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Blog Archives Highlights - Natural Parenting Learning by Heart – August 3, 2009 When I was a child, the term “learning by heart” was used in school and church to refer to rote memorization. At some point as a teenager, I wondered what “heart” had to do with it, especially since my heart definitely wasn’t in memorizing stifling old bits of poetry or biblical passages that I neither understood nor enjoyed. Years later, I stumbled upon Roland Barth’s book Learning by Heart (Jossey-Bass, 2004) and delighted in a new meaning for the phrase – one that contradicted the very concept of rote memorization, which, by then, I knew isn’t learning at all. And today, I discovered this lovely piece of the same name in the Irish Times, adding yet another element to the meaning of the phrase. It helped me remember that although one’s children may grow up and temporarily vanish from one’s life, they’re still there in heart and memory. Posted: 2009/08/03 2:34 PM Misplaced Mommy Wars – April 9, 2009 The Atlantic magazine recently published The Case Against Breastfeeding, written by contributing editor Hanna Rosin. In a nutshell, the author feels that the benefits of breastfeeding are not all that huge and that a commitment to breastfeeding puts other things at risk, such as “modesty, career, independence and sanity.” And she’s getting a lot of media coverage for her attitude. In a well-time and well-aimed return salvo (accompanied by a press release claiming to “set the record straight”...apparently wars sell magazines), Mothering magazine Publisher Peggy O’Mara eviscerates Rosin’s “cursory review” of the breastfeeding research and points out that this is a case of misplaced anger. As Peggy notes, breastfeeding is not the problem. The problem, as I also point out in my Natural Life magazine article about feminism and unschooling, is the lack of respect and support for the work of caregiving, which includes breastfeeding, unschooling and other aspects of parenting. Rosin writes, “If a breast-feeding mother is miserable, or stressed out, or alienated by nursing, as many women are, if her marriage is under stress and breast-feeding is making things worse, surely that can have a greater effect on a kid’s future success than a few IQ points.” Perhaps. But the solution to such a sad situation is not formula – in the same way schooling isn’t the solution to our educational and daycare crisis. The solution is to fix the underlying problem. And that requires changing society’s values. Neither does the solution lie in escalating the war among women, of which, I think, Rosin is guilty. She disdains the culture of motherhood and natural parenting, describing mothers who “obsess about breast-feeding” – “the urban moms in their tight jeans and oversize sunglasses” sizing each other up “using a whole range of signifiers: organic content of snacks, sleekness of stroller, ratio of tasteful wooden toys to plastic.” Revealingly, she admits to breastfeeding her baby son – although not “slavishly.” Perhaps if she and other mothers felt that their role was more valued – and if they had more support from the men in their lives – there wouldn’t be the need for attitude on either side of the debate. Or maybe the debate could end. Posted: 2009/04/09 10:38 AM Missing the Motherline – February 6, 2009 “Our mothers are our most direct connection to our history and our gender. Regardless of how well we think they did their job, the void their absence creates in our lives is never completely filled again.” So wrote Hope Edelman in Motherless Daughters: The Legacy of Loss. My mother didn’t talk to me much about our  history – gender-based or otherwise – in spite of my many attempts to draw her out over the years. Some of my mourning is now about that lack of conversation, the sharing that I longed for, the relationship we didn’t have.  In her book Stories from the Motherline: Reclaiming the Mother-daughter Bond, Finding our Souls, Naomi Ruth Lowinsky calls this connection “the motherline.” I am not sure why my mother was not interested in nurturing that important (to me) connection  (or not able to). She seemed not to value it, to denigrate it. But I am feeling its absence. Life learning with my daughters was one way I hoped to bridge the missing link. I have been at least partially successful.    Posted: 2009/02/06 8:05 PM It’s Bad Enough That They’re Forced to Be There... – January 21, 2009 “We’re well into January, meaning kids who had been on winter break are back at school, and for marketers it’s an ideal time and ideal venue as well for reaching them.” So starts an article on Media Life magazine’s (nothing whatsoever to do with my company Life Media!) website. If you need any more reasons to keep kids out of public schools than I’ve provided over the past 35 years, this article provides one. Your Client’s Ad in Public Schools provides advice to marketers about how to subversively place ads in school buildings and successfully avoid “the many consumer groups that would just as soon see all advertising disappear from schools.” “While school advertising is closely monitored, lest it be too intrusive or deliver the wrong message, when done right it can be very effective, reaching a captive audience with little competition for students’ attention from other advertisers.” Those parents who wish to minimize the teaching of their children to become consumers should be alarmed and educated by this article. It describes techniques such as ads on free school supplies like book covers, bookmarks and locker calendars, in-school product sampling and advertiser-sponsored special events, such as assemblies or gym classes. There are even broadcast options such as ads on school bus radio and in-class TV. According to the article, popular products for this sort of advertising include DVDs, videogames, TV networks, fast food, toys and children’s books. School advertisers mentioned include McDonald’s, Disney, Wal-mart, Microsoft, Cartoon Network, Lego and the military. Because in-school campaigns have to be approved by local administrators, the author claims that is an endorsement of the advertiser, intended or not. Oh, if you want to do something other than fume, in Canada, the Media Awareness Network has a tip sheet about keeping schools commercial-free. And the U.S. organizations Commercial Alert and Campaign or a Commercial-free Childhood are just two of those nasty consumer groups that would like to see all advertising disappear from schools. Posted: 2009/01/21 1:55 PM Pink Princess Plague – January 12, 2009 I hate pink. I’ve always hated pink. Thirty-five years ago, I dressed my baby daughters in red, navy blue, patchwork, bright green, yellow…anything except traditional girly pink. My mother and mother-in-law didn’t much like my anti-pinkness, but they coped. I must have been ferocious about it. I think my hatred came from more than just a color preference; it was about the meaning of the color. There are many traits associated with pink, but it is generally seen to be a calm, quiet, accepting, relaxing, beautiful color. Some prisons apparently use deep pink to diffuse aggressive behavior. In the early 70s, I was into rabble rousing and rebellion, not contentment and acceptance! Sure, some women are trying to reclaim the color – the CODEPINK women’s peace organization, for instance, and the Swedish radical feminist party Feminist Initiative, which uses pink as its color. But I think the stereotype is holding.  I was in a couple of department stores while my youngest daughter was visiting at Christmas and was overwhelmed by the pinkness of the toy sections and the girls’ clothing sections. An article in the UK’s Daily Mail newspaper wonders why toy manufacturers use so much princess pink in products designed for girls. Some researchers fear that young girls, brainwashed to respond to pink, are being encouraged to grow up too quickly and to become obsessed with body image and the stereotypes of what it means to be female. Sue Palmer, a literacy consultant and author of the book Toxic Childhood says that the marketing drive to force pink on girls has been so successful that speech therapists in the UK report that children can easily identify blue as just a color, but say “Barbie” when shown something pink.  The solution now is the same as it was for me 35 years ago: Go unisex in clothes and toys (cardboard boxes are great toys and they’re brown!) Ensure your daughters retain their self-esteem and encourage them to think for themselves. And if they –  like one of my daughters –  end up liking pink, at least it will be because of its color, not its stereotypes. Posted: 2009/01/12 5:54 PM Which Came First: the Baby Bully or the Adult Bully? – June 25, 2008 Recently, I’ve been dealing with some adult bullies in my business life and observing many more as I travel around town. Someone told me recently that I shouldn’t be hard on such folks, that they’re just dealing with the stresses of normal life in the big city. But I have been wondering if these obnoxiously aggressive people might have been childhood bullies who just grew up to be more sophisticated bullies. Many of these people would consider themselves to be successful people, but from my perspective they are misfits who try to impose their will on others through various sorts of bad behavior, including manipulation, sarcasm and arrogance. So I was interested to read a recent Associated Press story that talks about how bullying is beginning at ever-younger ages. It describes tormenting, teasing, exclusive clubs, rumor-spreading, whisper campaigns and other sorts of bullying among seven-year-olds. Apparently, the adolescent bullies were “Barbie brats” first. One person featured in the article is Meline Kevorkian, a Florida-based researcher and author who surveyed 167 educators and found that 25 percent indicated bullying occurs most in elementary schools. I have seen other research indicating that three-quarters of eight- to 11-year-olds have been bullied. According to Kevorkian, rationales for bullying at this tender age include wearing the wrong shoes or socks, not attending the right pop concert, having a smelly lunch or wearing bows in your hair. She says that this sort of aggression among younger kids is often written off as a routine rite of passage. So are we normalizing abnormal behavior? One parent quoted in the AP article notes that much preschool bullying flies under the radar of harried parents, teachers and baby sitters. Harried or not, do these people turn a blind eye because aggression is so commonplace in adult society? Think of those ubiquitous sports parents screaming at their offspring to succeed – or at least to hit their opponent – and those whose sense of entitlement and competition fuels their need to spend thousands of dollars on birthday parties for their two-year-olds, on sexy designer clothes for their ten-year-olds, or on SUV-sized strollers for their infants (when they could be using a less aggressive and more nurturing baby carrier instead). Ah, yes, the wonderful socialization that homeschooled kids are missing. Posted: 2008/06/25 6:38 PM Children are People Too – May 2, 2008 When my daughters were small, they had yellow t-shirts that proclaimed, “Kids are people too!”. Apparently, that message is still badly needed. Recently, Amber Jones, the leader of the Green Party of Saskatchewan, took her four-month-old baby to a press conference. As the story goes, she breastfed the child, then handed her over to her husband. Afterwards, Tammy Robert, a local talk radio show producer who reportedly didn’t attend the press conference, posted a blog entry entitled “Children and the Places They Don’t Belong,” suggesting that the child should have been left at home and fed pumped breastmilk by a babysitter, rather than being used as a “political prop.” The blog spurred about 70 mothers and children to hold a “mother-in” outside the radio station. There are many issues here, including public breastfeeding, women’s lack of support for other women, the polarization of feminists and mothers (who says you cannot be both?), and the egregious way we think we must separate work and family. In spite of the many responses to Robert’s blog that are prudishly anti-public breastfeeding, that is not what this kerfuffle is about. In fact, Robert, who describes  herself as a women’s studies student who breastfed her own son, agrees. Her blog posting and many of the responses there and on other websites (lots by working women) are very clear that this is about the fact that children shouldn’t be full-fledged members of their communities. She said that women “have worked hard to be mothers and political leaders but today’s attitude seems to say that mothers have to be mothers all the time…I’m not a mother all the time.” As a journalist, business owner and activist, I took my young daughters with me wherever I went – to the lawyer, the printer, the accountant, trade shows, business meetings, political meetings and, yes, press conferences. I did that for many reasons, including my belief that they belonged in those places and that accompanying me there was part of their education. I did it from the time they were born until they were old enough to decide not to accompany me…and then, many times, they chose to tag along. They didn’t get in the way or “misbehave” – initially because attachment parented children have their needs met and later because they were interested in what was going on. I was not being selfish and my daughters were