Listen Up Grandkids … Google Can’t Give You a Hug!

November 21, 2014 by the sibyls Leave a Comment

by Penny Cook

When we, as grandparents, are bombarded by the current angst about social media, technology, politics and childhood … what can we hold onto to for our grandchildren? What can we offer beyond all that?

If we’re not on a screen and can’t be swiped, what can we do?

Let’s never forget that children learn through relationships.

All children will be able to swipe and navigate the internet to get information … which children will have access to real life face-to-face conversations? Which children will get hugs and listening? Which children will have access to time and ‘old people?’ Where will they get their stories and the feelings? If enthusiasm is contagious where will it come from?

Enthusiasm is an emotion resulting from a story which comes from a real life interaction. If there is no real life interaction where will the enthusiasm come from? You can google the word enthusiasm, but can you google up enthusiasm without a real life interaction? Grandparentship is so important for our alpha kids. You can’t swipe grandparentship.You don’t get a hug from Google. You don’t get wisdom embed in your life. Google doesn’t listen. So who can?

Grandies can. They still need us.

Photo source: reddit

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What grandparents know that others do not see: all children are beautiful.

October 17, 2014 by the sibyls Leave a Comment

by Penny Cook

All children are beautiful and in the words of developmental psychologist Urie Broffenbrenner ‘every child needs someone who is absolutely crazy about them’. Why would he say that? What does that actually mean in a child’s life?

Childhood is when children get a raw impression of who they are..based on how adults, the powerful, knowing ones respond to them. As an early childhood teacher for more years than I like to admit to, I have always believed that every child I am connected with needs to feel that I like them. It’s my first responsibility. I’m not talking about behaviour here. I’m talking about knowing the power I have and being responsible with it. As an adult (not necessarily a teacher), any interaction I have with a child has the potential to contribute to her/his internal construction of his/her worth as a human being and a member of society. And … I haven’t always done that exceptionally well.

Adults, by definition rule the world. And children are wiser than we know. They are wise to the emotional script that we run with because essentially they are emotional beings. It has been said that children learn the teacher not the content. I’m guessing as you’re reading this you’re reflecting on your own childhoods and how you’ve grown up. Who did you respond to? Who were the adults who affirmed you and which adults did not? Children respond emotionally… that’s what attachment is about … emotional connection. As very young children ‘emotion’ is their first language, before a spoken language.

And that’s where grandparents are so important. We don’t have to make the decisions about the day-to-day routines. We don’t have to get children up in the morning and make sure they get to childcare, school or wherever. We don’t have to do the homework. We don’t have to provide the 5 food groups in the right amount.

The research is in … We can play well beyond bedtime, read more stories than allocated, spend time listening and responding. We can stop and smell the roses with children.

We can be crazy about our grandchildren because they need us to be!!

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Penny Cook has been an early childhood educator for over 30 years. She loves to travel – anywhere. Penny is a mother and ‘Nan Pen’, who is continuously fascinated and amazed by her two young grandchildren. She has always wanted to live in a tree house by the beach …..it’s never too late!! Other wonderfully insightful articles about young children by Penny include Call me on the Banana Phone, Grandma! and Hey Grandma, try this … build your grandchild’s imagination!

Photo source: Unknown.

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Call me on the Banana Phone, Grandma!

October 2, 2014 by the sibyls 1 Comment

by Penny Cook

I love technology. Well, I love that I get photos of my grandchildren on my smart phone!! The world has changed. It used to be that the grandmother was retired, or never had to work, so she didn’t need photographic documentation of what her grandchildren were up to because she was there!! Either in a visiting capacity or sometimes as a carer,

But, as a full time working grandparent in 2014, I love the photos. I love that I am included in the stories of their play. Although I’m not there I get to see when the 5-year-old decides to be Tarzan and his 9-month-old sister is cast as Jane. He in his underpants and she in her nappy. I get to see her diving into an upturned basket and emerging with an Octonaut. I get to see Tarzan reading a book and Jane looking lovingly on. I get to be delighted with their play.

I wonder, if we have forgotten the importance of play.

If children haven’t had lots of opportunities to ‘play’, to pretend a banana is a phone or pencils on the front of their bikes are headlights, then we have a serious problem with literacy. We know we are hard wired for language, but not for reading and writing. When children participate in ‘symbolic play’ (the banana for the phone), they are beginning to understand about symbols. They are learning that you can substitute one thing for another and transfer meaning. Eventually, they will understand those squiggles on a page represent the words we use to communicate. While they’re playing they are also talking and building a bank of words they can use to navigate the world, have their needs met and communicate their thinking. There is a body of research that strongly suggests if children don’t have quality verbal interactions with adults, by the time they are three years old they can be seriously disadvantaged in the literacy journey.

