Category: Teaching

you’re so smart & good job

Desere

You’re so smart!

How many teachers and parents say this phrase throughout their lifetime?

But there is a fundamental flaw in telling kids they are so smart.

My mentor was a big advocate of eliminating status in his classroom. Learning from him, I too attempted to create a classroom that was respectful of all ideas, one that pushed kids with different abilities to contribute their ideas.

Here is the problem with continuously telling a kid “you are so smart”. When they face something incredibly challenging and find themselves stuck, what are they going to think?

‘I am always told how smart I am, if I can’t do this it must mean I’m dumb.’

This is because they have a fixed mindset.

If, for example, a kid was told their whole life they are such a hard worker, what happens then when that kid is facing a challenging task?

‘Hmm, I must not be working hard enough.’

This is known as a growth mindset.

Tag jo boawler blogs and books

Tag article from facebook

…Yet

 

 

Good Job

When I wrote about finding RIE and the first time I let my son struggle, I described the situation when Franky kept trying to get to a ring that got stuck under his changing table. When he finally managed to get it free, I didn’t say “good job!” And here’s why

7 Alternatives to Telling Your Child “Good Job!”

In class story about G getting leg stuck

 

kid stuck one leg on ramp one in sandbox, unstuck, mom said good job

just say what you observe

imply stuck is bad?

and job,… this isnt job its play

Do you always need to cmoment?

No.

Only if kid looks at you

So while kid is playing.. You dont need to narrate every second every play by play

But when they look at you.. Thats when you can narrate. Thats where the organic language development comes in

 

“Watch baby thoroughly entertaining herself just by moving and learning her body. If she engages you or makes eye contact, be sure to verbally reflect what you see, i.e., “I saw that. You rolled to your back!” This is playing “with” a baby and connecting with her on her terms. 🙂

 

my journey in choosing homeschooling

Desere

For years I have immersed myself in the world of homeschooling. I read the works of Dr. Peter Gray and Alfie Kohn. I joined all the local homeschooling groups. I befriended many homeschooling families and met home educated children. As a former educator in the public school system and a mom, I have pretty strong feelings about how I believe children learn.

I was pretty convinced that I would follow this path and homeschool my own children when the time came.

But that didn’t happen.

Last January when the emails started pouring in about school registrations and when my friends began touring the schools around our homes, I joined in and began researching the schools in our area.

I was tired. At the time my boys were 5, 3.5, and 1 years old.

I really didn’t think that I could stay home and offer what I would ideally like to offer, if I were to homeschool my boys. I started to believe that my oldest, who would be entering kindergarten, would be better off once I send him away.

He would get to be with other children all day, every day.

He would have access to so many materials and resources.

He would go on field trips.

Furthermore, the schools around us are pretty great schools. I feel privileged to be not only in an area with so many high achieving schools, but also with the opportunity that I can school choice and attempt to get the school I like the most.

And the tours… well they did their job. I was sold.

So I enrolled him.

He happened to get in, by lottery, to the magnet STEM school in our district. Everyone kept telling me how lucky I was, how great the school was.

So for 6 months I kept telling myself that.

Meanwhile there was a pit in my stomach growing. I was feeling anxious as the days crept on. I knew in my heart that I didn’t believe this was the best decision for us. But I kept on because I was afraid.

The fear of homeschooling.

The fear of being tired with 3 little ones all the time.

The fear of failure.

The fear of judgement if I chose to homeschool.

The fear of my family’s reactions.

Fear of the unknown. School is known. I went to public school. My husband went to public school. I taught at a public school. I KNOW what that looks like. Alternative learning… that is completely new to us.

Fear.

And if you have read some of my other posts you will know that fear based parenting stems from how we view children, and the inability to innately trust these unique little individuals.

Fast forward to this fall and school starting. Franky was entering his 3rd week of kindergarten and each day brought more and more doubts. I understood this was a new transition for him. He went from 6 years of having almost complete freedom of choice for where we went, how he played, how he moved his body, when he ate, etc. to a pretty rigid schedule. We had to go to school every day from 8:00am to 1:30pm. The bell rang and he had to wait in line. He was told to be quiet several times throughout his day. He was told to sit a certain way, and write a certain way. Even play with blocks a specific way.

To my son who was given a lot of freedom, this was incredibly jarring.

And I understood that this transition would be hard. I also trusted that he had the tools to master this transition. He wouldn’t always be tearful at drop off. He wouldn’t always look relieved to be coming home. He wouldn’t always have a full lunch box when coming home because he chose to play instead of eating. These things would pass the more we went and the more we got used to this new state of our lives.

