11 Ways to Foster Independence

Developing Skills, Grit and Resiliency through Trial, Trust and Failure. 

After reading and agreeing with popular articles explaining how losing is good for kids, that grit is essential for success and that a 4th R – resiliency – has been added to child-rearing, it seemed like the next logical, large scale conversation might be:

• How do we allow failures to occur naturally in our child’s life?
• What will it look like to foster independence?
• Can my child handle what comes along?
• What can I do to encourage and show trust in my child?

Failures occur naturally when we allow our children to take a more active role in their own lives by providing them with ample opportunities to choose. Young children, with not much life experience, are bound to choose to play with a favorite toy instead of getting their snack or lunch ready for school, resulting in a hungry belly at snack time. The result is a learning experience that provides good information for the following day and a chance to develop resiliency as they experience a minor failure.

Here are 11 Ways to Put Trying, Failing and Recovery into the Everyday

1. Send the kids outside.
   
   Often, we send the kids outside when we’ve decided we’ve had enough. Enough screen time, enough rough-housing, or enough whining because they are “bored.” Instead of using outside time as a reaction to enough of something, get creative and spin it. Show the children how you used to make teeter-totters out of scrap wood. Or better yet, leave a pile of wood, nails and a hammer and see what happens. If your child is younger, allow for time to play in a puddle, pile of leaves or muddy zone. There are countless ideas out there.
    
2. Ask the kids.
   
   Consider asking your children to identify one thing they have never done, then encourage and enable them to try. The end result is not the goal. The process is! Give it a try, simply ask, “What is one thing you have never done but would like to try?” Then plan how and when, and simply be there without commentary, as they give it a go.
    
3. Start small.
   
   After we ask, we have to allow our kids to make toast, knowing it will lead to making eggs and pancakes one day. We have to slow down and say, try it. Even if as Lenore Skenazy says, “Maybe these tasks seem small, even silly, but in a culture that has created mountains of fear around every childhood experience, these kids (who are encouraged to try) have started their climb. Pretty soon, they’ll be ready to fly.”
    
4. Share stories.
   
   When we look to other people, to our own childhood stories and success stories from other children, it becomes easier to put it all in perspective. For example, Ringo Starr, a surviving Beatle, was chronically ill as a child and never finished school, in fact he spent many years in the hospital. It keeps things in perspective to think one of the most famous, beloved drummers in history discovered his own talent while tapping sticks to pass the time in his hospital stay. This certainly wasn’t a picture perfect- mom- and-dad-will-make-it-happen-route and he turned out pretty successful on his own, don’t you think?
    
5. Encourage other parents.
   
   Parents talk. Parents want what is best for their children. Avoid showing off what your child can do, but rather encourage other parents to discover for themselves that their children CAN handle more than they think.
    
6. Identify your fears.
   
   After your child has chosen a task, it’s helpful to write down the fears you have. Once you do this, you can plan for how you will respond if your worst fears actually come true. (Example: If I let my child pack her bag, she will forget her boots. I am afraid the school with think I am a bad parent. Plan: I will send a note saying I am encouraging my child and if she forgets her boots, we will work on ways to remember them at home.)
    
7. Get the facts.
   
   After writing down your fears, get the facts. If you’re afraid of the bigger, “what- ifs” like abduction, find out the real stats and then plan accordingly. See Protecting the Gift by Gavin de Becker. Bottom line: instead of putting the axe on an idea altogether, find another way to create the same experience through alternative planning and enabling.
    
8. Let go.
   
   Here’s where we, as moms and dads, have some work to do on ourselves as we develop the habit of letting go. We can try to control the outcomes and direction of our children while they are young, but as our children get closer and closer to leaving the nest, it is imperative that they learn and practice staying afloat and recovering in the wake of mistakes and mishaps. If we impede their progress neither of you will be prepared for what the real world will deliver from 18-years to 80-years-old.
    
9. Practice, practice, practice.
   
   In order for kids to experience and garner meaning and develop resiliency from the lumps and bumps, the ups and downs, the oopsies and flops that go hand-in-hand with all learning, kids will need oodles of practice time. And as parents, we have our own job to practice stepping out of the way and trusting our children. No parent I know is likely to wake up one day saying, “Alrighty kiddo- this time you’re on your own.” Likewise most kids won’t wake up one day saying, “No problem, I didn’t make the team or I forgot my lunch, I’ve got this,” without some practice. Baby steps and practice are good for everyone in the family.
    
10. Keep track.
    
    When parents keep track of the efforts and outcomes, it becomes very clear that over time, these “simple” tasks add up. They also keep motivation high and evidence in hand that yes, children do benefit from us backing off and staying quiet (grab the duct tape) and showing our kids that we have faith in their abilities to tackle new things and overcome failures.
     
