Author Archives: Janelle Durham

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About Janelle Durham

I am a parent educator and social worker, and teach music and science to children age 1 - 8.

How Much is Enough? How Much is Too Much?

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Although there are plenty of families in America who struggle with the basic necessities of life like putting food on the table, many other parents have access to a huge array of options. Toys to buy, media to watch, vacations to go on, and activities to enroll in. The job of marketers is to convince us these things are ‘necessities’ and things “you can’t afford to pass up”. Sometimes they play to our fears of the future: “Playing with this toy will help your child get into college.” Sometimes they play on parental guilt: “Help your kid have a great Christmas – show them that they’re loved.” Sometimes they sell joy: “You work so hard – you deserve to have FUN!”

And here’s the thing. Lots of those toys and media are fun! Lots of fun! And going on vacations as a family can lead to fabulous connecting moments and can be part of a child’s memories of belonging in a loving, happy family. And lots of those classes and activities really will help build your child’s knowledge and skills, and help them reach their potential.

So how do we decide which options to take? What is enough? What is too much? Every family has to make their own decisions, based on their child’s needs and their own goals and values.

What do kids need, in order to learn?

Often parents choose toys and classes as enrichment tools to help their child learn and grow. When we go back to the basics of brain development, we know that children learn through: novelty and repetition, guided play and free play, and down time to process it all.

New toys and media offer novelty – lots of interesting stimuli to take in. But if kids are continually bombarded with new things, and not given the chance to play with the same thing over and over, they don’t gain the benefit of repetition, which is mastery. If a child only has access to a few toys, he may complain of boredom, but he gets really creative with those toys!

Classes, camps, activities, and sports teams are all guided play and guided learning. They help your child gain new knowledge and learn new skills. But kids also benefit from free play – just having free time with friends or siblings to goof off and play any game they can think up. And they need rest and quiet solitude to absorb everything and make their own connections.

Kim John Payne, author of Simplicity Parenting, talks about 4 keys to raising “happier, calmer, more secure kids”: the environment, rhythm and schedule, and unplugging. Let’s look at each.

Environment: De-cluttering to make space for creativity.

If there are too many toys, a child doesn’t focus on any of them. They flit from one to the next, never really settling down to play. Their little brains are overstimulated by all the choices. If you keep giving them more toys to “get them engaged” they will get even more distracted.

It is better to focus on having a small number of really excellent toys. Here are some things to think about and look for when choosing what toys to have in your home.

  • Think about toys that build diverse skills: if I had only a few toys, I’d want one in each of these areas: big motor skills (balls, bikes, tumbling mats), small motor skills (puzzles, shape sorters, craft supplies), imaginary play (dress-up clothes, toy kitchen), music toys, art supplies, a set of magnetic letters, some dice for math skills, something to nurture (doll, stuffed animal), and toys for playing outdoors (bucket and shovel).
  • Choose open-ended toys that can be played with in lots of ways and passive toys where the child has to be creative to use them. Things such as blocks, cardboard boxes and tape, puppets, measuring cups and containers. Minimize toys that can only be played with in one way, and active toys where you press the button and it does all the work.
  • Elizabeth Pantley recommends these criteria for choosing toys: long-term play value, durable, washable, solid simplicity, challenge (will teach but won’t frustrate), appropriate for your child’s current developmental abilities, stimulates creativity, engaging, versatile, fits your family values, novelty (different than what you already have), and fun.
  • Spend less time in stores, less time looking at catalogs and shopping online. When you shop, it’s easy to fall in love with toys and end up bringing more home than you need.
  • Try setting up a “toy rotation” system. Make bins of toys, where each bin has about ten toys in it. Keep one bin out to play with and store all the others in the garage or a closet. Whenever the whim strikes (once a week?), swap out the old bin for a new bin.
  • Let your child get bored of their toys…

Think of boredom as a ‘gift.’ Boredom is often the precursor to creativity. Think of a bridge between ‘doing nothing’ and deep creative play. The bridge is almost always paved with (the frustration of) boredom. “I’m bored!” Now *that* is when something interesting usually happens.  – Kim John Payne

Rhythm: Increase predictability by introducing rhythmic moments for connection and calm.