My mentor teacher was telling me that he could master this situation and he could adapt. She told me even though his body is reluctant to enjoy this new situation, that he does have the resilience to persevere. He is testing the waters and seeing “who am I in this new place”. He will rise to the occasion.

He will own this new experience.

But that was just it.

I realized that I don’t WANT him to get used to this.

I don’t want my son to master this situation. I don’t want him to adapt. I don’t believe this is the best environment to cultivate learning.

So I pulled him out.

And now I sit and write this out to the world because I want others to see the tornado of emotions that can accompany a situation like this. I want others to know its ok to make a decision and then change your mind.

There are no big mistakes.

I know now that maybe I needed to send him to school, and to sit in as a parent volunteer in his class, and to sift through emails about homework and chromebooks… maybe I needed to have all this happen to lead me down this path of final awareness and clarity of what I want for our family.

I have stumbled and fumbled toward this path and I am excited to see where it leads. I am hoping to use this platform, one that I previously used to spread my understanding of the RIE approach to respectful parenting, to now spread my understanding of experiential learning.

What will my days look like with self directed education?

What am I hoping for in terms of my family?

Stay tuned…

you dont need to show them

Desere

In my very first post I described the type of teacher I was and how I believed aha moments were pivotal to my classroom environment. It was so important to me not to take away my students’ aha moment and this influenced my style of teaching. I had to build this type of culture of students leading the learning.

I never lectured and I never showed my students how to solve anything.

This may seem like a weird thing for a teacher to say. I promise you, my students learned, a lot.

But the difference with my style of teaching was that they were able to own each aha moment. And there is something to be said about this. When someone shows you something and you replicate it, you may feel good that you can do it too. But when you achieve something on your own there is a whole new sense of worth.

I have seen students rise to the occasion. I have seen how being confident in my students’ abilities led them to actually figure things out without me showing them how. All I had to do was let go of this need that I had. A need to show them. A need to ensure they do it right.

I heard this with teachers all the time. If I don’t give them the formula how will they know how to solve the problem? or If I don’t show them an example how will they know what to do?

I understood. You don’t want your students to fail. You want them to do it right, to complete their homework, to pass the test, to move on to the next teacher without making you look bad. You want them to succeed in life.

So it is hard to sit back and wait. It is hard to let someone do the learning, to do the heavy lifting, other than you. Especially when you think it is your job to show them how to do everything.

It was hard for me at first too. I remember when I was working under my mentor teacher, I kept wondering what was the point to this style of teaching. How could it be worth it for some concepts which could have been learned in 5 minutes to actually take hours to learn? I’ll never forget the pythagorean theorem lesson.

How long does it take to draw this on the board, have students copy it down, and explain you simply plug in whatever numbers you have to solve for the unknown side? About 5 minutes. I remember my teacher in high school showing me this and then giving several example problems of doing just that. I remember being able to do the same at home and thinking I was a genius because I totally understood the pythagorean theorem.

But with my style of teaching, with my mentor’s style of teaching, this theorem took an entire 1.5 hour lesson. Without me describing every detail of that lesson right now, basically the curriculum uses a game and probability to guide students to develop this equation on their own. Yes, they literally come up with the pythagorean theorem by the end of the lesson. And yes it takes 1.5 hours, sometimes longer. But at the end students really understood why this equation looks the way it does. They understand why we square the sides and why it equals c squared. There is an entire progression to their understanding. And only at the end do we say, “oh actually the equation you just came up with, well a man a really long time ago named Pythagoras found it first so now we name it after him.” Every time I taught this lesson (or any lesson) my students were not only so proud of themselves, they enjoyed it! The best part, they remembered what they learned months later because of this deeper understanding.

But it’s hard to let go. It takes so much longer. It takes patience. It takes more work on your part than you think because you are sitting back and watching kids fail over and over without ‘saving’ them. You are thinking about how to guide them without doing it for them. But I promise you this way works. My students always got there in the end. They did because everything they have ever learned and seen and done in their entire lives is a part of them and has given them the tools they need to build off their own understanding. Sometimes they needed help, of course. But that’s when I used questioning to help, to guide them, instead of giving them direct answers.

Anyway, I’m telling you this because I want to continuously shed light on the type of teacher I was, which has played a HUGE role in the type of mother I am and the style of parenting I believe in.

As parents, we tend to think our job is to show our children how to do everything.  It was just like hearing the teachers, but now I hear it with parents. She will never know what to do if I don’t show her first. or I need to show him how to do it. 