11. Celebrate!
    
    If your second-grader made eggs for the first time (after four failed attempts with shells in the scramble), he’s a rockstar because he’s taking on more responsibility and he did it. He made it through the failures, as minimal or as grand, as they may seem to us. This is progress! Have a big breakfast and make it a celebration.

As children grow and mature, parents can foster independence by allowing children to make choices, learn from them, make necessary course corrections, experience failure and success and develop the resiliency they require to tackle any of life’s challenges and obstacles. As the Buddhist Quote says, “Fall down seven times, get up eight.” 

- By Vicki Hoefle (Guest Blogger) 

Join me for a lively workshop on Monday, October 6th, 7-9pm,
right here at Hollis Montessori School. Details & Directions

Vicki Hoefle
Creator, Parenting on Track (TM)
Author, Duct Tape Parenting
www.vickihoefle.com

From the Mouths of Babes: Our Top 10

Language is essential to humanity, but it is something we often take for granted.  It allows us to communicate our thoughts and emotions and lays the foundation for reading and writing.  It sets apart entire cultures.  

Anyone who has children of their own, or those of us who work with children know the great capacity of their ability to listen and to speak. Maria Montessori, who had her own gift for words said, "At the base of every language is the great register of the sounds of the language - the child. The child is, as it were, a machine made by nature for this task. The child hears the sounds exactly.  That is in itself marvelous....The child has no preparation either, yet nature has given him this immeasurable gift which is that of registering and fixing these sounds in exact measure.  The adult prepares the intelligent part, the child takes it up, fixes it, keeps it." (Creative Development in the Child)

Sometimes we marvel at their words, and sometimes we wish we had been more careful speaking around their little ears.  Either way, children certainly have their own unique way of communicating. In that light, here is the top 10 list of gems we have compiled "from the mouths of babes":

1. "I know the biggest number in the world.  It's five thousand, two hundred, fifty-three hundred thousand twenty-seven."
    
2. Child approaching Guide with a tangled necklace halfway around his head, "Can you help me with this?  It won't fit.  My head grew too much."
    
3. Child:  Today is my daddy's birthday!
   Guide: Well tell your daddy happy birthday for me!
   Child:  Ok.  He's turning um, 90, well, I think 91 today.
    
4. "We have to have our heads checked to make sure no lace is in our hair." (child referring to a lice check)
    
5. "I saw a mommy worm and then I went away and came back and it gave birth to three baby worms!"
    
6. "My mom said I can't choose that work."
    
7. Child:  "My dad has a job."
   Guide: "What does he do in his job?"
   Child:  "He rides his bicycle all over the place and sells pieces of plastic."
    
8. After an informative discussion on spitting and germs, a child excitedly waved her hand to share a comment:  "Well one time when I was a little baby, I stuck my hand all the way down my throat and threw up all over my bed."
    
9. "My grandma sleeps ALLLLLLLLLL day.  Until the afternoon!"
    
10. Guide (asking a child if he is available for a presentation):  "Are you free?"
    Child:  "No!  I'm 4!"

-Becky (Children's House Guide)

A Rusty Cider Season

It was most dismaying to return to school in August, looking forward to a new cider season, only to find the leaves and fruit in our orchard covered with bright orange and black spots. A mild and rainy spring had caused our trees to become infected with the fungus cedar apple rust. Now our apples are small and pithy. We’ll have a lot less cider this year unless we can find another source for apples. Woodmont Orchard across the street, which has most kindly helped us out in the past, has fewer apples to spare this year. After a bumper crop in 2013, the harvest is likely to be a bust this year.

Cedar apple rust has an interesting life cycle. It requires both apples (or other rose-related species) and cedars (or other juniper-related species) in order to propagate. This spring, spores produced on junipers, wild or cultivated, landed on our apple leaves and blossoms just as they were emerging and were able to grow because the temperature was between 45 and 75° and were damp with rain. Orange spots formed as the mycelia that forms the body of the fungus invaded the plant cells. Damaged leaves means fewer nutrients for the tree and less healthy fruit for us. A couple months later spores were produced by those spots. Carried by the wind some of those millions will land on cedars planted in neighboring yards or on low-lying junipers down in Spalding Town Forest. There over the next year they will form a gall. Then, during the next spring rains, strange orange tentacle-like protrusions will emerge from the gall. Within a few hours these will begin to produce spores that the fungus forcibly propels into the air. And these float away, some perhaps to land and grow again on our trees.

