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Tessa Miller 4/17/13 1:00pm  328,461 285

10 Things to Stop Saying to Your Kids (and What to Say Instead)

Current research shows that some of the most commonly used and seemingly positive phrases we use with kids are actually quite destructive. Despite our good intentions, these statements teach children to stop trusting their internal guidance system, to become deceptive, to do as little as possible, and to give up when things get hard.

This is a guest post by Shelley Phillips via Lifehack.org.

Here’s a list of the top ten things to eliminate from your vocabulary now. I’ve also included alternatives so that you can replace these habitual statements with phrases that will actually encourage intrinsic motivation and emotional connection.

“Good job!”

The biggest problem with this statement is that it’s often said repeatedly and for things a child hasn’t really put any effort into. This teaches children that anything is a “good job” when mom and dad say so (and only when mom and dad say so).

Instead try, “You really tried hard on that!” By focusing on a child’s effort, we’re teaching her that the effort is more important than the results. This teaches children to be more persistent when they’re attempting a difficult task and to see failure as just another step toward success.

“Good boy (or girl)!”

This statement, while said with good intentions, actually has the opposite effect you’re hoping for. Most parents say this as a way to boost a child’s self-esteem. Unfortunately, it has quite a different effect. When children hear “good girl!” after performing a task you’ve asked them for, they assume that they’re only “good” because they’ve done what you’ve asked. That sets up a scenario in which children can become afraid of losing their status as a “good kid” and their motivation to cooperate becomes all about receiving the positive feedback they’re hoping for.

Instead, try “I appreciate it so much when you cooperate!” This gives children real information about what you’re wanting and how their behavior impacts your experience. You can even take your feelings out of it entirely and say something like, “I saw you share your toy with your friend.” This allows your child to decide for himself whether sharing is “good” and lets him choose to repeat the action from his internal motivation, rather than doing it just to please you.

“What a beautiful picture!”

When we put our evaluations and judgments onto a child’s artwork, it actually robs them of the opportunity to judge and evaluate their own work.

Instead try, “I see red, blue and yellow! Can you tell me about your picture?” By making an observation, rather than offering an evaluation, you’re allowing your child to decide if the picture is beautiful or not, maybe she intended it to be a scary picture. And by asking her to tell you about it, you’re inviting her to begin to evaluate her own work and share her intent, skills that will serve her creativity as she matures and grows into the artist she is.

“Stop it right now, or else!”

Threatening a child is almost never a good idea. First of all, you’re teaching them a skill you don’t really want them to have: the ability to use brute force or superior cunning to get what they want, even when the other person isn’t willing to cooperate. Secondly, you’re putting yourself in an awkward position in which you either have to follow through on your threats—exacting a punishment you threatened in the heat of your anger—or you can back down, teaching your child that your threats are meaningless. Either way, you’re not getting the result you want and you’re damaging your connection with your child.

While it can be difficult to resist the urge to threaten, try sharing vulnerably and redirecting to something more appropriate instead.“It’s NOT OK to hit your brother. I’m worried that he will get hurt, or he’ll retaliate and hurt you. If you’d like something to hit, you may hit a pillow, the couch or the bed.” By offering an alternative that is safer yet still allows the child to express her feelings you’re validating her emotions even as you set a clear boundary for her behavior. This will ultimately lead to better self-control and emotional wellbeing for your child.

“If you _____ then I’ll give you _____”

Bribing kids is equally destructive as it discourages them from cooperating simply for the sake of ease and harmony. This kind of exchange can become a slippery slope and if used frequently, you’re bound to have it come back and bite you. “No! I won’t clean my room unless you buy me Legos!”

Instead try, “Thank you so much for helping me clean up!” When we offer our genuine gratitude, children are intrinsically motivated to continue to help. And if your child hasn’t been very helpful lately, remind him of a time when he was. “Remember a few months ago when you helped me take out the trash? That was such a big help. Thanks!” Then allow your child to come to the conclusion that helping out is fun and intrinsically rewarding.

"You’re so smart!"

When we tell kids they’re smart, we think we’re helping to boost their self confidence and self-esteem. Unfortunately, giving this kind of character praise actually does the opposite. By telling kids they’re smart, we unintentionally send the message that they’re only smart when they get the grade, accomplish the goal, or produce the ideal result — and that’s a lot of pressure for a young person to live up to. Studies have shown that when we tell kids they’re smart after they’ve completed a puzzle, they’re less likely to attempt a more difficult puzzle after. That’s because kids are worried that if they don’t do well, we’ll no longer think they’re “smart.”

Instead, try telling kids that you appreciate their effort. By focusing on the effort, rather than the result, you’re letting a child know what really counts. Sure, solving the puzzle is fun, but so is attempting a puzzle that’s even more difficult. Those same studies showed that when we focus on the effort — “Wow you really tried hard on that!” — kids are far more likely to attempt a more challenging puzzle the next time.

"Don’t cry."

