How to approach the first day of school

This article by Wendy Mogel (author of Blessing of a Skinned Knee) was just shared with the incoming K parents by Araxi Gundelfinger, mother of a new K student and TBS Director of Advancement. It's got some great advice about getting ready for the first day of school, how to talk and act with your child that morning, and how to respond to your child at the end of the day. Definitely worth the time to read!

Alison Gopnik to speak at TBS

TBS Parent Ed event on The Zones of Regulation on Wednesday 11/7

Girl's Leadership Institute

My nine-year-old daughter and I just finished attending a four-week session run by the Girls Leadership Institute, and I can't recommend the experience highly enough. Titled "Real Parents, Real Daughters", the program spent sessions on relational aggression, emotional intelligence, learning to own mistakes and say sorry, and ended with practice using a loose script for conflict resolution. It gave both my daughter and me tools to use to talk and listen to each other better. There's another session beginning next week for parents of girls in 4th and 5th grade.

Parent Ed Event on raising boys

Oct.25 and Nov.14 parent ed events

Speech and Language in Young Children

Bananas is a great East Bay non-profit referral and support agency that provides free parenting information, referrals and workshops. They've got an upcoming four-session workshop on speech, language and literacy in young children that looks interesting!

If Your Child Doesn't Want to Talk about It

Dear families,

I want to thank you for the incredible outpouring of love and support you have shown to RF, Kristen, the other children, and the teachers during this difficult time. It has been a profound experience that validates everything I believe about the values that lie at the heart of our community.

As is developmentally appropriate for a number of reasons, some children are simply not raising the topic of RF's father's suicide with their parents, and some of those parents have come to us for help on how to give their children the right support in this scenario. Our advice, again informed by conversation with Dr. Anne Brodzinsky, is that if you have this experience, you can open the door to the conversation by saying something like "I heard that something sad has been talked about at school." Your child may then choose to accept that as an invitation to talk, or she or he may not want to, in which case it's very important to leave that door open without pressing the issue, perhaps by saying "I want you to know that you can talk about it with me at any time." Remember that it's okay for children to decide not to talk about this, and that indicating support for a conversation doesn't mean there has to be a conversation. This will help your child feel secure and safe that s/he can talk about it with you if and when s/he is ready.

There are of course many other scenarios of interaction you may experience. Please feel free to contact your child's teachers or me if you have any questions about this or any other experience you have with your child about this topic.

Family Tragedy at TBS

Below is the full text of the letter I sent out to our K-8 families yesterday (with the child's initials altered). While this has been an extraordinarily difficult several days for our community, I am profoundly moved by our community's willingness to put this child's needs at the center of our work and support him in this critical time. It is a testament to the deeply held beliefs and values of our families and staff, and I am extraordinarily proud to work at a place that can not only provide the stability and normalcy so needed for this child and family, but also provide a context in which he does not need to feel shame or stigma about this experience. I am in deeply touched by and grateful towards the many, many parents who have stepped forward to support this family in this time of crisis, and the professionalism and child-centered thinking of our faculty.

I write with deep sadness to let you know that one of our K/1 families has suffered a family tragedy. Last week, Brian, father of RF in Blackberry Creek, took his own life. While RF lives with his mother Kristin in Oakland, Brian (who lived in Capitola) was a close presence in his life.

RF has been absent from school for the last two days, and we expect him back tomorrow. In this time of crisis for the family, we want to ensure that school remains a safe, normal place for RF over the coming weeks; we especially want him to feel shame-free and to integrate this experience into his understanding of his life. Because of the specific circumstances of this situation - RF is aware that Brian killed himself with a gun; he is a talkative child who freely shares his thoughts and ideas with his peers in both Laurel and Blackberry, inside and outside of the classroom; we have a high number of siblings spread throughout our school, across the grades; and our multi-grade classrooms and K/1-4/5 buddy program leads to a community of elementary students who know each other across classrooms and grades - we have consulted with Dr. Anne Brodzinsky, our consulting school psychologist, on the best way to proceed, and how to balance the needs of providing the experience of a supportive community for RF with the developmental readiness of our students for this difficult topic.