First of all let go of that. Who cares?

Who cares if your child will use the little watering can as a drum for the next few years? Why does it matter for your one year old to know how to put the cymbals together to make a noise, or to pick up the crayon and draw something on a piece of paper?

I know you don’t want your kids to fail. You put things in their hands and do things for them. It is out of love and I understand this need as a mom, and as a teacher.

But it is a disservice.

Your child is not learning when you do things for them. They are not achieving anything, their brains aren’t growing, and they are not owning the aha.

If it’s a matter of saving time, when would you like to save the time? Is it worth it to save time now, when they are young, by showing them how to do things, only to be stuck years later with someone who can’t figure things out on their own? Someone who can’t persist through their own struggles? I mean it was like when I was teaching. The first 3-4 months were just setting up the classroom environment, setting up my students to rely on themselves and their groups instead of me. It was taking the time, excrutiatingly, to push students further and further so they see that they don’t actually need me to do everything for them. It was sitting with each group, one at a time, literally showing them how to work in a group and how to share ideas. It was setting up this foundation which took so much time and effort in the beginning of the year, so that by the end I was able to sit back and enjoy the learning happening all around me, often without me.

Furthermore, part of respectful parenting is treating your kids like you would adults who you respect and care for. Would you buy someone a gift, open it for them, and show them what to do? I mean, that’s crazy and demeaning. I can’t imagine doing that for my husband or my mother or anyone. So why do we do this with our own children?

Let them do whatever they want to do with whatever object they have in their hands. (as long as it is safe of course) Let them explore. Let them be young and creative.

You are worried they will never figure something out, but children’s minds are inherently explorative. They are constantly learning everything around them. Their brains are working and growing at max capacity. It has to be for them to learn to crawl and walk and talk and eat and everything. So just naturally they will try everything until something works. When we enjoy the process rather than the product, we enjoy watching our little ones figure things out rather than showing them what to do each time.

Earlier I mentioned that teachers feel like their job is to show students how to do everything. But shouldn’t it be more than that? I could care less if students remembered the binomial theorem or even the formula for area and volume. We have computers for that who can do it better and faster than us anyway. Instead I always felt like if I could send out to the world people who knew how to work together and problem solve, who knew what to do in challenging situations, and who knew that where there is struggle there is also strength, then I would be a successful teacher.

I knew that the trivial mathematical stuff didn’t matter, but the characteristics they were building in my class did.

Shouldn’t it be the same as a parent? Do we really care about showing our children every thing that crosses their path? Do we need to stress ourself out to make sure they do everything “the right way”? Or should we instead be striving to raise resourceful, persistent, confident, cooperative, aware human beings?

Let’s focus on who they are. Let’s trust them. Let’s do less so they do more. 

bedtime part 2

Desere1 Comment

Last week I wrote a whole post about babies having a bedtime. Basically I vented about when I go out late at night, I see too many babies and families, the babies are crying, and from my interpretations, the crying is tiredness.

But before I dive into the deeper issues of not adhering to a baby’s bedtime, I want to first clear up any issues I may have caused by writing my little rant the other week.

Now motherhood is hard. And I am not saying that in the cliche way that we hear all the time. Being a mom is the hardest thing in the whole world and unfortunately you only really understand this once you become a mother yourself. Therefore the last thing I ever want to do to you, my readers, is place judgment on you as a mother.  Motherhood is hard enough without judgment and critiquing.

That being said, my blog is about respect. Specifically respecting babies. My goal is to write about a parenting style that is centered on the idea that babies are capable, understand us, and are worthy of trust and respect.

That being said, there are exceptions. Because we are human. And we are not perfect. And we aren’t supposed to be perfect. So…

You have no one to watch the baby and need to run out for last minute errands. I am not judging you.

You go out all day, maybe with friends. You enjoy yourself and miss baby’s bedtime. I am not judging you.

You work everyday, get home late, want to spend time with your kids but also need to get groceries or buy some clothes. I am not judging you.

Now, if this is something you do on the daily then yea I am passing a little judgment. The instances I described in my last post didn’t seem like a once in a while venture out to Target. The parents were ignoring or trying to shush their crying baby so they could dilly dally on their phones and peruse the store. And I simply don’t believe that is in the best interest of their child.

I say this because I see babies as more than they are.