Prevention is difficult. Removing all local cedars and junipers is challenging. Some apple cultivars are resistant. Spraying with a sulphur will reduce or even eliminate the infection, as will powerful fungicides. Sulphur is considered an organic solution. The rust does not kill the trees. Some simply hope that conditions are not, as they were this year, perfect for spore germination. As a back-up, we are considering working with a local farmer who might be able to spray our trees with sulphur when conditions warrant (and the children are away).

-Jim Webster

Connections that Stick

Source: Harvard Center of the Developing Child

When we hold our babies for the first time we look into their little faces and think of all the potential they posses. It’s an amazing feeling. Some parents also think about what a great responsibility it is to help them become the best person they can be. It may seem like a daunting task, but it isn’t. We just need to understand how to guide them. At birth, their brains are ready to learn all that we have to teach them. 

Every experience that a young child has helps them to learn. Physiologically, these experiences help build the necessary connections between cells in the brain.  Things children experience through the senses make the strongest connections. The child needs to have an experience and then the language that accompanies that experience. It’s this process that also helps make a connection between the cells, and when a child has the same experience over and over again, the connection gets stronger and stronger. Research shows that a child needs at least ten repetitions to make a connection.

During the first year of life, the brain is the most active and these connections are being made more than any other time in the child’s life. Every sight, sound, smell, touch or taste is a possible connection. If the baby continues to have an experience the connection will get stronger. If the baby does not have the experience again, the connection will likely die away. The phrase “use it or lose it” is very true.

Young children go through periods of time when they are most open to receiving certain information. These are called “sensitive periods” or “windows of opportunity.” During these times the child is drawn to learning a particular skill and will learn it easily without very much “teaching” on the adult’s part. First, we must know what sensitive periods the child goes through and at what time in their lives, and then we must provide the child with the tools he needs to learn during that period. The sensitive period for language lasts for the first six years of life, so it’s important for us to provide the child with rich experiences full of opportunities for listening and practicing during this time. From ages three to six the child is in a sensitive period for learning manners and social skills. We must provide the child with social experiences and opportunities to practice those skills. When we miss a sensitive period, the skill may still be learned later, but it will be more difficult. 

During the early years, until six years old, if you look at a brain scan you will see what looks like an electrical storm. Connections are being made everywhere in the brain. Every experience is a potential connection. If you look at a brain scan of an early elementary child there are many, many connections. The connections are already made and the child is working on strengthening useful connections and paring down the connections they don’t need. They are organizing the information they will need in their lives and their own culture. Later, if they have had a forgotten something in the past and come back to learn it again, it will not be as hard because the brain will recognize it as a past experience or skill. For example, if a young child learned a second language, but then never used it and forgot it, as an adult it would not be as hard to learn it again as it would be for an adult who had never learned or heard that language as a young child.

It is important to give a child what they need according to their stage of development. To give our child the optimal environment for learning, we must always be learning and creating an enriching environment. And we must research and look for schools with teachers and administration who understand brain development in the child and support the child accordingly.

-Carla

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For more information on the developing brain, the following books are an excellent resource:

What’s Going on in There?: How the Brain and Mind Develop in the First Five Years of Life, by Lise Elliot

The Absorbent Mind, by Maria Montessori

Source: Harvard Center of the Developing Child

How to be a Montessori Parent

Just like there is more to being a mother than conceiving and bearing a child, there is more to being a Montessori parent than sending your child to Montessori school.  Being a Montessori parent involves taking a real interest in what your children are doing in school, engaging in the school community and making Montessori a way of life outside of school.

I haven’t had any training but I think I understand some basic tenets of the Montessori method and it seems like the most natural way to learn in my mind - similar to the way a mother duck or horse teaches their young. They show the little ones what to do (the presentation), encourage them to try it on their own (the work) and then allow them to rely on their new skill (independence).

In our quest to be Montessori parents, my wife and I try to remind ourselves to observe a few key guidelines that are worth thinking about:

1. Let children play - resist the urge to over-organize free time and allow active play time. Play fosters imagination, creative problem solving and interpersonal skills when others are involved.

2. Dive into things they show interest in - like showing how a key actuates a deadbolt - allow time for questions and comprehension.  This is hands-on learning which always sinks in quickly but even more indelibly when they are asking for it.

3. Let them do it - try to wait a little longer than is comfortable before jumping in to help them when they are trying to do something such as tie their shoes, pronounce a new word or graph an equation.  There’s nothing better than the feeling of accomplishment to help children develop self confidence and independence.

4. Keep them by your side - don’t stick them in front of the TV or iPad when you need to get things done around the house.  This requires patience and it will take longer to get things done at first but children want to do what their parents do and they want to help. Eventually, this pays off when the “help” turns real and they are picking up life skills.

Of course, this all requires commitment and tremendous effort but it is as important as being a good mother or, maybe, it’s just part of being a good mother (or father).

-John (HMS Parent)