In accordance with the professional advice of Anne and the literature on communicating with children about death and suicide, today the RF teachers led brief discussions with students; specifically, they explained that illness occurs on a spectrum or continuum, that sometimes people are ill in their minds, that sometimes when people are ill in their minds they take their own lives, and that this is what Brian did with a gun. We have chosen this path because of the degree of information that RF has about the circumstances of his father's death, and we believe that by making this an open topic, we minimize both the potential for a dangerous stigma that would impede his ability to integrate this experience in a healthy way, and the need for other students to whisper about or hide their conversations.

Some students in classrooms outside of the K1 have already learned about this tragedy directly from other students. In order to ensure that all of our students have accurate information, and to eliminate any climate of shame and reinforce the open conversation of this topic, I will be coordinating with each set of classroom teachers about when and how to have developmentally-appropriate conversations with the students in each classroom. If anything arises in the course of those conversations that would warrant further communication, we will of course let you know. In addition, if you have questions about the nature of this conversation with students, or about your child's participation, please contact me directly.

As with any unusual event in school, your children may come home and want to talk about this topic, the class meeting, or an interaction with RF (or another child) that he or she has sometime this week (or beyond). We encourage you to be direct and honest in your responses to their questions, and to let their questions guide you in what information you give them. If you would like further advice and direction on speaking with your child about death and suicide, we recommend reading the relevant pages at hospicenet and afsp.org.

If you feel the desire to reach out to Kristen, I encourage you to write cards or notes and send them by mail, rather than sending emails, unless you hear otherwise directly from her. This will give Kristen a stronger measure of control about deciding when to open those messages. Her address is in the school directory.

At TBS we often talk about the value of our community. I ask you now to put RF's health and well-being at the center of your thoughts as we demonstrate to him that his two worlds of home and school are one family that will support him through this tragedy without wrapping the particulars in secrecy or shame.

Thank you for supporting RF, his family, your child, and our community during this difficult time.

Ralph Cantor on drug and alcohol awareness

Last night, Ralph Cantor spoke to the middle school parents about drug and alcohol awareness, and the biology of the brain. His work coincides with and compliments the sexual health and puberty education, and street smarts program that are also currently in process in the middle school. Comments via email from parents this morning include "Ralph Cantor's session on teen drug and alcohol use last night was fantastic! I now feel armed with good, research-based messages to give our son. It's great to know that TBS is drug-free, but no matter what high school he attends, unfortunately, peer use of drugs and alcohol will be part of the milieu," and "The talk last night was AMAZING – one of the best yet!!" Click here to download the powerpoint.

YouTube has a nine-part video of a presentation that Ralph did last year at a PTA meeting for Emerson Elementary. It gets good (i.e. into the neurology) at the 3:00 minute mark of the video below, which is part two.

Why preschool shouldn't be like school

Alison Gopnik, co-author of the must-read book The Scientist in The Crib, has a recent article on Slate.com reporting on two studies coming out soon that show direct instruction can limit children's learning, because children come to depend on the teacher to show them what is worth knowing or exploring about a given topic. As Gopnik write, "These assumptions [that what a teacher explains is only what is worth learning] lead children to narrow in, and to consider just the specific information a teacher provides. Without a teacher present, children look for a much wider range of information and consider a greater range of options." This makes inherent sense to me, and has important implications about the transference of cultural values and biases between generations, but because I also believe that there is a role for direct instruction in a classroom, I look forward to looking at the actual research itself to understand the design of the experiments.

On a related note, here's an article on play from the NY Times that I was just forwarded.

Deepening Your Relationship with Your Child

I'm reprinting a write-up of last Wednesday's parent ed event, written by Moira Kenney:

"Anne Brozinsky held her last Parent Education event for the year, this one focusing on Deepening Your Relationship with Your Child, at the Depot on Wednesday night. Over the course of two conversation-filled hours, parents explored a series of techniques for connecting with their children in ways that improve family dynamics, reduce conflict, and, most importantly, lead to deeper conversations with children about the challenges they face. Anne provided a number of ideas for activities and conversation-starters, all based on the idea that you need to meet your child where they are, before you can help them move to where they are headed. Anne talked about the power of role-playing as a way of working through stuck family dynamics, and at least a few in the group seemed willing to try. One example that seemed particularly intriguing (and worth trying on a slow weekend) was the role-playing around morning routines, letting your child (or children) pick which parent they want to pretend to be and letting parents role-play the child's typical routine. There was much joking about what the breakfast menu might include, and what your kids might do to get you out of a cozy slumber. As always, parents appreciated the chance to talk in small groups, meet new parents, and share stories of struggle on the parenting front lines. Thanks, Anne!"

