parenting

Lullabies for Life

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 4 Comments

There’s no one like a young kid to make you feel like a stellar singer. I love to sing, but it’s not a God-given talent, or even one that can be bestowed by practice. So I love that Sprout loves me singing to and with him.

I’ve been singing to Sprout since he was born. In his earliest days, I’d hold him in my arms in the middle of the night, singing and pacing up and down our living room. I’d sing almost anything that came to mind – mostly children’s songs, because the lyrics were easy to remember, but occasionally rock favorites too.

The three most common were House on Pooh Corner by Loggins and Messina, a revised version of Rock-A-Bye Baby, and a song borne of my mom’s slight desperation when I was a baby.

I changed Rock-A-Bye Baby because the idea of singing a song about falling out of a tree is a bit dire for a newborn and certainly no reassurance for a nervous mom. In the hospital the night after Sprout was born, Chris helped me come up with a variant. For the last two lines, we substituted out “When the bough breaks, the baby will fall / Down will come baby, cradle and all,” with this geeky replacement: “All of the birdies do sing and call / He’s the best baby, so say we all.” We watched Battlestar Galatica while I was pregnant, so that particular phrase was still fresh in our minds.

My mom’s song, “Rockie rockie baby,” arose out of a similar predicament. When I was born, she couldn’t think of the words of a single lullaby. (Funny, now that she has a mental jukebox of kids’ songs from three decades of teaching.) So she made one up, so simple that even the most sleep-deprived new mom could remember it. It basically consists of the phrases: “Rock/Rockie,” “baby” and “you’re my little baby” in various combinations. So of course, I sang that to him as well, carrying on the tradition.

The love in our voices must have trumped the musical talent, because Sprout still loves to hear both of us sing. He enjoys his Music Together classes and banging on his instruments, but his favorite musical thing is singing with one of us. My mom now sings to him almost every time we FaceTime with my parents. She taught him how to start singing “You are my sunshine,” with her singing most of the parts and him filling in the ends of verses. She’ll sing “You are my…” and he’ll pipe in “sunshine!” with his tiny voice. It’s obscenely adorable. I decided to join in the fun by teaching him “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.” I love the night and star-gazing, so it was an appropriate complement.

Sprout’s even started singing back to me when he knows I need it. When I was going through a rough patch a couple of weeks ago, he hugged me, rocked back and forth and sang, “Rockie rockie.” I hugged him tighter, leaned in and listened. It was one of the most comforting things anyone did or could do for me.

I hope that even as he realizes we aren’t very musically inclined, the spirit stays, the hope and the love of our songs.

A Terrific Twosome

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / Leave a comment

It is considered a universal truth that watching two toddlers means “you have your hands full.” At the least, it’s chaos; at the worst, a total and utter cluster. But despite the prevailing wisdom, we actually had a great time babysitting for our friends’ three and a half year old (Z) with our almost two year old.

We aren’t strangers to either taking care of our friends’ kids or Sprout hanging out with Z in particular. We did the babysitting kid-swap before, looking after another couple’s infant last year. Z has been over to our house a number of times, playing with Sprout while his dad Gamemasters (GMs) our gaming group. However, this was different from other times he had been over both because his parents weren’t present and we had to put him to bed. So we weren’t entirely sure what to expect.

The night started auspiciously, with Sprout and Z playing well together. I suggested going over to the park – Sprout’s utterly favorite place in the world – but Z was extremely keen on heading down to our basement. As his dad said, “That means you have good stuff.” Good to know our toy choices pass the muster of a three year old. They played with our toy kitchen – the build-your-own pizza is very popular – and the slide. It helped that Sprout is now talking enough for Z to actually have conduct a bit of conversation with him, instead of just talking at him.

While watching the boys play was enjoyable, dinner was where we really got the show. Chris made spaghetti Bolognese, which is just spaghetti with fancy meat sauce. Sprout shoved the pasta in his mouth as fast as he could move it from the plate to his little face. In contrast, Z proclaimed it, “The most delicious pasta ever” and then proceeded to eat very little. Instead, he launched into an extended semi-monologue on a variety of topics of great interest to a toddler. They ranged from the presence of honeybees in our yard to robots in his bedroom to squirrels (in general) to whether our toilet worked like the one in his parents’ house. (My answer: “Yes, it works the same, although we don’t have a little potty.”) Sometimes he covered all of those topics in the same breath. I’ve taught kindergarten and am a bit of a scatterbrain myself and I’ve never heard such a variety of topics covered in a half-hour. It was a hoot. We tried to follow as best we could, but sometimes we just let him bring us along for the ride.

