Real-World Skills for Kids

Yesterday, I had the incredible honor of being a guest at TEDx New England’s inaugural event. TED (which stands for “technology, entertainment, and design”) is a series of short speeches on “ideas worth spreading.” Yesterday’s event was hosted by WGBH — in studio, no less — and MC’d by New York Times columnist David Pogue (who, by the way, happens to pretty damn funny).

The talks were nothing short of inspiring. We heard from: MIT Ph.Ds developing sustainable, safe nuclear power, an artist who builds living sculptures for urban areas, the corporate responsibility-focused Dean of Harvard Business School, to name a few. But, I’m partial to anything that helps empower children. That’s why Katie Smith Milway and John Hunter made the biggest impression on me.

Milway is a children’s author who doesn’t write about talking animals or the first day of school. Milway writes about issues like microfinance. Her book, One Hen, about a boy from rural Ghana who started his own chicken farm, teaches children about  entrepreneurship. The book grew into a nonprofit called One Hen, Inc., which “offers teacher manuals and workbooks that use stories, interactive media and hands on activities to teach social entrepreneurship in classrooms across the country and around the world.” The One Hen website even has a series of games that allow children to earn beads and then give those beads to a small business owner. (When the children donate their virtual beads, One Hen makes a real loan to someone in the developing world.)

John Hunter has been a fourth grade teacher for over 30 years. While he was an undergraduate, he traveled throughout Asia and became fascinated by the principles on non-violence. Hunter wanted to find a way to teach his students how to embrace non-violence in an often-violent world. Out of this desire grew the World Peace Game — a multi-month, hands-on simulation where students are divided into four countries. Some countries are rich, some are poor. Some are powerful, some are weak. They face external economic, social, and environmental crises, along with the imminent threat of war. These nine and ten year old students work together to resolve conflicts, avoid war, and leave each of the four countries more prosperous than when it started. Hunter’s game (and the principles that underlie it) teach children real-world issues along with self-awareness and leave them better prepared to become citizens of the world.

I can’t wait to see all the great things to come from TEDx New England and look forward to participating in more inspiring events! If you’re interested in TEDx, checkout their website to see when the next talk near you will be.

Make the Potty Words Stop!

Something happened to my sweet little boy when he entered Kindergarten a few months ago. He suddenly became completely and utterly immersed in the humor of body parts and bodily functions. Now, I get that children, especially those with Y-chromosomes, find this stuff funny, but really? Must every punchline be the same?

“Why did the chicken cross the road?” “POOP.”

“Knock, knock.” “Who’s there?” “POOP.”

C’mon, kid. You gotta mix it up a bit.

It doesn’t help matters that every other boy in his class thinks these jokes are HILARIOUS. With the amount of positive feedback he’s receiving, these jokes are likely to be around for years.

He and one of his best little buddies have also started talking lately about punching people’s “butts and weenies.” Which, while making me cringe (“weenies?” ick.), absolves me of responsibility, as we use anatomically correct terms in this house. (Also, he shouldn’t be talking about doing that.) I made him promise that he would try to cut back on saying it and that he would never, ever say it in front of his teacher. Which he didn’t. Until yesterday.

He arrived home after his very first school field trip. “How was it?” I asked, a bit too excited for the occasion.

“Kinda boring,” he said. “But,” lighting up, “Ms. L said it was my final warning before going to the Principal’s office.”

“The Principal?! What happen –”

“Butts and weenies.”

I was horrified. Here was my sweet boy, my Kindergartener no less, being warned about the Principal’s office. My upcoming parent-teacher conference played out in my head. The mortification of having to discuss “butts and weenies” with this woman was too much. Gavin and I had a loooong talk about why the Principal’s office is not a good thing and (yet again) why punching people’s butts and weenies is not acceptable behavior.

I think the message resonated quite well for, oh, a good five minutes. But how to make it sink in longer? Is there anything I can do? Or, is this just a normal childhood phase that I need to wait out? Advice welcome.

Tips for Feeding a Picky Eater

It was my son’s admission that he’d eaten chicken nuggets for lunch every day at school last week that got me thinking about ways to get healthier food onto his plate without the constant battle.

