I was listening to an interesting podcast a couple of nights ago. It was so thought-provoking that I couldn’t fall asleep afterwards. The question discussed was: “Are we raising a nation of wimps?”

By this, the commentators proposed that children are not learning the coping skills which lead to independence.  Their childhood is nice and clean and safe, but they are psychologically fragile later on when they leave for college.

Does a sanitized childhood turn a kid into a wimp?
It’s a scientific fact that if you are not exposed to enough “adversity” in the form of germs, your body doesn’t develop immunities. Is this a metaphor for what happens psychologically? The commentators proposed the idea that adversity enables our children able to meet the normal challenges of life as they grow up.

For instance, the crime rate is actually lower than when we were young, but parents these days are hyper-aware of all the potential “bad” things that can happen to their children. And that perhaps we unnecessarily “over-protect” our children because if something “bad” does happen to a child, parents are blamed for it. (If you hadn’t let her go rock climbing, she wouldn’t have broken her arm. Or worse, if you hadn’t allowed him to walk alone to school, he wouldn’t have been abducted.)

Are my own fears holding me back from doing what is best for my child’s development into independence?
Like every parent, I worry. (Will it hurt them, scare them, be too hard, cause them to fail?) Especially so when I became a parent for the first time. I think my oldest Nathan is now far less self-sufficient than his siblings because I was there most every moment, doing it for him, solving the problems, finding the solutions, mediating the play dates.

But my job as a parent is to teach my children to take smart risks. How to decide what is a good risk. What makes a poor risk. Train them about what should be avoided altogether. Risk management – yes. Risk elimination – no.

Of course, the level of risk is dependent on your child’s maturity, temperament, personality, strengths and weaknesses. Risks should be different for every child. You need to know your child in order to train them well.

The nitty-gritty practical.
So how does this idea of allowing adversity in the form of good risks play out? Here are some ideas:

Let your children make mistakes. Have them to fix the mistakes themselves. Even if it takes several attempts to do so. They’ll learn far more than if you do it for them. Even a toddler can clean up something they’ve spilled. Even if it is NOT the way you’d do it. (Are you gritting your teeth yet? I know I am!)

For school-aged children, allow them organize their own time. Do they really need you to decide if they should empty the dishwasher, have a snack or do their homework first? (Of course, you’ve already taught them what the consequences are for not doing chores or homework. Children need to learn to manage their tasks and time, and this is a good way to help them become more independent. Cause seriously, eventually someone who didn’t birth them and love them unconditionally will be their boss!)

Allow your children to play freely unmonitored with other children without the grownups intervening. The kids will work out the problems! (I don’t mean never check on them. But we adults often step into the middle of conflict far too soon.)

Encourage them to try new things. For one child, that may be finally raising her hand in class. For another, learning to dress himself, even if it is a struggle to work those little hands and legs. (And yes, it’s faster and easier if you put the clothes on, and they’ll match and not be on backwards. But don’t lose sight of the goal – independence. Help them get there one step at a time. Just don’t do the steps for them!)

Doing these things actually fosters brain development in the part of the brain where “executive functioning” occurs. This is the portion of the brain (the pre-frontal cortex for you brain anatomy lovers out there) where planning and decision making occur.

Recently, I was on the phone for nearly an hour with the HP customer service department located in some third world country (very annoying, but another blog!) when my 11 year old Nathan kept interrupting and wanting me to cut him some watermelon. I kept shooing him away. Funnily enough, when I got off the phone, I discovered that he had cut his own watermelon. It was a hack job, but that really didn’t matter. He had faced adversity, and solved his own problem. I never have to slice watermelon for him again. But I had trained him to use a knife previously – risk management. Risk elimination – no. He could have cut himself. But he used a steak knife. He knows better than to use a butcher knife.

If you’d like to listen to the podcast, you can find it on BamRadio Network.

-posted by Miss Analiisa, who loves this quote from Andre Malraux: “Often the difference between a successful person and a failure is not one has better abilities or ideas, but the courage that one has to bet on one’s ideas, to take a calculated risk – and to act.”