The best part of our dinner-time conversation was completely incomprehensible to us. Z said something we couldn’t understand, garbled by pasta in his mouth and a lack of enunciation. Sprout didn’t seem to be paying attention up until this point, focusing on inhaling as much pasta as possible. But right then, he looked up and burst out laughing hysterically. Z then laughed loudly and made a funny noise, which set Sprout off laughing again. This entire time, Chris and I were just looking blankly at each other trying to figure out what was going on. Then we joined in the laughing because adorable toddlers laughing about nothing is too cute not to.

Handling the two of them gave me a little preview of what it may be like if we have a second child. As an only and socially awkward child, I never had those “look at each other and start laughing for no reason” moments that you have spontaneously with other kids around your age. It was so joyful to see Z and Sprout share that, completely separate from whatever the adults were doing. While Sprout would be the older sibling in a potential future situation, I could see him sharing that kind of resonance with a brother or sister. Even if he never has a sibling, I hope he continues to have friends like Z that he can have those moments with.

In the end, everything went smoothly, even bedtime. While I can’t imagine that would always be true with two toddlers – it’s certainly not been with a single one – it was a relief to see that it’s at least occasionally possible.

Gaining New Words Every Day

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 3 Comments

There’s a joke I tell about my own babyhood that although I started talking late, I’ve been making up for it ever since. At Sprout’s 18 month appointment, we thought he might be following the same path. He was a tiny bit behind on his verbal development – nothing to be concerned about, but significant enough to keep an eye on. My mom is a speech-language pathologist, so I knew if he needed an evaluation or services, I could get great advice and wasn’t worried. But it turns out we had nothing to be concerned about anyway. Lately, it looks like he’s closer to following Chris’s path, who was speaking in full sentences by his second birthday.

At the last doctor’s appointment, we realized that we weren’t entirely sure if he had reached the milestone or not because we hadn’t kept track particularly well. More importantly, we wouldn’t have any clue if he had reached the 2-year-old 100 word goal if we didn’t start some type of system. While some people do rather more elaborate methods (like this adorable “Word Wall”), we stuck with something simpler – a calendar. I took the free but beautiful calendar I recieved from the Nature Conservancy and started writing down every word he said independently (no repeating after us) on the day he said it. Although we could have just used a piece of paper, going slightly more complex was the perfect choice. Sprout really enjoys looking at the animal and landscape photographs, which themselves offer opportunities for introducing new words. He now can identify something on every page, from trees to water to monkeys.

While we were far from exact in writing down what word he said when, the calendar also offers us a way to look at patterns in his learning. We found that he tended to have “vocabulary explosions,” where he would suddenly start using 5 or 6 new words in a few days and then go back to a slower pace. It also helped us remember words that he used constantly for a while and fell out of use as he moved on to different ideas.

Besides timing, the most obvious patterns are in terms of subject matter – namely, his love of animals. In addition to the usual farm animals, he knows about different marine animals (sharks, fish, penguins, whales, octopus), flying animals (owls, bats, birds in general), insects (butterflies, or as he says it “flies,” bees), jungle and plains animals (lions that say “rowr,” monkeys, and giraffes). I think most of it comes from his books, the majority of which have animal characters. In addition, his cool wooden animal puzzles from Melissa and Doug have also helped reinforce those concepts. Other popular topics include body parts, household objects, and a few scattered verbs focused on how his body moves (jump, walk, march, hop).

Like most toddlers, he loves identifying everything he sees and knows the word for multiple times, especially cars, buses and birds. His joy at gaining knowledge and mastery over words is rather contagious.

In fact, we’ve actually stopped using the calendar in the last few weeks because he’s learning too many new words for us to keep track. He’s up to more than 200 and gaining new ones on a daily basis. While it’s no longer in active use, the calendar is a really nice (and compact) keepsake of this particularly exciting time.

With a solid foundation of single words, he’s started developing a larger vocabulary around concepts. He’s increasingly close to knowing the alphabet song, although he routinely skips letters. Hilariously, he recognizes when something is a letter, even when he has no idea which letter it is. He’ll go up to our Prius, which has the word Hybrid in raised letters near the door and say, “A…B…D…” He does the same thing with numbers. Occasionally when he’s babbling to himself instead of sleeping, he’ll count: “1…2…5….10.” It’s hard to both stifle my giggles (I don’t want to sound like I’m mocking him) and gently correct him while being encouraging.

