A Handful of Fun

March 26, 2015 By Diane Constantine

Why Sensory Play is Important for Preschoolers

This article is by Amanda Morgan. She has her masters degree in early childhood development and trains parents and teachers. But she also is a mom with four sons who teach her something new every day. Please stop by her site: www.notjustcute.com. You can also sign up for her monthly newsletter.

Think of your average preschooler. How long has this child been proficient with language? Depending on the age, the child may not really be too proficient yet! Others seem to have been talking non-stop since 2 1/2, but that means they’ve been talking now for all of…..about a year! Now think of how long these children have been seeing, smelling, hearing, feeling, and tasting. Their whole lives! Children are wired to receive and utilize sensory input from day one. This is why children will dive in hands first, exploring a new substance. The senses are their most familiar, most basic way to explore, process, and come to understand new information.

This is why we must allow young children to learn through experience, not just lecture. These children need to use their senses and be engaged in meaningful experiences. As we talk with them about what they are observing and sensing, we give them new language tools to connect with these more familiar sensory tools, building language as well as supporting cognitive concepts specific to the experience.

Now, the flip side to this equation is important to remember as well. Just as children learn through their senses, they also are developing the ability to use those senses and are building the neurological pathways associated with each one. With added sensory experiences, combined with the scaffolding of adults and peers, children become more perceptive. Their sensory intake and processing becomes more acute. As they are better able to use their senses, they are then better able to learn through their senses.

Sensory play is really part of the scientific process. Whether out loud or within the internal dialogue of the mind, children have developed a question, leading them to investigate-by grabbing, smelling, listening, rubbing, staring, licking , what have you! They are using their senses to collect data and from that, attempt to answer their own questions. Whether or not young children are always able to verbally communicate this process, it is still a valid exercise in scientific inquiry.

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Happiest Families

August 28, 2014 By Diane Constantine

I read Eric Barker’s post 6 Things the Happiest Families Have in Common. I’d like to take his ideas and personalize them.

Have a mission statement

The happiest families have a mission statement. Another way to describe a mission statement is a set of goals the family is reaching for. It is very hard to know if we have done well, if we don’t know what the goal is. Having goals, we can periodically assess our progress and make adjustments to more nearly meet our goals. Or we may decide a goal has been reached or is no longer important and make some new goals.

You may need to take some time as parents to think and pray about what are your values and what goals you want for your family. You may make several goals as your mission statement. To help you get started, try completing the following statements.

“We want our family to be. . .”
“We want to be a family that. . .”

You may decide you want your family to be supportive of each member developing their talents. Or, you want to be a family that reaches out to those less fortunate than you are.

Share your family history

The happiest families tell and retell the family history. Grandparents and aunts and uncles tell stories from their childhood and even what they heard from their grandparents. Tell the good things to instill hope for success. But also share the tough times and how the family came through the crises. What did family members do that was praiseworthy? What has set your family apart from others?

When children know they are part of a family with a history, it can give them confidence to stand in times when they have to be different than the culture around them. They can say, “I’m a famly name, and our family doesn’t do things like that!”

Weekly family meetings

Many of you don’t have children old enough to have a family meeting. For you, it might be wise as parents to have a weekly meeting together and answer these questions for yourselves and with your little children in mind.

For those of you with children old enough to take part, set aside about 20 minutes once a week to give everyone a chance to answer these questions.

What worked well this week?
What didn’t work well this week?
What will we agree to work on in the coming week?

If the kids met the previous week’s goal, they get to pick a reward (with parent’s approval). If they did not meet their goal, they get to pick from previously agreed upon punishments.

Following this plan helps keep the goal before everyone’s minds. It also means you’re keeping short accounts and not adding to the list of failures week after week. There is much better chance of success if things are dealt with quickly and rewarded fairly.

How to fight right

Since no family can always escape fights between members, here’s a way to deal with fights where each one feels it is fair. When a fight breaks out:

Separate everybody to think about what just happened. This reduces the emotions that boiled over.
They get back together and come up with three alternatives. There must be three choices of resolutions.
They pick the one they like the best. This way everyone has a say and they have agreed on the solution. This keeps the parents from being dictators.

Family Dinner

With our busy schedules dinnertime may not work to get everyone together. You may choose any meal of the day when everyone should be present nearly every day. In most family dinners the amount of time for ‘real’ talk is only about 10 minutes when “pass the salt” and “get your elbows off the table” are excluded. In most families, the parents talk at least 2/3 of that 10 minutes. The happiest families turn it upside down and the children are the ones who talk 2/3 of the time.

Make sure everyone has a chance to say something to the whole family. They may tell about something that happened during the day, some news that others should know, or why they feel happy or sad.

Parents should teach one new word each day. Children who eat a meal each day with their parents are less likely to drink, smoke, do drugs, get pregnant, commit suicide, or develop eating disorders than kids who don’t eat with their family. They also have better academic achievement and fewer behavioral problems. So it is worth rearranging your schedule to include one family meal everyday.

Just Try!

Everyone wants a happier family. These are things that the happiest families all do. Will you succeed at all of them? Probably not, at least not all the time. But if you want to have a happier family, try to include these strategies into your family’s life. Just try! If you can’t do all of them, start with one of them. When you see that you can do that, try adding another.

Remember to pray for each member of your family every day. Bless your children as they begin and end their day. God will help you to set good goals and give you the wisdom you need to help your children grow to be the best possible version of themselves.

