Welcome aboard,
There has never been a time when parents taking charge of their children’s education has been more important. Beyond what the public or private schools offer, one will find the keys to successful parenting and education. If you believe that turning your children over to the state to educate is okay, then you don’t need this site. If, like so many parents, you know that it is your responsibility to make certain your children master the basics, become self-directed, and develop the skills and crap detectors necessary to survive in our complex times, then you are one with us.
The importance of parent involvement in their children’s education came home to me many years ago when I visited Japanese schools. The U.S. was kicking itself for falling behind Japan on math and science test scores. The myth at the time was that the Japanese had made significant breakthroughs in teaching.
In Japan, I learned that following WWII General Douglas McArthur had ordered the establishment of American type schools in Japan. My visits convinced me that the organizational structure they used was of our creation. Almost everything was the same. So what was unique or different? What made Japanese students excel in certain areas? Visiting school after school, I became aware of the one factor that caused Japanese kids to excel: Japanese mothers. The involvement, home pre-school training, tutoring, expectations, and the influence of mothers made Japanese schools better. I also learned of cases where there were sad consequences of too much or the wrong types of parental involvement. Japan had a disturbingly high teen suicide rate. This was attributed to the misuse of parental pressure and unrealistic expectations beyond a child’s abilities.
Parents need to make some critical and key decisions about their relationship with their kids. Look over this list and sort out the things you agree or disagree with.
I DON’T HAVE TIME. Interesting. When we decide to have children they are our primary responsibility. There is a very narrow window of opportunity – only a few very critical years – to meet your parental obligation to your children. Take the time and learn how to prioritize. Of course you have to work. That is not an excuse.
I DON’T KNOW ENOUGH. It is not what you know, it is that you know how to find out. The most effective teaching you will ever do will be at the side of your child learning with him. He may even teach you. You are not to be the teller of knowledge, but rather a fellow traveler on the same adventure track.
I HAVE CERTAIN BELIEFS THE SCHOOLS DON’T TEACH. There is only one certain way to inculcate beliefs and values. Model them in the way you live and relate to others. The records are full of the results of parents forcing belief systems on their children. Almost all children grow up and reject these “teachings” and often their parents. The cost of trying to program children with certain perceptions of religion or behavior is too great. If you believe it, live it. Teach by example. Don’t let your personal insecurity or fears contaminate your responsibility to your children who must survive in the future, not your past.
I DON’T HAVE THE MONEY TO DO TRAVEL LEARNING. No, but what you do have is a life full of adventures and you can share them with your kids. In fact, seeing the world through the eyes of a child, myriads of seemingly simple things become magical. A walk in the park, a trip to the market, a visit to the zoo or a library or… All around you is a playground for parents and kids to explore together. Sure, you might plan a trip together and maybe do something exotic. But the wonders kids need to explore with you, hand-in-hand are at home. Find a leaf. Study it. Draw it. Learn about trees together.
MY KIDS ARE TOO YOUNG / TOO OLD. True, there are learning parameters. The learning needs of toddlers are different than 10 year olds. There is age (development) appropriate learning and you need to know about it. There really are critical times in a child’s development when essential skills must be mastered. You can find the essential skills for each age group (grade and subject area) on-line at www.essentialskills.net or go to your State’s Department of Education site. Libraries can get you copies of essential skills for each subject and grade level.
If your child misses learning essential skills, then their ability to move forward is limited. Their problems functioning well in school compound into problems of loss of confidence, negative self-image, and rejection in a competitive world. Your job as parent is to make certain age appropriate essential skills are mastered. To often the schools don’t take time to do this. You must. Learning together through adventures is the best way we know of helping them master the essential skills. The worst place to teach essential skills is the classroom. In your world, you can discover, understand, master, and apply the skills they need.
TOO OLD? William Pollack, Ph.D. in his book, Real Boys, Rescuing Our Sons From The Myths of Boyhood, points out that boys need to be nurtured by their mothers (and fathers) well into their twenties. The old idea that a boy should be yanked from his mother’s arms and become a man at puberty makes no sense. The relationship between parents and children may change in the late teens or early twenties from parenting to powerful friendship, but nurturing and adventuring together does not end. The one factor that does limit families learning together and traveling together is social development.
There comes a time, usually in what we call middle school, when it is the job of the student to master social relationships. First friendships gain power over parental relationships. Some jokingly note that there is a magical time before Sex, Image, Clothes, Cars, and Rebellion when children are wonderful. After that, they scare the hell out of us. The key to continued relationships is to build strong, loving and shared responsibility models before SICCR forces kick in.
GIRLS ARE DIFFERENT. No kidding. They are. Have you read Mary Pipher’s book Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls? Read it before you have an adolescent daughter. There are pitfalls easily avoidable if one knows what a child may face. At every age, girls are not developmentally or physically the same as boys. Sorry, if you believed the myth that girls are girls because we make them play with dolls. That ignorant myth, spread by the Unisex/Woman’s movement in the ‘70s, died a hard death, but not everyone attended the wake.