Being with your child’s tears isn’t always easy. But when we say things like, “Don’t cry,” we’re invalidating their feelings and telling them that their tears are unacceptable. This causes kids to learn to stuff their emotions, which can ultimately lead to more explosive emotional outbursts.

Try holding space for your child as he cries. Say things like, “It’s OK to cry. Everyone needs to cry sometimes. I’ll be right here to listen to you.” You might even try verbalizing the feelings your child might be having, “You’re really disappointed that we can’t go to the park right now, huh?” This can help your child understand his feelings and learn to verbalize them sooner than he might otherwise. And by encouraging his emotional expression, you’re helping him learn to regulate his emotions, which is a crucial skill that will serve him throughout life.

"I promise..."

Broken promises hurt. Big time. And since life is clearly unpredictable, I’d recommend removing this phrase from your vocabulary entirely.

Choose instead to be super honest with your child. “I know you really want to have a play date with Sarah this weekend and we’ll do our best to make that happen. Please remember that sometimes unexpected things come up, so I can’t guarantee that it will happen this weekend.” Be sure you really are doing your best if you say you will too. Keeping your word builds trust and breaking it deteriorates your connection, so be careful what you say, and then live up to your word as much as humanly possible.

One more note on this, if you do break your word, acknowledge it and apologize to your child. Remember, you’re teaching your kids how to behave when they fail to live up to their word. Breaking our word is something we all do at one time or another. And even if it’s over something that seems trivial to you, it could matter a lot to your child. So do your best to be an example of honesty, and when you’re not, step up and take responsibility for your failure.

"It’s no big deal!"

There are so many ways we minimize and belittle kids feelings, so watch out for this one. Children often value things that seem small and insignificant to our adult point of view. So, try to see things from your child’s point of view. Empathize with their feelings, even as you’re setting a boundary or saying no to their request.

“I know you really wanted to do that, but it’s not going to work out for today,” or “I’m sorry you’re disappointed and the answer is no,” are far more respectful than trying to convince your child that their desires don’t really matter.

"Why did you do that?"

If your child has done something you don’t like, you certainly do need to have a conversation about it. However, the heat of the moment is not a time when your child can learn from her mistakes. And when you ask a child, “Why?” you’re forcing her to think about and analyze her behavior, which is a pretty advanced skill, even for adults. When confronted with this question, many kids will shut down and get defensive.

Instead, open the lines of communication by guessing what your child might have been feeling and what her underlying needs might be. “Were you feeling frustrated because your friends weren’t listening to your idea?” By attempting to understand what your child was feeling and needing, you might even discover that your own upset about the incident diminishes. “Oh! He bit his friend because he was needing space and feeling scared, and he didn’t know how else to communicate that. He’s not a ‘terror,’ he’s a toddler!”

5 Things To Stop Saying to Your Kids and What to Say Instead | Lifehack

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Shelly Birger Phillips is passionate about being the best human she can possibly be and supporting others to do the same. She has helped hundreds of clients overcome personal challenges and develop the skills to live happier, more authentic lives. You can find her conscious parenting blog here, and Her Authentic World team here: Follow her on Twitter here or email her at shelly at awakeparent.com.

Images via Katsiaryna Pleshakova, Ilike, and Inara Prusakova (Shutterstock).

Want to see your work on Lifehacker? Email Tessa.

I Think I Know Why You’re Yelling

By Janet Lansbury

Posted by janet on Feb 15th, 2013

“I find that I become one of two moms when my children are upset. I’m either Mary Poppins — kind, loving, patient — or I’m completely intolerant and prone to yelling and screaming.”
–Concerned Mom

If you’re yelling at your kids, you’re not alone. In fact, my own empirical research suggests yelling has become something of a parenting epidemic. Some are even calling it “the new spanking”. Why are so many dedicated, intelligent, aware parents losing control?
My sense is that parents often end up yelling because they’ve actually made the very positive decision to give their children boundaries with respect rather than punishments and manipulation. These parents are working really hard to remain gentle and kind, and yet their children’s testing behaviors continue. They become increasingly frustrated, even fearful, feeling they’ve lost all control without any way to rein their children in.
And it’s no wonder! If I attempted to absorb all the vague, contradictory advice I’ve seen and heard regarding discipline, I’d be blowing a gasket on a regular basis myself. So many of these theoretical ideas are seductively warm and fuzzy, but they come with a whole lot of scary don’ts (“don’t punish, reward, control, give time-outs or consequences, use the word ‘no’, expect obedience, be authoritative, etc”), and very little in the way of practical tools.
If you’ve been yelling, here are some thoughts to consider:
1. You aren’t taking care of yourself
A long soak in a warm tub, getting away with friends or your spouse are always good ideas, but what I’d suggest is far more basic and crucial: know your limits and personal needs, and establish boundaries with your child from the beginning. Yes, even with your infant.
For example, in the context of a respectful relationship (which means perceiving your infant as a whole person and communicating with her as such), it is okay for your baby to cry for a few minutes while you make your regular morning trip to the bathroom to brush your teeth. You leave your baby in a safe, enclosed place, tell her you will go and always acknowledge her feelings when you return.
Since you are respecting your baby’s need for predictability, you’ve made this activity a habitual part of your day together, and your baby learns to anticipate that you will go and return. She still may complain, which is her right, but you confidently let her know you hear her and accept her expression of displeasure. “You didn’t want me to go. That upset you. I’m back.”