He’s starting to link phrases together too, making it a little easier to have conversations. The other day, he said “Ow. Foot” to Chris. When Chris asked what happened, Sprout responded, “Hog. Sharp.” From that, Chris could figure out that he stepped on the dryer hedgehog (it replaces dryer sheets), which has sharp plastic spikes. Today, as he walked past the neighbors’ house, he said, “Dog. Scared.” They have a medium but very loud dog that barked at him the other day.

I know some people dread their kids learning to talk because it allows them to talk back. But I much prefer words – even sarcastic ones – to crying or whining. Plus, one of things that has always connected Chris and I is our love of good conversation. I hope that we can share that with him and have great things to discuss with each other in the years to come.

A Fine Whine

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 2 Comments

A few months ago, the primary adjective I would have used to describe my son was “sweet.” While he’s still sweet most of the time, I have lately been periodically barraged by a cacophony of whining. I often wake up bleary, blinking to see a small person either yelling at me or just about to.

Lately, certain times of day are a series of efforts to hold off a meltdown. It had been mornings, which declined, only to be replaced by the return of the dreaded Bedtime and Middle of the Night Yelling. Sometimes I’m able to stave off the yammering by acknowledging his need promptly and responding in a reasonable period of time. I’m not going to drop everything – he needs to learn some patience – but I also want him to feel like I am listening. While less reliably effective than it had been, Dr. Harvey Karp’s Connect with Respect technique does help to an extent.

But some days, I just can’t help him. Sometimes it’s because I cannot under any circumstances figure out what the hell he wants. He’s up to more than 200 words, but that still leaves out a very large portion of the English language. This is an especially big barrier when he launches directly into whining with any prior indicator of need. I can’t parrot back what he wants if I can’t understand a word he’s saying. I’ve taken to looking him in the eye and telling him, “I can’t understand what you want. You need to use a different voice so I can understand you.” We’ve had mixed results. I think it works when he wants something specific and fails when he’s just randomly cranky, often under the influence of teething. Of course, it works the least at 4 AM, when neither of have any idea what we want except to go back to sleep.

Other times, we’re physically incapable of meeting his request, most often associated with the plea of “Up!!” Chris tried to explain to him recently that “No, you can’t go up into the tree to chase the squirrel.” We have a similar problem at the park, where he seems to believe that we have the ability to lift him up high enough to make a basket. As I’m simply not that tall and even the smallest basketball moves only inches from his fingers, it’s simply not practical. I lift him up into my shoulders, but that’s the best I can do.

Then there are other times that I simply won’t give him what he wants because it’s against our rules and values. We have zero tolerance for anything that purposely hurts another person, physically or mentally. Unfortunately, this sometimes conflicts with a toddler’s desire to have All the Things, All the Time, regardless of their actual owner. A few weeks ago, Chris had to physically extract our screaming toddler from the park for the first time because he stole someone else’s ball and refused to give it back. Thankfully, that’s been an isolated incident – so far.

Other times doing the action once is fine, but I don’t want to set a bad precedent. A few weeks ago, I allowed him to sit in my lap once while I was eating breakfast. For the next several days, he was obsessed with wanting to sit on my lap instead of his own chair. As I need my space and like eating my cereal without a small child’s fingers in it, I really didn’t want to make that part of my morning routine. Similarly, he often wants me to read to him in the morning, which I don’t have time to do and get to work at a reasonable hour. These are some of the toughest things because while he knows the schedule in general, he doesn’t understand context yet and is confused as to why sometimes some things are okay and other times they aren’t.

The worst part of the whining is that it’s incredibly emotionally draining. While the noise hurts my ears, the idea of it sets off my self-judgment. Even though I know he’s frustrated by the general unfairness of the world, the constant “Mamamamama” sure sounds like it’s condemning me. The third day of him screaming to sit on my lap, I actually started crying myself. Thank God his public meltdown was with Chris – I might have had one with him.

Thankfully, the whining is declining a little bit, as he starts to realize it isn’t very effective. I hope this self-control of ours is going to pay off soon because I might need to invest in earplugs otherwise.

How to Introduce Books to Your Baby to Help Them Love Reading

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 2 Comments

Text: "How to Introduce Books to Your Baby to Help Them Love Reading / We'll Eat You Up, We Love You So" Photo: Four children's board books on a wooden table

“Where everyone is napping,” I read, as my baby crawled off my lap. Soon, he was across the room and out the door. With him gone, who was I reading to now? As cute as The Napping House is, it’s not the book I would pick for myself.