Understanding stages of equilibrium and disequilibrium in your child can provide emotional comfort and helpful clues for the anxious parent.  It can even turn anxiety into fun as you watch for the cycles.  Just knowing that your child is normal can help you and your family weather a season of toddler terrors.  For example, when I know that all 2 ½ year olds tend to be oppositional, I won’t worry that I’m raising the next Attila the Hun.

According to research done by the Gesell Institute, not only do children have individual personalities, but each age has an individuality of its own. The years characterized by more calm behavior, control, and compliance, (equilibrium,) are 2, 3, 4 and 5.  The years of disequilibrium are 18 months, 2 ½, 3 ½, and 4 ½.  During these seasons, children’s behavior is more likely to be explosive, anxious, unreasonable, and even out of control.

Disequilibrium:  18 Months, 2 ½, 3 ½, 4 ½
Equilibrium:  2, 3, 4, 5

Let me summarize the different stages from the Gesell Institute’s findings.

18 months:  “I want it now!”  At this stage, the child has definite ideas of what he wants, but he doesn’t yet have the words to express himself.  He has trouble accepting delay or failures.  Crying and tantrums result because he doesn’t have the motor skills to do what he wants and he’s not willing to be flexible.  Because he is resistant to change, he is also resistant to sudden transitions.  He avoids them by physically refusing to cooperate. 

When David was this age, I hated trying to get him out of the house and into the car.  Now I know why.  He resisted every stage of the process; shoes tied, jacket on, getting buckled into the car seat. It was an exhausting struggle for both of us.

At this stage, the key to success is parent flexibility.  Patience and good humor will serve you well as you wait out this stage.

Age 2:  “Good Will.”  The two-year-old is willing to conform. She is eager to please.  She has good body control. She falls less, walks and runs easily. Her talk is improving rapidly.  She is able to name her wants.  She is easier to live with because life is easier for her in the stage.

Age 2 ½:  “Oppositional.”  At two, the child was emerging from babyhood. At 2 ½, he is rapidly becoming his own person.  He has become rigid, ritualistic and demanding.  This is when bedtime routines become elaborate and drawn out as each facet cannot be skipped without loud protest. Many an exhausted parent has tried in vain to shorten the process only to find the child will not settle down at all. 2 ½ year olds aren’t cooperative because they desire to exercise their new found skills independently. 

Tomorrow I’ll explain the cycles for equilibrium and disequilibrium for 3-5 year olds.

-posted by Donna Detweiler whose research for this blog is from Gesell Institute’s Child from One to Six:  Evaluating the Behavior of the Pre-school Child.

In the midst of the Kindermusik Spring, Summer, Fall planning and registration, web-site updating, and TWO weeks of various children in my house with 104 to 105 degree temps, I’ve fallen off the blogging radar.

But, it’s relatively quiet today, so I’m going to begin again. I’ve been wanting to blog about my personal experiences with my sensory-child, but every time I sit down to do so, it produces such a hurt in my heart (thinking of all we’ve been through), that it’s just plain hard to start. However, a recent blog by one of my friends has re-inspired me, so I shall wipe away my tears and just do it.

I thought it would be good to start with a simple explanation of what Sensory Processing (sometimes called Sensory Integration) is.

Sensory Integration is the process where all the parts of your nervous system take in the information detected by your senses (sight, touch, hearing, taste, smell, proprioceptive and vestibular) and organize that information for your use.

When this process happens smoothly, you can climb a ladder, eat a piece of pie, build with blocks, interact well with other people or do a forward roll. (Maybe NOT at the same time, though!) This leads you to be happy, well-adjusted and secure.

Sensory integration is an unconscious process of the brain – we don’t think about it happening. Learning and behavior are the visible aspects of sensory integration. Reading, writing, and math require a great deal of sensory integration, and make very complex demands on the brain. If sensory integration is working well, children learn as we intend them to, and the process of learning is very satisfying to them. (There are other reasons for learning difficulties as well, but good sensory integration is necessary).

All children need sensory input and experiences in order to grow and learn. Sensations are “food for the brain”. They provide the knowledge needed to direct the body and mind.