How do children ‘get’ these quality interactions? Well, there are lots of ways. Reading stories together is one. Being available to listen and respond to the wonderful life theories children are constructing is another. Singing is possibly neglected in the literacy world, but so important. Young children are very forgiving. They are not yet music critics so don’t care what you sound like. They just like to sing together.

So are we putting the cart before the horse with our expectations about reading and writing? Do we have an understanding of how young children learn? Are we rushing children in to the ‘academic’ world and are we taking away the very substance of how they learn – play? Have we forgotten the connection between symbolic play and the ‘valued’ literacies of reading and writing?

How can we reclaim play for children? Well Grandparents, rip the sheets from the bed and string them between the couch and the recliner. Get in that cubby with the kids. Drink copious cups of tea. Be the dog, the baby, the mum, the dad, sister, brother or whatever. You are building readers and writers…. And don’t let anyone tell you anything different.

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Photo source: Smatoday blog, Vic Museum and ipad App store.

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How did childhood become a prison sentence?

August 25, 2014 by the sibyls 1 Comment

by Kerry Cue

We are the generations, who roamed free. We rode our bikes unsupervised. Explored the neighbourhood. Played in the street. Our grandchildren live indoors. (See The Last Child in the Woods book review) This is cause for great concern. Sibyl Helen Elliott writes about the joys of taking grandchildren into nature. There is another side to this story. Childhood is diminished if children do not experience nature. Now the research confirms our fears.

Results from the Australian State of Play Report, 2012, comprising 8 – 12 year old children, their parents and grandparents published in Primary Focus, the SAPPA (South Australia Primary Principals) Magazine include:

*Indoors: 9 out of 10 kids spend more time playing inside than out.

*A lack of inspiration: 37% of kids run out of ideas for play.

*A lack of time: Afterschool activities limit the time children have to play outdoors.

*A lack of opportunity: 37% of kids report they don’t have anyone to play with outside as almost half the kids they might play with are indoors plugged into technology.

“A growing body of research shows us that outdoor play leads to better physical and mental health, has positive effects on cognitive function and learning, and reduces the incidence of behavioural problems.” Maria Zotti, Nature Play, SA.

Peter Dunstan, Principal Kilkenny PS, SA, writes in Primary Focus that outdoor play fosters “wonderment, independence and freedom” as well as “social skills, imagination, creativity and problem solving”.

So concerned are the South Australian Primary School Principals they have combined with Nature Play, SA (A NFP organisation) to promote outdoor play. Nature Play, SA has produced this poster: 51 Things to Do before you’re 12. Pass it on!!!!!!!

Photo: Unsourced

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The kids have left; the dog has died. Is it time to downsize?

July 17, 2014 by the sibyls 1 Comment

by Helen Elliott

We decided to downsize. The children had left, the dogs had died, as had one cat. The other was thinking about it. The garden, my adored, beloved garden was making me anxious and there was the problem of Upstairs. Upstairs, where the children had lived so happily all those years was now where I hurled anything I didn’t use but was too lazy to pitch out. Or sentimental. Upstairs was over my head. I never went there if I could help it but it hovered, symbolic of a paralysing weight .

So why not sell when someone knocked on the door, said they were in love with your house and garden and here’s an offer you can’t refuse. We didn’t. In three months we were in a flat.

Oh. What do you do with a grandchild in a flat? Sure, we could walk in the Botanical gardens, find playgrounds, sit in cafes, go to museums. But something was shockingly out of kiltre. These lovely places were public, not personal. I couldn’t say: “Grandma planted that kolkwitzia twenty years ago”. Why was I waking in tears every morning, dreaming of my old garden? And why did I feel my hands and feet were cut off, disabled by my inability to step out onto the earth and into that intimate natural space I had been creating for over two decades?

Helen in her garden

Life is change, I know this. But my change was in the wrong direction. I heard that word “de-natured” and everything made sense. Without nature at my door I was a shadow of myself. It made me think hard about nature in the lives of my small grand children.

Two years, two flats later we decided to upsize. An acre, a tranquil house, a stream, a pond, a vegetable garden. I have never been happier. And the grandchildren know about this thrilling thing called The Country.

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Helen Elliott is a thoughtful and analytical reader, informed and soulful writer and unyielding literary critic for many Australian newspapers. She is also a dedicated gardener.