not being used as props. Their presence didn’t make me feel or behave any less professionally. They were not a distraction. They were safe. And they can trace their current levels of community engagement directly to those early life experiences. They also learned to choose work about which they are passionate and that work and life aren’t mutually exclusive. Instead of making second class citizens of children (which includes hiding in public washrooms to breastfeed them) as Tammy Robert favors, we need to affirm their rights as first class ones, as people rather than as people-in-training. That includes cultivating more humane and holistic ways of living and working, and finding ways to integrate children and their parents into workplaces. I don’t know or care if Amber Jones’ taking her baby to a press conference was a “publicity stunt,” although I doubt it. But if it was meant to provoke a discussion about the place of families and children in public life, then it was a successful one! Putting our babies on the shelf when they have become an inconvenience (or an embarrassment to certain people) or sending our older children to school when we can no longer stand having them around is no way to fix the deep malaise in our society. From children, we can learn to ask questions, ignore pretension, slow down, scramble across irrelevant or pretentious barriers, consider what is important in life and accept everyone, regardless of age, job or worldview. And yes, Tammy Roberts, you are a mother all the time, like it or not. Should have thought of that earlier. Posted: 2008/05/02 11:20 PM Trusting Teens to Make Their Own Education Decisions – February 25, 2008 A teaser for an edgy new advertising campaign has had people scratching their heads in Toronto over the past few weeks. It features fictional ads for a new pharmaceutical product, “Obay,”, purported to stop teens thinking for themselves and humorous, provocative messages about parental “mind control.” The full marketing campaign was launched today and the organization behind the mysterious ads was revealed to be Colleges Ontario, the advocacy organization representing the province’s 24 colleges of applied arts and technology. The campaign is a welcome antidote to the “helicopter parent” trend I’ve written about in the past, where parents pretty much run their young peoples’ lives, influencing and managing educational and career choices. Linda Franklin, President & CEO, Colleges Ontario says there is a general lack of awareness about the benefits of a technical or trades education, as opposed to a university one. “Our goal with ‘Obay’ is to use a tongue-in-cheek approach to begin to address this awareness issue, starting with parents, the group our research showed has strong influence when it comes to decision-making around post-secondary education. The message is to step back and find out what your children really want, and then look at all the postsecondary options together.” The Obay campaign, brought to you by the makers of “WhyBecauseISaidSo” and “NotUnderMyRoof,” is designed to remind parents that they should explore all the options – in many cases, their children may be more likely to find rewarding and fulfilling careers through college education and training. Unfortunately, research shows that by a margin of three to one, parents push their teens to attend university and one third also say they would be disappointed or embarrassed if their child went to college! So this advertising campaign includes copy like: “Your kids should be allowed to make their own decisions, especially when it comes to their post secondary education” and “Sure you want what’s best for your kids, but when it comes to post-secondary education, pushing them to do what you want isn’t right.” Too bad these parents didn’t receive this autonomy message before they had kids, but I guess it’s better late than never! Posted: 2008/02/25 12:20 PM Idle Parenting is Responsible Parenting – February 19, 2008 A few years ago, I wrote an article for Life Learning (that has since been in great demand for reprinting) about how the work ethic gets in the way of both childhood and learning. So I was glad to have a reader pass along this highly entertaining recent article from The Telegraph newspaper out of the UK. The article talks about “inactive parenting” and “idle parenting,” which is the opposite of the pushy, competitive parenting and work ethic driven school systems that cram kids’ days full of so-called educational activities, gadgets, playdates and various other kinds of programmed stimulation. It suggests that the most responsible way to parent is to leave kids alone to create their own lives. Of course, unschooling parents fall on the inactive side of the fence. But lately I’ve received a number of article queries for Life Learning from people needing to reassure themselves and others that all the stimulation isn’t necessary, that it really is OK to encourage self-sufficiency rather than being the helicopter that endlessly hovers. We’ve published one of them, which discusses how unschooling can feel more like unparenting when compared to the neighbors, in the upcoming March/April issue. The Telegraph piece was written by Tom Hodgkinson who is editor of a quirky British alternative magazine called The Idler. (Google “Tom Hodgkinson” or “The Idler” and you’ll find other essays on this same subject.) His parenting style is motivated by one of my favorite DH Lawrence essays: Education of the People, published in 1918. Lawrence wrote, “How to begin to educate a child. First rule: leave him alone. Second rule: leave him alone. Third rule: leave him alone. That is the whole beginning.” And the reason the author feels this style of parenting works? Respect for the child and trust in another human being. Trust is a word we use a lot in Life Learning. It goes a long way. If you agree, you might want to bookmark The Telegraph website because Hodgkinson will be writing a regular column there on idle parenting beginning in March. Posted: 2008/02/19 3:58 PM The Harm of Not Trusting Children – January 6, 2008 You may have heard the term “helicopter parents.” It refers to those who hover over their children, worried to an absurd degree about their welfare as well as making their decisions. These parents are supposedly motivated by fear that something will harm their kids; it’s a nasty, violent, competitive world, after all. So they coddle their children, not letting them play outside without supervision; lobbying for the removal of playground equipment they feel is unsafe; trying to prevent every lurking germ known to humankind from entering their homes; swaddling every body part possible in armor while the kids learn to walk or ride their tricycles; requiring constant communication from the kids via cellphone (which has been called the world’s longest umbilical cord) and overseeing – and often participating in – relationships and social events. These parents are also involved to an inordinate degree in their offspring’s high school course choices and career and post secondary education decisions – this at an age and stage when said offspring should be able to make their own decisions, seeking appropriate advice and opinions when desired. I don’t like war metaphors, but in a perverse sort of way, I can accept the newly coined term “Black Hawks,” after the military helicopter of the same name, which is used to describe those who cross the line to unethical behavior such as writing their children’s college admission essays. Yes, I’m told it happens. These are parents do more than hover at a safe distance; they actively intervene. Now, according to an article in the Guardian newspaper, helicopter parents are moving beyond tricycles and college exams to participating in the job market on behalf of their children. They write the resumes, go along on interviews, fight with managers about their child’s performance evaluations and try to participate in salary negotiations. That’s not caring; it’s meddling in someone else’s life and taking away their freedom of person! And it does a huge disservice to young people because it delays maturity, lessens self-esteem, undermines self-confidence and prevents the development of problem-solving skills. Frank Furedi, professor of sociology at the University of Kent in the UK views the rise of the helicopter parent as an indicator of an infantilization of society and the blurring of the boundaries between childhood and adulthood. He says we are witnessing the appearance of “kidults” or “adultescents” – people who are biologically maturing at an ever early age (which is another issue altogether) but are treated like semi-children by families and institutions (which are cancelling recess because it’s too dangerous). Furedi should have added the billion dollar industry that has developed as marketers exploit the natural fears of new parents (with money to burn) – selling everything from those highly questionable Baby Einstein products to kneepads for crawling babies, bullet-proof backpacks and books with names like Germ-Proof Your Kids. We need to think about the result of all this inappropriate parental control, this lack of trust in and respect for young people’s ability to learn, grow and act appropriately. These “kidults” are going to have to solve the serious economic, environmental and social problems their baby boomer parents have. If their families and their schools infantilize them in order to keep them safe – delay their development in order to allay adult anxieties – they won’t have been provided with the tools to solve those problems. They won’t even have learned how to keep themselves safe because they won’t know how to assess danger and make wise decisions. A story on this subject in my local newspaper quotes social work professor Michael Ungar from his book Too Safe for Their Own Good, about the risk the bubble-wrapping creates for kids. Some teens, he says, robbed of the inherent need for risk-taking and testing the boundaries, seek it out in dangerous ways like delinquency, substance abuse or running away. “Too much risk and we endanger a child,” writes Ungar. “Too little risk and we fail to provide a child with healthy opportunities for growth and psychological development.” Children learn by doing – and that means by making mistakes, whether the mistake results in a skinned knee or a wasted semester. The role of parents and the other adults in children’s lives is to facilitate that learning in developmentally appropriate ways. Are we helicoptering because we’re afraid to let go or because we’re living vicariously through our children…or do we just not know how to teach them to make their own decisions while keeping themselves safe? Posted: 2008/01/06 3:42 PM Socialization, huh? – October 10, 2007 A new report of a 20-year study of children in a rural Quebec town draws links between verbal abuse (read: bullying) by teachers and precocious sexual behavior of girls younger than 14. Researchers led by psychology professor Dr. Mara Brendgen found children at elementary school who were shouted at, harshly criticized or embarrassed by teachers in the classroom had an increased risk of early sexual intercourse. The study, published last month in the American Journal of Public Health and conducted by a team the Universite du Quebec and the Universite du Montreal, also draws a link between peer rejection and girls engaging in early sexual intercourse. Brendgen told the media, “Basically, it’s a similar experience that they have from the teachers as they have from peers, in the sense that they are really publicly humiliated and exposed.” These students – who are estimated to number as many as 15 percent of the school population – often  turn to generalized delinquency, perhaps to give their battered self esteem a lift. The researchers found that “disruptive” students – those with “attention problems” and a “diminished interest in school” – are most frequently targeted, supposedly having provoked their peers or teachers into negative behavior. An earlier report about the same research project, which was published in 2006 in Pediatrics, stated that “Many adults mention past incidences of verbal abuse by the teacher as the most overwhelming negative experience in their lives.” But Bregnan says we should be careful not to “lay blame” on anyone. Parents are, instead, supposed to help their children make new friends who will help “protect them from the loneliness and depression that result from rejection and victimization.” Funny that one of the main criticisms about homeschooling is that children will miss out on the valuable socialization experience that schools offer. Hah. Posted: 2007/10/10 5:20 PM Telling Us What We Already Know...Don’t We? – September 6, 2007 I can’t decide whether I should feel smug, confused, angry or just cynical. Today, a study published in The Lancet medical journal stated the obvious: Food additives fuel hyperactivity. In fact, preservatives and artificial colors have “significantly adverse” effects, British scientists have found. Um, I thought Dr. Benjamin Feingold figured this out over three decades ago. Isn’t that why we monitored our daughters’ consumption of things like Red Dye #3 and Yellow #2 in the 1970s? Or maybe Red Dye #3 – which was banned in the U.S. in 1990 – just caused cancer. Silly me. And yet, a professor of psychology at the University Southampton was quoted in the press as saying that we now, for the first time, have clear evidence that mixtures of certain common food colors and preservatives (namely sodium benzoate) can adversely influence the behavior of children. Of course, the same guy noted, simply removing the additives from food would not prevent hyperactivity in children. Of course not. So does this mean that industry-sponsored scientists will now suddenly agree with independent researchers about something that has long been obvious to observant mothers? Don’t hold your breath. The new research was apparently greeted with skepticism by the International Food Additives Council, an Atlanta-based trade association. Posted: 2007/09/06 8:40 PM In Defense of Strong-Willed Children – August 6, 2007 Norm Lee has done many things in his life, including a stint in the military, a job teaching English, and – when I first came across him – working with John Holt promoting and leading seminars on home schooling. But his life as an abused child has led him to be a ferocious champion of children’s rights and an advocate for children who are spanked and who suffer other types of abuse. To that end, he maintains a website and sends out an occasional email newsletter. Both are worth reading. His latest newsletter arrived the other day and can be read on his website. It’s entitled “Why I Like the Strong-Willed Child.” It describes how, when he taught high school English, the best pupils he had were “the school-hating malcontents.” These students were, he maintains, way more interesting than those who did well – in addition to being brighter and more creative. Saner, he says. But they had a hard time because they were also the most disruptive. And often had been bullied, humiliated and otherwise mistreated a lot. Anyway, I recommend spending some time on Norm’s site reading this particular essay. If you’re an unschooler, you’ll nod in agreement with his comments and conclusions. If you’re the type who favors schooling, then I hope your mind will be opened just a tiny bit to the assumptions we make about children and schooling. You’ll also find out why Norm quit teaching school. While you’re there, I urge you to sign on to his list of those vowing to “Stop the Hitting.” Posted: 2007/08/06 3:49 PM The Child Care Career – July 1, 2007 There are many organizations supporting or protesting child care of various sorts, from non-profits and commercial centers to stay-at-home parents of both infants and older unschooled children. And they often disagree publicly and vociferously about their strongly-held positions, in spite of their universal concern for the well-being of children. So I was pleasantly surprised to read a press release announcing an agreement between a daycare advocacy group called the Canadian Child Care Management Association and a parental rights group called the National Family Childcare Association to work together to help policymakers develop inclusive child care policies based on family choice. The NFCA/CCCMA agreement commits both associations to advocate for, among other things, parental choice through financial equalization factors and taxation by way of a model of a child care benefit voucher system, which could be used to purchase a variety of types of daycare or to support a parent who chooses to stay at home. I see this agreement as encouraging, but only the beginning of the end of the pursue-a-career-or-stay-at-home cultural and emotional battle zone that has been dubbed “the mommy wars.” One of the first volleys was launched a few years ago by law professor Linda Hirshman who wrote that privileged, educated women who choose to stay at home to raise their children are hurting themselves and other women. This idea that staying home with children undermines the advances of the last four decades of the women’s movement is the basis of much of the scorn and anger that has been heaped upon me and other unschooling/homeschooling advocates by other women. We’re letting down the side, so goes the argument. As Hirshman wrote in a controversial article in The American Prospect magazine in 2005: “A good life for humans includes the classical standard of using one’s capacities for speech and reason in a prudent way, the liberal requirement of having enough autonomy to direct one's own life, and the utilitarian test of doing more good than harm in the world. Measured against these time-tested standards, the expensively educated, upper-class moms will be leading lesser lives.” As if nurturing the development of the next generation isn’t important work – perhaps the most important work of all! But then, if we think it is so important, why isn’t a capitalist society willing to pay – and pay well – for it? And so this devaluation of parenting over having a career continues. As one unschooling  reader recently wrote to me: “My biggest struggle now as a mom is to get beyond the conditioning by our society that I previously bought into, that being a mother isn’t enough. That it doesn’t really matter and putting the kids in daycare and school and going back to work is the only way for me to make a *real* contribution to society...” And she asks, “What if [the women’s movement] had fought for the value we were already providing, rather than insisted we be allowed to behave like men?” Over my 35 years so far as a mother, I’ve often thought that motherhood is a series of choices, sometimes quite difficult ones. But thank goodness I have had choices. All parents need to have choices as to how they live their family lives; perhaps this new child care agreement is the beginning of a broader recognition for and status of one of those choices. Posted: 2007/07/01 12:59 PM Little Bits of My Mother…and Daughters – May 19, 2007 I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the intersection of the lives of mothers and daughters: My eldest daughter’s 35th birthday is approaching and my 98-year-old mother is, once again, quite ill. Ever since our daughters went their own ways, I have often felt the somewhat disconcerting sensation of there being two bits of me floating around out there somewhere distant. The feeling has intensified now that they both live half a continent away. Occasionally, these days, I feel a twinge of regret at not staying in better contact with my mother when we lived in far-flung places as a young family (OK, and sometimes not so far away.) Recently, I stumbled upon some research that seems to put some facts behind the floating bits sensation – and reinforces the bond between mother and child. Apparently, cells can migrate from mother to fetus and remain there long after the child becomes an adult, a phenomenon that is called “microchimerism.” Lee Nelson, of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, is studying the effect of these cells and whether it’s good or bad. The research results are mixed so far, with some experiments suggesting that maternal cells can produce insulin when a child develops diabetes. But other research suggests that these same maternal cells can trigger autoimmune diseases. That’s of particular interest to me, since my mother and I both have lupus. The reverse is true too. In addition to having some of our mother’s cells in our bodies, we apparently left some of our own behind in her bloodstream when we were born. Fetal cells appear in mothers’ organs long after birth and have even been found in the bone marrow of grandmothers. These fetal cells, say some researchers, have a role in healing disease. In one experiment, fetal cells migrated from the mothers’ blood to the disease sites (including thyroid, liver and cervix) and seemed to form healthy tissue. To complicate matters, some women may have three generations of cells in their bodies – their own and some from their mother and their children. So there’s an explanation for my floating bits feeling. And there’s also plenty of support for my current task of trying not to complain when somebody tells me that I’m just like my mother. Posted: 2007/05/19 4:49 PM Who are the Child Care “Experts?” – April 6, 2007 The most recent analysis of a long-term U.S. study found that the more time children spent in daycare centers before kindergarten, the more likely their sixth grade teachers were to report such aggressive behaviors as “gets in many fights,” “disobedient at school,” and “argues a lot.” These behaviors were listed on something called “The Child Behavior Checklist Teacher Report Form,” which consisted of 100 so-called “problem behaviors.” The 1,364 children in the analysis had been tracked since birth as part of the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development, the largest, longest running, and most comprehensive study of child care in the United States.  However, the most compelling part of this study is the finding that parenting quality was a much more important predictor of child development than was type, quantity or quality of child care. That is good news in light of a recent Canadian study authored by Dr. Fraser Mustard. As back-up for its recommendations for institutionalizing early childhood, the Mustard report blamed everything from substance abuse and illiteracy on a supposed lack of parenting skills. In an op-ed piece last week in the National Post newspaper, Kate Tennier, founder of Advocates for Childcare Choice, which favors funding the child rather than the daycare spot, quoted Mustard as saying that only about one-third of parents are highly competent, the rest are “OK” and “about 17 percent are godawful.” There will always be some parents who could use some help with parenting skills and/or community support raising their families (not to mention access to affordable housing, fairly paying jobs and so on.) But instead of shifting the responsibility onto institutions and thinking up Orwellian ways to screen children in order to slot them into ever-earlier formal learning environments, governments should be giving parents and children the respect they deserve. For starters, they could foster a culture of learning in every home, provide community and tax supports to parents who wish to stay at home with their young children, and encourage changes in workplace culture to include nursing mothers; young children; and career-track part-time, flex-time or home-based work. If we want to prepare the next few generations of children for happy, productive, socially-aware adult lives, we need to rethink many things, including our attitudes toward childhood. And we need to decide who are the experts in regards to our children: the children and their parents, or bureaucrats and politicians. Posted: 2007/04/06 2:05 PM  It’s OK to be an Introvert (except in school) – April 1, 2007 Thanks to a good friend of mine, I have been thinking about being introverted. I’ve always know that’s my personality type: needing hours alone every day, preferring to work alone, loving quiet conversation about feelings and ideas, preferring to write letters rather than talk on the phone because writing allows me to think through my responses, able to give great presentations to big audiences (where it feels like I’m acting) but awkward in small groups, disliking small talk, easily worn out by being with others…. But now I’m thinking about (and remembering) what it’s like to be an introverted child. Our society favors extroverts – and they apparently outnumber introverts by about three to one. They dominate public and social life, doing well as politicians. Being outgoing is considered normal and therefore desirable, and is seen as a mark of confidence and leadership. Introvert-type behavior, on the other hand, is considered abnormal. An introvert is considered to have a problem – to be antisocial and shy, to have an illness which needs to be overcome. However, research has shown there is a biological basis to it, relating to different types of brain activity. The introvert/extrovert concept goes back to the 1920s and the psychologist Carl Jung, on whose work the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator is based. Jung was, in fact, an introvert, as were Katherine Hepburn, Hans Christian Andersen and Albert Einstein. Stock market guru Warren Buffet and philanthropist billionaire investor George Soros are others. Of course, like anything else, most of us are a combination of both types. School can be a terrible place for an introverted child who dreads its demands to “perform.” I shudder even now when I remember my fear when called upon to read aloud in front of the class, to write a rhyming couplet on demand, to stand in the aisle beside my desk and sing the scale or answer a math question. Group activities are prevalent at school, and that inhibits the development of ideas in introverts. Also, we need time to think about the answer we will give to a question, but teachers tend to move on to the next person if a student doesn’t respond quickly. Fortunately, introverts tend to be artistic and smart – more than 75 percent of people with an IQ above 160 are introverted – so I did well in school. Another feature of introverts is that, unlike their opposites, they don’t need a lot of encouragement or positive reinforcement to work hard or succeed; nor do they care much what others think of them. Nevertheless, school was not a pleasant experience for me. Hmmm, come to think of it, it might not be a great place for extroverts, either, because their short attention spans, impatience with frustration and love of action could get them labeled! Anyway, not understanding that introversion is normal and doesn’t need to be cured, my more extroverted mother pushed me to be more social and less “shy,” in the same way she tried to push my father into social situations