Read my handout on rituals and my post on daily routines. And here are some thoughts on making birthday parties more manageable.

Scheduling: Give kids the gift of unstructured time

You might have the option to enroll your child in anything from art classes to aikido, from piano lessons to pottery, ballet to baseball, soccer to Spanish, gymnastics to geo-caching, wilderness survival to web design. There are so many cool and exciting things to learn! (And, you can’t help but think… it’ll help someday when they fill out college applications…)

Plus there’s the things you have to do – doctor’s appointments, picking up the siblings from their activities, grocery shopping. And more things you want to do – movies, playdates, dinner out, outings to the playground, sporting events, farmer’s markets, hikes in the woods, vacations to the beach…

All of these are cool. And all of them are learning experiences. Just choose your activities wisely. And make sure you remember to make space in the schedule for down-time, and quiet contemplation, and spontaneous, creative play. And for self-care for them and for you: sleep, calm meals around a table, snuggling up with a book.

Unstructured time gives children the opportunity to explore their inner and outer worlds…  they learn to engage with themselves and the world, to imagine and invent and create.  Unstructured time also challenges children to explore their own passions. If we keep them busy with lessons and structured activity, or they “fill” their time with screen entertainment, they never learn to respond to the stirrings of their own hearts, which might lead them to study the bugs on the sidewalk, build a fort in the back yard, make a monster from clay, write a short story or song, or organize the neighborhood kids into making a movie.  These calls from our heart are what lead us to the passions that make life meaningful, and they are available to us… when we are given free rein to explore and pursue where our interests lead us.” (Dr. Laura Markham)

Unplugging: Reduce the influence of adult concerns, media and consumerism on children to increase resilience, social and emotional intelligence.

When allowing your child to use screens (TV, computers, smartphones, tablets, etc.) make conscious choices about the content and about how much, when, and where to use them.

Spend more time outdoors, relaxing, playing, and discovering together.

Allow for quality family time:

Families can benefit by doing things whose only purpose is the joy of spending time together, like playing Monopoly, shooting hoops (with no coaching), drawing pictures, or taking a walk. Being unproductive together tells the child that the parent likes the kid, as he or she is.  (Source)

Learn more:

Willingness to Fail is the Key to an Inventor’s Success

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failedThe successful inventors, designers, engineers, artists, chefs, and entrepreneurs of the world know that the keys to success are hard work, sensible risk-taking, taking on challenges, failing, and trying again till you succeed.

Thomas Edison was a prolific inventor, holding over 1000 patents. His inventions include the electric lightbulb, motion picture cameras, and the phonograph. Here are quotes that give clues to the reasons for his success:

  • Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.
  • I have gotten a lot of results! I know several thousand things that won’t work.
  • Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.
  • Just because something doesn’t do what you planned it to do doesn’t mean it’s useless.
  • The essentials to achieve anything worthwhile are: Hard work, Stick-to-itiveness, and Common sense.
  • The reason a lot of people do not recognize opportunity is because it usually goes around wearing overalls and looking like hard work.
  • I never did a day’s work in my life. It was all fun.

Edison clearly had “grit” and a “growth-based mindset.” He also loved to tinker, and had a passion for learning. (Click on any of those color links for tips on instilling those traits in your child. Also read here about the impact of praise on your child’s mindset.)

Here are some ways to raise an Inventor (or designer, engineer, artist, chef,  entrepreneur, author, builder, etc.)

  • Create a culture where struggle and risk-taking is valued more than the “right answer”. One parent asked this question at dinner once a week: “how did you fail this week?“
  • Instead of defining things as “pass” or “fail”, try “mastered” and “not yet.”
  • Tell stories about successful people that illustrate how grit helped them succeed.
  • Let them know that everyone, no matter how talented, runs up against things they can’t do. The ones who succeed are the ones who fail, pick themselves up, fail again and persevere till they succeed.
  • Talk about mistakes and failures as normal parts of learning – not reasons to quit.
  • Let them see you fail and keep trying. Don’t say about yourself “I’m just no good at this.” Say “I guess I need to try harder.”
  • Honor them for times when they set their own goals, begin the work, face road blocks, and carry on to completion.
  • Make things together. Come up with an idea for what you want to accomplish. Draw it and plan it. Build it. Test it. Ask each other: what is working about it? What could be better? Make it better together. Show it to other people. Ask them what could be better.

