My mom just send me a funny article from the San Jose Mercury News titled, “For Christmas this year, it’s all about managing expectations.“  Mike Cassidy writes about trying to convince his family that this year Christmas is going to be like the Whos down in Whoville, holding hands and singing with no presents at all.  I really enjoyed it.

There’s also a great article on the First 5 web site by Lindsay Dunckel called “Please can you buy it for me?  Our children as consumers and what you can do about it.“  Read the article.

You have my best wishes if you are trying to scale back this Christmas. I know I’d love to have my holiday be more about spending time together, and less about “getting more stuff.”

As families move further into the world of high tech online interaction and into what seems like endless faceless computer/media time, we are also working more hours to keep the family afloat and sharing less actual conversation time with our children.

Computers and other media do provide information and entertainment; however they lack the ability to model appropriate emotional responses to day by day situations. These emotional skills are an important component in our children’s healthy development.

“How are you feeling today?”

This question is a no-brainer for most adults; however, it is very different for young children.  Being able to recognize our own feelings and emotions, and also being able to identify those same feelings and emotions in others, is a skill that each of us must learn. This skill is called empathy and it is an important key to helping children become well adjusted, resilient adults.

Disappointment, anger, sadness, family and peer conflicts and emotional frustration, can leave a child feeling at loose ends. The inability to understand these feelings and a lack of basic problem solving skills can easily lead a child into emotional meltdowns, tantrums, aggression or depression.  

Take some time to work with your child on developing a few simple coping skills and you will create a more harmonious family atmosphere while also giving your children some basic and useful tools that can be pivotal to their social and academic success. 

Here are some simple tips that you can use with your young child to begin this process: 

1. When you are out with your child, take the time to point out the emotions that you see being demonstrated by others around you.  For example, at the park you may see children playing happily together, you can say – “Oh, look at those children, they look so happy, they are all smiling aren’t they? They must be having fun.”  Or, if you see a conflict occuring between children, or a parent and child, you might say “He doesn’t look very happy, I think he must be feeling (sad/angry/frustrated); what do you think?” 
2. Cut out pictures which depict people showing strong feelings – happy, sad, excited, angry, surprised, disgusted, etc. try to find two of each emotion.  Glue the pictures onto index cards.  You may now use the ‘feeling cards’ for different activities with your young child. You can ask your child to match up two cards that illustrate the same emotion on each, or let them choose a card from a grab bag and name the feeling that the card shows.
3. Talk to your children about things going on around them while you point out connections to the emotions those situations bring up.  Talk about what scares them, what makes them happy, or what makes them sad.
4. Make sure your child understands that it is okay to be happy or mad or grumpy or sad.  Explain that we all have all of those feelings inside and that there are often times when people have differing emotions about the same situation, like when one child enjoys catching and looking at insects or bugs, yet another may be terrified of them.  Pointing out these differences helps children to understand that we must be aware of others’ emotional needs as well as our own.  
5. Teach your child some self-soothing methods such as taking a few slow deep breaths when he is upset; counting to ten before responding to a frustrating situation in haste; or drawing a picture that expresses his emotions.  A fun choice is take him outside to ‘run it off.’  Physical activity helps to calm down the body and the mind.

These tools, when used by a child who is feeling frustrated or angry, allow that child to feel more ‘in control’.  When a child is able to understand and cope appropriately with his or her emotions, that child feels safer and more competent, which in turn helps to boost his or her self-reliance and self-esteem. Strong empathic and emotional skills have been studied and found to increase both social competence and academic success. 

So, the next time that you ask a child “How are you feeling today?” remember that for them, it isn’t always an easy question to answer.

If you plan on traveling somewhere this summer with young children, keep in mind the following…

• Young children can only sit for a couple hours at a time.  Break up your drive with lots of stops.  Running on the lawn at a rest stop will improve everyone’s mood.
• Have each child pack and carry a backpack with activities and  protein snacks.   Snack every two hours to keep spirits up.
• Pack additional surprise snacks and items to get you through tricky moments.
• Listen to books on tape appropriate for the entire family.
• Plan car trips during sleep/nap time.  
• If you have to fly, plan the flight for the morning when your child is rested.  Avoid traveling during the “witching hours” right before dinner.
• Play “What will we do when……” games while on the road.  The role play will give your children valuable skills on how to act in public. 