where he wasn’t comfortable. Thinking about how frustrating it must have been for her to live with my father and me, I realized that this is probably the source of much conflict and concern among home educating families. How much simpler life would be if parents understood and appreciated these sorts of personality differences, gave their introverted children a place to be themselves and trusted them to be extroverted when appropriate. Here’s a good website for parents of introverts. Posted: 2007/04/01 7:35 PM  The Messy Room – February 18, 2007 Rolf and I were straightening up our basement and moved a brass daybed belonging to our daughter Melanie from one side of the room to another. As we do whenever we move the darn thing, we chuckled as we reminisced about its history. Rolf had promised it to Melanie when she was a child if only she would keep her bedroom neat for a year. Since it’s now in our basement, the bribery obviously worked, although I didn’t particularly agree with it at the time and don’t recommend it now. And I don’t think there is any connection between the bed and the fact that Melanie now lives in a neat house. (However, I often think that perhaps someone should have made the same offer to her dad at some point, because he still hasn’t learned to clean up his piles of clothes!) At any rate, our discussion reminded me of a humorous article that we published in Natural Life magazine’s Natural Child column back in 1997. It was written by British Columbia homeschooler Linda Boulter and entitled “The Messy Room.” Linda concluded with these wise words: “In the end, the key is that they do learn. And we learn that learning cannot be imposed from without because it only has true value when it comes from within.” Posted: 2007/02/18 5:58 PM Breastfeeding in Public – January 24, 2007 After a number of recent incidents where breastfeeding mothers have been asked to leave restaurants, theaters and various public places like parks, the City of Toronto is planning to set things right. The Public Health department is hoping to broaden a policy already in place that covers city employees breastfeeding at work to assert a woman’s right to breastfeed anywhere in the city. The Ontario Human Rights Commission already has a policy that states, in part, “You have the right to breastfeed a child in a public area. No one should prevent you from nursing your child simply because you are in a public area…They should not ask you to cover up, disturb you, or ask you to move to another area that is more discreet.” Maybe I was naïve 30-some years ago. Or maybe times have changed for the worse. But I breastfed my two daughters wherever I was in the early 1970s. It never occurred to me that anyone would object. And nobody did, that I recall. After all, feeding children is the purpose of breasts…and it’s a very sad commentary on our messed up culture that we connect feeding a child with sex and relegate it the bedroom, or with other bodily functions and banish it to the bathroom. Indeed, in most places in the world, breastfeeding holds no sexual connotation. At any rate, most breastfeeding mothers bare less skin than many entertainers – just have a look at the upcoming Academy Award presentations! Anyway, the La Leche League has info on its website about breastfeeding laws in various places. I recall in the early days of homeschooling, I used to carry a copy of the education law around with me in public…maybe breastfeeding mothers will have to start doing that. Posted: 2007/01/24 12:49 PM Preventing Violence Against Children – October 15, 2006 In the upcoming November/December issue of Natural Life magazine, we report that the United Nations has recently released a study on violence against children. And a few days ago, I received notice that a special website has been created with links to the report in many languages. The report provides a global picture of violence against children and proposes recommendations to prevent and respond to this issue. The core principle behind the report, with which I agree, is that no violence against children is justified and all violence against children is preventable. Yet, sadly, the report confirms that such violence exists in every country of the world, cutting across culture, class, education, income and ethnic origin. Not only that, it is often socially approved and frequently legal and state-authorized. The author hopes that his study and recommendations mark a turning point – an end to adult justification of violence against children, whether accepted as “tradition” or disguised as “discipline.” His recommendations include a prohibition on all forms of violence against children, including all corporal punishment, transforming attitudes that “condone or normalize violence against children”...including corporal punishment, development of public information programs to promote non-violent values and ensure that children’s rights are disseminated and understood (including by children) and development of parent education programs focusing on non-violent forms of discipline. The report notes that for many children, educational settings expose them to, and may even teach them, violence. “Violence perpetrated by teachers and other school staff, with or without the overt or tacit approval of education ministries and other authorities that oversee schools, includes corporal punishment, cruel and humiliating forms of psychological punishment, sexual and gender-based violence, and bullying. Corporal punishment such as beating and caning is standard practice in schools in a large number of countries around the world.” In spite of this excellent report, those working to eradicate violence against children will, I’m afraid, continue to have an uphill climb against those whose activism is not propelled by the best interests of children. There is a vocal lobby against anything to do with the United Nations, including its Convention on the Rights of the Child, and against the abolition of laws that permit spanking of children. For instance, in Canada in 2004, the Supreme Court refused to criminalize spanking as a form of parental discipline, disagreeing with one of its most internationally respected and outspoken members – Justice Louise Arbour, the UN’s former chief prosecutor in the International War Crimes Tribunal – that spanking should be criminalized. Arguing on the side of parental abuse of children was a group calling itself the Coalition for Family Autonomy, headed up by the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) and including Focus on the Family, Canada Family Action Coalition and REAL Women of Canada. At the time, HSLDA’s Dallas Miller characterized the court case as an attack on parents by those who support children’s rights. Lest you wonder about the connection with homeschooling, the logic sees this attack, if successful, as eventually making homeschooling illegal. This fear-mongering has served HSLDA well over the years, but that’s another story. The court seemed to believe that family disruption is more harmful to children than corporal punishment. As Miller is quoted as saying on the HSLDA website, “The decision...is grounded in the recognition that to criminalize the actions of parents who provide loving guidance and correction to their children would result in ruined lives and broken families. As the court noted, this burden is often borne by the children involved.” Um, I beg to differ, but I wasn’t in court. Unfortunately, the support of violence against children is not restricted to right-wing conservative organizations. While the Canadian Teachers’ Federation has a policy that opposes the use of corporal punishment in schools, it has warned that repealing Section 43 of the Criminal Code, which allows parents and teachers to use “reasonable force by way of correction” of children would quickly lead to chaos in the classroom – a confusing and, to my mind, hypocritical stance. But maybe it's “just” semantics. Their current policy notes that “Section 43 of the Criminal Code does not sanction or condone child abuse” and that it provides protection to teachers when the use of force is justified.” Hmmm, I thought that whether or not the use of force is ever justified was what was under dispute! Aside from violating the Canadian Charter of Rights, Section 43 has been singled out as contrary to the Criminal Code in at least three decades’ worth of reports, many of them commissioned by governments themselves. In addition, Canada, as a signatory to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, is obliged to make the physical punishment of children an offense. A growing number of countries, many of them Scandinavian, combine law reform with parental education to change public opinion and private conduct when it comes to striking children. These governments believe that as the public becomes better informed about the well-established link between the physical punishment of children and heightened aggression among children and youth, attitudes toward disciplining children will be altered. It’s time for other so-called civilized countries to come out of the Dark Ages and do the right thing. Posted: 2006/10/14 12:29 PM Embracing Their Choices – October 1, 2006 I’ve just sent the electronic files off to the printer for the November/December issue of Life Learning. Once again, a bunch of inspired contributors have helped me put together a unique collection of thought-provoking articles about the journey we’re all walking toward life learning. The letters section has suddenly become quite lively, at least partly in reaction to Peter Kowalke’s series of interviews with young people who have grown without schooling. A number of readers have been reacting with dismay to the life path choices some of his recent interviewees have been making. However, as one reader wrote – and as I’ve told Peter a number of times – the candor displayed by his subjects is both refreshing and thought-provoking. My own ongoing journey involves embracing and rejoicing in the life choices made by my two now 30-something daughters. And that’s how I view the life decisions made by the young people Peter has interviewed: If we are confident that we’ve given our children the tools of life learning – the ability to reason, experiment, take risks, make mistakes, regroup, change direction and try again – we should be comfortable that they are making the best choices for themselves at any given point in time. Bringing up independent thinkers means respecting the choices that result from that independence, even when we might not agree with them. I do not share the view of one letter writer who suggested that their making choices with which we don’t agree means that “the world of unschooling is in flames.” That level of acceptance is not always an easy path for parents to walk and we can’t always look to our own parents as role models, but it’s an important part of the life learning journey. One of the contributors to the November/December issue – Karen Ridd – has an accepting parent as a role model. Karen interviewed her mother about her feelings around the unschooling of her grandchildren. Her joy in watching her grandsons learn provides a good role model for us all. Posted: 2006/10/01 3:16 PM Junk Food and Truant Officers Visit Park Place – September 28, 2006 A couple of very non-welcome spins on the already competitive game of Monopoly have crossed my desk recently, released just in time for Christmas gift giving. Homeschoolopoly purports to celebrate the best of homeschooling. Apparently that includes avoiding “running into the Truancy Officer lying in wait to send a homeschooler to court!” But don’t worry, you can use your “HSLDA Member – Get Out of Court Free” card. HSLDA is one of many businesses that have paid big bucks to have their name and other promotional material on the game board and in a flyer inserted in each box. Aside from the fact that it doesn’t reflect the diversity of the homeschooling community, this game seems to me to ratchet up the commercialization of the movement. But the designers of that game have some stiff competition in the hawking stuff to kids department. Hasbro has released a new version of Monopoly itself, which has ads for McDonalds, Starbucks, Motorola and other corporate sponsors on the game tokens. “Shame on Hasbro for hawking junk food and caffeine to children,” says Gary Ruskin, executive director of an organization called Commercial Alert. “Hasbro is toying with the health of our children. Maybe it thinks that the childhood obesity epidemic is just a game, but parents know better.” “Hasbro has undercut one of the prime virtues of its own product,” adds Jonathan Rowe, issues director of Commercial Alert. “Whatever else one thought about Monopoly, at least it conveyed to kids the importance of savings and investment. Now the game is touting consumption instead. Maybe Hasbro should rename it ‘Huckster Haven.’” Commercial Alert’s mission is to keep the commercial culture within its proper sphere, and to prevent it from exploiting children and subverting the higher values of family, community, environmental integrity and democracy. For more information, see their website. Posted: 2006/09/28 3:16 PM What’s the Rush? – August 21, 2006 These days, avoiding the adult-looking face of six-year-old murder victim JonBenet Ramsey in the media is difficult…and I imagine we’ll be seeing that disturbing photo for many more months now that the ten-year-old case has a new suspect. I, like many others, have begun wondering all over again why