Babies are not easy audiences. Nonetheless, reading to them is essential. The American Pediatric Association appears to agree, with a recommendation to read to children – even babies – every day. While “every day” is tough, it’s still a good goal. But besides remembering to do so in a sleep-addled state, the idea of reading to a squirming baby can be intimating.

From my experience, here are a few tips for reading to very young children:

Continue reading →

Children’s Book Week: Passing Down my Beloved Books

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 2 Comments

Did you know this is Children’s Book Week? My posts this week are going to focus on reading to children and children’s books, from the weird to the patience-building.

Saying that I am attached to my books is an understatement. I have two large Tupperware containers of books in my closet that I’ve owned since I was a child, ones that I either believed would be out of print or that I valued so deeply it pained me to get rid of them. But because I was a very precocious reader, very few of them are picture books. In fact, I have few distinct memories of reading picture books at all. This leaves me at a bit of a loss for now when it comes to passing on my beloved books to Sprout. Fortunately, there are a few that remained from my young childhood, mainly because my mom “borrowed” them for her classroom and brought them home when she retired. However, some are a bit different than I remember them.

Cover of Squiggly Wiggly;s Surprise, with a bee looking at two worms
Squiggly Wiggly’s Surprise: This was definitely the most hilariously disappointing of the bunch. Squiggly Wiggly is a worm (according to the book – he’s actually a caterpillar) that is represented by a little finger puppet that you push through holes in the book. However, his brown coloring and black rings make him look suspiciously like part of the male anatomy. Less funny but more unfortunate, Squiggly has some serious body image issues. While the story is ostensibly about him learning about different colors, most of it is actually him complaining that he’s drab and ugly, opining he could be something else. In the end, of course, he’s transformed into a beautiful butterfly. That’s kind of a crappy message though, as not everyone actually gets to become a butterfly. Squiggly should love himself for who he is. If you want caterpillar stories, stick with The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

Cover of Bialosky Stays Home with a photo of a teddy bear making cookies
Bialosky Goes Out and Bialosky Stays Home: In contrast, these books were a pleasant surprise. I faintly remembered the books that used photos of a teddy bear as pictures, but before re-reading them, wouldn’t have been able to tell you anything about them. Bialosky is like Winnie the Pooh’s long lost cousin: he makes grand plans that go array, loves honey, and is “a bear of very little brain.” In Bialosky Goes Out, he spends so long deciding on where to go and what to bring on a walk that it starts pouring before he has the chance to leave. In Bialosky Stays Home, he attempts to make cookies, but “tests” so much of the batter via nibbling that’s there isn’t any left to bake! In both books, he responds to his dilemma with a shrug and declaration that he’ll do better next time. While they lack the moral ambiguity of Winnie the Pooh, he has an irresistible attitude even when his plans completely fail. I’m very glad my mom kept them – they seem to be out of print now.

The Day Jimmy's Boa Ate the Wash cover
The Day Jimmy’s Boa Ate the Wash: This is by far my favorite handed-down book, a tale of subversive fun narrated by a hilarious little girl (Meg). It has a sense of unbridaled, unashamed chaos. It starts off with the main character greeting her mother – who wears a very 1970s outfit combining no fewer than 3 floral patterns – after a trip to the farm. In the course of telling her mom about the trip, we find out that not only did a bale of hay fall on a cow, but that pigs ate the students’ lunches, motivated by the kids throwing their corn, due to the students running out of eggs to throw, all precipitated by Jimmy bringing his pet boa constrictor into the hen house. And the narrative – or Meg’s mom – doesn’t judge the kids at all for this behavior. Meg’s mom acts surprised, but far less than I suspect I’d be in the same circumstance. In fact, it’s very clear that Meg is a key instigator in it all of it – while she didn’t start it, the scene in the henhouse shows her with a full armful of eggs, ready to chuck at her classmates. The other thing I love is the fact the protagonist is female. Not only are girls underreprestened in children’s literature, but they tend to either fit into two stereotypes – full-on tomboys or very pink, very conventionally feminine girls. Meg and her fellow female classmates are neither. They all wear cute 1980s style dresses and skirts to the farm, but participate in the chaos as much – or more than – the boys. When Meg comes home, she changes into a car racing costume to pilot a homebuilt racecar with Jimmy (owner of the boa constrictor) and his new pet pig. But the best part is her non-plussed reaction to the day’s events -“I suppose it was exciting if you’re the kind of kid who likes class trips to the farm.”