Once at your destination:

• Balance your together time.  Schedule some outings for everyone and some for only the immediate family to give everyone a break. 
• Help your children stay grounded  by connecting every hour to read a book or play a simple game.  
• If visiting friends or family let them know ahead of time that you will be leaving the gathering when the children have had enough. 
• Chat after a gathering to share feelings, thoughts and experiences.
• Limit your visit to two to three days.

For more parenting tips, sign up for Tulum’s Mindful Parenting Tips.

I was at a BBQ at my daughter’s preschool the other night and I was having a conversation with another mother about memory, or lack of memory.  She is 28, and let’s just say that I’m not.  

There’s probably no medical study supporting this, but every mother I talk to feels like her mind is a sieve.  I never used to forget people’s names.  I could meet them once, and remember their name three years later.  Now I can’t remember anything, or anyone.  As a child my mother seemed on top of everything.  It was also a different era.  She didn’t work, and young couples didn’t have to stretch as much to buy their first house. 

At the BBQ all the moms were coming up with their own theories of “what happened to our minds” and we decided it was this:

• Lack of sleep
• Loving another little person so much that you are constantly worrying about if they are rested, if they have a full tummy, if they have sunblock on, where are you going to send them to preschool, and on and on.
• A lot of responsibilities other than your child(ren) including: your job, your mortgage, your husband.
• And in some cases… getting older

There.  That’s the mommy version of a scientific study.

A new study from Child Trends, Involvement among Resident Fathers and Links to Infant Cognitive Outcomes, published online in the Journal of Family Issues, shows that fathers’ warmth, care, and play with their babies is positively linked with infant cognitive development–as seen in the babies’ babbling and exploring objects. The study also finds that fathers’ influence is even greater for baby boys and for babies with a disability.  More evidence about how important dads are. . .

Encourage the dads you know to bathe, change, dress, feed, sing, read, and play with their babies!

To read more about the importance of dads, go to my article the First 5 Nevada County website: http://www.first5nevco.org/articles/daddifference.cfm

To read more about the study, go to http://jfi.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/0192513X08318145v1

Hi!  I am writing from the “Grass Valley School Readiness” office and we are getting really excited about our new program to be launched in September.  We will be bringing a new curriculum to Preschools and Caregivers in the district.  This curriculum is called “Second Step:  A Violence Prevention Curriculum”. 

I will be training teachers to use the Second Step Curriculum in their preschools and I wanted to share a little with everyone about the program.  

Four of the larger preschools in the area who have shown an interest in Second Step have been chosen to be trained in how to use it with their students at the preschool level.  After these schools have received the training I will be training four additional schools, and as time and interest permit, I will continue to train throughout the year. 

The focus of Second Step is on assisting children with the recognition and understanding of their emotions and the emotions of others and to provide them with efficient problem solving skills and emotional coping mechanisms.  This is taught with the aim of reducing anger and violence in the classroom and at home, as well as to increase social competence in children’s day to day interactions. These skills have been shown to increase success for children in school and in later life.  In a 2007 study of 142 elementary school students, University of Delaware researchers Caroll E. Izard and Christopher J. Trentacosta found that students who seemed adept at managing their emotions were also the ones teachers rated as more academically competent.

The Committee for Children (which produces this curriculum) takes pains to tie the Second Step curriculum’s goals to academic objectives: It publishes a chart identifying the ways each Second Step unit can support skills in math, science, health, and language arts. (See link at: http://www.cfchildren.org/) 

Second Step is a research based curriculum which, since 1987, has been used in North America and overseas.  The three major units of the program are Empathy Training, Emotion Management, and Problem Solving.  