And that’s the whole point of this site. I want to open your eyes, too. I want you to see your baby for more than they are. I want you to sit back and watch your baby “play“. I want you to wait and let your baby struggle before ‘saving’ them. I want you to talk to your baby while doing things to them like picking them up or changing their diaper. Because when you do this, when you really start to create habits like these, babies become more than babies. You will start to see them as whole beings. And once you see them this way, you start to feel for them more. You start to question whether the mentality of “oh he is just a baby it’s fine” is the best way of thinking about things. You start to wonder “would I want anyone treating me like that?” And once you see your baby and all babies like this, you can’t turn it off.

My goal is not to place judgement on you as a mother. When I wrote my last post, even when I wrote about not taking babies to Disneyland, I am describing what I see from the baby’s perspective. And I am doing this to help you see it as well.

I am a teacher at heart after all. Even though I am not RIE certified or credentialed in early childhood development, I believe I can still teach you. I can teach you how I empowered high school students in a subject most adults shudder when mentioned. And I can teach you what I have learned studying this parenting philosophy so far.

If you don’t agree with it, we are all good too. There is no black and white with parenthood, and you have to do what feels right to you.

As for me… I believe in RIE. If you do too, then let’s officially get back on track and dive into the bigger issue underlying my rant from last week.

Why is it so important that we adhere to a bedtime schedule? 

Babies and kids crave routine. The more consistent the environment, the more they will flourish. Routines give babies confidence and security. This security lays the foundation for babies to learn and apply their learning. Because of this constant learning and adapting, the moment you mess with the predictable, you throw off a baby’s world.

Furthermore, there are countless researchers that have shown a correlation between bedtime and cognitive development. Irregular bedtimes are linked with lower scores in reading, math, and spatial awareness. Irregular bedtimes are linked to behavioral problems. Irregular bedtimes are even linked to self-image issues.

But most importantly, irregular bedtimes means you are not putting your child’s needs first. It means you are taking the repetition and routine away from your baby. It means you are going to have a screaming baby. It means you are probably going to get angry or frustrated yourself. It means you are setting yourself up for failure.

Remember how hard being a parent is? So let’s avoid these types of situations if we can. Just respect and trust.

Respect your child’s needs.

This includes being fed and in bed on a consistent schedule.

Trust your child’s ability. 

The more consistent you are, the more they will follow through. Babies and young children are capable of holding up their end of the bargain. They will eat and they will sleep because it becomes a predictable part of their world.

Lastly, because I am passionate about this parenting philosophy I am going to call out any behavior I believe undermines babies and young children. I am not out to criticize you or your choices. I am here to spread knowledge. I have gained a lot of insight when teaching high school students a specific way. And the specific way I taught has now forged the type of mother I have become.

So trust me when I say, I am not here to critique your parenting choices.

But do respect the experience I bring to the table.

the first two years

Desere

I’ve been struggling with independent play since beginning to learn and implement RIE about 6 months ago.

I felt like whenever I needed to leave my son, after letting him know of course, it would be a toss up whether he would continue playing or stand and cry awaiting my return.

How can I enforce better independent play? After all, RIE speaks of growing a babies ability to play on their own into their toddler years and beyond. Independent play builds character. It builds creativity.

So why wasn’t it working every time?

If I sit in his play yard or in the same room, he will play without even glancing at me for what feels like forever. But I have to be there sitting with him.

Am I doing something wrong?

Then my RIE teacher said that for the first two years, the care giver really shouldn’t be doing anything that takes away their attention while the child plays.

Wait a second. Didn’t I write a whole post about how it is important for my child to respect my needs? Didn’t I speak to the importance of leaving them alone?

Well of course, we are human. If we need to use the restroom or even take a breather in another room, we are entitled to do so. But what my RIE teacher is referring to, is remembering that our job for the first two years is to set up a foundation. I wrote about this before. The first two years are about trying out these principles, and laying the groundwork for our children to be independent, to learn strength through struggle, to have manners while eating, and to listen to our words.

To build trust takes time. To fully build a foundation for the RIE characteristics to appear later on in our child … takes time.

This means that as the caregiver we need to entirely dedicate ourself to our child, as much as reasonably possible. When our child is awake, that is NOT the time to fold the laundry. It is NOT the time to clean the dishes. It is NOT the time to work on the computer.

Not for the first two years.

This applies to feeding as well, a topic I talk about a lot. And I talk about feeding a lot because anyone with a child knows, feeding becomes a big part of your life.

The other day I was speaking with a fellow RIE mom about how we feed our children on the floor, at their own little table, giving them all of our attention. And we both agreed that sometimes this feels weird. It feels weird because meals are often social events. In my culture, in most cultures actually, eating is a time to bond.