If you are a sensitive person who can’t sleep deeply with your baby near you, but you’re co-sleeping because you think you should, you are not taking care of yourself.

If you want to wean your child or limit your toddler’s nursing, but you feel guilty about that, you are not taking care of yourself.

If you need to go to the kitchen to make a cup of coffee, but you’re afraid to leave your fussy baby or screeching toddler, you are not taking care of yourself.

In fact, if you feel guilty about any self-care moment, you are probably not taking care of yourself.

We all give up much of our lives for our children, but it is unhealthy for us (and even less healthy for our kids) to become an egoless parent, neglecting our needs and virtually erasing ourselves from the relationship. We need personal boundaries, and our children need us to model them. This is what it means to have an honest, authentic, respectful relationship that will make limit-setting in the toddler through teenage years clear and simple (notice I didn’t say “easy” — because it’s hardly ever easy).
Parenting fact: Our babies and toddlers will never give us permission to take care of our needs. “Go ahead and take a little break, mom, you deserve it!” will never be said or implied through our young children’s behavior, even on Mother’s Day. Quite the opposite, in fact. These boundaries must come from us, and our children will do their job by objecting, rebelling, making demands and more demands, and continuing to feel around for our limits until they are firmly and consistently in place.
2. You have spent your baby’s first year distracting, appeasing or otherwise manipulating her rather than speaking honestly about limits.
It disappoints me to hear some of the non-punitive discipline advocates I admire making statements like this one: “The bad news is that babies often want everything they see. The good news is that they’re generally distractible during the first year.”
Your baby is a whole person ready to engage actively and honestly in a relationship with you at birth.  When you distract, you are practicing avoidance – denying an honest connection in order to side-step your child’s healthy feelings of resistance. The pattern this creates for both of you will make it so much harder for you to feel comfortable setting respectful limits later on.  This formative first year is a crucial time to set limits honestly, because this is when we will establish what will always be the core of our parent/child relationship.  (For more about setting limits honestly with babies, please read 5 Reasons Toddlers Don’t Need ‘Redirection’ (And What To Do Instead)
3. You feel responsible for your children’s emotions
Here are the main reasons parents neglect to establish personal boundaries with their children or use manipulative tools like distraction (all of which often lead to yelling):

• They don’t believe a baby is really a whole person who can understand words and interact honestly.
• They can’t make peace with the discomfort they feel surrounding their child’s emotions.
• They perceive all crying as something to avoid or fix, “one-note communication”, rather than a nuanced dialogue.
• They ride the whirlwind of their child’s disappointment, sadness, anger, etc., rather than being an anchor with the understanding that it is essential to emotional health for children to express themselves.

This unhealthy perception of children and their feelings thwarts the development of emotional resiliency, creates the need for even more limit-setting in the toddler years, and will exhaust you every time you have to say ‘no’ or insist upon something (which will be often). The toddler years, especially, are a limit-pushing, resistant period. Your child needs to behave this way in order to individuate in a healthy manner. If you feel pained about or responsible for your child’s daily roller-coaster of emotions, you’re going to be reluctant to set honest limits, get tired, and probably end up yelling…or crying, which isn’t healthy for your children either.
Repeat after me: Once I’ve fulfilled my child’s basic needs, my only responsibility regarding feelings is to accept and acknowledge them.
4. Your expectations are unreasonable
You also might be yelling because you are expecting the impossible. Children are explorers. They need safe places where they can freely move, experiment, investigate. Asking a toddler not to run, jump or climb is akin to saying, “Don’t breathe.” Create and find safe places for your children to play. Don’t expose them to materials or equipment they can’t use as they wish and thereby set yourself up for frustration and anger when they don’t comply.
It’s up to us to avoid situations that will try our patience rather than get caught up struggling to keep the peace and make it work.
5. You are confused about setting limits gently with respect
Join the club, and please allow me to introduce you to the most well-tread section of my blog: (HERE) I also recommend the blogs Regarding Baby, Not Just Cute, Abundant Life Children, Mama Eve, Aunt Annie’s Childcare, Core Parenting and Teacher Tom for their wealth of helpful advice and advocacy for respectful limit-setting.
6. You needlessly enter into power struggles
It takes two to struggle, so don’t engage. You are not your child’s peer; you are her capable leader. So, instead of taking your child’s healthy, age-appropriate button-pushing behavior personally and going to that “uh-oh” place that leads you to yelling:

a) Make eye contact with your child and confidently state a limit: “It’s time to brush your teeth.”

b) Give a simple choice or opportunity for an autonomous decision: “If you can come now, we’ll have time for a second book.”

c) Acknowledge your child’s feelings of disagreement (and welcome those feelings to continue as long as they need to, while you continue to acknowledge them). “Oh, I know you are having so much fun with the dog and it’s hard to stop, but it’s time. What a bummer! You are really upset and disappointed that it’s bedtime. I know the feeling.”

