Nurturing Your Children’s Passions 

It’s a new year! Your children may become anxious about how to fill long dark winter days. What can you do as parents to nurture their passions? When your children tend to shut down on cold winter days, you may feel overwhelmed and frustrated on how your family will get through the winter months without going crazy.

Questions to Ask Your Kids to Identify Passions

Here are some questions you can ask your children to get them thinking about what they would like to do or explore during their free time:

1. What do you love most about school?
2. What would you like to do to keep your body moving on cold winter days?
3. What is your favorite playtime activity?
4. What do you like to do outside?
5. Who would you like to do a project with? What would you do for a project?
6. What would you like to learn about? How do you want to learn about this topic?
7. Where would you like to go to learn more about a specific topic?
8. Is there a museum or activity program that explores or provides training about a topic of interest?
9. What can I do to support your interests?
10. What should we research online to identify classes or learn more about your topic of interest?

Some of the Best Projects Come from Our Children

Children are capable of planning incredible projects when you encourage them with your actions. For example, Maria loves art and shares art projects with her friends. She creates temporary tattoos by drawing creations with marking pens on an absorbent sheet of paper. Then she places the marking pen art against her skin and dampens the sheet of paper with a paper towel. She is very impressed with transferred tattoos. Her sister, Anna, loves to create finger weaving leashes for her collection of stuffed animals. Rosie, her cousin, designs and sews doll clothes for her doll. She has also has created an Etsy account to sell customized Cricut stickers.

Science experiments generate lots of questions that must be answered. Brandon experimented with various hand sanitizers and surface cleaners to determine which products killed the most germs. Dave learned how to code and created various digital games.  Marla won an ecology award for learning how to continuously water trees while conserving water with various irrigation systems.

Passions Lead to Internships and Careers

Although these art projects and science experiments sound like educational and exciting rainy-day activities, several led to future internships and career choices. Maria now works in a store creating graphic art designs for tee shirts and other products. She plans to major in graphic art design when she starts college. Anna loves project-based learning and wants to inspire kids by becoming a project-based elementary teacher. Brandon has expanded his scientific interests and is currently becoming certified as a train engineer at a local park. Dave is getting ready to apply to colleges. He wants to eventually construct mass transit systems. I loved playing school when I was a kid and am still teaching students after 40 years in education.

Share in the comments section below this blog what passions you may have developed as a child that led to a satisfying career. Much success as you continue to support your children’s passions.

10 Strategies to Get Your Child Excited About Learning

Each fall most students return to school and are excited about their new grade level and teacher assignments. Some become anxious because school is challenging for them. Others may have a history of struggling to learn or functioning successfully in a classroom setting. These students need added intervention support to ensure that they will succeed in school.

Here are ten proven strategies that parents can reinforce at home:

1. Identify a response for your child that motivates them to respond positively when encountering a challenging situation or difficult task.
2. Consistently reinforce each positive behavior with this motivating response.
3. Many children become overwhelmed when they must rush through life with too many scheduled activities. Pace their lives with balanced times for eating, sleeping, family activities, exercise, chores, and screen time.
4. Give your child time to chill. Some children need to find a quiet place to decompress when they are overstimulated or agitated about a situation. Give them the space they need away from too much stimulation or annoying situations.
5. Respect your child’s individual differences. Children need to feel valued and supported by their parents. Encourage them to reflect on the value of their many strengths and how they can effectively overcome various challenges.
6. Give your child the gift of your personal attention. Today’s parents are busy. Their children are busy. Slow down and find time to talk with your child daily. Hug them and love them for who they are.
7. Schedule time for your child to socialize with other children. Today’s families are overly scheduled with work, planned activities, and life’s responsibilities. Ensure your child has opportunities to play with other children and make friends. These experiences will help them learn how to plan and work more effectively with classmates and lifelong friends.
8. Limit screen time. Ongoing research indicates that children are more anxious, depressed, and challenged with too much screen time. Some children stay up late at night monitoring electronic devices. Others become addicted to online games and texting instead of building personal relationships.
9. Walk your talk. Apply what you say to what you do. For example, do you balance your daily life and allow time for eating, sleeping, family activities, exercise, and limit screen time?
10. Finally, express gratitude for all that is good in your life, your children’s lives, and in your community

Happy new school year of many successes!