parents would plaster their young daughters’ innocent faces with make-up, and coif and dress them in a manner suited to a much older person. This sort of adult intervention is common, if not as extreme as in the case of child beauty queens. It’s what makes parents push their young children into playing team sports at an ever-increasingly early age. It’s what leads them to program their children’s summers with school work or “enrichment” activities, and to justify enrolling their three-year-olds in preschool. It’s what robs children of the learning that takes place when they arrange their own games and choose their own activities on their own timetables. In short, when they are respected enough to be allowed to behave like the boisterous, curious children they are. There are a number of possible psychological reasons for parents at the extreme end of this syndrome, but at the bare minimum they are motivated by an urgency to give their kids a leg-up, a running start at achieving success. Author David Elkind notes that these “hurried children” often suffer illness, confusion, pain and stress as a result of being pushed, and that they represent a good chunk of the suicide statistics. Although Elkind coined the term and sounded the alarm in 1981 in his book The Hurried Child (Addison-Wesley), we’re hurrying children even faster these days. I find that ironic, given the fact that life expectancies are increasing in the western world. This desperate rush to front-end load our children’s lives makes little sense when they can reasonably expect to survive for another 70 or 80 years. In most people’s lives, there is plenty of time to allow life to unfold at its own pace, without this desperate need to get ahead. The cosmetic and education industries would make less money, but I think we’d all be better off. Posted: 2006/08/21 10:50 AM Hooray for Fooling Around – June 28, 2006 As school ends for summer vacation, parents have apparently begun to worry what to do with the little brats once they get bored by the middle of next week. So the media trots out the interviews with “experts” about how to find replacement warehouses…er, babysitters…and how to schedule their children’s time so that they don’t get too undisciplined and so that the facts stay firmly stuffed in those apparently highly porous brains during two months of supposed inactivity. Nothing makes me work up to a rant faster than those interviews, which are usually juxtaposed with sounds and pictures of kids celebrating their emancipation. This morning, I heard one “expert” cautioning that children need free time over the summer, except that it should be the “fooling around with a purpose” kind of free time. Aside from the hidden message that learning and fun are incompatible, this person, being an educator apparently knowledgeable about play, should know better. Fooling around is how kids learn. Fooling around always has a purpose for kids. This educator meant the kind of purpose that an adult imposes…that is, a curriculum-related purpose. If, on the off-chance, a child has really learned something in school, she won’t forget it over the summer. In fact, she might use what she learned while fooling around this summer! However, most of what these well-meaning adults are concerned about children forgetting hasn’t really been learned; it’s been memorized with indifference. And it may well be long forgotten by September as the emancipated children steer clear of anything that looks or smells like school. And in place of that memorized stuff that seemed so irrelevant to their lives is bound to be some real learning that resulted from a summer of freedom to think, experiment, make mistakes, correct them, read, day dream and fool around. Posted: 2006/06/28 5:13 PM Growing Up Too Soon – June 27, 2006 This morning, I was sitting writing in my favorite café. Past me walked a little boy of perhaps three or four, holding his mother’s hand and looking very unhappy. Almost immediately, he began crying – that tearless sort of sobbing that means one’s heart is breaking. While his mother ordered and waited for her drink, she ignored her son’s wails. Nobody else in the café could. Two other women, apparently acquaintances of the mother, asked what was wrong with the child. “He wants to stay home today,” she said, “but he has to go to daycare. He’ll be fine. You know, he has just finished preschool and is going to junior kindergarten in the fall, which is so exciting.” One of the women tried to distract the little one by talking to him. She told him he was soooo grown up and asked him if he’d just graduated. He looked at her briefly, then began pulling his mother toward the door, yelling, “Home.” He apparently didn’t think it was so exciting to have graduated to another level of home-leaving. Perhaps the graduation comment was inspired by an article in this morning’s paper. With no irony at all, the piece describes a senior kindergarten graduation, complete with caps, gowns, diplomas and ceremony. The parents gushed, the kindergarten teacher spoke of milestones and becoming independent (turning from caterpillars into butterflies) as they “graduated” from half-day attendance to sitting in desks and listening to teachers talk on a full-time basis. The kids in the accompanying photo look bored already. But perhaps the most telling comment came from one six-year-old who said his favorite part of the event was having his mom there. Too bad so many moms are so eager to push their children away, under the questionable guises of independence and education. Posted: 2006/06/27 3:28 PM Learning Independence – June 11, 2006 My mother, who was close to death last fall, has recently recovered enough to celebrate her 97th birthday. On Mother’s Day, she was well enough that she was able to be interviewed for the life history that is being written about me for Natalie Zur Nedden’s  PhD dissertation. I’ve been reading the transcript of the interview and have learned much from my mother’s short and sometimes muddled responses to Natalie’s gentle questioning. Reminiscing about my early school experiences, my mother told Natalie that she participated in the school’ s parent organization because I needed her. During the interview, that response was one of a few that astounded me, and when pressed for more, she reverted to her habitual taciturnity. But I think she meant that I needed the safety of her proximity. I didn’t think so at the time and, in fact, remember disliking having my mother hovering when I wanted to take some steps toward independence. But, of course, learning to be independent within a safely supportive environment – and on their own timetable – is one of the reasons why I kept my own young daughters out of school! And now I’m feeling glad that mother listened to her instinct to protect her young daughter, even though I bristled at the attention at the time…and that I ignored those well-meaning interferers who prodded me to “cut the apron strings” while my own daughters still needed me. Posted: 2006/06/11 2:35 PM Expanding the Notion of Feminism – January 22, 2006 One of the more disheartening aspects of my three decades of work promoting home-based education has been the scorn of many feminists. I’ve tried to ignore what have always seemed to me to be their short-sighted, narrowly defined misunderstanding of both me and my vision for education, and to focus on a much larger view of gender issues. The choices made by women (and some men) to be at home caring for both children and elderly relatives should, it seems to me, be supported rather than ridiculed, paid for rather than eliminated. So I was pleased to receive an invitation from Albertan unpaid work activist Beverley Smith to join her on March 1 in New York City to argue in favor of the value of unpaid work done in the home. Caregiver Credit, an American organization actively promoting tax recognition for care of the elderly in their own home by family members, has joined the European Federation of Unpaid Parents and Carers at Home, to host a meeting in conjunction with the UN meeting for the Commission on the Status of Women. The meeting, linking women and some men from around the world, has defined a huge goal: to enlarge traditional definitions of “work”, of how an economy works and of how societies can value all the roles men and women have…wherever the work is done. These organizations are not against women’s paid work; they celebrate the advances the women’s movement has made in that area. But they asks for more: for equality for all the roles of women, new and traditional…for inclusiveness, not scornful judgments. They want the balance between career and family to be between two win-win options so that both women and men can make their commitments based on what they believe and on their perceived needs, not only based on money. For more information about Caregiver Credit and this progressive movement, visit their website. Gloria Steinem, who is a member of Caregiver Credit’s Board of Trustees, says “This is the next major phase of the Women’s Movement.” Finally. Posted: 2006/01/22 1:05 PM Normalizing Military Action – December 22, 2005 If Christmas is a time of peace, then why is a military organization involving itself with the Santa story? That’s the question being asked by an organization called Homes not Bombs, which uses nonviolent direct action in an attempt to create a just and compassionate, not to mention nonviolent, society. The focus of their concern is that for the 50th year, NORAD (and its predecessor the Continental Air Defense Command) is tracking Santa Claus’s progress on Christmas Eve, complete with an elaborate website. Toronto activist Matthew Behrens has written and released a press release on Santa’s behalf, noting that the usually jolly guy was uncharacteristically furious to hear that an organization that is part of the Bush administration’s Star Wars scheme is telling little children that he is happy to be tracked by them. “I don’t want war planes on my tail, and I don’t want children to think I am in any way associated with the type of organization which plans for things like nuclear war and space warfare,” Claus apparently told Behrens via telephone. “Your War Dept. misrepresents me the same way the sales of war toys misrepresent me. I don’t make machine guns and toy tanks, and I certainly do NOT want an escort from warplanes or to be tracked by an organization working to militarize the heavens.” Santa, says Behrens, is disturbed to again find himself the focus of the annual military public affairs operation, “designed to normalize for children the idea that the military, as well as military alliances which plan and constantly threaten life on the planet with nuclear warfare, pre-emptive invasions, and environmental destruction, is a benign outfit.” Behren’s news release reacts to a NORAD release, which says, “At Santa’s request, millions of curious children will be able to closely follow his progress by viewing digital photographs and technical information compiled by NORAD on their Internet site.” He quotes Santa as saying, “I have made no such request, nor would I. Kids going to this web site are taught to view war and the instruments of war as normal, acceptable, inevitable. When I went to the website, I saw downloadable coloring pages for the most destructive warplanes on the planet, planes whose only purpose is to deliver death and destruction. They describe the technology which is part of the star wars program as ultra-cool, and actually have the gall to say that Rudolph, a lifelong pacifist who is also a vegetarian, has helped them develop their infrared tracking technology!” In the release, which is posted on the Homes Not Bombs website, Behrens includes contacts for the Canadian military wings that have offered press interviews on this topic, as well as NORAD. Just in case you agree with him. Posted: 2005/12/22 7:08 PM No Longer All in the Family – August 21, 2005  I’ve written here before about efforts to institutionalize pre-schoolers in government-mandated programs, as a way to expand the public school system’s social engineering and keep the education industry in business. And now at least one Hollywood celebrity has put his energies behind the movement. Actor/director Rob Reiner (When Harry Met Sally, A Few Good Men, All in the Family, etc.) has introduced a Preschool-For-All initiative slated for the June, 2006 ballot in California. In response, author and speaker Diane Flynn Keith has written a clever open letter to Reiner opposing his plan. The letter incorporates his film titles, with the idea was that it might be a clever way to get some attention from the media for this issue, and subsequently to initiate some open dialogue and debate on the topic. In addition to having written the book Carschooling, Flynn Keith owns a discussion list called “Unpreschool” and a website called Universal Preschool, where she monitors such issues and provides suggestions for learning alternatives for young children. She points out that the research studies Reiner is using to justify his initiative do not apply to the mainstream preschool population; on the contrary, they involved kids who are from disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds and considered to be “at risk”. In addition, the results have been contradicted by other research conducted by the same group, and some of the other research has been shown to be skewed due faulty reporting methods and/or too small control groups. And that’s not to mention other research that indicates early separation from parents and too-early academic training can be harmful to young children and stunt their intellectual, emotional, social and psychological development. Flynn Keith says that so-called universal preschool is a problem worldwide. “So many countries already have government funded daycare/childcare programs, that the citizens don’t see what the problem is at all. The mentality seems to be, ‘Of course the government should raise your babies while you go off to work or play – and the government can do a better job than parents ever could anyway!’ But here in the States, we haven’t been used to government funded daycare/preschool programs, although people are really in favor of them, especially if we call them ‘preschool’. There’s an entitlement mentality…when it comes to education. To most folks, public preschools are just an extension of public schools and they support them, without ever asking, “What’s best for the children?” Life learners know, as Flynn Keith says, “that children learn best through imaginative play and exploration of their environment in the natural rhythm and routine of their home with loving parents, not in the artificial environment of classrooms with transient strangers who indoctrinate them with academic curriculum.” Initiatives like Reiner’s succeed by playing on people’s fears of their children “falling behind” if they don’t have the “advantage” of an early start. Flynn Keith asks, “The government has a track record in public schools and they are failing so what would possibly make parents think that they can rely on the government to properly nurture and educate our completely vulnerable little children?” I believe our governments would be better off spending our tax money to create the social and economic environment that would allow families to do what they do best: help their children learn and develop. If you agree with me, tell them so and don’t let misguided guys like Rob Reiner be the only voices heard. Posted: 2005/08/21 11:23 AM Honoring Children With Song – June 23, 2005 In 1976, my three- and four-year-old daughters were given a newly recorded album by a new children’s singer called Raffi. It was called Singable Songs for the Very Young. Over the next four years, three more Raffi albums found their way into our home: More Singable Songs, Corner Grocery Store and Baby Beluga. The words to some of those songs still periodically loop through my brain. At least ten more award-winning Raffi albums followed over the next few decades, selling over 12 million copies in total, but the environmentally-aware, Vancouver-based, Egyptian-born singer with a gentle, peaceful style left my growing daughters’ radar. Given his obvious respect for children and ecological advocacy, I wasn’t surprised to recently receive information about Raffi’s Covenant for Honouring Children, a poetic declaration of our responsibilities to children and the Earth, and of respect for the child as a whole person. It is being circulated through child advocacy and environmental health groups, and an audio version, featuring the voices of Raffi, Dr. Jane Goodall and the Dalai Lama, has been created. The Covenant (© 2004 Homeland Press) reads in part: “We find these joys to be self evident: That all children are created whole, endowed with innate intelligence, with dignity and wonder, worthy of respect. The embodiment of life, liberty and happiness, children are original blessings, here to learn their own song. Every girl and boy is entitled to love, to dream and belong to a loving village. And to pursue a life of purpose. “We affirm our duty to nourish and nurture the young, to honour their caring ideals as the heart of being human. To recognize the early years as the foundation of life, and to cherish the contribution of young children to human evolution.” Raffi is now devoting most of his time to reaching adults with that message. He is currently writing a book entitled Child Honoring: How To Turn This World Around, an anthology promoting respect for the first years of life as the best way to create a humane and sustainable world. Sounds syrupy, eh? It’s not. This guy is the real deal. Given his popularity and trust with kids, he gets tons of corporations wanting to license his songs to sell things to kids. And he always refuses, saying he won’t violate the kids’ trust. He even backed out of the Vancouver International Children’s Festival in 2000 after arriving to find it awash in corporate sponsorship. More about this refreshing guy and his work can be found at http://www.raffisongs.com. Posted: 2005/06/23 12:25 PM Becoming Voiceless – May 5, 2005 Today, I have been editing articles for the July/August issue of Life Learning magazine. Canadian broadcaster, writer and unschooling mom Beatrice Ekwa Ekoko has contributed a wonderful interview with popular unschooling writer and conference speaker Sandra Dodd, who lives in New Mexico. One of the things Sandra said to Beatrice during their wide-ranging conversation was: “If your child is bored, you could offer her three or four really cool things to do. Whereas, my mom and millions of other moms would say, ‘If you are bored mop the floor. If you’re bored, you can go and pull weeds.’ That is punishing a child for communicating with you!” As I read that quote, I flashbacked to circa 1960 and heard and saw my own mother using those same words. And I experienced all over again the hurt and frustration of being punished for innocently sharing my summer vacation dilemma. I’m not sure if my mother wanted to solve my boredom problem or punish me, but she most surely shut down future communication with her. Perhaps she truly believed that children – and perhaps women – should be, or actually were, voiceless. But Sandra’s words made me understand why today, at a sprightly and relatively independent 96 years of age, my mother seems apathetic. Her reaction to most of my suggestions is that she can’t be bothered. And why would anyone bother doing or saying anything if they had felt for most of their lifetime that their actions or words weren’t important? Posted: 2005/05/04 8:22 PM Trusting Ourselves and Our Children Is Not Regressive – April 1, 2005 Life learning families make choices that differ in some ways from current societal norms, and therefore sometimes struggle with the tensions and seeming contradictions inherent in those choices. Giving our children the honor of learning without schooling is bound to bump up against many other issues, from how a family makes its living to how the chores get done. I have been exploring some of those issues – both in my own life and in a broader context – as a result of the reader feedback I’ve been receiving to a recent Life Learning magazine column (see my March 21, 2005 blog entry – “Learning Neatness”). As part of that exploration, I am reading a book entitled The Paradox of Natural Mothering (2002, Temple University Press). Academic Chris Bobel has massaged her dissertation into a book that portrays a group of mothers engaged in homeschooling, natural health care, voluntary simplicity and various attachment parenting practices. The paradox in the title arises from what Bobel sees as a conflict between a lifestyle that is both progressive and regressive (i.e. anti-feminist). While the women she interviewed feel they are making choices in their lives, Bobel denigrates these as non-choices that are biologically determined because they are emotionally-based rather than intellectually thought-out. (Presumably, if they’d thought about their choices, they’d have behaved like more conventional mothers!) What these mothers are, in fact, doing is trusting their emotions, their intuition, their bodies and their children. Perhaps our societal agendas have swung us so far away from the inherent “knowing” that characterizes primitive societies that so-called “natural parenting” seems to contradict the principles of equality for women. My own life – and I would say those of the women Bobel has portrayed – is an ongoing pursuit of the balance between trust and intellect. Trust, after all, is one of the cornerstones of non-coercive parenting and life learning. Taking ownership of our own education and allowing our children to own theirs requires trust in what we call “human nature”. In the case of our children, that means trusting that they will behave sociably and want to learn things, including both academic knowledge and social skills...with our help and example, of course. Posted: 2005/04/01 12:10 PM Learning Neatness – March 21, 2005 I get a lot of feedback from Life Learning readers. And I love it, whether it’s praising or criticizing, because one of my goals for magazine editing is to challenge, provoke and get readers to think. And feedback means people are engaged with the magazine and care enough to share their opinions. However, the response to one recent piece is troubling me. Naomi Aldort’s column in the March/April issue, entitled “Who Should Clean Up the Mess?” seems to have hit a hot button for many women. Naomi asks us to recognize that most children aren’t motivated to clean up their own messes and argues against coercing them to do so, on the basis that it will only create resentment and dislike for the whole idea of cleaning up. And she says that parents should accept that the need for a clean house is theirs, not their children’s, and be honest about that with their children. “There is only one ‘mess’,” she writes, “and that is the confusion of mind which tells us to expect children to be who they aren’t or to do what they don’t.” Well! I have been ducking a firestorm of complaints ever since the article was published. We’re telling mom to be a doormat, wrote one irate reader. It’s not difficult to make the kids pick-up, said another. There is a need to address the parent’s resentments, according to one woman, if the family isn’t to live in a pigsty. Another woman wrote about having grown up in a household with a maid who picked up after the family and how “wrong and twisted” she has come to think that was. “What on earth were my parents thinking?” she cried. “Did they even care enough to think about it at all?” Whew. We appear to have unearthed a lot of deep feelings, including those about cleanliness and our roles as women and parents! I’m pretty sure the discussion will continue in the pages of Life Learning (we try to print all the letters we receive that include first and last names, plus the city where you live)...or in this blog if you are not a Life Learning reader. But I have to ask why we can trust that our kids will learn arithmetic on their own but can’t trust them to learn how to clean up messes. Why do these readers accept that real learning does not happen under coercion but feel the need to coerce their children to pick up after themselves? Why are we making a distinction between academic and life skills? One reader, who seems less stressed than some about the article in question, sent along this quotation for my quote collection: “Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they are more deadly in the long run.” ~ Mark Twain. Posted: 2005/03/21 10:41 AM Too Young to be Seen in Public – February 22, 2005 When my I clear out my in-box and find more than two references to the same topic, my curiosity is aroused (it doesn’t take much!). Today, the subject of homeschool ID cards has risen to the top of the pile. Homeschool organizations and individuals have, for years, been creating little cards to carry in their wallets to prove their kids are involved in a home-based education program and to allow them to get educational discounts in local curriculum and art supply stores. Companies are now sprouting up to negotiate such discounts and to sell a slicker version of these ID cards to consumers. My experience with self-educating families tells me they will be wary of such schemes for a variety of reasons, but it is a testimony of the size and maturity of the homeschool movement that such efforts are underway. However, there is a much darker side to the issue. Dig a bit deeper on the websites of such companies and you will be able to purchase an ID card for your kid too. These cards aren’t designed to make your kid feel part of a peer group or to get them discounts in stores. They are to keep your kid out of the hands of the police when they are outside during school hours. Since the mid to late 1990s, an increasing number of cities have been making it illegal for people under 18 to be outside during school hours unless accompanied by an adult or in possession of a permission slip from a parent or guardian. These municipal curfew laws allow police to stop and question someone just because they look young. What a gargantuan assault on the rights of young people! As an attempt to control truancy and juvenile crime, such laws are a failure, according to a 1998 study by San Francisco’s Justice Policy Institute, possibly since most crime simply isn’t committed during the day by kids between 5 and 18. Instead, they waste the time of police officers who could be doing something useful to fight crime and they promote negative feelings in young people about law enforcement agencies. Additionally, they make the archaic assumption that education only happens between certain hours in certain locations. In addition to self-educated young people whose education takes place primarily in the community, students in year-round schools or who attend schools with unusual days off or otherwise flexible schedules can also run afoul of these scandalously stupid curfew laws. I haven’t been able to find statistics for the number of cities that have enacted daytime curfews in the U.S. and Canada. But I was amazed to learn that in 1997, the United States Conference of Mayors identified 72 cities across the U.S. with daytime curfews; the momentum seems to be increasing and a quick Internet search uncovered a dozen or so that have enacted them over the past few months alone, plus two states – Illinois and Hawaii – that are considering state-wide daytime curfews.  