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Volume II, No. 1 THE SUPPORT OF OTHERS “Who of us is mature enough for offspring
before the offspring themselves arrive? The value of marriage is not that
adults produce children but that children produce adults.” Peter DeVries The Tunnel of Love EMOTIONAL SUPPORT It was a
Wednesday evening and a group off women sat comfortably in a circle on the
thick, shag carpeting. Propped against pillows and furniture, they nibbled on
snacks and sipped drinks as they discussed mothering. Tonight most off their
husbands were at home spending time with the children. These
women had already formed a Mother’s Study Group which met in a more formal
atmosphere twice a month. Topics were scheduled for discussion and everyone
took turns making presentations. They discussed subjects ranging from “Loving
What We’re Doing” to “Sharing Our Teaching Resources.” This was their first
step toward creating a support group for mothers who were teaching their tiny
children. This led
to their designing workshops to help both parents learn new patterns in
parenting. Eventually, classes such as S.T.E.P.* became available, adding
another dimension to parent support groups. This
special Wednesday night meeting was arranged to discuss the next step in this
process. After an evening off warm discussion, everyone decided that the next
emphasis would be on a deeper sharing of feelings. Since Mothers’ Study Group
already met two afternoons a month, it was chosen as the place to start. The
first meeting of the month would be slated to brainstorm ways to build
emotional support. It was a nice way to end the meeting and a great way to
start the new year. PARENTS TOGETHER However valuable your written resources are,
there’s no substitute for talking with other parents. An approach that worked
with your first child may not be working with your second. A technique that
worked a month ago may be ineffective now. You may even discover that
something you tried unsuccessfully at one point may be just the thing for
today. There’s a special kind of encouragement that comes from sharing ideas
with people who have similar concerns. Parents usually exchange ideas spontaneously —
especially when confronting challenges. Although they may have widely
differing opinions of what a tiny child can do, most parents are united in
their desire to feel more effective. Some are also seeking better ways to
feed their children’s natural hunger for learning. This desire to understand
more — and to feel understood — pulls parents together through generation
after generation. Even with inflation, Americans today have more
leisure time than any generation before them. Having gone beyond toiling for
basic survival, people have more time to think about self-improvement.
Although fathers have always felt a deep interest in their children, they are
becoming more vocal in examining their roles as parents. Simultaneously,
women are exploring their roles as mothers and responding to their husbands’
increasing involvement. PARENTS IN YOUR AREA Many cities already have parent support
groups. If you’ve been unable to find one which suits your needs, you can
create your own by meeting with several friends. If you wish to reach out
beyond your existing circle, you may be able to make contacts through one of
the following areas: 1) La Maze classes are filled with parents who
are excited about the coming births of their babies, and eager to respond to
their infants’ needs; 2) Montessori schools are good places to meet parents
who are interested in early childhood education 3) Classes such as parent Effectiveness
Training (P.E.T.) and S.T.E.P offer a good place to discuss feelings and
behavior; and 4) Your apartment building or neighborhood may
also have parents who’d enjoy being able to discuss the joys and challenges
of child-rearing. GETTING STARTED If you join an established parents’ group, the
format will be set. All you need to do is add your own ideas. If you decide
to meet with a few friends, you’ll need to plan your own: What kind of
atmosphere do you want? How often will you get together? What does each
individual most hope to get from the discussions? What questions or feelings
does the group want to deal with first? Will you use suggested readings as a
base for discussion? The amount of planning you do for this will
depend on the personalities of the people in the group. The key point is to
create a relaxed, supportive environment where each parent feels respected and
encouraged. Encouragement is support, and that’s a great thing to have when
we’re growing with our parenting *
Don Dinkmeyer and Gary McKay – Systematic
Training for Effective Parenting FIELD TRIPS FOR EARLY LEARNERS Field trips have long been an infrequent but
popular part of public school programs. Often the few memories we have of our
public school years are of the special, places we visited on field trips.
These experiences are so rich that one group of parents decided that their
children shouldn’t have to wait to enjoy them... Quietly,
a group of mothers and children filed into the high school band room. Ranging
in ages from 18 months to almost six years off age, all of the children were
interested in what they were about to hear. The
instructor started the session by asking a band member to play a scale on the
clarinet. After a brief period off joking among the students, the clarinetist
played the scale and the field trip was well under way. With a
good natured exchange between all, selected students took turns playing each
of the instruments in the band. Scales sounded from piccolos and bassoons,
xylophones and flutes. Each in its own time, cymbals, drums and gongs
resounded throughout the room. Trumpets, tubas and trombones each took their turn,
till all the instruments in the band had received a personal introduction. After
the children listened to each instrument, the band moved into rehearsal. No
performances today. This was a behind-the-scenes look at the work and rework
necessary to perfect a piece for public performance. The
instructor used hands and baton to signal the students for a specific result.