Recycling and Environmental Conservation 

I am passionate about conserving resources and mindful recycling (or reducing waste). Each school year I want to help students become aware of what is going on around them in relevant and useful ways. My hope is for each child to connect with something that interests them as they become an advocate or steward for change and making a difference in their community.

Get Kids Excited

Initially, I get the kids excited about their learning environment by adopting a class mascot. Last year our class adopted sea otters. We learned that sea otters are important in managing sea urchins and keeping the ocean’s kelp forests healthy. Students were excited as they learned more about these topics:

• Sea otters are aquatic engineers and balance harm to ocean environments.
• Kelp feeds sea otters and absorbs carbon in the ocean.
• Management of microplastics and single use plastics in the environment can reduce pollution.
• Effective conservation strategies in the home, community, and the environment can have a significant impact on waste reduction.
• Kids can make a difference in their communities.
• Honey bees are important in balancing the ecosystem.

Learn About Recycling

Our end of the year project was to invent and create new objects on collage boards after collecting recycled trash at school and in neighborhoods. The students worked as teams to build a honey bee playground. They used plastic tape, food packaging, bubble wrap, cereal cups, straws, and plastic bags. As students worked on their projects, they learned it takes 20 years for a plastic bag to decompose and 200 years for a plastic straw. Now their next challenge will be to study products that can made from these byproducts. For example, I recently purchased a recycled purse made from cork and gave a friend a recycled cosmetic bag with recycled soaps.

Limit Waste

As we enter our next school year, what can students, parents, and teachers do together to limit the pollution and waste in our communities? Please share your ideas in the comments section below this blog.

Long-Distance Moving with Kids

My world feels a bit upside down.  Or at least sideways.  I am part of the “sandwich generation,” trying to balance raising my family while caring for aging parents.  My mom was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s a few years ago. In the next month, we will be moving halfway across the country to be closer to my parents.

Our family has had many conversations about the move, as we process the pros and cons of starting a new life in the Midwest. While my kids are excited about the big move, each of them has unique concerns.

Getting a Job

My oldest is excited to move close to family and already has a new job lined up.  As the most extroverted of my children, his apprehensions about the move surround leaving close friends behind. It is important to help him to find ways to stay connected with old friends while he makes new ones in the coming months.  We toured his new school on a recent trip to our new state, which helped him get excited about new opportunities and friendships.

Keeping Life Simple

My middle daughter has a rare genetic syndrome. Change is difficult for her to process.  Keeping some type of normalcy during this transition is very important for her.  We talk often about the places, people, and activities in our new home that she already knows and loves. I researched and found that my daughter’s inclusive sports organization here in California has a league within driving distance of our new home.  Her amazing speech therapist, who has worked with our daughter for almost ten years, offered to get licensed in our new state and continue services via Zoom.  These familiarities help ground and stabilize my daughter during this big change.

Caring for the Pets

My youngest daughter has many friends, but loves animals most of all.  Because of the long-distance move, some of our animals from our hobby farm had to be rehomed.  I knew this would be the hardest part of moving for my daughter.  I gave her full license to approve and suggest new homes for the animals we could not move with us.  We planned a way to move our three cats ahead of us.  They are now waiting for us at my parents’ home and in typical feline fashion, are not homesick for us at all.  Our Bassett Hound, Betsy, will be riding shotgun in the U-Haul next month, drooling her dog-breath in my face for all 2500 miles!  We have plans to buy new baby chicks soon after landing in the Midwest, and my daughter has reminded us about the importance of buying a property with enough room to house her new menagerie of animals.

Accepting Change

The excitement and anxiety about this moving transition are unique to each child. Allowing them to grieve, plan, and discuss the move in their own ways gives them a sense of agency over this big life change.

Why Do We Lose Our Minds?

Two conversations this week made me question why it is as parents that we sometimes lose our collective minds. One conversation was with the parents of a 9th grader and the other was with the parents of a 6th grader. While on different topics, there was a clear tie that interlinked these two talks.