Eric Barker compiles information from many reputable sources to answer questions many of us have. You can receive his emails by requesting them at his blog, Barking Up the Wrong Tree.

For another article on finding fun in marriage see, Have Fun or Else!

Help for Kids with Irrational Fears

August 22, 2014 By Diane Constantine

Lisa C. Baker writes blog called, A Fine Parent.com. You can see her complete article at: Got Kids With Irrational Fears?

She begins the post with:

Don’t you think one of the most helpless and frustrating moments as a parent is when our kids have irrational fears, and nothing we say seems to make a difference?

It may be something common like the fear of darkness or monsters under the bed. Or something completely out of ordinary like the fear of ants, or everyday sounds, or imaginary little men living under the nightstand.

How can we help them overcome these fears?

For my daughter, it was an irrational fear of water. Even a splash on her leg from stepping in a puddle made her scream like she’d been cut with a knife. She ran away from dogs because she was afraid they would lick her. I could only bathe her with a sponge in a bucket in front of the TV to distract her. Once, she punched a one year old in the face because she was so afraid the baby would suck on its fingers and then touch her with wet hands.

Her 5 strategies are:

1. Validate your child’s emotions through empathy and calm confidence.

2. Reduce your child’s panic with mindful, sensory calming.

3. Challenge your child to test the edge of fear.

4. Spark your child’s imagination and creativity to challenge anxious thoughts.

5. Change your own thinking to match your child’s new found confidence.

She describes how she learned through trial and error and then with a book written by Lawrence Cohen called, The Opposite of Worry: The Playful Parenting Approach to Childhood Anxieties and Fears.

If your child is struggling with irrational fears, why not go to Lisa’s blog and read more about her strategies for helping her daughter deal with her fear of water.

If you, as an adult are struggling with fear, you may be helped by reading, Battle Against Fear

Read Aloud Every Day

July 23, 2014 By Diane Constantine

Huffinton Post reported: On June 24, 2014, the American Academy of Pediatrics issued its first-ever policy statement focused on literacy promotion, calling for pediatricians to advise all parents about the many benefits of reading aloud, which promotes literacy and social-emotional skills.

“Reading with young children is a joyful way to build strong and healthy parent-child relationships and stimulate early language development,” Dr. Pamela High, a pediatrician and professor at Brown University’s Alpert Medical School, told The Huffington Post.

“Even in higher-income families, many children do not experience the enhanced engagement and language-rich parent-child interactions, including book handling, print exposure and other early literacy experiences afforded by daily shared reading,” the authors write. “All families face issues of limited time, limited parental understanding of the key role of reading aloud and competition for the child’s interest and attention from other sources of entertainment, such as electronic media.”

“As for parents, High said they should remember the so-called ‘5 Rs‘ of early education: reading with their children daily as part of a set routine; rhyming, singing and cuddling with them throughout the day; establishing routines and regular times for meals and sleep; rewarding them for their efforts and successes to boost self-esteem; and developing relationships that are reciprocal and nurturing. Parents should make daily reading a part of their regular, set routine.”

So, Moms and Dads, take the time, make the effort to include reading books together as part of your daily routine with your babies and young children.

A Better Way to Stop Lying

July 10, 2014 By Diane Constantine

from Mamapedia.com

Do stories like Pinocchio really keep our kids from lying?

One of the key ways parents teach their children right from wrong is through stories. Part of the continued popularity of Aesop’s Fables, which date all the way back to the fifth century BC, is that they’re an effective tool for instilling morals and values in our kids. Right?

Well, it depends, according to a new study.

The research, which was recently published in the journal Psychological Science, looked at the effectiveness of moral tales to encourage young children to tell the truth.

The results demonstrate that stories focusing on the negative consequences of lying — such as your nose growing longer and longer with each fib — are a lot less successful at molding honest children than stories that praise a character for choosing to tell the truth.

The experiment involved a researcher giving a child aged 3 to 7 a temptation too good to resist: Telling said child not to look at a toy and then leaving him/her alone in the room. Not surprisingly, most of the kiddos looked at the toy.

Upon returning to the room, the researcher read the child one of four morality-themed tales — two of which associate lying with negative consequences (Pinocchio and The Boy Who Cried Wolf), one of which involves a character being praised for his honesty (George Washington and the Cherry Tree), and one of which is totally unrelated to the topic of truth-telling (The Tortoise and the Hare). Researchers then analyzed which of the kids confessed to looking at the toy and which didn’t.

The result? The fables involving significant negative consequences for lying, i.e. public humiliation via of an ever-elongating schnoz and death via a wolf’s jaws, were no better at encouraging honesty than the story that didn’t mention deceit at all.

The only tale that inspired the kids to confess to peeking at the toy was the one in which the future first president fesses up — ”I cannot tell a lie” — and is subsequently praised by his dad for telling the truth. Children who were told this story were three times more likely to be honest than those who had heard the other fables.

The takeaway for us parents trying to raise honorable kids is that emphasizing the positive results of truth-telling is far more effective than highlighting the negative consequences of lying.

While scolding them for their transgressions is often necessary, commending their good behavior makes an even stronger impression. The satisfaction of being praised far outweighs the fear of being reprimanded.

Although I wouldn’t expect “Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire” to become “Say What’s True and We’ll Thank You!” anytime soon.

by Katie Markey McLaughlin is a freelance writer and blogger who believes that moms can do anything, but not everything. Her blog Pick Any Two encourages all of us to set priorities without apology or guilt.

Another good article on lying is Turning Lies into Lemonade from A Fine Parent web site.