Cover of a Very Young Dancer, with a young ballerina on the cover.
A Very Young Dancer: I haven’t given this book to Sprout yet, as it’s rather text-heavy. Nonetheless, I look forward to reading it with him. It follows a young ballet dancer training in the School of American Ballet in New York and what she has to do before the big performance. Because my mom took me to the New York City Ballet every year (we lived near its summer home), I was a little obsessed with ballerinas as a kid. While I can’t force him to like anything, I want Sprout to be able to appreciate dance and theater, especially because they are often seen as “girly” interests. I hope this book can give him some insight into the hard work, athleticism, and beauty that goes into dance. Unfortunately, he won’t even be the second kid to use it. A little boy at my mom’s school was interested in dance and I gave her permission to take it to school. He then drew on it with crayon. At least I know it was loved.

What were your favorite books growing up? Did you have the chance to pass any of them on to your kids or kids you know?

Monkeys! Things I Learned from Watching Disney’s Monkey Kingdom

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 1 Comment

This past weekend, we brought Sprout to his first movie in a theater. It was in the mid-60s and predicted to rain, but I also wanted to get out of the house. It was just the right day for going to the movies. While there are few movies I would show him at this age, we were in luck. Last week, Disney released the latest in their Earth Day Disney Nature series – Monkey Kingdom. I figured if there was any movie that would hold his attention, it was this one. Besides, we were fully prepared to leave the theater if he got too antsy. As he was enthralled for the first 45 minutes, we all got to pay close attention to that section. Here are a few things I learned while watching:

My kid really likes monkeys.
I already knew this one, but I couldn’t predict exactly how many times he would say the word “monkey!” during the movie. At least 30 or 40, although I wasn’t counting. Thankfully, there were only about 10 other people in the theater, none of them sitting close to us. Chris said there was another kid with running commentary as well, although I didn’t hear them. It helped that the the sound was really loud.

The city the movie is set in is real and looks awesome.
The movie focuses on a group of monkeys in Polonnaruwa, an abandoned ancient city in Sri Lanka. The scenery is spectacular, with monkeys swinging from natural rock formations, giant trees, and intricately carved buildings. The coolest part is that Polonnaruwa is a real place, designated as a UNESCO Cultural Heritage site. The movie doesn’t even show some of the most striking statues, intricately carved and full of evocative details in their clothes and headdresses. I’ll probably never get to visit, but damn, the Wikipedia article alone made me want to.

Macaque monkeys provide a great illustration of privilege.
The movie focuses on Maya, a lower-class macaque monkey. Macaques have a very specific, strict and regimented social structure. The top monkeys – the alpha male and his primary females – get the best food, sleeping places, and protection from predators. Because class position is inherited, their kids are extremely privileged as well. They get to climb all over the lower-class adult monkeys, even when they’re trying to sleep. Whether they want to or not, the low-class monkeys are forced to be defacto babysitters for the royalty. The movie’s explanation of the system was a great elementary description of privilege that I think could spark some really interesting conversations with older kids. (Especially if you ignored the rest of the plot. More on that later.)

By Kalyan Varma GFDL 1.2, GFDL or CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

By Kalyan Varma GFDL 1.2, GFDL or CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Baby macaques are seriously ugly-cute.
They’re super-wrinkly and almost completely bald except a little patch of old-man hair on the tops of their heads. Only other monkeys and people who think naked mole rats are cute could think baby macaques are.

Disney’s dislike of non-conventionally attractive people extends to monkeys as well.
Except for the babies – which obviously get a pass – every monkey with a disfigurement or a striking facial feature was a villain. Props to Chris for pointing this out. He also made the valid point that much of the “showdown” between the two monkey tribes was just the result of clever editing. The scarred monkey that was presented as the head of the warring tribe was probably from the same group as the heroine.

Nature documentaries are a great way to teach media awareness.
I remember being absolutely shocked the first time I realized nature documentaries are often staged. I maintained my naïveté about that particular subject for a pathetically long time – at least until high school. And those were “Planet Earth” type of movies, with straight-forward facts over vibrant, amazing images. “Documentaries” like Monkey Kingdom that have a plot and specific characters require the filmmakers to play even faster and looser with “what really happens in the wild.” One part of the movie claims that a number of traumatic events happen to our protagonist in a single day, when it probably took months to shoot. Similarly, some people have suggested that the main character and her “love interest” are never on screen simultaneously, their romance a result of clever editing. While Sprout isn’t old enough, discussing how nature filmmakers can use selected footage and editing to create or suggest events that never happened is an excellent lead-in to broader discussions into how the media does or doesn’t cover news. The idea that the media can distort the news or leave out major parts is challenging to consider, but nature documentaries offer a fuzzy and gentle introduction.