Nutrition is a question that worries every parent I know. How do we ensure our picky kids are eating enough? Are they getting the balanced diet they need? And what if, heaven forbid, they go on a boycott of all foods colored green?

We reached out to parents and nutritionists for tips on getting those notoriously picky eaters to do just that: eat.

photo: tonya staab

  • Give them a say in planning the meals. Susan Miller, mom to three boys, got her kids involved in creating the family’s weekly menu. Each child would contribute something to the menu that they wanted to eat. “Once they had a little more ownership of the process, they fought me less and were more willing to taste things.” Jill Berry recommends taking the kids along for grocery shopping. “I had good success getting my little kids to eat veggies by letting them choose a veggie from the supermarket. My son loved to weigh the food we purchased on the scales in the produce aisle.”
  • Get them cooking. It’s not surprising that kids love to cook. After all, what is cooking if not a fun science experiment where they mix ingredients to see what results? “The more hands on they are with the preparation of the food, the more interested they are in eating their own creations,” says author Leanne Ely. “I call it hands-on nutrition.” Mom Shannon Duffy agrees and adds that not only does cooking encourage kids to eat better but also teaches them valuable skills. “At the age of 7, my son was already measuring ingredients and helping make meals.”
  • Engage their imaginations. Give their food a special name, call it something fun. Much of what kids like or dislike is really just how its presented to them. “Feeding my kids was often little more than a name game,” says Toni Garcia Carpenter. “When it came to breakfast, I found the word porridge to be a useful tool. After all, the Three Bears liked it. More importantly, the term porridge could be applied to any hot cereal. So we had oatmeal porridge, cream of wheat porridge, and of course, grit porridge.”
  • Serve meals in courses. Break meals up into smaller courses and start with what you want them to eat most. When her kids were little, Ruth Grau began their meals with a fruit or veggie course. When they finished their fruit or veggies, they would have a meat/protein course, followed by an optional carbohydrate course. The result? “My kids now eat everything and love veggies!” says Ruth.
  • Prepare foods in new ways. Maybe your child doesn’t dislike broccoli as much as she claims; maybe she just didn’t like the way it was cooked last Tuesday night. Think about texture, spices, even shapes, and add some variety to the way you cook. Registered dietician, Kati Mora, recommends “preparing the foods your kids don’t like in new ways to see if maybe they just don’t like the brand, prep method, or just aren’t in the mood for it on one particular night.”

Teaching Charts to a 5 Year Old

Earlier today, I left my site statistics window open at the dining room table as I went to get Gavin a cup of apple juice.  As I was in the kitchen I heard from the dining room “Daddy, I like your painting.”  Not having painted anything in about 15 years,  I didn’t know what he meant.

Returning to the dining room, apple juice in hand, I saw him sitting in my chair happily appreciating the artistic merits of the chart of emails sent by day over the past month.  I like the chart too, because it shows that SittingAround is growing.

My “Painting,” or notification emails sent by day for the past month.

Realizing that he’d never been exposed to visual representations of information before, I though it would be a good idea to give him a quick primer.  I expected his attention would last maybe three sentences.  Six charts in, having shown him bar charts, spider graphs, x-y plots, and pie charts, I realized he was more interested so I started to probe on understanding.

I showed him this bar chart and asked, “Which day do you think we have the most signups?”

SittingAround User Signups by Day

Instant and correct answer: “Tuesday.”

So I showed him another chart and asked “Why do you think they call this a spider-graph.”  This time answering like I was a bit of a simpleton, he says in his explain-simple-concepts-to-my-parents voice “because it looks like a spider web.”

Touche kindergarten child, touche.  Perhaps I’ve underestimated you.

I ask if he’d like to make his own charts, which gets an excited jumping up and down yes.  About twenty minutes and three charts later he clearly felt like he’d mastered the topic and was ready to move on to blowing bubbles on the deck.  The following are the charts that we created this afternoon.