We know so much about female development vs. male development, yet little of this vital knowledge gets into our school systems. Perhaps the best way to understand this is: There Is Nothing As Unequal As The Equal Treatment Of Unequals.
That’s why parents must be involved and make certain that a daughter’s development is not limited by a son’s. For example, a girl’s language skills usually develop well ahead of boys the same age. That’s okay, unless the girls are placed in a situation (classroom) where they are held back or where they always beat the boys at every task. Students are grouped based upon chronology, not development. It is not that girls are smarter; it is that they develop certain skills on their own timetable. They often master essential skills identified for a grade level long before some educators think they should. Curriculum development is male centered.
Boys forced to compete with girls with different development skill sets cannot win. Girls soon learn to dumb-down rather than feed the frustration of unequals forced to compete.
Parents who actively engage in adventure learning experiences with their children soon see the strengths of their daughters and, on a different developmental scale, their sons. They learn to honor both, as both are on necessary courses towards maturity. There is nothing more important to the mental health of a daughter than to be challenged and then honored for what she can accomplish.
No, don’t worry. If boys or girls are allowed to develop at their own speed, and get the help they need to master the required essentials, in their own time, they will be functionally self-directed. It is when their differences are not honored that damage is done. The job you have accepted is to make sure this does not happen.
I DON’T WANT TO RUIN MY CHILD’S CHILDHOOD. We hear that a lot because it is a strong concern voiced by parents. In the paragraphs above, we have identified some of the things that are proven to ruin a childhood. In addition, there is a myth that came from a time when a lack of knowledge about human development let educational leaders and charlatans come to conclusions that have proved to be unfounded.
Of course, many parents wish for a religious-social solution to direct human development. Some major forces that attract these parents teach that there is a source of all knowledge and wisdom out there that a child’s mind, uncontaminated by forces around them, can tap. They argue that there is no need to master essential skills, because if right-minded they will acquire them from the source. In some of these movements they taught that, to stay childlike, full of magic and wonder, running wild and free of all contaminating influences outside of certain music, poetry and physical movement, would spawn superior children. Some of these “leaders” actually believed that brain development followed tooth order or other physical changes. Others were starting cults and philosophical movements to serve themselves. In all, what we know now, exposes the myths and lets us proceed with information.
In the early ‘90s when my sons were six and four, I met an Australian man with a doctorate in applied mathematics. He told stories of growing up on the Great Barrier Reef with little supervision until the age of 12. He and his brother “ran wild and free” and had no formal schooling. It seemed the perfect example of what some 19th Century philosophers espoused. On further examination I learned that his parents were well educated and had planned this childhood for the boys. There were parameters, and requirements, though subtle. Wild and free often meant structured play. An indicator of structure was the mastery of reading at the appropriate developmental levels, and arithmetic fundamentals that build a mathematics foundation. Nor were the boys savages. Their social development was not retarded. Their parents had planned a wonderful childhood for their kids. Both ended up with doctorate degrees. Something magical had happened, but it was the parent’s doing, not some imagined force.
My wife and I studied this model, compared it to times in our own childhoods when we felt wild and free, and knew that magic had to be a part of our boy’s lives. For me, it was a time to experience a part of childhood I had too little of. Together, as a family, we found the beaches and places where “we” children could run with the wind, explore with our whole bodies, laugh and shout and be wild and crazy. We found many such places and our hearts laughed. And yes, this strengthened the need for foundation skills – essential skills – that we could build our lives on. As an example, Tolkien fantasy became part of our lives, first when read to the boys and later as they read and discussed the Trilogy of the Rings. That led to the many thousands of pages of Robert Jordan’s works and, believe it or not books like Michener’s, The Source. Through fantasy to history, philosophy, commentary, storytelling and written communication. Most important, the boys sought out reading materials. They did not have to do assignments. To this day they are self-directed readers/learners/writers/leaders and moral men, because they have the foundation skills that were necessary to move forward, and the free spirits and access to joy developed in childhood.
I’M NOT A MOM. Do you mean that you have to work and don’t have time to be with the family, or do you mean you have no capacity for love, nurturing, tenderness, patience, adventure, or learning? If you lack empathy, the ability to love unconditionally, or any connection to other human beings, you are badly damaged. Perhaps, through the wonders of your children’s childhood, you can create and experience a positive childhood of your own. Perhaps you were hardened by some ignorance and now the only way you know to parent is the way you were parented. It has to end, and, hopefully, before you pass along something too ugly to live with. Your kids don’t need that.
It is important to know that male and the female of our species are capable of great parenting. Alone or together, a parent is someone geared into the wonders of the world and in love with life – theirs and their progeny. Damaged parents can heal.