I sent this picture of my daughter to a friend tonight, saying that my daughter is really happy to be out of the house after a week stuck inside. My friend said,
"and of course you took her to a library. Do you ever do anything that's not so good for her?"
Well, she was actually going to a dance class which is held at a local library.
Smallsteps and I play a lot of games together and pretty much, all are done with attention and the intention of developing her skill set. From the day she was born and I held her, I started talking to her constantly about everything we are doing and this hasn't stopped. But more than that, I have actively spoken to her about things she has to guess or imagine, to spend energy thinking about what she can't see or, perhaps hasn't much experience with yet.
We play word games and number games and since before she turned 4 last year, she can add and subtract and has a very broad vocabulary in both Finnish and English. For the last year and a half, we have been playing a guessing game while she eats, where I describe something and she has to guess what it is. Sometimes I will tell her that is is an animal or a plant and give clues, other times she will have to ask questions like size and color to get to the right answer.
In the last couple weeks we have been playing a word game where I ask, what letter does "so and so" start with? - and she will annunciate the word and give the letter. Then I moved onto what it ends with and she will say the word and overemphasis it as I have demoed and give the letter. In the last few days, I have given her simple words and have her make the sounds of each until she spells it out - cat, hot, spot, dog. A couple days ago, we were reading a Dr Seuss book and she looks at one of the words, sounds them out and says the word.
"Daddy! I can read!"
She was very proud of her accomplishment, but for her, none of this is a lesson, none of it is a chore, none of it is forced - It is all just fun and games and she demands more of them and she wants them to be "difficult".
We also play physical games, where she has to chase a balloon that I throw, trying to "trick her" so she can't reach it. Or catch a ball, or create a new trick on the exercise rings we installed in her room. We draw and color-in, build lego or make castles out of wooden blocks.
There are a million things we do - but my friend is right, no, I don't really do anything that is not good for her. What is interesting is that a lot of people seem to think that this is bad, as if my daughter is being mistreated because the games we play are educational in some way. I find this a very strange approach, but perhaps it is an indication of how many people are raised, that learning is work, that it is hard, boring and obligatory. And because this has been the experience for a lot of parents (myself included), we see a "good time" as time where we can spend not learning and we then carry this default and apply it to our children.
This makes the assumption that the good time for us, is the same good time for them. Because we want to spend our time in front of a screen not learning, we sit our kids in front of a screen for their downtime too. However, we are spending a huge amount more time in leisure activities than we did earlier in life, but have a look around, do people seem happier, more energetic? How about yourself? If we aren't actually better for spending our leisure time in front of a screen, why would we imprint the habits into our children?
Well, convenience. It is "easier" to sit kids in front of one screen, so the parents can have time on another, but that state of convenience gets increasingly difficult for all concerned when for example, we need to attend to other activities, like learning new skills. We spend so much time not practicing learning, that when we must, we are unsurprisingly quite poor at it and it becomes a chore, difficult, boring, obligation. And the cycle continues.*
And, since I only have one child to experiment on (I was really hoping for twins), I am taking the approach that long term, a child that is curious about the world and able to seek out and learn new skills will be easier work than one that is a passive consumer and must be forced. I have a single study subject, so the scientific experiment isn't robust, but going on the stories of my friends - we have had a very easy child to raise, allergies and health issues excluded. Very few tantrums when she was little and while she has had a fair bit (in our view) of screen time in the last year, not once has she got upset when it is time to do something else and most of the time, it is her who is putting the lid down on the laptop, wanting to do something active - even though while watching she is super active and uses the screen as more background noise half the time.
The other thing is that being with her is very easy also, as she rarely needs to be entertained, as she is rarely bored in the sense of having nothing to do, because she is able to find something of interest in anything she comes across. She constantly observes the world, talks about what she sees, asks questions and makes up her own games for us to participate in. The "parenting" activities are simple because we don't have to have something, we can make a game out of anything, no matter where we are or what is around us, even if we have to use our imagination as the playing board.
To me, this has nothing to do with being a good parent or not, but it is perhaps more about being an effective parent. If the goal is to raise a child to be able to stand on their own two feet as a well-rounded and largely self-reliant adult, childhood activities have to support the progression. They say, charity begins in the home.
So does competency.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
Our daughter thinks my wife is the funniest - but I have the best games.
