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August 16 - October 1, 2018
When “multitasking” is valued as a survival skill, should we be surprised when increasing numbers of our children are being “diagnosed” with “attention difficulties”?
To have moments of calm—creative or restful—is a form of deep sustenance for human beings of all ages. Relationships are often built in these pauses, in the incidental moments, when nothing much is going on.
These stresses distract from the focus or “task” of childhood: an emerging, developing sense of self.
As parents become more involved in simplifying, in increasing rhythm and predictability in the home (Chapter Four), they will learn how to build in “pressure valves,” little islands of calm throughout the day.
Parents and I discuss the four levels of simplification: the environment, rhythm, schedules, and filtering out the adult world.
Too much stuff deprives kids of leisure, and the ability to explore their worlds deeply.
Overparenting creates a lot of tension. Our anxiousness about our children makes them, in turn, anxious.
we also define ourselves by what we bring our attention and presence to.
With less physical and mental clutter, your attention expands, and your awareness deepens.
Nature is a warm sensory bath that can counterbalance the cold overwhelm of too much activity, information, or “stuff.” Time in nature calms and focuses;
“When your child seems to deserve affection least, that’s when they need it most.”
four levels of simplification—environment, rhythm, schedules, and filtering
This profusion of products and playthings is not just a symptom of excess, it can also be a cause of fragmentation and overload. They hadn’t considered how too much stuff leads to a sense of entitlement. Or how too much stuff relates to too many choices, which can relate to a childhood raced through at far “too fast” a pace.
Yet the less exposure a child has to media, especially television, the less vulnerable they will be to advertising’s intentional and unintentional messages. In her wonderful book The Shelter of Each Other, Mary Pipher discusses some of the unspoken lessons that advertisements teach us, and particularly our children: to be unhappy with what we have “I am the center of the universe and I want what I want now” products can solve complex human problems, and meet our needs buying products is important These messages, over time, create both a sense of entitlement, and a false reliance on purchases
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children given so very many choices learn to undervalue them all, and hold out—always—for whatever elusive thing isn’t offered.
unilateral changes will not be possible given children’s well-developed sense of fairness (that is, their ability to see through hypocrisy).
The trend toward more high-tech toys speaks to the presumed need for more and more stimulation to hold a child’s attention.
By simplifying the number and complexity of our children’s toys, we give them liberty to build their own imaginary worlds. When children are not being told what to want, and what to imagine, they can learn to follow their own interests, to trust their own emerging voices. They can discover what genuinely speaks to them.
A child who does not fully develop their sense of touch through explorative play can become hypersensitive to their own personal space and hypersensitive (or not fully aware) of another’s.
Soon, as they enter their second year and beyond, they will be role-playing and pretending, using imitation and imagination to create elaborate stories and worlds of their own making. Much has been made in recent years of how this make-believe play helps children develop critical cognitive skills known as executive function. Executive function includes the ability to self-regulate, to amend one’s behavior, emotions, and impulses appropriately to the environment and situation.
Children love to be busy, and useful. They delight in seeing that there is a place for them in the hum of doing, making, and fixing that surrounds them.
The primary predictor of success and happiness in life is our ability to get along with others.
Through movement they’ll build balance and coordination—undeniably; they’ll also develop vitality and a lifelong predisposition for activity.
lack of exercise is often the issue when kids can’t sleep, but a lack of creative expression can also make the transition into sleep difficult.
When a desire for the next thing is at the heart of an experience, we’re involved in an addiction, not a connection.
Sadly, though, anything can be commercialized and trivialized through overexposure and excess.
Children depend on the rhythmic structure of the day—on its predictability, its regularity, its pulse.
Not only can children find security in the patterns of daily life, they can begin to find themselves.
By surrounding a young child with a sense of rhythm and ritual, you can help them order their physical, emotional, and intellectual view of the world.
We are connected by the things we do together. There is a regularity, a consistency to what we do as a family.
Studies have shown that the more often families eat together, the more likely it is that kids will do well in school, eat fruits and vegetables, and build their vocabularies, and the less likely they will smoke, drink, do drugs, suffer from depression, struggle with asthma, or develop eating disorders.
The dinner table is one of a child’s most consistent laboratories for learning social skills (and impulse control); it’s democracy in action.
Consistency also teaches us that some things do not change, though we may wish they would. Not everything bends to our personal preferences.
But a half hour or an hour of quiet, restful solitary time during the day is restorative at any age, and a habit worth cultivating.
Without sleep we’re reactive, unable to approach new things or changing circumstances with strength and resilience. Sleep is the required rhythm to a strong “I am” sense of self.
most children between two and six need eleven hours of sleep. From ages six to eleven, some kids can do well with ten hours, but that number will go up again—to eleven or even twelve hours—during adolescence.
stories give children the strength and the images they need to make sense of their world.
Surely if you’re fully available to the person on the phone, you can’t be to those you’re with, and vice versa.
Everyone is distracted when one member of the family is distracted. Even if the kids don’t have their own cellphones or BlackBerries, they understand when they have someone’s attention and when they don’t.
Anticipating gratification, rather than expecting or demanding it, strengthens a child’s will.
Anticipation holds back the will; it counters instant gratification. It informs a child’s development and growth and builds their inner life.
You can see the shadow of overscheduling in this definition of addiction given by my colleague Felicitas Vogt: “an increasing and compulsive tendency to avoid pain or boredom and replace inner development with outer stimulation.”
I’ve seen how loading up a child’s days with activities and events from morning to night can dig a developmental groove in their beings. It can establish a reliance, a favoring of external stimulation over emotional or inner activity.
Worry may be an aspect of parenthood, but it shouldn’t define it. When it rises to the top of our emotions, coloring the waters of our relationship with our children, something is not right.
But what strikes me so often now is how our fears and concerns for our children have eclipsed our hopes for them, and our trust.
The human brain is the least developed of our organ systems at birth. Most of its development, including its fundamental neural architecture, occurs during the first two years of life, in relation to and in interaction with environmental stimuli.
Babies need interaction with parents and other humans; they need to manipulate their environment (to touch things, to feel and move them), and they need to do “problem-solving” activities (such as the eternal “where did it go?” problem-solving of peekaboo).
the passivity of television is especially worrisome for young boys, whose brain growth is particularly dependent on physical movement.15
“Viewing entertainment violence can lead to increases in aggressive attitudes, values and behavior, particularly in children. Its effects are measurable and long-lasting.”16