Grit – The Key to Success?

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gritMany people view intelligence as the key to success. However, there are plenty of intelligent people who don’t achieve much, and lots of successful people that don’t score that well on IQ tests. Angela Duckworth, from the University of Pennsylvania, suggests that an even more important trait is grit. “Grit is passion and perseverance for very long-term goals. Grit is having stamina.” “Grit is sticking with things over the very long term until you master them.”

Duckworth studied students at West Point, competitors in the national spelling bee, and those who complete college versus those who don’t. She’s tested them on the grit scale which asks if they work hard, if they stick to a goal till it’s achieved, and how they respond to setbacks. Those with the highest grit scores were the most successful in each realm.

She believes grit can be taught. Some ways to teach it:

  • Create a culture where struggle and risk-taking and doing things outside your comfort envelope is valued more than getting the right answer.
  • Tell stories about successful people that illustrate how being gritty and working hard despite setbacks helped them to succeed.
  • Talk about mistakes and failures as normal parts of learning – not reasons to quit.
  • Let them know that everyone, no matter how talented, runs up against things they can’t do. The ones who succeed are the ones who fail, pick themselves up, fail again and persevere till they succeed.
  • Honor them for times when they set goals, face road blocks, and carry on to completion.
  • Encourage a growth-based mindset.

Some argue that grit is a byproduct of other traits like confidence, courage and curiosity. Others argue that a child is more likely to be “gritty” and persistent and complete tasks in areas where they are passionate. Duckworth agrees: “I don’t think people can become truly gritty and great at things they don’t love So when we try to develop grit in kids, we also need to find and help them cultivate their passions. That’s as much a part of the equation here as the hard work and the persistence.”

Learn more:

Growth Based Mindset

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Carol Dweck, a psychologist at Stanford University, has spent decades studying achievement and success. She has developed the concept of a growth-based mindset, summarized here:

Fixed Mindset Growth-Based Mindset
Belief Intelligence and talent are static. They’re something you’re born with: you have it or you don’t. Intelligence develops with effort. The brain is like a muscle that can be trained.
Goals To look smart in every situation.
To never fail.		 To push myself and try new things.
To take on new challenges.
Success Proving I’m smart or talented. Stretching to learn something new.
Evaluation of a new situation Will I succeed at it or will I fail?
Will it make me look good or bad?		 Will it allow me to grow?
Attitude to challenges I avoid challenges.
I stick to what I do well.		 I embrace challenges.
I persist when things get tough.
Response to setback I’m a failure. (identity)
I give up.		 I failed. (action)   I’ll learn from it and move on. I’ll try harder next time
Effort Why bother? It’s pointless. Effort is the key to mastery.
Criticism Ignore criticism or deflect: “It’s not my fault.” Learn from criticism: how can I improve?
Success of others I feel threatened by it.
If they succeed, I fail.		 I find lessons and inspiration in other people’s successes.
I feel good When it’s perfect. When I win. When I try hard. When I figure something out.
Results They plateau early. Never reach full potential. They achieve ever-higher levels of success.

Mindsets in the classroom:

Students were given a test. Then some of the children were praised for their intelligence: “that’s a good score. You must be smart.” Some were praised for the process: “that’s a good score. You must have worked hard.” The kids were then asked what they wanted to do next, and they were given the option of something easy where they wouldn’t make mistakes or something challenging where they might make mistakes but would learn something important. Those who were praised for intelligence chose the easy task. Those who were praised for effort chose the hard task they could learn from. Later, they gave everyone a very hard test – the kids praised for intelligence lost confidence and lost their enjoyment of the task and later lied about their scores. The kids who were praised for the effort and the process stayed confident, worked hard at the problems and remained engaged and didn’t lie about their results, because they felt they had done as well as they could on a hard test.

In other research, by Dweck and Blackwell, a group of low achieving students attended a class that taught that intelligence, like a muscle, grows stronger with exercise. As they learned to believe that intelligence was something they could learn, rather than something they could never achieve if they weren’t “born with it”, their motivation increased. They worked harder. When they had difficulty, instead of saying “I’m just not smart enough”, they would say that they needed to work harder or smarter. Their math scores improved, and continued to improve in the following year.