Therefore sometimes it feels weird that my son eats by himself on the floor. It feels weird to eat dinner with my husband while my son plays. Why not just put my son in his high chair so he can sit with my husband and I, and we can eat together as a family?

Because Desere, that’s not what I need to do for the first two years!

I am teaching my son how to eat right now. For the first two years, he needs me to focus on him. He needs me to pay attention. He needs me to make sure he is safe. He needs me to watch him pick up his glass cup full of water without dumping it on himself. He needs me to watch him use his little fork and spoon.

This is part of the sacrifice I need to make.

But only for the first two years!

When he is older, when he has learned how to eat and have manners while doing so, then OF COURSE we can sit together. We can do this because we have now laid the foundation of what it means to eat a meal.

RIE is often mistaken to only apply to the first two years of a child’s life. But this isn’t true. What RIE does is it gives parents the tools to build the character of their baby for his/her entire life. Many of these ‘tools’ take the first two years to build.

And I relate to this idea a lot because of how I used to teach. I used to think of myself as the type of teacher that was giving my students the tools to problem solve for their entire life. I didn’t care if my kids knew formulas or equations by heart, or if they could solve problems that looked like the problems I had exemplified on the white board.

What mattered to me was that when my students were facing problems in their life, when they were struggling, when they had to work with a group, that they had to tools to overcome these obstacles.

Similarly this respectful parenting philosophy gives us the tools (trust, respect, slowing down, etc) to help our kids develop. And many of these RIE tools require investment during the first two years. 

RIE: a history

Desere

In my education program, I taught a curriculum called IMP, Interactive Mathematics Program. This curriculum was developed in 1989, so it has time and experience behind it. And can I just say, I love this curriculum! I love how it puts the heavy lifting on the students. I love how the problems aren’t contrived but are really applicable to daily life. I love how each unit has a central problem students have to answer, like “How long is a shadow?” or “Do bees really build it best?”, and through answering these problems they are learning mathematical concepts.

The school where I got a job, however, was not using IMP as their curriculum. But after my first year, I was able to convince my principal to adopt it. Then throughout my second year, I was able to convince 9 other schools to do the same. I did this by allowing teachers to come and observe me, and holding professional development conferences about the curriculum and my own experience with it.

You see when schools were forced to adopt Common Core a few years ago, many had to switch curriculums in order to comply to the new standards. Common Core is just a new set of standards. But for mathematics, these new standards imply that students have more opportunities to collaborate, problem solve, and have deeper conceptual understanding.

The schools in the system I was working in kept trying different new curriculums, but each curriculum seemed to fall short. Students were not learning. Grades were not improving. Teachers were miserable. This is because all the new curriculums that claimed to comply to Common Core were too new. There were too many issues that needed to be worked out. Honestly most of the new books I saw were literally the same original textbooks that we all had growing up, but with “group work” sprinkled in. It was old, masked as new. But because everyone was in a rush to implement Common Core, the curriculums came out before they were ready.

Consequently during my second year, I made it my mission to convince as many schools as I could to adopt IMP. Because I knew IMP was successful! It has the history behind it that already proves its success. Furthermore, it is already everything Common Core is trying to be, but it was done in 1989.

So I have just told you how amazing this curriculum is. From the school’s point of view, it is 100% compliant with Common Core. From a teacher’s point of view, it is a fun and enriching curriculum. From a student’s point of view, it actually teaches understanding rather than memorization through stories and group worthy tasks. It has been around for almost 30 years!

Then why haven’t you heard of it?

Why aren’t more schools using it, if it is such a successful and enjoyable curriculum?

Well through my fight to spread IMP I realized, just because something is good, even really good, doesn’t necessarily mean it is well known. 

This brings me to RIE.

People keep asking me what RIE is. Which is understandable. It is not a widely known parenting philosophy. But it is not a new thing, and it is not a trend. RIE was founded in 1978, but the ideas that developed this philosophy stem from much earlier.

Magda Gerber, founder of RIE, was influenced by her children’s pediatrician Dr. Emmi Pikler. Dr. Pikler worked with parents in the 20’s and 30’s to raise their children in an environment with free movement and minimal intervention.

In 1946 she opened up an orphanage in Hungary named Loczy to house the hundreds of infants found parentless after World War II. Dr. Pikler wanted the babies to be raised according to a specific philosophy:

  • trust in the child as a self-learner
  • intimate human relation with one primary carer
  • minimal interruption of child play
  • a lot of time for child play
  • independence in movement, choice, and activities
  • involvement of the child in all activities with the carer
  • respect

As a doctor, Emmi Pikler was specifically focused on the physicality of allowing babies to grow up without being taught how to sit or walk. She wanted them to develop gross motor skills on their own timeline.