TV Shows, using a simplified X-Y axis

TV Shows Gavin Likes vs. How often he gets to watch them
Data Table for TV Shows Gavin Likes

Toy preferences, using a simple bar chart

Scale of 1-10 how much Gavin likes each toy. Notice how he considers my Iphone to be one of his toys.
Data Table for Toys Gavin Likes

Food, using a four factor spider graph

Gavin’s Take on different foods. I think this one is my favorite. Notice how we have somehow convinced him that Kale is the perfect food. Secret to that, I think, is lots of galic and olive oil.
Data Table for Gavin’s take on foods

 

Gavin’s Summary:
Q: What did you think about daddy showing you charts today?
A: “Awesome, Awesome”

Q: What was your favorite chart?
A: “I think toys, yeah, toys, toys toys”

Q: What is a chart?
A: “I don’t know but I made a chart at school today.  Its just a plain old chart, you know, number charts daddy.”

I’m a big proponent of explaining things to kids that are beyond what I think they can understand.  I figure it primes them to the basic concepts and words for the next time they are exposed to the idea.  It also has the advantage of occasionally finding an area where my son’s comprehension is way beyond what I expect it to be, like happened today.

If you’d like to try this with your own kids, the excel file we used to make these charts is available here.  Gavin 5 year old charts.xls

5 Healthiest Candies for Halloween

If you’re anything like me, you dread the post-Halloween sugar binge. I spend a lot of energy trying to get my son to eat healthy and it becomes so much harder when he’s staring down a bucket of treats. But, not all treats are created equal. The same amount of one candy may be much less healthy than the same amount of another. So, how to choose?

The classic red licorice tops our list of Healthy Treats

In honor of the upcoming holiday, we’ve compiled a list of the top five healthiest candy options:

  1. Twizzlers. Our hands-down winner. These long-time favorites are low in sugar, low in calories (compared to other candies), and low in fat. And, they are trans-fat free.
  2. York Peppermint Patties. The high mint filling-to-chocolate coating ratio makes these a winner. While mint isn’t typically a kid’s favorite flavor, these patties are sweet enough to appeal to everyone.
  3. Tootsie Rolls. The soft, chocolatey comfort of a Tootsie Roll is a low-guilt indulgence. Tootsie Rolls have half the calories of the average chocolate bar and just a third the fat.
  4. Smarties. This is one very smart choice. Serving sizes are small, but at 25 calories a pop, you can feel good knowing your kids will still have room for dinner.
  5. Kit Kat. If you must have a chocolate bar, a Kit Kat is the way to go. It’s lower in fat than most other bars and is trans-fat free. Best of all, its easily broken into smaller servings and shared.

These five options will leave you (and your kids!) feeling better about enjoying a ghoulish October treat. Do you have a favorite Halloween candy?

SittingAround Honored at the White House

Recently, SittingAround had the distinct honor of being selected by the White House as a “Champion of Change” for the work we’re doing to bring better babysitting to families across America.

I went down to DC last month and participated in a panel discussion at the White House, giving advice to aspiring entrepreneurs. I shared my experiences starting SittingAround and why I am so passionate about building community and improving childcare.

Despite miserably small shoes (you have no idea…) and no Barack sightings (though I did catch a glimpse of Bo), it was an amazing time. Here’s the video from our panel discussion on entrepreneurship:

Alright Dads, the Jig is Up!

As I blearily opened one eye to read my email on my iPhone this morning, I was excited to find that my Google alerts had caught this delightful article outlining what we ladies have suspected for a while: that men are hard-wired for parenthood just like women.

Without getting too science-y, the article describes how testosterone-oriented behaviors can interfere in childrearing, and that men who spend the most time taking care of their kids have the lowest levels of testosterone. Basically, this means that when it comes time to care for the kids, it’s not just women who adjust to the changes- men adapt too.

By itself, I would have thought this article was interesting, but probably would not have necessarily felt the need to share. But since reading it this morning, it seems as though this idea is EVERYWHERE. Maybe it just crawled into my brain and affected the way I saw everything today, but I could swear there were more dads in the SittingAround twitter feed, which lead to reading more Dad Blog posts. This one, which made me smile at how well it illustrated the science, is a personal favorite today: The Joys of Fatherhood

And then came the Johnson and Johnson commercial. The adorable baby, dad, and frog filled ode to family time:

So men, we were already on to you, but now we can prove it! I think this means we’re going to be seeing a lot more dad-oriented, kid products and entertainment in the future, too. Have you seen any? Share! Especially if it’s really cute…we like it when it’s really cute. 

