Getting determined plays a big part in building your kid’s life around who she actually is, with some of it matching up with what we traditionally think kids should be up to and some not.  There will be things that work famously and easily, and things that don’t.

‘Til we’re blue in the face we can say we believe that if at first you don’t succeed, try, try, etc., meanwhile (understandably) hoping things that are meant to be will work instantly.  That they’re won’t actually have to be too much try, try.  But it often does take a lot of try, try, and it really can be the difference between getting somewhere and staying nowhere.  Which is probably why it can feel excruciating even though it sounds so simple!  I’m writing about it today because it keeps smacking me in the face with various attempts I’m in the process of.

That first phone call to a possible mentor didn’t work out?  The woman was downright mean?  There’s someone else out there who’s not, and it’ll be worth making the second call (unless it takes three, or four, or more). I promise.

Kids often tell me they don’t like reading, except for things they like.

What the heck?  I can’t tell you how many zillions of times I’ve heard this.  Somehow we’re giving them the impression that  these People Who Like Reading that they’ve heard of and know about like reading everything.  When I encounter this, I assure whomever it is, up one side and down the other, that this is not the case. I know because I’d make a good Exhibit A.  I love reading things I like and want to read, and I detest reading anything I don’t like and don’t want to read.  It sounds ridiculous.

One way we could probably curb this confusion is to stop saying simply that we love to read.  It’s usually not true, anyway, without the rest of the sentence.  It’s like I was saying here about finishing the sentence to make it true.  Unless you really just plain love to read anything that’s put in front of you - love it for the reading of it and not anything to do with the content - you could do many kids a great service by saying something like “I love to read when the writing’s really good,” or “I love to read books that are about people like me,” or “I love to read road signs,” or “I love to read magazines.”  Then they’d start to get a more accurate picture of this reading world of ours, in which we all have taste and rarely read just because there are words in front of us and we want to spend time reading them because we don’t have anything better to do.

Let them know there’s something in it for you, and then they’ll have the freedom to find out whether or not there might be anything in it for them.

One thing adults love to say to kids is “Well, too bad; there are some things you just have to do.”  If you watch a kid’s face when someone’s delivering that line, you’ll know right away how many times they’ve heard this before.  In most cases, LOTS.  You’ll also get a sense of how inspired they are to act as a result of it.  In most cases, NOT PARTICULARLY.

It’s something we say to each other, as adults too, and it’s implied in much of what we do.  Because, of course, we heard it all the time back when we, the present-day adults, were kids.  So we assume it’s true and in good conscience, we pass it on.  We want them to be ready for the real world.  And it helps us feel as though life is supposed to be as much of a drag as it can feel like when our days are full of things we’re doing because we think we just have to.

But it’s TRUE isn’t it?  There are things we just have to do.  Don’t worry; I’m not going to argue that it’s not true.  I’m going to argue that it’s incomplete.  On its own, the statement is in fact not true.  You don’t actually have to do anything.  You have to do some things if you want a specific outcome or you want to avoid a specific outcome. For example, nobody actually has to do the dishes. You might have to do the dishes if you don’t want to throw away all the ones you’ve used and buy new ones. Or you don’t want to cause a rift between yourself and a loved one.  Or you have a job as a dishwasher and you want to get paid at the end of the week.  So it would be more accurate to say “There are some things you just have to do if…” Or “There are some things you just have to do unless…”

What’s tough is that as soon as you decide you’re going to make it a point to complete the sentence, you start to see how much you’re insisting upon (from yourself and others, kids included) that demands deeper consideration of how the sentence should end.  Don’t worry, though.  There’s gold at the other end; if you commit to inquiring into why/if you have to do things, and why you actually insist on what you insist on for others, you’ll find that a lot of the fight falls away. Kids, in particular, will perk right up.  They can hear the difference between things we say on auto pilot and things we say because we’ve considered them and determined that they have some value.

There’s a sign outside the neighborhood elementary school that clarifies the school’s policy on taking off jackets at recess.  (It’s been balmy the last few days.)  Children in grades K-2 are to keep their jackets on, children in grades 3-5 may take them off.

I’ve watched many battles over jacket-wearing, and I don’t quite understand it.  When kids get cold, they usually (in the absence of actual thermostatic dysfunction, which the reading I’ve done suggests is extremely rare) act quickly.  And they’re not usually quiet about it.  Getting their needs met is not something children tend to take lightly.

So it’s a little strange that we decide to try to regulate their temperatures for them.  To me it seems like a recipe for not learning how to regulate various things for yourself in much the same way as scheduling meals and eating regardless of hunger can teach kids to eat when they don’t need to and shouldn’t.  We tell them they’ll be cold, if they don’t wear a jacket, though we have no idea how they’ll actually feel because their hormonal makeup is entirely different from ours. (As each of ours is from everyone else’s.)  They don’t get the chance to find out whether they’re hot or cold, how many layers they need, whether they need a jacket or not.

If it’s too warm to be wearing a coat, left to their own devises, kids know.  And similarly, if they’re too cold, they can put coats on.  We say these things, like “wear a coat or you’ll be cold,” with good intentions, but they don’t always hold up under inspection.  When kids resist, it’s worth a look to find out what the source of their resistance may be…

Yet another suggestion that things are not always as they seem. This reminds me of how many folks I’ve heard say that they can only focus on what someone’s saying if they don’t make eye contact, though we tend to assume it’s the opposite. Take a look at this summary of a study (published earlier this year in Applied Cognitive Psychology) about the effect of doodling on recall.

I’m going to get a reputation for the unwise practice of recommending books before I’ve finished reading them, but I can’t help myself.  I have read several pages from the beginning, several from the middle, and a few from the end of Your Child’s Strengths: Discover Them, Develop Them, Use Them, and there is so much in it that can be so useful in so many ways for so many people I cannot wait to start talking about it.  You can read a few pages on Google books…

I’ll post more soon when I come up with the words…

I consistently find that it’s easier to generate excitement for math when it’s called something else.  (A game, for example, even when it shamelessly involves multiplication, is drastically better received when it’s called a game than when it’s called math.)  I’m beginning to think that it would be wise if we retired the word math for awhile.  It’s come to embody, represent, and inspire such dread, fear, loathing, and hostility (often compounding over the course of generations) that I think it deserves a break.  And many of us deserve a break from it.

This is not at all to say that we should stop doing the things we’ve come to refer to as math.  Just that we could stop using the word.  For now.  Not only does it inspire the less-than-healthy and productive states I mentioned above, our general understanding of what it actually is has been whittled down to something that could only appeal to a very few humans who happen to function in a particular way.  Math, defined broadly, is the kind of stuff anyone could find a home in; not just those who happen to have a proclivity for memorizing columns of numbers, or substituting letters for numbers in some prescribed manner.   There is room in the math I know for artists, builders, designers, extraverts, poets, chefs.  And room for it in all of their various pursuits.  When treated well and generously conceived, math has the ability to invite, inspire, and intrigue.

The earliest mathematicians were a varied lot.  To them math was a playful, welcoming thing.  They’d have been sorry, I’m sure, to hear it spoken of today as it is.  So perhaps we should shelve the word, breathe some life back into the observation, rendering, and capturing of pattern, relationship, quantity, and then invite it back to the party when we can treat it as the spacious entity we deserve to have it be.