Furthermore, Dr. Pikler ensured every carer took extensive notes. Each carer was in charge of 3 babies, and were to take weekly notes that tracked behavior and movement, as well as social interactions. Outside of these notes, there was several scientists and doctors who observed and carried out studies during the 60’s and 70’s. Research done on this philosophy and methodology continued because Loczy continued to raise children in this way for 30 years!

After Magda Gerber worked with Dr. Pikler in Hungary, she decided to bring what she learned to the United States. She became an infant specialist herself and began Resources for Infant Educarers® (RIE®) to continue educating parents and caregivers.

My point with all this, is that although RIE is not well known, it is not new.

But I get it, people who have just heard of it may still be hesitant and wonder, how do we really know if it works? Even I wrote a whole post about not knowing whether RIE will help my son become a respectful, secure adult one day. But just as I told teachers when they were training and learning IMP with me, they needed to trust in the curriculum. They needed to trust that it has been around and it does work.

We too, need to trust in RIE.

RIE has the history.

My RIE teacher has children in their 20’s. She told me she could always see a difference between her kids compared to other kids. My other RIE teacher just went to her granddaughter’s 8th grade graduation last week. She raised her kids using RIE, and they are in turn raising her grandchildren using the same ideals. She said it was such a unique experience being able to see her 13 year old daughter so self aware and confident.

This style of raising children has a history. And the history speaks for itself.

 

building a foundation

Desere

Last week I wrote about my idea of leaving your kids alone. When you need to do something during the day, or when trying to enforce their sleep, leave them alone. This is a way to build mutual respect.

This week I want to piggyback off this post.

I have talked to several moms who don’t necessarily buy into my ideas of leaving my son for a few minutes, or asking him to help me change his diaper. Other moms have tried, and tell me that it just doesn’t work. They try to go to the bathroom but their baby cries hysterically.

So they wonder, how can I be a self respected adult and go to the restroom? How can I teach my child to respect me and my needs, when they act like the world is ending if I leave the room?

Here’s the thing, this stuff doesn’t happen overnight.

I have been fortunate to stumble upon these ideas early on, and I have been working on each idea with my son for months and months now, persistently.

The ideas behind this respectful parenting approach take time. It takes time to implement, and it takes time to take effect.

So last week my advice was leave your kids alone.

Now I say if you want to be able to leave successfully, you have to first build a foundation of trust.

A foundation of respect and trust begins with communication. Before I was ever able to leave, I needed my son to trust me to come back. For him to trust me to come back, he had to believe my words when I say “I am going, but I will be back in a few minutes.” And he only began believing my words when I began asking him if I could pick him up.

Asking and telling him what I was going to do, before doing it, built trust and anticipation. I wrote about how anticipation begets cooperation. When you give your child the opportunity to anticipate what’s about to happen to him or her, they will more likely go along with it. More likely, but not always.

This means for months, I started with the idea “can I pick you up”.  I asked him, occasionally told him, and waited. I did this for months. (Am I stressing enough how long this all took me? Because it took months!)

Only after I saw that my son was listening to my words did I begin to tackle diaper changes.

That’s because in order to transform our changing table experience, I needed my son to hear me. He needed to hear when I said lift your legs up, or punch through your shirt.

Months went by (yes months), and I was working on building more trust through communication. You see it takes time to build a relationship based on trust and openness. It takes time for him to trust me when I say that I’m going to do things but that I’m going to tell him first.

Only after I mastered the changing table, did I move on to telling my son I was leaving the room.

My point is, you can’t just jump into leaving your baby and hope it works. It doesn’t even always work for me. And you can’t just start talking to your child on the changing table hoping for a miracle.

This was always a big parenting aha moment for me, that to implement anything with my son takes time and commitment. I first realized this when starting a bedtime routine with him. It took several days before we got our routine down. The key was continuing every night, same routine, same time.

When I taught high school, I used to have teachers come and observe me because of the curriculum and methods I was using in my classroom. Afterwards, they used to tell me how amazed they were with my students. They couldn’t believe how well they worked in groups, tried each problem, self-advocated when they were struggling, and vocalized their ideas to the rest of the class. They were impressed. I was impressed too.