Disney seriously made a film about monkeys into a princess movie.
A key part of media awareness is being able to read the unsaid or implied messages in a story. Disney’s message in Monkey Kingdom – and I am not exagurrating at all – is that if you are poor, you can wait for your Prince Charming to come and overthrow the king. Seriously. The low-born monkey has a love interest come in from another group, the love interest takes over after the monkey King loses his position during a conflict, and Maya, her baby, and her monkey prince live happily ever after. Tina Fey does a good job narrating and the story is cute, but also pretty inane. Fortunately, the imagery and footage was so engaging that it was easy to forgive the silliness.

If you’re a toddler, movie theater seats are really fun.
The movie was so engaging that Sprout was captivated for a good 45 minutes – about 2/3 of the running time. After that point, he wanted to move around a little. As he clambered off my lap, I let him sit in the seat next to me. Not being a toddler myself, I underestimated both how little he would be in comparison to the giant seat and how much he could move the it up and down with his body weight. Thankfully, this new diversion was both quiet and pretty darn entertaining for him.

Letting a toddler walk up or down stairs in a movie theater in the dark is a terrible idea.
Unfortunately, playing on the movie theater seat didn’t last the entire movie. No, his next task to conquer was crawling up the stairs. Again, I figured it was quiet and relatively harmless. I parked myself on the stairs and planned to give chase if he went too far. Unfortunately, he didn’t get far at all. As he pulled himself up the third step and I glanced at the screen, I heard a wail. He had slipped, crumpled in a toddler-shaped pile. I scooped him up and hustled outside, trying to minimize both his pain and everyone else’s exposure to it. After a few minutes of calming down, we went back into the theater. Then, because I’m a brilliant, forward-thinking mom, I let him try to walk down the stairs. Of course, he fell again. Thankfully, it wasn’t as hard and the movie was pretty much over anyway.

What was the first movie in a theater you brought your kid to or that you remember as a kid? How did it go?

Montessori Practical Life Skills for Modern Times

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / Leave a comment

My son is in a Montessori playgroup, so I’ve spent a decent amount of time browsing descriptions of the philosophy as well as activity suggestions on Pinterest. While I agree with its broad aims of child-led education and teaching practical skills, one thing that frustrates me is that the curriculums don’t seem to be updated to reflect modern times. And I’m not even talking about computers. While some of the skills taught are great, like gardening, others are downright archaic, grown out of date through the development of technology or culture. For example, I certainly don’t iron handkerchiefs, arrange flowers, polish silver or wash chalkboards on a regular basis. (These are some of the tasks mentioned in Montessori presentations and Montessori websites about Practical Life Skills.) Instead, I offer a suggested list of updated activities and life skills that Montessori or not, practical-minded parents and teachers may want to integrate into their children’s learning. These are skills that I do use very regularly, some learned from my parents and some through trial and error. I’ve gained as an adult through some amount of trial and error, building on my parents’ well-intentioned efforts to teach me them when I was younger, which I often ignored.

Picking out and cooking vegetables: Food preparation is a pretty big part of the Montesorri curriculum, from what I can tell. They actually teach kids to use knives properly, which is both great and something my junior high home-Ec class failed to teach me. (The main thing Home-Ec taught me about kitchen knives was to be afraid of them.) Picking out and cooking vegetables is the next step up, but definitely a skill that an elementary school student could learn under supervision. I think it’s essential for kids to learn how to cook vegetables in particular because there’s such a cultural prejudice against them. Children are already told by society that they should dislike vegetables. In contrast, part of the reason many of us love to bake cookies at Christmas or pie at Thanksgiving is because we fondly remember doing so with our parents or grandparents. If most people looked back on cooking tomato sauce, preparing sweet potatoes, or sauteeing broccoli with their families, I think we’d all eat a lot more veggies. Involving kids in the process builds that inherent fondness, staves off some of that cultural negativity and helps them feel responsible for the end product. Even if a kid is too young to even go near the stove, parents and teachers can still talk about what vegetables are in season and how you can tell if a vegetable is fresh. In terms of specific learning goals, this allows you to talk about seasons, months of the calendar, problem solving (if this isn’t in season, what can I use instead?), and characteristics of a vegetable like color, firmness and flavor. In field or shopping trips to the farmers’ markets, children can ask farmers questions, learning about agriculture as a career and different growing methods. For older kids, this can feed into conversations about environmental impacts, the transport of goods, and plant life cycles.