9^th Grade Student’s Academic Progress Concerns

The conversation with the 9th-grade parents was about the academic progress of their child. Their child received perfect grades in the first semester of their high school career. The parents were not excited about this, however. They were upset because when they started to plan out the courses their son would take in the 10th-grade year, their student did not want to take all Advanced or Honors classes. The parents shared that this had already led to three conversations ending in tears. I asked a direct question of the parents to understand their frustration. “Why are you upset by this?” Their answer was that their child would never receive Valedictorian or the best scholarships if they did not take the hardest courses.

6^th Grade Student’s Basketball Team Challenges

The conversation with the 6th-grade parents was about their child’s playing time on the school basketball team. The parents were seeking support in their frustration with the coaches and the way they were running their program. As former coaches, they did not receive much support.

Again, I asked a question. “Do you think the coaches dislike your child enough that they are willing to lose or negatively impact the rest of the team just to make them unhappy?” They agreed this was not the case. So, we found some common ground in understanding that the coaches were probably doing the best they could and with the best intentions. The conversation eventually ended.

How Parents Can Model Respect for School Leadership

The worst part of the experience was that this conversation was taking place IN FRONT OF THEIR CHILD. As the parents belittled and criticized the coaches for not showcasing their daughter’s talents more, they were unwittingly empowering their child to show the same level of disrespect for the coaches and future coaches, leaders, and bosses.

If these two conversations were outliers, I would not feel compelled to write this blog. The issue is that conversations such as these seem to be more of the norm instead of the exception. And to be clear, I have been as guilty as anyone for losing my mind in this manner on an issue or two in the past.

When thinking of how I wanted to address this issue, I was fortunate enough to read a great reflection by Paul Assaiante. His reflection prompted me to consider how to best help parents when they lose sight of what is actually important. He encouraged supporting parents to reframe their thinking by asking them about their “Big Three”.

First, ask them to write down the three most important things they WANTED for their child when they were born. They will likely respond with them being happy, healthy, cared for, prepared for the world, or some other altruistic end.

Next, ask them to write down the three most important things they WANTED for their child when it comes to whatever activity they have seemed to lose perspective regarding. For instance, if it is academics, the question would be what do you want for your child as a result of their schooling experience. If the issue pertains to athletics, the prompt is what did you want your child to get out of the experience of playing competitive sports.

Then ask them to analyze their current behaviors and to evaluate whether how they are conducting themselves would likely result in any of those six areas being actualized. This also clearly works for other scenarios outside of academics and athletics.

A Win – Win for Students, Parents, and School Leadership

In the case of academics, parents would likely answer that they want their child to learn how to learn, find their voice, become a lifelong learner, develop critical thinking skills, create friendships, become a better communicator, and/or learn how to operate in society.

In the case of athletics, parents would likely answer that they want their child to become a good teammate, learn how to push themselves, respect authority, put the good of the group ahead of their individual interests, sportsmanship, and/or learn how to lead a group of their peers.

The issue is in the midst of the moment, as parents we somehow collectively lose our minds and all focus on the things WE say are important to us. We become consumed with things like class rank, playing time, and social status.

The trick in breaking this trend and not losing our mind is simple, but hard to hear (and read). TYPICALLY, when we lose focus on what we originally wanted for our children and do not act in accordance with what WE originally said was important, it is when we are operating based on OUR EGO and not what is best for our children. Even if you can rationalize that this is not about your ego and you are just protecting your child, please remember that if we never allow our kids to experience failure we are setting them up for catastrophic consequences when the ‘real world’ inevitably punches them in the face.

I cannot overstate the importance of taking the time to consider the WHY behind your interactions with your children. The ability to take a step back and evaluate our behaviors and their alignment with what we actually want for our children may be the difference between your child growing to love academics or athletics or them hating it as they grow older. More importantly, this may also be the difference between a healthy relationship with your kids or a toxic relationship.

Whenever we lose sight of what we want for our kids and start acting in accordance with what we want for ourselves, we must actively take a second to put our own egos in check and remind ourselves that protecting our children from all struggles and failures is a recipe for disaster.