He was relaxed in his instructions and yet his leadership was clear. He
snapped out the beat on his fingers to point out just how a group of
instruments should enter the piece. He told one group to come in stronger,
another to soften its sound. He had the big picture, and the students worked
with him to play the piece with feeling and accuracy. As the band continued
to play, the mothers occasionally whispered to their children, pointing out
specific things that were happening. Whenever
some of the children signaled readiness to leave, their mothers quietly took
them out of the room. They’d had just enough of a good visit and now it would
be fun to take a break. This field trip was possible because a group
of mothers decided to set aside one day a week to visit places of special
interest. Fathers with flexible schedules also take their children from time
to time. Because they have created a parents’ group,
they are given tours of places they’d never get into as individuals. They’ve
seen demonstrations of everything from repairing a shoe to building a
prototype of a new tractor. The, next issue of Parenting for Excellence will describe how you can arrange visits to
places which interest you. Whether you visit a neighbor on a Sunday
afternoon, or a museum on the day of a special exhibit, the opportunities are
endless — and so is the fun! Basic Principles THE RELATION BETWEEN
TUTORING AND DEVELOPMENT to tutor — to instruct or teach privately We have found over and over again that a child with a
really good tutor can learn as much in an hour as the average child learns in
a day at school; as much in a day as the average child learns in a week at
school. Glenn Dome in What
to Do About Your Brain-Injured Child Did you see “Son-rise” on television — the
dramatization of Barry Kaufman’s book about how he and his wife brought their
autistic son to normality. Or maybe you’ve read the more recent A Miracle
to Believe In — an account of how the Kaufmans engineered a similar
“miracle” for the autistic son of another couple. Both stories offer
intriguing insights into normal early development. LEARNING FROM HURT CHILDREN During this century there has been enormous
progress in understanding the growth, needs, and potentialities of young
children. Much of that progress is based on work with deprived, retarded, or
hurt children. They are essentially normal children who’ve gotten stuck at
some point in the same developmental process we all grow through. Perhaps
that is part of our initial discomfort in relating to them; we have to deal
with the realization that they, with their often unusual behaviors, are
basically just like us — or, worse, that we, except for a few bodily changes,
are basically just like them. If we can accept our own vulnerability long
enough tb look closely at children with retarded development, we can learn a
lot. Since they exhibit our own process of development slowed down, stuck, or
detoured, they can be clearer mirrors for us. Running a film in slow motion
can reveal tiny, movements and patterns we didn’t perceive at the normal
speed.. Studying human development in slow motion can give us the same
advantage. SPEEDING UP TO Yet what may be even more instructive for
parents of the very young is how a slowed or stuck child is worked with to
speed up the rate of development. Let’s go back to the Kaufmans. They did a
lot of talking about loving the children they worked with. Children need love
as unconditionally as plants need sunshine. The Kaufmans and friends
demonstrated that truth effectively and movingly; but that’s not all they
did. Along with all the warmth and loving acceptance, they taught.
One-to-one, twelve hours a day, seven days a week, they tutored — teaching
the first step, and when he got that, the next step; and when he got that,
the next. There were mistakes and brilliant moves, retreats and breakthroughs.
Mostly the love was strong; sometimes it faltered. But always, steadily,
continually there was the tutoring. The essence of tutoring is facilitating the
particular developmental steps of a particular human being at a particular
moment. Private instruction is a tutor’s primary medium, but an effective
tutor does whatever is needed to help a child take the next steps. At one
point in the Kaufmans’ tutoring, they both feigned sleep for two hours in
order to give the child an opportunity to observe them in safety and grapple
with the personal decision of whether to initiate contact with them. Their
behavior didn’t look like skillful teaching; it looked like doing nothing.