But what I told the other teachers when they began training with me was that what they saw takes time. I couldn’t stress it enough. Everything they saw was the result of months and months of preparation. It took months of me sitting with groups, literally showing them what it looks like to talk and share ideas. It took months of randomly calling students to get them to actually listen to each other. It took months of celebrating mistakes for students to feel comfortable making them in front of each other, and their teacher. Basically I spent the first semester building this culture in my classroom.

So I have experience putting a lot of time in, knowing the results will be worth it.

Is it daunting? Of course it is. Everything about being a parent is daunting enough, without the pressure of also trying to build a respectful relationship with your child. But if you truly want your children to be raised a certain way, any way, you need to set up the foundation first. And it’s never too late to start. Start now. Just remember, it won’t happen overnight. And that’s ok too.

So be patient, be consistent, and be persistent. There are no shortcuts in raising resourceful, respectful, and competent human beings. Build the foundation now! Trust me, it will be worth it. 

self control

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In my last RIE class there was an incident that led to a big discussion about self control.

One baby, let’s call him A, kept going to a little girl and hitting her on the head. Although we have the two teachers and all the moms there, we were not always able to block the hitting. Whenever it happened, the girl would go to her mom who would hug her until she felt better.

At one point the boy walked (he is one of two in my class that can already walk) toward the girl. Our teacher who narrates said “A, no.” The boy’s mom, taking our teacher’s lead, began saying “no, no” to her son and scooting toward him. Then the boy hit the girl, hard. She was crying uncontrollably. Our other teacher, who interacts with the babies, came over. The boy’s mom and the girl’s mom came over. Three adults, 2 babies.

Both moms were trying to console the girl. Then the boy tried to hit her again. This time, his mom grabbed his arm and said “no you cannot hit her.” The girl was screaming. The three adults were hovering. The whole debacle seemed to upset the boy who just walked away to play with the toys outside.

This is when our teacher began a conversation about modeling. You see, when my teacher said “A no” her ‘no’ was indifferent. There was no shame or warning in her statement. There were already a few times that the boy hit the girl and was blocked. So this last time, when he walked over, the teacher simply stated, ‘no’. The mom’s ‘no’ was not the same. She said it a few times and it was done admonishingly. Furthermore, she resorted to grabbing his arm to stop his last attempt.

Who can blame her? This is an emotional scene. It is emotional because we as adults lose our self control and just react in the moment. Whenever we see our own child doing something to another child, or if another child does something to our baby, it is extremely hard to breath and calmly walk towards them. It is extremely hard to resist the reactionary “NO!” and the arm grab. And why wouldn’t it be extremely hard? It is a tough and emotional situation.

Yet we never get any repercussions for losing our self control.

Babies do not have a lot of self control. Self control is a skill that babies learn, slowly, over years and years. And although they do get better as they hit several developmental milestones, they are still led by their emotions. They can’t help it. When they feel something strongly it will take over and they are no longer acting out of reason or logic, but out of emotion.

The problem is the moment we grab their hand, the moment we act aggressively, our children will want to resist. They will resist when we physically hold on to their bodies. They will resist when we yell “no”.

“So what are we supposed to do?”, the boy’s mom and I both asked our teacher.

We can never model non aggression with aggression. If we do not want our children to be physically rough with another child, then we cannot be physically rough with them. There is never a time when we should grab our child’s arm or body to stop them from doing something. If we want to stop them, we block. This means simply placing our hand in between them and whatever or whoever we are trying to protect. If you find that simply blocking, as stated above, is not working, the best thing to do is to physically remove your child from the situation.

Practicing respectful parenting means not only respecting our children, but also teaching them to respect themselves and others. This happens organically of course because we treat them with trust and respect. We are models to our children.

Furthermore, our teacher noted, we need to remember that babies are building their self control and to notice the times they are demonstrating control rather than only noting the times they lose it.

Yes, toward the end of class A was constantly walking over to the girl and trying to hit her. What about during the first 30 minutes of class when he would walk over to her and admire the bow in her hair? What about all the times he walked by another baby, once even just inches away from them, without touching or hitting their head? What about when my son had a ball in his mouth and A walked over and grabbed the ball out of my son’s mouth without touching any other part of my son’s face? Most importantly, what about when he removed himself from the emotional situation to go outside? There were so many moments within the 90 minutes of class where A showed incredible self control. Which is not easy, especially for a baby who is walking among crawlers.