Behavior problems such as inability to cope with stress or change, negative self-concept, fussiness or not enjoying play with other children or family members can be a result of poor sensory integration. Physical symptoms of poor sensory integration include: hyperactivity (sometime misdiagnosed as ADHD), distractability, poor coordination and muscle tone. Speech and language depends on many sensory integrative processes, so delays in speech and language or articulation problems are often indicators of sensory integration problems.

Research by the Sensory Processing Disorder Foundation indicates that 1 in every 6 children experiences symptoms of Sensory Processing Disorder that are significant enough to affect their ability to participate fully in everyday life.

If you see yourself or your child in these “symptoms”, please don’t panic! Only an Occupational Therapist or like trained professional can properly diagnose Sensory Processing Disorder. And, as Rob’s OT explained to me, everyone is somewhere on the sensory scale. Everyone, at some point, has difficultly processing sensations. Perhaps you don’t like the sound of a shovel scraping against a rock? You don’t like the feel of scratchy clothing tags against your skin? The auditory and physical sensations of taking the cotton out of a vitamin bottle?

-posted by Miss Analiisa, who promises to begin at the start of her journey’s story a bit later this week.

Ever noticed how prevalent cycles are in life?  Every day the sun comes up, it goes down. The earth rotates around the sun causing predictable seasonal cycles. The dryer has a cycle.  The dishwasher has a cycle. Moms have those cycles. Even businesses and school years have cycles.

Guess what?  Your kids’ development tends to cycle too. Understanding these cycles can help you avoid taking a spin on the crazy cycle when your normally sweet child’s behavior takes a turn for the worse.

Jean Piaget, noted sociologist, observed that children’s development is not linear and progressive like the gradually rising line graph measuring a successful company’s sales.  Rather, children develop cognitively on a relatively predictable cycle with periods of equilibrium followed by disequilibrium.

According to Piaget, children go through a stage of disequilibrium when they have learned new information about the world and now their brains must “accommodate” that information and adjust their other ideas about their world (which Piaget called “schemes”) to it.  The child must learn and master a new set of skills.  Trial and error learning is taking place, which includes uncertainty, struggle, and frustration.

Conversely, when a child is in the phase called equilibrium, she is “assimilating” the information learned, having fun with her new skill and knowledge.  This phase lends itself to more ease and pleasant emotion.

As children cycle through these learning phases, their behavior reflects the emotional comfort, or discomfort of the phase.  A child experiencing disequilibrium may suddenly seem more difficult to get along with, or edgy and challenging.

Think about what it is like for you to drive in an unfamiliar city.  Until you know where you are going and how to get there, you can feel uptight and even bark at your spouse if you go the wrong direction or miss a turn.  When a child’s internal map is shifting, he may feel anxious and act out unpredictably until things become more settled.  And of course he doesn’t understand what is going on.

When my son hit age four, my darling boy went through a particularly snarky period. I sought advice from a trusted friend, who just happened to be a seasoned first grade teacher with an award-winning knowledge of brain development in children.  My lucky day!  She explained to me this “normal” crazy cycle of equilibrium and disequilibrium.

My fears of raising a juvenile delinquent were calmed. She recommended the excellent books on the child development by well-known author, Louise Bates Ames. Ames’ books explain the various developmental cycles of each age.  Once I knew what to expect, I could better interpret behavior and ride out a cycle of disequilibrium with less fear and stress.

Recognizing a season of disequilibrium does not mean you excuse unacceptable behavior or give your child permission to be a thorn in the side of your family for a time. It simply helps you to have patience and to calmly assess what discipline tool is needed to help train your child to handle the new place in life she is discovering. You can lovingly and consistently deal with the individual situations as they arise.  And when things suddenly get smoother, you can celebrate equilibrium!

More on equilibrium and disequilibrium next time.

-posted by Donna Detweiler, who found that the truth about equilibrium/disequilibrium cycles set her free from fear during difficult days.

Neuroscientists at Harvard University have used MRI imaging to examine how emotion is processed in the brains of children. In pre-adolescent children, the scientists found that emotional activity occurred in the area of the brain called the amygdala.

The amygdala is where we process our emotions like affection or anxiety, as well as being the center for identification of danger, leading to a “fight or flight” response. Put another way, if the amygdala is damaged, a person might become indifferent to danger, or be able to recognize someone, but then not be able to decide if he likes him or her.