To match the needs and abilities of younger children, the Preschool/Kindergarten level of the program contains only three steps:  (1) “How do I feel?” (2) “What is the problem?” and (3) “What can I do?”  These steps are at the core of the more sophisticated steps provided in the curriculum used with older children. 

Using these three simple steps, children are taught how to “read” and interpret internal cues, external social cues, and generate possible solutions to the problem through a series of 20 to 30 minute lessons given once or twice a week.  At the pre-K/Kindergarten level, these lessons include:

*Dealing with Losing Something
*Dealing with Distractions
*Fair Ways to Play
*Dealing with Name Calling
*Learning to Have Fun with our Friends
*Joining In
*Dealing with Being Hurt

The lessons are taught in a lively, interactive, child-friendly way using puppets, role playing, and discussion revolving around a photograph that depicts some aspect of the lesson being learned. Following, is a link to a Sample Lesson Card from the program. Each Second Step Lesson revolves around one of these Lesson Cards. http://www.cfchildren.org/media/files/ssp_pk_lesson.pdf. 

An interesting observation by many involved with teaching Second Step is that not only are the children receiving benefits from the program but that staff is also working more harmoniously after being exposed to the Second Step lessons as they internalize the skills they are teaching to the children.   

It will be very interesting to watch this program grow and to track changes in behavior and coping skills of the children in the participating preschools; I will keep you updated on our progress!

On a related note – I was browsing an interesting website today called the “Greater Good Magazine” Greater Good is published quarterly by The Greater Good Science Center at the University of California, Berkeley. Greater Good advances the Center’s mission to ‘sponsor and disseminate leading scientific research into the roots of everyday altruism, healthy relationships, and happy children’.  I was reading the listing of their beliefs (bulleted below) and felt it was very much in line with exactly what Second Step is aiming for:

• The human inclination toward goodness is strong, but it can be strengthened by specific social conditions.
• The good of society as a whole can be promoted through the science of positive and “prosocial” emotions and behaviors — for example, by studying emotions and behaviors such as compassion, respect, joy, trust, love, empathy, gratitude, and tolerance.
• People who possess the inner resources necessary for their own emotional well-being will help foster social well-being through their behaviors toward others. At the same time, social harmony helps foster mental health at the individual level.
• Similarly, social well-being in our communities begins with well-being in children and families.

This site also features an informational page on parenting called the Half Full Blog: Social Science for Raising Happy Kids. (http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/tools.html) Take a look and get some good tips and advice on parenting.  There is a lot of interesting information there. 

posted by Laurie Chamberlin

I was walking to my car last week when I saw this adorable little baby asleep in a front carrier while his mama was humming and unloading groceries into her car.  “Laurie!” exclaimed Debra and took me by surprise as I hadn’t realized I knew her. “I read your article on Flat Head Syndrome in the Briar Patch Newsletter.  I ran right out and bought this!” Debra stroked the fabric of the navy colored front carrier. “He loves it.” she explained. “He falls right asleep whenever I put him in it.” Debra beamed with a vibrant smile and a confidence I hadn’t seen during her pregnancy. I looked at my own two children who were oohing and aahing over the smiling mother and adorable sleeping newborn.

Driving away I felt a sense of gratitude for that interaction. Debra looked so happy and was obviously settling into motherhood well. The last time I saw her was during her pregnancy and she was having trouble communicating her needs to her doctor. I looked right into her eyes back then and said, “This is what parenting is, it is about communicating our needs and making decisions for our family that might not please others.” Debra looked me right back in the eye and said, “I’m not good at that.” I winked at her with a smile and said, “You can be.”

It turns out Debra was able to discuss what was important to her with her doctor. It was a step that helped her to take an active role in the decision making process of her baby’s birth. Some studies have shown that when mothers take an active role in their birth experience they feel more positively. When mothers feel better about their birth experience, one can only imagine that they are more inclined to settle into motherhood with greater ease because they are starting from a place of confidence. I saw this very sweetly in Debra who will forever be etched in my mind loading groceries into her car as confident as could be.