Transformers + Thomas the Train = Trainsformers

Or, pure awesome.

I often feel guilty about the amount of time my technophile son spends playing with my iPhone. This morning, however, he woke me with a YouTube video that showed me this was time well-spent. This Thomas-Transformers mashup marries the toys of my childhood with the bane of my existence the toys of his.

Op-Thomas-prime? Mega-train? Hilarious. (Note: some of the language in this video is not suitable for young children)

 

Lessons in Coop Cooperation

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It’s an established truth amongst those in the know (a group growing every day) that coops help makes parents lives better. They save families money, build community, and help parents achieve that illusive “balance” we all seem to be chasing in our lives. But like in any group, especially one in which a number of different households are involved, there are going to be hurdles to overcome. Adam Rabiner, a member of the Prospect Heights Babysitting Coop, was kind enough to write about some challenges that his coop battles, how they are facing them, and the lessons they have learned in the process:

Coop Waffle Party
Courtesy of Andrea Kaplan

My Brooklyn baby-sitting coop formed six and a half years ago, about the time my first child was born.  With eleven active members, those who post for a sitter have a strong chance of getting one.  Our principal challenge over the years has been to increase those odds even further and to create a coop where every single member goes out and sits at least periodically.  Members have voiced concern that it is difficult for prospective new members to feel comfortable coming into a group with a sizable number of inactive members who they may never meet.  Coops are based on trust and ongoing, dynamic, relationship building, and it may hard to build up trust in this situation.  Achieving full, active participation, though, has been elusive, and in fact may be unrealistic.

 

Our group has pursued several strategies to encourage maximum use.  One is simply moral suasion.  At business meetings we’ve had frequent conversations about the benefits and necessity of a fully engaged membership.  We’ve also created both positive and negative incentives to encourage use.  For example, we instituted a new rule that families who do not go out at least once in a given calendar year will be penalized and those who go out the most will be rewarded.  With four months remaining in 2011 and seven families sit-less this year, the verdict is still out on how effective this reward system will prove to be.  Our latest effort is to have the Membership Chairs reach out to these families and speak to them about the reasons they are not using the coop in order to explore ways to better address their needs.

 

Courtesy of Mark Jaffe

I’m hopeful that this last strategy makes a positive difference – but my sense is that families choose to use or not to use a baby-sitting coop for various reasons, some of which may be beyond the control of the group.  Members may move away from the neighborhood, remaining with the coop out of loyalty and friendships, but find using it impractical.  They may find alternative care arrangements for their kids.  They may need to take a hiatus due to having another child, unusual family living arrangements, or life circumstances.  They may simply enjoy attending a coop’s social activities and remain members for that reason alone.

 

Ultimately, it would be grand if every single family that joins a coop chooses to use it several times a year.  That’s a gold standard and I’d be happy to see it realized in my Brooklyn neighborhood.  I’m waiting to see if our latest efforts to spur greater usage bear fruit.  If they do not, I remain comfortable knowing that a coop can be functional, even vibrant and healthy, with a dozen or so committed members.

A big thanks to Adam for sharing his wisdom and experience. We will be eager to hear about Prospect Heights’s progress towards their goal of 100% participation!

Finding a Babysitter: A Five Year-Old’s Perpsective

Last week, I was working on a SittingAround flyer that could be distributed easily to coops around the country, making it easier to find and recruit new families. Putting flyers in places families frequent (coffee shops, playgrounds, community centers, etc.) is a great way to gain visibility in your neighborhood and let other families know there is a coop nearby!

My five year old son, Gavin, saw me hard at work and asked what I was doing. “I’m designing flyers for SittingAround,” I told him.

“I can help,” he said and ran off.

An hour or so later, he emerged with 15 flyers that he had made himself, advertising SittingAround. My heart nearly broke with how sweet they were. I took a few pictures to share the work of my budding entrepreneur and wonderful little guy:

Image and video hosting by TinyPic

Image and video hosting by TinyPic

The real flyers arrived a few days ago, and I was worried he would be hurt I didn’t mass produce his version. Instead, he kept saying how much he loved the flyers and wanted to help put them up. So we went coffee shop to pizza place, eating our way across town and putting up flyers as we went.

I’m super lucky to have such a wonderful little helper :).

~Erica