However, to be able to express why you feel an emotion, you must engage the cerebral cortex – the portion of the brain that plays a key part in thought and language. It is not until adolescence that brain activity associated with emotion moves up to the cerebral cortex. But this only happens in girls’ brains.

This means that you could ask a 7 year old why she is feeling sad, but she couldn’t really tell you. Conversely, an 18 year old would be able to explain what she is feeling and why in great detail. But only if she was a girl.

Another recent study shows that this continues to be the pattern in adulthood. For women, the majority of brain activity associated with emotions is in the cerebral cortex, while men’s emotional processing still happens in the amydgala.

The conclusion? Asking a 35 year old male to talk about his feelings (everyone has feelings, of course, but young children and men may have a more difficult time finding the language to talk about them) can be about as productive as asking a 7 year old to do the same thing.

­-posted by Miss Analiisa, who is going to try and remember this information and not bug her 11 year old son or her 44 year old husband about exactly what they are feeling or why.

From the moment you get pregnant, you’re inundated with literature telling you to read to your child.  It’s pretty hard to not see articles touting the lifelong benefits of reading and the importance of reading to your child early.

But let’s face it…reading to a young child can be stressful. 

Young children do not like to sit still for hours and hours, or for minutes and minutes, for that matter. It doesn’t matter if you are telling them a hilarious story about what happens if you give a pig a pancake, some children do not want to sit still for it.  I have heard tell about children who, from infancy, cuddle up on their parents lap and desire nothing else in life other than to sit there and be read to. I’ve sat and listened to soft-spoken moms tell me how they spend hours just reading, reading, reading to their kids.  And I am thrilled for those parents, I truly am.

But let me just be clear about this…none of the Venning Children exhibited anything remotely close to that kind of behavior.  My early parenthood visions of what reading to my kids looked like soon gave way to the reality that reading more often entails me loudly reading words over a moving passel of arms and legs on the living room floor.

Now, I’m not advocating total chaos while you read.  I mean, kids need to learn proper behavior and jumping on the living room couch is not acceptable movement during reading time (uh, or anytime for that matter).  But simple movements, such as rolling on the floor or building with blocks can actually enhance your child’s learning. 

I remember my breaking point.  I had a newborn and was a probably a little post-partum, but I remember sobbing and sobbing one day after attempting to read to 2-year-old Kevin because  he would “NEVER learn to read and would NEVER enjoy sitting and reading and what kind of mother was I that couldn’t read to her child?” (Okay, from the sound of that, I was probably a LOT post-partum!)  Anyway, for a while, I think I even gave up reading to him altogether.

My enjoyment in reading to my young kids greatly increased once I learned that it’s okay for kids to be moving while you read to them. In fact, it’s good for them.  Now, if I were my friend Analiisa (one of the smartest people I have ever personally known) I’d be able to insert a paragraph here about the connection between young children’s brains, motor skills and learning styles.  I absolutely love listening to her teach me this kind of info, but I do her injustice when I try to retell it and it comes out something as simple as this “kids moving = good learning.”  So I apologize, my dummy brain just gives you the bottom line.

And the bottom line is that kids need to move in order to learn, and some more than others.  To require them to sit still during reading time actually works backward for them: they’re using their brain’s energy to concentrate on sitting still, instead of concentrating on learning the rhythm and rhyme of the words.  Let these wiggle worms play quietly on the floor and you’ll notice their love for reading time increase.

Now, in our home, the rule is that they can choose what they want to play with while I read, but it cannot be a noise maker and they cannot be a noise maker.  Other than that, they can wiggle, roll, lay, bounce or build.  And now, eight years later, do you know what Kevin often does (yes, the Kevin I had a breakdown)?  His favorite thing now is to cuddle up on my lap and read along with me!  Where was this child six years ago?  Trapped inside a little body that needed to wiggle while I read. 

-posted by Donna Venning, a stay-at-home mom who, after fifteen minutes of reading to her older  kids, will make them get up and “shake the wiggles out” before going back to read for another fifteen minutes. She can even be caught wiggling with them more often than not.