But it was the most useful method they could have employed for that particular
child at that particular moment. Parents who tutor their own small children are
constantly making decisions like that — doing, or not doing, something for
their special child because that’s what their specific child will find most
useful for growth right then. The point is not so much what they do but that
their attention is on their individual child’s growth, that they continually
to whatever the child’s growth requires next. ITS EFFECTS The effect this has is easy to see when
parents tutor a retarded child. Empathetic, skillful tutoring speeds up a
retarded child’s rate of growth. Generally, if there is enough of the right
kind of tutoring, the child can achieve normality. At that point the tutoring
usually stops. The parents have had a fervent belief that their child could
achieve normal functioning. They have achieved their goal. They are to be
admired. Interestingly, there are also parents of
normal children who tutor their children. Normality is not their goal; it’s
what they start from. Their fervent belief may be that human beings are
designed to grow far beyond what’s called normal. They may see the heights of
human development as more worthwhile goals for their child. They may see
“normality” as a slow-motion version of what humanity is meant to enjoy.
Perhaps they see what are currently called “gifted students” as normal human
beings who received a lot more individual attention than the “ungifted.” However far their vision extends, they use
tutoring — increased individual attention, lots of private instruction — as a
way to make that vision possible for their child. The effect of this tutoring is to speed up
their children’s rate of growth. Enough of the right kind of tutoring ensures
that their children experience each stage of growth fully — so fully that
they are ready to go on to the next stage sooner and better prepared. THE POSSIBILITIES On first relating to retarded persons, we may
feel discomfort, facing the fact that we could have gotten stuck too if we
had had some of the experiences that slowed them down. On first relating to
persons of superior intellect, achievement, and energy, we may also feel some
discomfort, facing the fact that we could have learned to live more richly
too if we had some of the experiences that speeded them up. We may also feel exhilaration at seeing in
them some of the possibilities of being human — and knowing that we can use
our time and personal attention, our tutoring, to offer our children those possibilities. TO MOTHER — OR FATHER — IS TO
TEACH “DID YOU KNOW THAT …” Did you know that anteaters, eat as
many as 30,000 ants in one day!? I wonder why cats walk only on
their toes! Can you believe that a large bull
elephant spends 18 hours a day just feeding himself!? Wow! One cubic inch of bone can withstand
two tons of force! Would you have ever guessed that the strongest
muscle in your body is the one you use to chew with !? National Geographic calls them “far out
facts.” Contact magazine calls them “factoids.” I think of them as
hooks for children to hang new information on. Telling children one fact with excitement or
great interest can start a conversation, spark wonder, create a new mental category,
or just add to your child’s information base. FOR EXAMPLE You or your child may wonder out loud, “If a
bull elephant spends 18 hours eating, what does he do the rest of the time?”
(Then you might talk and read about elephants and maybe go observe them at
the zoo.) Or, “How much time does the elephant have left in a day after all
the eating?” (So you subtract!) “What is a bull elephant, anyway?”
(Talk about cock, ram, rooster, etc. as other terms for specific male
animals.) “Can I ride an elephant?” (Find pictures of elephants in The main course in your child’s early
education is the organized daily teaching you do. There’s a sequence to what
you cover; this day’s work together arises from what you learned yesterday
and last week. The “Did-you- knows” are more like relishes, garnishes, the
elegant extras. COLLECTING You can collect them by keeping a stack of
index cards handy and jotting down any interesting item you come across in the
course of your day. Just remember that interest, like beauty, is in the eye
of the beholder — or the enthusiasm of the teacher! What seems mundane to you
can become an active exploration for your child. “Wow! It snowed 21 inches in DISTRIBUTING Collecting a few “Did-you-knows” each day can
get to be a stimulating habit. Distributing them can become a happy art — and
provide a life filled with nice surprises for your child. One day, “When you say the word cookie,
you’re speaking Dutch!” shows up in a lunch box. Another day, “It’s
sometimes hard to tell when a snake is asleep because he doesn’t have any __________!”*
is found stuck inside a mitten. Or “Guess what the tallest living animal
in the world is!” might appear under a cereal bowl. Stashing a few
“Did-you-knows” in a pocket can enliven a long ride or generate intelligent
conversation over diner. Here are a few extras to add to your collection. SOME FREEBIES Did you know that: • A tunnel from one side of the earth to the
other would be nearly 8,000 miles. long? • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born on January
27’? • There’s a cork in the center of a baseball? • You were born at 9:245 AM Central Standard
Time, and you were beautiful! *
eyelids **
giraffe PARENTING FOR EXCELLENCE — Volume II, No. 1 —
January 1982 Parenting
for Excellence is published ten times per year by The Stelle
Group. Subscriptions are sold by the volume, with volumes beginning in
January. Subscription rates are $15 for one year, and queries about
subscriptions and delivery should be sent to The Stelle Group, |
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