Another example of where these mindsets play out is in the math classroom. 3 out of 10 American describe themselves as “bad at math.” This leads to the belief that “I will never be good at math, so there’s no point in even trying.” Parents and teachers often reinforce this perception. Research shows that while genetics and inherent intelligence can help children initially score well, over time the kids that do best in math are the ones who work hard, have good study habits, and enjoy doing math.

To help your child develop a growth based mindset:

  • think about how you praise them: praise effort, not talent. Praise process not product.
  • pay attention to how you talk about your own abilities… do you say “I’m just no good at…” or do you say “this is hard for me right now, but if I keep trying I think I’ll do it”
  • think about how you respond to their failures and frustrations. Do you let them give up, or encourage them to keep trying? Do you say things like “I know it seems hard now, but I also know that the more you practice, the better you’ll get.”
  • encourage them to tinker: play around at something – try and try again until you get the result you were hoping for

Learn more about growth mindsets at http://www.whatkidscando.org/resources/spec_growthmindset.html and Mind-sets and Equitable Education: http://www.principals.org/Content.aspx?topic=61219

Read more on math at “The Myth of ‘I’m bad at math’” at www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2013/10/the-myth-of-im-bad-at-math/280914/ and “’I’m not a math person’ is no longer a valid excuse” at www.businessinsider.com/being-good-at-math-is-not-about-natural-ability-2013-11

If you’re in the Seattle area, you can attend a lecture on the Growth Mindset by Tracy Kutchlow on Wednesday, April 29. Learn more here.

Building a mini submarine

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A few weeks ago at our Family Inventors Lab, we studied submarines, and our book for the day was Papa’s Mechanical Fish, a really well-written and enjoyable book that shares the adventures of a family where the father is an inventor, who is sometimes successful and sometimes not. He is inspired to make a mechanical fish, and after several failed attempts makes a submarine the whole family can ride in.

At class that day, our main tinkering activity was to make a water-tight mini submarine that would keep a little paper person dry inside for 20 seconds underwater. Our supplies included plastic easter eggs, miscellaneous plastic containers, and tools that would help to waterproof things (tape, plastic bags, silly putty, things to wrap objects in, etc.)

This activity did what we hope to do with all our activities… it adapts to various ages and it teaches kids to experiment and adapt their efforts till they succeed.

Our littlest kids (2 – 3 year olds) mostly just used this as a sensory tub. They played with whatever was floating in the water.

Some of the middle-sized kids (3 – 4 year olds) did things like  float an easter egg inside a plastic bowl boat or fill plastic Ziploc bags with water and float those.

Our next oldest (4 – 5) tested the other containers: water bottles, small food containers, and some travel-size toiletry bottles to see which would keep a paper person dry. Some would and some wouldn’t. They also tried wrapping the eggs in various things (paper, cloth napkins, plastic bags) to see if they would stay dry. All of those failed, except sealing the egg inside a ziploc.

The oldest kids (6 and 7) did the full tinkering activity with the easter eggs. Testing, diagnosing, hypothesizing, building a prototype,  testing again, and repeating till we got it right. We learned that plastic easter eggs leak water because they have holes in the ends. We tried taping the holes and sealing the gaps with play-dough or silly putty. But even after you seal the holes, there’s a gap around where the two halves come together, and the eggs still leak. (And play dough makes a big mess when it gets wet!)

We eventually discovered a working solution: seal the ends of the eggs with silly putty. Put the paper person in. Wrap a silly putty seal all around the gap where the two halves of the egg come together. Submerge it. Count to 30. Bring it out of the water, dry it off, open it up, and Voila! we had created an easter egg submarine.

This is a great activity to repeat at home during bath time. Just grab a wide variety of plastic containers with lids from your kitchen, tear up some paper from the recycling bin to be your “people” you’re trying to keep dry, and head for the bath tub. Your child will learn about sinking, floating, water-tight vs. leaking, and the  fact that bubbles coming up from your submarine is a bad sign… if air comes out, water will go in!