As completely counterintuitive as this is for most of us, it works. The more you are willing to agree with your child’s feelings while calmly holding on to the boundary, the easier it will be for her to release her resistance and move on. How can your child continue to fight when you won’t stop agreeing with her? This parenting “white-flag” of empathy will miraculously dissolve the tension for both of you.

d) If your child still does not comply for whatever reason, follow through by taking her hand (literally or figuratively). “You’re having a hard time coming upstairs to brush your teeth, so I’m going to help you.” You calmly take her hand, and then perhaps you add, “Thank you for letting me know you needed help.”

This by the way, is exactly what she was doing.  And once you’ve recognized that all of your child’s resistant, impulsive, objectionable behavior is really just an awkward request for your help, you’ll probably find it easier to stop yelling about it.

From www.janetlansbury.com

Preschoolers at play show science skills

When kids incessantly ask "Why?," mess around in the dirt and run their hands over everything within reach, they're not just being kids. It turns out they're also being scientists.

Until recently, preschoolers were widely believed to be irrational thinkers. For most of the 20th century, the prevailing theory pioneered by cognitive development expert Jean Piaget held that children roughly ages 2 through 7 cannot understand concrete logic or other people's perspectives.

Although young children are the only ones who truly know what they ponder, research conducted over the past decade has led many psychologists to see infants and toddlers as, in fact, capable of thinking logically and abstractly.

"The main thing is that they're drawing conclusions from data and evidence and experiences the same way scientists are - by making hypotheses, testing them, analyzing statistics and even doing experiments, even though when they do experiments, it's called 'getting into everything,' " said Alison Gopnik, a UC Berkeley psychology professor and one of the field's leading experts.

Better understanding of how children learn about the world could have important implications for their formal schooling, Gopnik argued in a recent paper published in the journal Science, which summarized studies by her and other researchers.

Kids don't have to wear lab coats to act like scientists, Gopnik said.

Teaching can backfire

In one study, Gopnik and her colleagues showed children ages 3 through 5 a machine with a switch on one side and two disks that spun on top.

By playing with this simple device, the preschoolers were able to figure out and distinguish between the many ways it worked: The switch made one disk spin, which made another disk spin; the switch made both disks spin; and so on.

In another of Gopnik's experiments, 4-year-olds were able to figure out how to make a toy light up in just two steps instead of several. But "they only did that if the (researcher) said, 'I don't know how this toy works,' " Gopnik said. "If the (researcher) said, 'This is my toy, I'll show you how it works,' they just imitated whatever the experimenter did."

In other words, children who were led rather than turned loose didn't devise the more creative solution - an "example of how, ironically, direct teaching ... can sometimes sort of backfire," Gopnik said. "It leads to a kind of narrowing of what children are thinking about, instead of an extension or broadening of it."

Other studies show that young children, in addition to being able to ponder their own actions, are also capable of weighing the actions of others.

That was the heart of a 2010 experiment involving rubber frogs and ducks run by Tamar Kushnir, an assistant professor of child development at Cornell University.

Social, statistical cues

In the study, 3- and 4-year-olds rummaged through boxes with either mostly toy ducks and a few toy frogs, or mostly toy frogs and a few toy ducks. After an adult picked up ducks from a frog-dominated box, the children were asked to choose one of the two animals to give to the adult. The children generally chose the duck, inferring based on statistical odds that the adult preferred ducks over frogs, the researchers said.

"The amazing thing is that children didn't just pay attention to what you were picking and why you liked it," Kushnir said. "They paid attention to what you left behind."

The study demonstrates that by an early age, children can already pick up on all kinds of social and statistical cues, Kushnir said.

"We know other people think and feel and want and know, and might have different perspectives from our own and different ideas from our own ideas," she said. "These are the different kinds of things children have mastered by age 4 or 5. That's remarkable."

And kids don't need fancy toys or bright screens to learn those lessons, said Barbara Bennett, a developmental and behavioral pediatrician and head of the Child Development Center at California Pacific Medical Center. They just need simple props, blocks and books.

Vital lessons from play

Bennett cited a patient of hers, a boy, who recently stacked big pieces of foam into an arrangement that he called the letter "T."

The freedom to play and imagine "allows them to really use their mind and look at things from their perspectives and make their own judgments and scientific thoughts, even though it may not look like science to us," she said.

Overall, experts say, there are plenty of studies that make the case for educating very young children by focusing more on imaginative play - and less on traditional reading, writing and arithmetic.