For a list of classes go to www.lauriechamberlin.com

Laurie Chamberlin, CD, ICCE, LE teaches childbirth preparation classes, lactation classes and is a prenatal counselor serving the Grass Valley/Nevada City/Auburn area. For more information contact: www.lauriechamberlin.com  lauriechamberlin@comcast.net or call 530.477.5442

In my line of work, I spend a lot of time thinking about, writing about, and getting other people to think about what children need.  As the mother of a pre-teen daughter, I hear a lot about what a particular child “needs”—which doesn’t always match up so well with the thinking I do at work (except when it’s something like “I need to snuggle with you”).  So I had to smile when I came across this quote:

Contrary to the broader culture, most of what children need, money cannot buy.  Children need time and space, attention, affection, guidance and conversation.  —Mary Pipher, Ph.D., therapist and author of Reviving Ophelia

I so whole-heartedly agree.  If I could give every child just one thing, it would be a strong, positive attachment to a loving adult.  Wouldn’t the world be a beautiful place?

My daughter’s class spent a month this year studying bears and camping. Her teacher had a sign in the classroom that read, “No Growling Allowed.” Now no one in the whole world, unless you know us really, really, well, would ever guess that my daughter growls. She looks far too quiet and sweet to growl, but trust me, she does. I’ll see her coming towards me with both hands on her hips and a low “grrrrr.” I’ve never met a bear in the woods, but I’m sure my reaction would be about the same—curl up in a ball, and get ready to be mauled.

Usually growling goes hand-in-hand with not enough sleep.  This this time of year, not enough sleep is the norm.  Since the time change my daughter has woken up every morning at 6 a.m.  If you keep her up until midnight, she also wakes up at 6 a.m., except every once in a while when she sleeps until 6:45 a.m.  Now getting her to bed early enough for her to feel rested in the morning is next to impossible.  Every night we try to go upstairs to bed at 7 p.m. and then maybe she’ll be fast asleep by 8 p.m.  Usually it’s more like 8:45 p.m. and then the next morning at 6 a.m. she is wide awake and growling.

Once summer vacation rolls around and she is up late every night for a couple of weeks, she’ll finally throw in the towel and start sleeping until 8 a.m. I can’t wait.  This time of year with the nights getting shorter it’s all I can stand to start bedtime at 7 p.m.  Bring on summer vacation… I’m ready!

For a family that hasn’t really ever been “family bed” people, we sure have a lot of family in our bed. My first daughter has mostly always been in her own bed, partly because she likes it that way, and partly because I wasn’t going to have a “family bed” when she was born.  But then I had a second baby, and loosened up (a lot).  

My second daughter used to start the evening in her own bed in the room she shared with her sister.  That would last for maybe a couple of hours and then she’d be in our bed for most of the night.  I loved having her in bed with me, and still do.  She is the warmest, snuggliest, loviest little lump next to me in the middle of the night.  She is now five and probably ends up in our bed around 3 or 4 a.m. most nights.  While I’d have her there all the time, my husband doesn’t love having her in our bed.  It’s a queen, she is getting pretty big, and it’s quite cozy with her there.

When we put the kids to bed at night, I get a chance to sleep with my older daughter.  She is eight, and we have gone through every imaginable scenario of bedtime routine.  My husband and I have taken turns putting the kids to bed.  We have had the children put themselves to bed (good luck).  We’ve had them fall asleep on their own, and we’ve had them fall asleep with us.  

Now, they are 5 and 8, and while I’m sure they are perfectly capable of falling asleep on their own, they will only go to sleep with a grown up.  My husband and I alternate who puts who to bed, so one night I’ll put my younger daughter to bed, and the next night I’ll put my older daughter to bed.  We finally figured out, after lots of fighting, that they need a little time at the end of the day without their sibling.  

Personally, I love the one-on-one time with each child at bedtime.  We read stories, talk about our days, and then we fall asleep with them.  My husband often gets up and reads, and I almost always stay in bed.  I’m making up for years of lost sleep.  And, it’s my chance to wrap myself around their little bodies and hope they never get any bigger.