Taking care of animals: Everyone knows that taking care of an animal can be great for teaching responsibility, but no parent wants the poor animal to suffer through the child’s learning process. But both parents and teachers can help prepare students to be good stewards of wild and domestic animals without taking on the responsibility of a cat or dog. For wild animals, kids can help fill bird feeders, plant flowers for pollinating insects, or hang bat houses. On the most basic level, little ones can practice their pouring skills with small bags of bird seed. On a deeper level, it can lead to conversations about animals’ needs (food, shelter) and larger ecological roles. Classrooms usually can’t have cats or dogs, but many can have lizards, hamsters, butterflies, or fish. As part of the class’s daily activities, children can feed the animals, play with them, and even help clean their cages. To build awareness of the skills needed for keeping more demanding pets, students could take care of toy cats or dogs, play-acting feeding and brushing them. Kids themselves love to pretend they are pets, which also helps them build empathy for animals and think about how they may see the world differently from humans.

Recycling and composting: Recycling and composting provide tons of great opportunities to build sorting skills as well as lead into bigger thematic conversations. Depending on your community’s recycling set-up, you may be separating garbage into paper, plastic, metal and trash, or if it’s single stream like ours, just recyclable and non-recyclable. Adding composting to the mix makes it even more complicated, with produce scraps able to go into it, but no other food scraps. If you do your own composting, you can also explain how you need to balance the food scraps with dry input like newspapers. These activities can lead into conversations about how much we throw away and what happens to it, how that affects other people and how we can reduce our waste. With older kids, composting is a great opportunity to talk about decomposers, soil chemistry, and their role in ecology.

Bike maintenance: This is one I could use a better handle on myself. When I pulled my personal bike out for the first time this spring, Sprout was fascinated by it. I showed him how I pumped up my tires and had him help by pushing down on the handle. Every kid who has a bike should at least be able check their bike ABCs before each ride – Air in the tires, Brakes working, and Chain running well. In an ideal world, they should also know how to place a jumped chain back on and fix a flat tire, although those are both fairly challenging. These skills build both fine and gross motor skills, along with problem solving skills. While preschoolers and even most elementary school kids won’t bike alone, having these skills does make biking possible as a form of transportation for kids, far earlier than they can drive.

These are just a few of the practical skills that I think we should be teaching all kids, especially in the Montessori curriculum with its focus on “real life” learning.

What practical life skills do you want to teach your young kid or do you wish you were taught when you were a child?

Teething Bites

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 2 Comments

Text: "Teething Bites / We'll Eat You Up, We Love You So" Picture: Cartoon shark holding up a fin

The scourge of teething has darkened our door once again. And if that sounds overdramatic, let me assure you that it is not at all.

Sprout started teething quite early, around five months. He showed all of the classical signs: drooling like a waterfall, chomping on his hands, and slight stomach crud. Every day, we would check to see if there was any progress made, if those little white bumps were any closer to poking through. We applied Ora-gel religiously, hoping to find a way to help him sleep better.

Unfortunately, it was more than two months until we saw the first tooth emerge. The others took their sweet time as well, sprouting from his gums like the world’s slowest, hardest seedlings. While there was some pain, especially just before they poked through, it didn’t affect his mood too badly. He was a little cranky here and there, but nothing vastly out of the ordinary.

Much to our relief, there was a brief reprieve.

Then came the molars.

Continue reading →

A Bear of Very Little Brain but a Lot of Heart

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / Leave a comment

When the weather outside is frightful, I’m more willing than usual to bend the rules. While we normally don’t allow Sprout to watch videos – I’d just rather him be outside, looking at a book, or engaging in creative play – I actually suggested an exception a week and a half ago. It was freezing rain, there was a winter storm advisory and there wasn’t anything better in the world to do but snuggle on the couch and watch a movie. So that’s precisely what we did, turning on 1977’s The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh.

We picked that particular movie after a rather strange exploration of the Netflix app’s children’s section. Of course, I fully expected there to be a number of inane films, such as Peabody and Mr. Sherman and Cars’ Tall Tales. Then there were a bunch of children’s films that are excellent, but still too old for a toddler, like The Lion King and Spirited Away. What surprised me was how many obviously adult – many R-rated – films were showing up, from Top Gun to Barbarella to Annie Hall. Also, the fact that “Crime TV Shows” is a category in “Kids” at all. I don’t know if someone is screwing with the Netflix algorithm or what, but don’t trust that section to be accurate!