Parenting Styles and Children’s Emotional Intelligence

An interesting article from the most recent issue of The Family Journal: Counseling and Therapy for Couples and Families. Come see me for a copy!

Parenting Styles and Children’s Emotional Intelligence: What Do We Know?

By Alberto Alegre

Abstract

The theory of emotional intelligence has elicited great interest both in the academic and the nonacademic world. Therapists, educators, and parents want to know what they can do to help children develop their emotional intelligence. However, most of the research in this field has investigated adults’ emotional intelligence. This study reviews the scarce research literature in the area of children’s emotional intelligence. It also reviews the way in which parenting styles and practices predict children’s emotional intelligence in similar or different ways that they predict other developmental outcomes. Based on the parenting literature, four main dimensions of parenting are identified that are relevant to the study of emotional intelligence: parental responsiveness, parental positive demandingness, parental negative demandingness, and parental emotion-related coaching. Parental responsiveness, parental emotion-related coaching, and parental positive demandingness are related to children’s higher emotional intelligence, while parental negative demandingness is related to children’s lower emotional intelligence. Additionally, social–emotional intervention programs used in schools have succeeded in improving children’s emotional skills. Implications for practitioners are discussed.

"When we stop playing, we start dying." - Dr. Stuart Brown

Mitch, Andrea, Paula and I are reading a wonderful book about play right now by Dr. Stuart Brown called Play: How it Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul, as part of our preparation for the second preschool director luncheon we will be hosting this year, in January. The book is based on a huge body of original research by the author, including over 6000 "play histories", as well as research by zoologists, neurobiologists, pediatricians, and scientists in a range of other fields. He begins by defining play, why it occurs, and its role in human development. He then examines how play differs for children, adolescents, and adults; the relationship of play and work; how play fosters social relationships and connections; if there is a "dark side" to play; and concludes with a chapter of advice for living a play-full life. A few of my favorite quotations so far - either for their strikingness, or for the implications for our work.

"I don't think it is too much to say that play can save your life."

"...active play selectively stimulates brain-derived neurotrophic factor (which stimulates nerve growth) in the amygdala (where emotions get processed) and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (where executive decisions are processed)."

"As children, the reward for play is strong because we need it to generate a rapidly developing brain."

"The work that we find most fulfilling is almost always a recreation and extension of youthful play."

"...during play, the brain is making sense of itself through simulation and testing. Play activity is actually helping sculpt the brain."

"Sometimes running is play, and sometimes it is not. What is the difference between the two? It really depends on the emotions experienced by the runner. Play is a state of mind, rather than an activity."

"When we stop playing, we start dying."

If this has caught your fancy, you might also be interested in this video, and this website.

Preschool Director's Luncheon: School-Parent Communication

Today we hosted the second of a series of luncheons for preschool directors and teachers, dating back to last spring, designed to provide a professional community for preschool directors (raising awareness of TBS being a secondary benefit, of course). The topic of today's conversation was school-parent communication, with an emphasis on understanding how neurobiology influences our communication patterns. The half-dozen attendees relayed anecdotes of scenarios in which they had successfully and unsuccessfully talked to parents about difficult issues as they ate a vegetarian meal. Head of School Mitch Bostian then delivered a quick presentation called "Neurobiology .101", in which he went over the various process and tasks for which different regions and structures of the brain are responsible.

For the final 1.5 hours, special guest Amy MacClain (www.amymacclain.com) lead the participants in an investigation of the struggle parents today face given the structures and values of modern society, and methods administrators and teachers can use to acknowledge their own emotions heading into and during conversation, as well as how to safely hold a space for parents to feel heard. Strategies were discussed to help attendees ground - and stay - in a reflective, rather than reactive, frame of mind when in a potentially loaded conversation. As is wont to happen in a lively group, the conversation also strayed into other topics, such as the perils of enforced sharing; suggestions for future luncheon topics by the participants include multicultural education, cultural inclusion, and classroom management.