoyed it and so donated some money in hopes of seeing it again next year.

Written By: Nicole LeBlanc Charlwood