"The most important lessons children learn early in life," Kushnir said, "don't happen in a classroom."

Stephanie M. Lee is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: slee@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @stephaniemlee

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/health/article/Preschoolers-at-play-show-science-skills-4068588.php#ixzz2DgBYqiXO

Flash Cards or Finger Paints: Should Academics or Play Be the Goal of Preschool?

Flash Cards or Finger Paints: Should Academics or Play Be the Goal of Preschool?

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Hello there! If you are new here, you might want to subscribe to my email feed for free literacy and learning ideas.

Guest post by Amy Webb, parent, educator, and blogger at The Thoughtful Parent.

If you are the parent of a preschool-aged child, you have probably put quite a bit of thought into what type (if any) of preschool to enroll your child. If you’re like me, you had no idea how complicated a decision this could be until you started delving into the topic.

Play Based vs. Academic

One of the first things I discovered when learning about preschools is that there seems to be an emerging distinction between “play-based” and “academic” programs. On the face of it, many parents might have a tendency to gravitate towards the “academic” preschool model. Isn’t this the best way to prepare my child for the school environment he will face in the future? Isn’t a high-stakes academic environment what he/she will experience once they enter formal schooling? And herein lies the crux of this issue (in my mind). We, as parents, may feel that academic rigor is the definition of “quality” in K-12 education and so it must be the same for preschools. If we look at the research in early childhood education, however, we find this is not necessarily the case.
A quick review of the academic research on this topic reveals that this recent emphasis on “academically rigorous” preschools may, in fact, be undermining youngsters’ ability to learn and be creative. Several recent studies have compared young children’s learning when provided either (1) direct instruction about a toy from a teacher, or (2) time to explore a toy on their own with little adult instruction. The results were quite clear: preschoolers who were “taught” how to use a toy by a teacher, did use the toy as instructed; but that’s all they did. They did not try to find any other features of the toy that the teacher did not explain to them and they did not try to use the toy in new ways. By contrast, the preschoolers who were given no direct instruction on the toy, they found new features of the toy and new ways of playing with the toy that the direct instruction group never noticed. So it seems that preschoolers do learn from direct instruction, but they are not as creative or flexible in their learning as when they are just left alone to learn by playing.

Young Children Learn through Guided Discovery

This research points to a key aspect of child development that may not be readily apparent: young children do not learn the same way adults learn. As adults, when we learn a new task, most often we are given direct instruction from someone else or perhaps we read instructions from a manual. Young children, on the other hand, do not learn most effectively this way. Their form of learning is what psychologist Alison Gopnik calls “guided discovery.” This involves the child exploring an object or task in their own way while watching an adult or older child perform the task. The key difference, it seems, is that the child is not directly instructed on how to use an object or perform a task; they simply figure it out through their own exploration (i.e., play).
Of course, as children get older there is a need for direct instruction. Skills like reading and writing would be difficult, if not impossible to learn through a “guided discovery” type of learning. However, trying to provide rigorous academic direct instruction at the preschool age is essentially putting the cart before the horse. Preschoolers are still in the discovery stage; they are not yet ready for routinized learning.

Academic Preschools Lead To Long-Term Problems

In fact, this type of academic drilling may undermine their interest in learning all together.  The tricky part of this equation, however, is that kids in “academic” preschools may in fact learn their ABC’s sooner and be able to recite memorized information back to adults on cue. This is appealing to us adults. I admit, the thought of seeing my toddler name numbers, letters, and even phonic sounds seems exciting. What research is beginning to show us, however, is that this immediate “payoff” in the form of routinized learning may come at the expense of a real interest and love of learning. A study by researchers at the University of North Florida showed just this. They followed 160 children who experienced three different types of preschool settings: child-initiated (e.g., play-based), academically directed, or a combination of the two. These children were followed and their academic performance tracked until fourth grade. The results showed very few differences in the children’s school performance in early elementary school. By the time the children reached fourth grade, however, the children who attended the academic-focused preschool showed a gradual decline in academic performance (i.e., grades). Of course, this is only one study, but research of this type implies that children pushed into academics too soon may miss out on a more integrative, curiosity-driven approach to learning that they will need later in life.

Preschool Should Be . . .