I hadn’t seen this particular version of Winnie the Pooh since I was little, but I’ve had a lifelong fondness for the stories. My mom nicknamed my dad Pooh Bear in college and have a number of Pooh Bear Christmas ornaments. They sang me Loggins and Messina’s House at Pooh Corner as a child and now I sing it to Sprout in both the most joyful and desperate hours. Sprout also has a plaque with the famous quote from Christopher Robin to Pooh about believing in yourself that my mother-in-law originally gave my husband. Needless to say, I was looking forward to sharing these beloved characters with him.

Sprout thought it was fantastic. He laughed multiple times, mostly at appropriate moments. He giggled at Pooh falling out of a tree and spitting out bees in his hapless attempt to steal honey. He also laughed at the part where Rabbit starts hallucinating because he’s terribly lost in the woods, but I told him it wasn’t appropriate to laugh at someone being scared. He probably just thought the imagery was weird, but I don’t want to reinforce that reaction.

Besides what he laughed at, how he laughed was particularly striking. It was a tinny, almost stilted laugh that was different from his usual one. Chris pointed out that this was one of the few occasions he’s had to laugh “at” something rather than “with” someone. Usually when he’s laughing, it’s because we’re tickling him or doing something funny together. It was odd to see how much his laugh varied depending on the situation.

Sprout wasn’t the only one laughing though – both Chris and I enjoyed it quite a bit. While I remembered bits and pieces from before, there were a number of things I had forgotten:

1) How hallucinatory it is: Besides the sequence with Rabbit, there’s also a very trippy part where Pooh imagines Woozles and Heffalumps taunting him. It’s obviously influenced by Fantasia, with multi-colored dancing, spacey elephants and lithe, morphing weasels. For some reason, it also reminded me of the dream sequence in the Big Lebowski, but maybe that’s just because I love that movie. Jeff Bridges would make a very interesting Pooh Bear though.

2) How many jokes for adults there are: It’s easy to think that having jokes for adults in children’s movies was invented by Pixar and Dreamworks, but Winnie the Pooh had its share of them, most adopted straight from the original stories. From the fact that Pooh Bear quite literally “lives under the name of Sanders” with the sign “Mr Sanders” above his house to Owl clearly being based on some boring Cambridge don, there are a wealth of jokes only adults will get.

3) How deeply annoying Tigger is and how other characters react: Tigger is straight-up obnoxious. He bounces in with no warning, yells at other characters, often destroys their stuff, and abruptly leaves, never with any apologies. Now, many children’s characters could be described as “deeply annoying,” but what’s fascinating about Winnie the Pooh is how they explicitly acknowledge that within the text. Tigger’s behavior absolutely pisses off Rabbit and even frustrates ever-patient, kind Piglet. It’s so bad that in a secret community meeting, Rabbit convinces Piglet to help him lose Tigger in the woods! It’s a pretty awful thing to do, even to someone who is highly inconsiderate.

4) How much the stories are about the challenges of building a community, especially when the “people” in it are flawed: Thr conflict with Tigger is fundamentally about an outsider coming in who doesn’t mesh with the current community. Tigger, Rabbit, Piglet and Pooh all behave poorly and face a variety of consequences for it. Because it is a children’s story, they all learn a lesson at the end and get along, but it isn’t so easy as just a quick fix. While both the outsider and the community chooses to adjust their behavior and expectations to serve the greater good, the story definitely suggests that this is going to be an ongoing struggle for Tigger and Rabbit. Similarly, a story where Owl’s house is destroyed in a big storm is about the sacrifices we make for the people we love. While the storm continues to rain and rain, Eeyore searches for a new home for Owl. Finally, Eeyore announces he has found the perfect house, which Owl declares he loves. The only problem is that it’s already Piglet’s house. Saddened by giving up his house, but wanting his friends to be happy, Piglet makes the sacrifice. Thankfully, Pooh turns it into a relatively happy ending by inviting Piglet to live with him, but it’s pretty obvious that Piglet is still sad about giving up his house. It’s this kind of struggling with real moral issues that really rekindled my love for the movie.

While I’m not against showing Sprout movies and TV shows in general, I do want to be picky about what I show him. Just like his books and bringing him out in nature, I want the pop culture he does consume to be kind, thoughtful, and creative. The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh happily met all of my expectations and more.