Curfews – even of the more common overnight variety – have had less success in Canada; last summer, the Quebec Human Rights commission overturned one enacted by the town of Huntingdon (just north of the New York State border). But that’s not to say it couldn’t happen in this country. Some groups, like the Home Educators Association of Virginia (HEAV), have been battling daytime curfew laws. But it’s an uphill battle because the post-9/11 climate of fear is encouraging the erosion of human rights. And I don’t think most people like kids enough to tolerate their presence except in specialized holding facilities like schools. Nevertheless, I hope that all families who live in areas with daytime curfews – whether or not their kids attend school or learn elsewhere – will work to get them revoked. I also hope families who live in cities without them will make sure they never pass.  Posted: 2005/02/22 12:47 PM Hyper-parenting and its Backlash – December 3, 2004 You have to know that when two large, mainstream magazines write about something at the same time, there is a trend underway. And now, Canadian newsmagazine Maclean’s and Psychology Today are both raising the alarm that overparenting is harming kids. The cover story in the November 22 issue of Maclean’s is entitled “Stressed Out!”. It describes what it calls a “radical movement” that is saying no to preschool tutoring, flashcards and organized sports, that is letting kids be kids again and even allowing them to be bored sometimes. The trend that American psychiatrist Alvin Rosenfeld calls “hyper-parenting” – fretting that kids won’t be able to keep up in an increasingly globalized job market, subjecting kids to formal education at increasingly younger ages, pushing education as the focus of play and toys – has been around for awhile now. Even as more research surfaces to say that, for instance, early readers hold no long-term advantage over late readers, hyper-parents keep frantically trying to teach their babies to read. Now, I don’t imagine a hyper-anything turns into its laid-back opposite very easily. And true to form, hyper-parents will do the backlash with fervor. It apparently already has its movement manifesto – Muffy Mead-Ferro’s book Confessions of a Slacker Mom (Da Capo Lifelong, 2004). (Slacker moms – do we detect a touch of guilt in that term? – say No to parenting philosophies that undermine parents’ and children’s ability to think for themselves.) And, of course, every trend and counter-trend has its accompanying industry, this one involving an alarmingly large body of products and services dedicated to de-stressing kids’ lives, from seminars teaching parents how to back off, to yoga classes for kids. Ironically, hyper-parents may be in danger of making the cure worse than the ailment. Maclean’s author Sue Ferguson asks the rhetorical question: “Are we really capable of hands-off parenting?” And perhaps many of us aren’t, because along with pressuring their kids to perform, parents are, according to the November/December issue of Psychology Today, “going to ludicrous lengths to take the lumps and bumps out of life for their children.” This generation of parents seems so invested in their kids that if they’re not pushing they’re pulling. In the Psychology Today piece, which is entitled “A Nation of Wimps”, Hara Estroff Marano writes, “However well-intentioned, parental hyperconcern and microscrutiny have the net effect of making kids more fragile.” Part of the modus operandi of hyper-parents is to protect their kids, to take all the discomfort and disappointment out their children’s lives. So...these parents push and prod and pressure their kids, and then take away all opportunity to learn coping skills and, as a result, make them risk-adverse. In their desire to help their kids succeed, hyper-parents are setting them up to do just the opposite. What a pressure cooker! No wonder that anxiety is the most common cause of childhood psychological disorders, affecting approximately 20 percent of North American children. The Psychology Today piece quotes one child as telling his psychologist, “I wish my parents had some hobby other than me.” Well, even though the big magazines are writing about the subject (and my own Life Learning magazine – dedicated to helping parents let their kids have the space to learn – is steadily increasing its readership), I’m probably being too optimistic to think this backlash against hyper-parenting is gaining huge speed. Psychology Today’s writes, “Messing up, even in the playground, is wildly out of style. Although error and experimentation are the true mothers of success, parents are taking pains to remove failure from the equation.” I guess there is a long distance between knowing something and putting it into practice. Posted: 2004/12/03 4:27 PM Compulsory Childcare? – October 27, 2004 A report on the state of daycare in Canada has been released by the Paris-based Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). European researchers reviewed 20 countries for the child care report, released earlier this week. They said Canada’s system is chronically under-funded and is a patchwork of dismal programs offering little more than basic babysitting. Now, I am the first to agree that we need stable, well-funded daycare (and other kinds of babysitting) for those who want and need it. And we shouldn’t tolerate the shabby centers, poorly trained and underpaid workers, and lack of outdoor play space that the OECD researchers apparently found on their cross-country tour. Canada has among the highest percentage of working mothers of young children, yet it invests less than half of what other developed nations in Europe devote on average, according to the report. It recommended that federal and provincial governments each pay 40 percent of daycare costs, with parents making up the remaining 20 percent. However, I’m very worried about where this is going. In a Toronto Star article yesterday about the report, social worker and former Lieutenant-Governor of New Brunswick Margaret Norrie McCain was quoted as using the term “evidence-based early childhood development”. She said, “In the past, people thought of [daycare] as a babysitting service for moms to go to work.” Uh, yes, isn’t that what we’re talking about (with the possible inclusion of dads)? Nope, what we’re really talking about, according to Norrie McCain, is “falling behind in the ability of our people to compete on the world stage, in the global marketplace. It’s serious business.” Ah yes, that report was authored by an economic development organization, wasn’t it? Nervous yet? Well, how about this? OECD project manager John Bennett believes that neglecting child development is a pity because children are “very competent learners”. They can, he says, “do a great deal and if they’re given the right situation and the right support and the right professionals looking after them, children will learn to read and write quite quickly, they’ll be curious about nature, about their environment, it means they can communicate well together.” His report notes the importance of young children taking part in “an active, exploratory curriculum”. Such professional arrogance, such a lack of understanding about how kids learn! Why not put some public money into supporting parents so they can stay at home with their young children? Why not put some money into creating and supporting community institutions to help families learn together? But that’s clearly not where we are headed. In response to the report, Minister for Social Development Ken Dryden, who has responsibility for drafting a $5 billion national childcare plan, told reporters, “What the OECD report said, and very clearly and effectively, is we’ve approached child care in the past as a service... Now what we need to do is move from that to something that is a system.” He favorably compared the development of a childcare system to the way the public education system developed a century ago. And in doing so, he has inadvertently described one of the main problems with the public education “system” – it has never been a service! So...“evidence-based”, “curriculum”, “professionals”, “system”. How long until attendance at childcare becomes compulsory? Posted: 2004/10/27 11:48 AM Like Parent, Like Child – October 25, 2004 According to the results of a study released today by Statistics Canada, children raised by punitive parents are more likely to bully others, get into fist fights and be mean. The research paper entitled Aggressive Behaviour Outcomes for Young Children: Change in Parenting Environment Predicts Change in Behaviouris based on data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth. That research looked at 2,000 Canadian children over a period of six years. It was found that children aged two to three years who were living in punitive environments in 1994 scored 39 percent higher on a scale of aggressive behaviors, such as bullying or being mean to others, than did those in less punitive environments. The difference was even more pronounced six years later in 2000, when the children were eight to nine years old. Those who lived in punitive homes scored 83 percent higher on the aggressive behavior scale than those in less punitive homes. Both at age two to three and also at age eight to nine, children raised in a non-punitive parenting environment were much less likely than others to exhibit aggressive behavior, according to their parents. The level of aggression was not affected by household income or gender of the children. However – and here is what I find really interesting – the study found that as parents adjusted their parenting styles, their children were able to change as well. When parenting styles that had been punitive when children were two to three years old became less punitive six years later, children’s aggressive behavior scores also tended to be lower, regardless of how aggressively they had behaved while very young. In other words, children whose parenting environment changed from punitive at age two to three to non-punitive at age eight to nine scored just as low in aggressive behavior as those whose parenting environment was not punitive at either of those ages. Posted: 2004/10/25 1:16 PM Or Are They Growing Up Too Slowly? – August 9, 2004 Many of us know 20-somethings who are returning home to live with their parents...or we know (or are) the parents. An article in the July/August of Utne magazine calls these young people “adultescents” and quotes a year-old article in Psychology Today that blames the phenomenon on Baby Boomer parents who don’t want their adult children to grow up. These “permaparents” are supposedly impeding their adult offspring’s independence as a selfish extension of their manic parenting style. And yup, there are books on the topic too, such as All Grown Up: Living Happily Ever After with Your Adult Children by Roberta Maisel. So which trend is it anyway?? Parents rushing their kids into adulthood before they’re ready (see yesterday’s rant, below) or parents not allowing them to grow up? Can’t be both at the same time.  