In many ways this research reiterates what we’ve know about preschool for awhile. The real benefit of preschool is in learning life skills like social skills, self-control, and persistence, not necessarily in any “academic” skills. Research from 30+ years of Headstart and similar programs have provided strong evidence for this. Kids who attended those preschool programs (most of whom are economically disadvantaged) did better than their peers in school and in life, but not because these programs helped increase their IQ. Researchers found it was the social skills they learned in preschool that put them ahead of their peers on many aspects of later achievement. One of the primary goals of preschool is to help students develop self-regulation and play-based preschool promotes this goal in a better, more child-friendly way. Research has continued to show that self-regulation is a better predictor of a child’s later academic success (and life success) than IQ tests or academic tests.
Sure, preschool may also help kids learn their ABCs and colors, but the interaction with peers and teachers is what really seems to matter. Well-known British pediatrician D.W. Winnicott put it this way, “It is in playing, and only in playing, that the individual child or adult is able to be creative and to use the whole personality, and it is only in being creative that the individual discovers the self.”
Bio: Amy Webb is stay-at-home mom to a 2 year old son and author of the blog The Thoughtful Parent. While completing her PhD in Human Development and Family Sciences she realized how little of the academic research about child development and parenting actually reaches the average parent. With The Thoughtful Parent she “translates” the latest child development research from academic lingo to a parent-friendly format. Amy also contributes monthly to the parenting blog Notes on Parenting.

Mud Is Good! Ten Easy Ways to Connect Your Family to the Joy of Nature

Short on Vitamin N? Here’s a brief list of nature activities to help you connect your kids, and yourself, to the health and cognitive benefits of nature time. (For a more complete collection of 100 actions, for families, schools, and communities see Last Child in the Woods, from which the following suggestions are drawn.)

1. Invite native flora and fauna into your life. Maintain a birdbath. Replace part of your lawn with native plants. Build a bat house. For backyard suggestions, plus links to information about attracting wildlife to apartments and townhouses, see the National Audubon Society’s Invitation to a Healthy Yard. Make your yard a National Wildlife Federation (NWF) Certified Wildlife Habitat.
2. Revive old traditions. Collect lightning bugs at dusk, release them at dawn. Make a leaf collection. Keep a terrarium or aquarium. Go crawdadding — tie a piece of liver or bacon to a string, drop it into a creek or pond, wait until a crawdad tugs. Put the garden hose to good use: make a mud hole. (Your kids will sleep well later.)
3. Help your child discover a hidden universe. Find a scrap board and place it on bare dirt. Come back in a day or two, carefully lift the board (watch for unfriendly critters), and see how many species have found shelter there. Identify these creatures with the help of a field guide. Return to this universe once a month, lift the board and discover who’s new.
4. Encourage your kids to go camping in the backyard. Buy them a tent or help them make a canvas tepee, and leave it up all summer. Join the NWF’s Great American Backyard Campout.
5. Take a hike. With younger children, choose easier, shorter routes and prepare to stop often. Or be a stroller explorer. “If you have an infant or toddler, consider organizing a neighborhood stroller group that meets for weekly nature walks,” suggests the National Audubon Society. The American Hiking Society offers good tips on how to hike with teenagers. Involve your teen in planning hikes; prepare yourselves physically for hikes, and stay within your limits (start with short day hikes); keep pack weight down. For more information, consult the American Hiking Society or a good hiking guide, such as John McKinney’s Joy of Hiking. In urban neighborhoods, put on daypacks and go on a mile hike to look for nature. You’ll find it — even if it’s in the cracks of a sidewalk.
6. Be a cloudspotter or build a backyard weather station. No special shoes or drive to the soccer field is required for “clouding.” A young person just needs a view of the sky (even if it’s from a bedroom window) and a guidebook. Cirrostratus, cumulonimbus, or lenticularis, shaped like flying saucers, “come to remind us that the clouds are Nature’s poetry, spoken in a whisper in the rarefied air between crest and crag,” writes Gavin Pretor-Pinney in his wonderful book The Cloudspotter’s Guide. To build a backyard weather station, read The Kid’s Book of Weather Forecasting, by Mark Breen, Kathleen Friestad, and Michael Kline.
7. Collect stones. Even the youngest children love gathering rocks, shells, and fossils. To polish stones, use an inexpensive lapidary machine-a rock tumbler. See Rock and Fossil Hunter, by Ben Morgan.
8. Encourage your kids to build a tree house, fort, or hut. You can provide the raw materials, including sticks, boards, blankets, boxes, ropes, and nails, but it’s best if kids are the architects and builders. The older the kids, the more complex the construction can be. For understanding and inspiration, read Children’s Special Places, by David Sobel. Treehouses and Playhouses You Can Build, by David and Jeanie Stiles describes how to erect sturdy structures, from simple platforms to multistory or multitree houses connected by rope bridges.
9. Plant a garden. If your children are little, choose seeds large enough for them to handle and that mature quickly, including vegetables. Whether teenagers or toddlers, young gardeners can help feed the family, and if your community has a farmers’ market, encourage them to sell their extra produce. Alternatively, share it with the neighbors or donate it to a food bank. If you live in an urban neighborhood, create a high-rise garden. A landing, deck, terrace, or flat roof typically can accommodate several large pots, and even trees can thrive in containers if given proper care.
10. Invent your own nature game. One mother’s suggestion: “We help our kids pay attention during longer hikes by playing ‘find ten critters’—mammals, birds, insects, reptiles, snails, other creatures. Finding a critter can also mean discovering footprints, mole holes, and other signs that an animal has passed by or lives there.” (For inspiration, take a look at the finalists and winner of Clif Kids’ 2012 Backyard Game of the Year contest.)

For more suggestions, in addition to Last Child in the Woods, a number of recent books offer great advice, including Fed Up with Frenzy, by C&NN’s Suz Lipman, I Love Dirt! by Jennifer Ward, and the free booklet A Parent’s Guide to Nature Play by Ken Finch. Also, the classic Sharing Nature With Children by Joseph Cornell. Online, Nature Rocks is another good resource.

And of course visit the Children & Nature Network for more ideas for your family and community, including an action guide for change, toolkits to create a Family Nature Club or become a Natural Leader, resources for Natural Teachers and pediatricians  — as well as state and national news and the latest research. Connect with the grassroots campaigns and efforts of others around the world. And please tell us how your own family, school, organization, or community connects young people to nature.

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Richard Louv is Chairman Emeritus of the Children & Nature Network and the author of  ”LAST CHILD IN THE WOODS: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder” and  ”THE NATURE PRINCIPLE: Reconnecting with Life in a Digital Age.”

Mothering Your Self

MOTHERING YOUR SELF 
By Jessica Sorci, MA, MFTI

In those first days, weeks and months after having a baby, every new mother undergoes immense physical, emotional and psychological change.  The change is all-encompassing and completely overwhelming at times, even to the most well-adjusted, best supported mom.  Just as her pregnancy gradually, but utterly transformed her body and her ideas about herself, her postpartum experience is also utterly transformational, but this time in an immediate, full-speed-ahead way that isn’t the least bit gradual and is entirely unrelenting.  As a therapist who works with new moms, and as a former new mom myself, I have seen and known the intensity of this kind of life transformation up close, over and over again.   Sometimes the intensity of the transformation creates or stirs up anxiety, despair and depression.  Some new moms get entirely swallowed up in the fear and despair and some just visit those feelings on occasion.  I believe there are some specific ways we can help protect ourselves from getting completely swallowed up and ways we can help ourselves recover when we begin to sense the overwhelm encroaching.  Let's explore...

If I were to name the single most powerful contributor to anxiety and despair in the postpartum period it would be LACK OF SLEEP.  Creating opportunities for uninterrupted sleep is critical to maternal wellness.  If you are able to arrange even one or two nights a week of really good sleep you will find your mood improves dramatically, just knowing you can expect and count on getting these little (but HUGELY important) breaks for true sleep.  If you are particularly sleep-challenged, here are some ways you might consider reconstructing your life so that you can get the sleep that is required to feel and to function reasonably well:

* Ask family members (moms, sisters, nieces, aunts, grandmothers) if they can come spend the night and take over the nighttime duties (feeding, holding and changing your little one) so that you can close your bedroom door and sleep uninterrupted.

* Hire a night nanny or a postpartum doula if you can afford to.  Even if it's just one or two nights a week, you will benefit immensely from being able to put in ear plugs, get truly comfortable and SLEEP for at least 4 continuous hours.  Hopefully twice, consecutively in one night.

* Have your partner take over night duties on his nights off.  I know it's not how your partner dreams of spending his days away from work but remember, your partner is not also recovering from giving birth, making milk (if you're breastfeeding) and is not linked up and hooked in to the baby to the same degree that you are...meaning, your partner's body has a lot more time and resources available for restorative activity than does yours.  Your partner has a huge advantage here in terms of energy.  He can sacrifice those Friday and Saturday nights for the greatest good of the whole family, allowing you to get some quality sleep while he tends to the baby and sleeps in a separate room from you.

Without some decent sleep we cannot be well.  Without our wellness our families suffer.  Truly, make this the top priority for yourself every day.  At some point your baby will be sleeping longer stretches at night and not requiring the level of care he/she needs now (I promise!).  But in those times when baby isn’t sleeping, make certain you have a plan in place to protect your own sleep.  I can’t overstate the importance of this one.

Many new moms also suffer from the near complete loss of free time and the grief and guilt that seem to accompany that loss.  We yearn for the ability to take a long, hot shower, watch a movie, think the thoughts we want to think, linger over a meal…and there is absolutely nothing wrong with wanting and missing all of those ways we used to live.  I would go so far as to say, it’s incredibly healthy to yearn for all those ways we used to live, for those are the ways we knew how to take care of ourselves and the ways we knew how to feel joy and comfort and wellness.  The fact that you miss your old life is really a good sign – that there is a life in you that wants to re-engage and re-emerge.  However, many new moms have a tendency to feel this desire and this yearning is in conflict with being a “good mom”.  A “good mom” would be content just being a mom – just holding, feeding, changing, bouncing and tending to her little one 24/7.  Right?  Ahem.  Very few humans would find complete fulfillment in such a rigorous, repetitive, and in some way (dare I say) unrewarding job.  Loving your baby and being a wonderful, responsive, attuned mother is not at all in conflict with having a need for a self.  The challenge and the conflict are really around managing to have both.  And if I’m telling the real truth here, in the early days and weeks and months, baby’s needs win out most of the time.  Often there just aren’t enough hours in the day or helping hands and frankly there isn’t sufficient ENERGY to allocate a reasonable chunk to mom’s very real, very valid needs.  But with a little effort we can usually arrange for some small chunks of time on a regular basis in which to care for ourselves.  Those small chunks of time are priceless and are, like sleep, critical to maternal wellness. 