Let’s just listen to our kids and our hearts; ignore the trends, the fads and...this is heresy coming from a writer...the books; respect our kids for the individuals they are; stop beating ourselves up for not being perfect parents; and enjoy ourselves and our families. Now there’s a concept! Posted: 2004/08/09 5:58 PM At Their Own Speed – August 8, 2004 Yesterday, our youngest daughter left for her 2000 km-away home after a two-week visit. As always when a visit with one of our daughters ends, I have been thinking about their childhoods. By all accounts, those years, when they learned without school and we traveled often and far, were fun and carefree. They learned easily and joyfully, were stable and responsible children, and grew at their own comfortable speed into successful, happy adults. Watching them grow up reinforced my belief that our society expects too little of children, refusing to respect their rights and neglecting to listen to their opinions. But chatting with our daughter this past week, some concerns that have been lurking just under my consciousness began to surface. I began to wonder if their father and I could have done better (don’t we all?!) especially in terms of helping them make the transition to adulthood. Did they really grow up at their own speed, or did we expect too much from them too soon because – like most alternatively-educated and attachment-parented kids – they seemed sophisticated and confident at a relatively early age? In his book The Hurried Child, David Elkind writes that in blurring the boundaries of what is age appropriate, by expecting or imposing too much too soon, we force our kids to grow up too fast. But what, I argued with myself this morning, is “age appropriate”? And who decides? Elkind’s basic premise is that parents have pushed their children emotionally and intellectually too far, too fast. He says that today’s parents think of their kids as Superkids, so competent and so mature that they need adults very little. Why? Because, he believes, parents, who are building careers, blending families or struggling as single parents, have no time for child rearing. Having a competent Superkid relieves these parents of guilt, but it places too much stress on the children themselves. British psychologist Terri Apter takes Elkind’s premise a step farther. In her book The Myth of Maturity, she argues against the notion that when children finish high school or college and land a job they instantly become autonomous, responsible adults. This myth of maturity, she writes, is harming our kids. While a young person may appear to function as an adult, in reality they are often in turmoil, depressed and overwhelmed by life. So instead of withdrawing emotional or practical support so that their teenager can solve his or her own problems, Apter says we really should be providing continued guidance and support, while also requiring respect and independence. Looking back, I do recall feeling relieved (OK, smug too) that my kids seemed to be navigating teenagedom fairly easily. However, listening to them now, I realize that we probably sometimes fell off the fine line between expecting too much and too little. And while never withdrawing emotional support, their father did give them some not-so-subtle nudges out of the nest. But we didn’t feel any pressure to go along with the Superkid image out of fear that Heidi and Melanie would “lag behind”. And as autonomous, responsible children and teens, they naturally avoided the jolt that happens to the schooled kids Apter studied. And even though – for whatever reasons – I missed some things with which I probably could have helped, they grew quite gracefully into their 20s and now their 30s. Then, just as I had laid that concern to rest, I went shopping and noticed a plethora of adult-aimed items – from T-shirts and purses to tea towels – featuring Care Bears, Hello Kitty, Blues Cues and various Disney characters. Are young people, I wondered, feeling so cheated out of childhood that they have this level of nostalgia for novelties geared to a much younger audience? Are they revisiting the fantasy world of childhood because the real world is so scary, as an article in yesterday’s Toronto Star (one of a recent spate in the mainstream media) suggests? Writes columnist Margo Varadi, “There comes a point when young people can’t deal with the anxiety of feeling vulnerable all the time and want to be reassured.” Hmmm, I thought, as I read that line. There comes a point when people of all ages can’t deal with the anxiety of feeling vulnerable and want to be reassured! Maybe we all need a dose of childhood from time to time just because it’s comforting. Maybe nostalgia thrives as the world gets scarier. Posted: 2004/08/08 12:02 PM Controlling Behavior, Not Thinking – July 5, 2004 A Life Learning reader commented to me today that, in his opinion, setting limits to a child´s behavior is not controlling in the authoritarian sense of the term, because parents have to nourish and protect...and control their own sanity. He says that he and his wife never tried to control their (now adult) children´s thinking, their feeling, their selves or their learning. But they controlled their behavior when necessary. However, I always found that precisely because my husband and I didn´t try to control our (now adult) daughters´ thinking, etc., we seldom needed to control their behavior. Sure, when they were young, they sometimes followed their curiosity into potentially dangerous situations, but we made sure that we were there to rescue if necessary; as they got older, they learned to balance danger and risk...again, I believe, because they were allowed that opportunity. As for my sanity and that of my husband – well, I think we are as sane as we ever were! We have a few gray hairs to show for the process, but nobody ever said parenting was easy. Posted: 05/07/2004 10:48 PM Baby Signs – June 3, 2004 There is a new movement afoot called Baby Signing. It helps parents and young babies learn sign language in order to communicate prior to the children learning how to speak. Apparently, infants develop the fine muscles in their hands before they develop those required for speech, so they are equipped to communicate before they can speak, by the age of seven or eight months, according to researchers. At that age, they also have the conceptual ability to understand and use language. The sign language that is generally used is similar but not identical to American Sign Language, which is used by the hearing impaired (and that is an issue of controversy within the baby signing community). This could be seen as an extension of the gestures most babies learn to make, such as waving goodbye and pointing to mommy’s breast when it’s time to eat. Or it could be seen as an extension of the give-them-a-head-start/teach-your-baby-to-read philosophy, which I detest.  Drs. Linda Acredolo and Susan Goodwyn and child development specialist Joseph Garcia “discovered” baby signing in the 1980s. Acredolo and Goodwyn conducted the research for the National Institute of Health that is said to demonstrate the language and cognitive benefits of baby signing. Their research seems to show that teaching babies to sign increases their IQ and enables them to talk at an earlier age than those who don’t. Babies who sign apparently do better on infant IQ tests at age two. Age two??? Garcia is the author of Sign With Your Baby. Acredolo and Goodwyn authored the book Baby Signs: How to Talk With Your Baby Before Your Baby Can Talk.  And they have written other books, including a whole raft of baby signs for specific purposes titles and Baby Minds: Brain Building Games Your Baby Will Love. There are both supporters and skeptics of baby signing and the claims made in its favor. It seems to act as a bridge into speech, rather than delaying the spoken word. Some psychologists feel that any developmental advantages may come from the close contact between parent and child, rather than from signing specifically, and say that, like with early reading, everybody catches up in the end. Signing may reduce parental frustration and thus decrease family stress – ever tried to figure out whether your fretful baby was hungry, wet, uncomfortable, cold, hot or otherwise upset? And there certainly doesn’t seem to be any harm done, except perhaps to the family bank account. Like any movement – especially those that involve parents who are vulnerable to spending money because they want to give their kids a head start – this one is breeding an industry of baby sign language instructors, videos, CDs, books, websites and even home business opportunities. Posted: 03/06/2004 7:45 PM Who Decides? – May 29, 2004 This morning, I interviewed Mimsy Sadofsky, one of the founders of the Sudbury Valley School (SVS) in Framingham, Massachusetts. Founded in 1968, SVS is a democratically run school community, governed on the model of a traditional New England Town Meeting, which believes passionately in self-directed learning. Mimsy and I have both been involved with promoting self-initiated learning and freedom for kids for over 30 years. And although we were familiar with each other’s work, we had never met. However, although I enjoyed my chat with this warm and funny woman on the campus of The Beach School, a Toronto SVS, I was astounded to find the two of us to be on totally different wave lengths. And I was left with more questions about adult control and kid’s rights. Attendance at Sudbury Valley-style schools is compulsory and separation from parents at an early age is thought to be a good thing. Mimsy told me that is because it works better that way, that it says to kids this is a place to which  you need to make a serious commitment, even if you are little, that you need to go regularly so that relationships can develop, and that not being accountable to your parents during the day is empowering. However, I do not believe that a school can be truly democratic if attendance is compulsory. And I am not sure it makes much of a difference if the dictator is friendly...or a group made up of the participants. I also believe that kids can separate from their parents naturally, at their own pace, in the same way they learn at their own speed. My kids did. Posted: 29/05/2004 7:05 PM Overstimulating TV – April 25, 2004 Very young children who watch television face an increased risk of attention deficit problems by the time they go to school, according to a new study published in the journal Pediatrics. Researchers at the Children’s Hospital and Regional Medical Center in Seattle, Washington, suggest that TV might overstimulate and permanently rewire the developing brain. They studied the viewing habits and behavior of 1,345 children, and found that for every hour of television watched daily, two groups of children – ages one and three – faced a 10 percent increased risk of having attention problems at age seven. Behaviors cited included difficulty concentrating, acting restless and impulsive and being easily confused. The researchers didn’t know what shows the children watched, but lead author Dr. Dimitri Christakis says that content likely isn’t at fault. Instead, he says, unrealistically fast-paced visual images typical of most TV programming may alter normal brain development. Research has already shown that since the brain develops very rapidly during the first two to three years of life and that television watching can shorten attention spans. In fact, the American Academy of Pediatrics already recommends that children younger than two not watch television. In my opinion, that is good advice for people older that two as well! As Groucho Marx once said, “I find television very educational. Every time someone switches it on I go into another room and read a good book.” Posted: 4/25/2004 4:55 PM Lack of Power – April 21, 2004 Murray Milner Jr., a sociologist at the University of Virginia, says that the baffling social behavior of so many of today's teenagers is a reaction to the isolated and powerless role that adults have assigned to them. Milner is the author of a new book Freaks, Geeks, and Cool Kids: American Teenagers, Schools, and the Culture of Consumption (Routledge, 2004). Through extensive fieldwork by a team of researchers, he found that the elaborate social scenes constructed by teenagers are a logical response to the constraints of their lives. He says that living in a world ruled and regulated by adults, teenagers have few opportunities to shape the key features of their lives. And so they exert control over their school social scene – with a vengeance. “Why this near obsession with status? It is because they have so little real economic or political power. They must attend school for most of the day and they have only very limited influence on what happens there.... They do, however, have one crucial kind of power: the power to create an informal social world in which they evaluate one another.”  Milner’s findings also suggest that our consumer society plays an influential role in the lives of status-conscious teenagers: “Perhaps the thing that American secondary education teaches most effectively is a desire to consume,” he writes. Posted: 4/21/2004 10:24 AM Laziness – April 20, 2004 Few things seem to trouble parents more than the possibility their kids might be lazy. I guess it’s the legacy of that old Puritan Work Ethic (and you don’t have to be part of any particular religion to suffer from it!). Like our current style of schooling, which is based on  it, the belief that hard work makes you a better human being dates back to the Industrial Revolution. It might have been a useful tool for factory owners trying to make their employees productive, but it can actually be counterproductive today. Those who can work smarter and more creatively often get further ahead in today’s workplace. And they certainly live happier, more balanced lives. The Puritan Work Ethic is especially damaging in terms of education, where work for its own sake just doesn’t make sense. Students are often asked to put in long hours in the classroom and doing homework, experiences that seldom produce much real learning. What we call “play”, on the other hand, often results in a great deal of learning. The problem for many adults is their lack of trust in children’s innate ability – yes, their drive – to learn. As a result, they mistrust what seems like inactivity, forgetting that our brains can be very active while our bodies are at rest. Oh, and that fear of growing up lazy? Kids who are able to pursue the results of their own interests and passions work harder than those who are made to do meaningless work. That just makes people aimless and unproductive. Posted: 4/20/2004 1:56 PM Distraction from Interaction – April 9, 2004 A new study by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation and the Children’s Digital Media Centers has uncovered some astounding news about young children’s use of electronic media. The study is called Zero to Six: Electronic Media in the Lives of Infants, Toddlers and Preschoolers and it surprised even its authors. In surveying over 1,000 families, the researchers found that American children six and under spend an average of two hours a day using screen media. This is about the same amount of time they spend playing outside and well over the amount they spend reading or being read to and otherwise interacting with caring adults! Posted: 4/9/2004 10:18 AM 4/9/2004 10:18 AM 4/9/2004 10:18 AM 4/9/2004 10:18 AM