I’ve given some thought to creating a list of ways to replenish sanity/energy/wellness if you have only a small chunk of time.  I suggest you add to this list and then use it at least twice a week – once a day preferably.  And even if you only have a few minutes, invite yourself to really become present, to really inhabit your body in the moment.  Become aware of your breath and of the sensations in your chest, your face, your arms, neck and back.  Here we go:

If you have 15 minutes to Mother Your Self:

* Take a shower and use a candle or cleanser that feels or smells wonderful.

* Call a good friend/family member to connect – someone you can REALLY talk to.

* Make a delicious snack.

* Read a magazine or go online for fun

* Lay down and rest.



If you have 30 minutes to Mother Your Self:

* Take a relaxing bath. Close your eyes and allow yourself to feel the warmth and the weightlessness of the water.

* Sit down and eat a nutritious meal.  Chew slowly and savor the taste and the sensation of being fed.

* Take a walk in your neighborhood. Turn your attention to the way your body feels.  Notice what it's like to move without holding a baby.

* Go to a nearby coffeehouse and enjoy the feeling of being in the world, and being free to linger a bit.

* Take a short (but hopefully sweet) nap.



If you have 1 or 2 hours to Mother Your Self:

* Arrange for a gentle, loving postnatal massage.  Treat yourself.

* Go to your favorite restaurant and eat something you are truly hungry for.

* Go to a movie and let your mind travel somewhere entirely different from your current life.  Do some advance research to ensure that the movie is uplifting and not scary or depressing.

* Chamomile tea, earplugs, pillows, close the door and SLEEP.

* Find an entertaining, enjoyable book and lose yourself in a wonderful story.

* See a therapist to talk and feel supported in this particularly challenging time.

* Go someplace in nature that you find beautiful - the ocean, mountains, a lake, a park and soak it in.  Walk, meditate, breathe and immerse yourself in the beauty and wonder of the natural world.

* Go to a cafe and bring a notebook.  Begin writing about your birth story, your current experience as a new mom, or something entirely different.  Take this time to explore the contents of your own mind - often our thoughts and impressions receive very little floor time and yet there is so, so much to process and metabolize.

* Go to a yoga or meditation class.  Take some time to get in your body and give it some love.  Doing so in the presence of others can feel like an entrance back into the world.

Add to this list and keep it nearby so that you can use the bits of “free” time you have to nourish yourself.


There is nothing on earth as important as creating and raising a child.  Nothing.  Mothering means infusing a new little body and consciousness with love, making manifest through your presence and your responsiveness an experience of the world as a safe, welcoming place.  Imagine for a moment exactly what it takes to imbed a human being with a real conviction that they are loved and with the desire and confidence to launch into life full of curiosity.  Oh, and also, to equip that person with the ability to tolerate struggle, pain, failure and loss (because sadly, those things will surely come at some point).  Yes, this motherhood thing is quite an endeavor.  Many of us are faced with the crushing realization that we have had very unrealistic expectations of perfectionism for ourselves as the mothers we envisioned ourselves being (prior to motherhood).  We thought we could do it all and do it all perfectly (or at least REALLY, REALLY well).  When we become parents we are forced to realize that we cannot possibly do it as well, as flawlessly as we had fantasized because it is in fact a 24 hour a day job that sustains for somewhere in the neighborhood of 18 years and challenges pretty much every facet of our entire being.  Thankfully, we also learn that perfection is neither required, nor is it even desirable. "The good-enough mother...starts off with an almost complete adaptation to her infant's needs, and as time proceeds she adapts less and less completely, gradually, according to the infant's growing ability to deal with her failure..." (Donald Winnicott ,Transitional Objects and Transitional Phenomena, 1951).  Part of learning to be a good enough mother is learning how to care for the baby and the little girl in our selves even as we care for our children.  It turns out that the better we care for the baby inside of us, the better we are able to mother the baby in our arms. 

This blog is written with the intention of addressing that little person inside of you who has perhaps been neglected since the birth of your baby, or maybe even longer than that.  Some of us have never received the kind of mothering that we now expect to be able to give to our children.  How can we give what we have never received?  Ahhh.  Now that we know exactly what it is we want and need to be able to GIVE, we know exactly what it is we need to receive.  That’s right.  You need to find a way to give yourself at least a sliver of what you are now oozing from every orifice.  Love.  Food.  Rest.  Attention.  I’m talking about Mothering Your Self.