When I started teaching, my mentor gave me a book, Tools for Teaching by Fred Jones. This book had so much advice in it that correlates to RIE. One thing I remember reading was about controlling our own anger as a teacher. The book outlines ways to do this and the biggest rule is to breathe. When students get out of control or do something in class, first take a few breathes. This is because simply breathing forces you to calm down.Your heart rate goes down, your muscles relax. This also buys you a few seconds to think about what just happened, to act accordingly. Then walk over and do whatever disciplinary action needs to be done with the students. The high school where I taught, discipline was the #1 priority. If you could not control your class, there was no hope in teaching them anything. And I cannot tell you how many times this breathing technique saved my classroom environment.

It’s not easy though. It is not easy to have such control.

So back to parenting and back to the little boy. At the end, do we punish him for hitting the girl. No, we do not. Because he lost control. Which we all do. What we really need to start doing is what I had to do when I was training to be a teacher. We have to work on ourselves.

We need to train to have better self control. We need to slow down. We need to breathe. We need to reflect, respect, and respond (the 3 R’s), rather than react. We need to act gently.

It’s on us to change our behavior if we want to influence our children’s behavior. We need to work on ourselves so that we can be the best models for our kids.

And no…it’s not easy. But no one ever said parenting would be easy.

 

baby-led play

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When I became a mom, I was overwhelmed with the idea of play time. Making sure my son was entertained, as well as developing certain skills, was exhausting. All day long I would pick up toys and show my son how they worked, hence playing with him. I would build towers and show him how to push them down, push buttons and sing along for him, and stack rings in the correct order. I would place my son down with his toys and if he didn’t start playing right away I would bring the toys closer. I would go to events like baby story time at the library, picking my son up and down to the music like all the other moms. I figured as my son grows, becomes more aware and more mobile, then play time will get easier.

It didn’t.

I was still playing with all of his toys and still feeling more exhausted every day. Something didn’t feel right. It felt incredibly forced, like I was being pressured to play with him because I thought that was how we were supposed to play with babies. 

And the problem definitely was not that we didn’t have enough things, because we did. We had all kinds of toys.

Toys that light up and play music

Toys that develop hand-eye coordination 

Toys great for imaginative play

Interactive toys with smart stages that grow with baby

I could go on… but you get the point. 

When I began learning about respectful parenting, I realized how I could let go of this idea I was stubbornly holding on to, the idea of playing with baby. I was looking at it all wrong.

This is when I got my aha moment, baby-led play.

You see, babies are motivated by all sorts of things that we don’t always understand. Simply placing your baby (on their back) in an area full of safe things is enough to get them going. Your baby will start playing with something, maybe not right away, but they will. Why force it?

As long as babies have our attention and are in a safe environment, they will play. This is because babies learn about their world through play, it’s in their nature. It’s about trusting and respecting your baby to lead their play time.

I trust my son to play with something for as long as he wants. I trust his choices. If he goes to one object and decides to leave it after less than a minute, who am I to bring it back to him and tell him to play longer? If he picks up a ball and plays with it for an hour (as he often does whenever we go to RIE class) before exploring the other objects, again why stop him? He must really like that ball!

I respect my son’s ability to play with a toy however he wants. When I got the Fisher-Price stacking tower for my son, my whole family and I would show him how to put the rings in order on the tower. What did my son want to do? He wanted to first eat the rings. When he was more mobile, he wanted to throw the rings across the floor to watch them roll away. I used to show him again and again how to place them on the tower. I think back on this and wonder how I could be so selfish. My son was amazed at the ability of the rings to roll away, and I was trying to take that away from him. Why? To build him hand-eye coordination according to the label on the box? The thing is, he was building hand-eye coordination in his own beautiful way.

When I taught high school math, I spent most of the time as a facilitator in my classroom. This meant stepping back, waiting, and observing my students working in their groups. I would never lead them in solving a problem. It was not about projecting my own agenda or ideas, it was about building off their ideas.

Sometimes this meant solving problems took longer. Actually… it often took longer. But when problems were solved, my students were able to truly own the moment. This is part of student-led teaching. And the result was resourceful and self aware students. Because I trusted my students to be able to learn with me facilitating rather than lecturing, they were encouraged to try new things and persevere.

Sometimes they didn’t quite answer the problem. And when I first trained to be a teacher this bothered me. But my mentor made me realize that ultimately the point of being a math teacher is not to get students to solve problems using preconceived equations. The point is to give students the tools to problem solve through several types of situations, to try out their ideas, possibly fail, and keep trying out more ideas. This is what will prepare them for life beyond school. This is better than teaching the pythagorean theorem and students asking me, “when will I ever need to know this?”

So my students didn’t always finish a problem. But there was so much math happening and so many ideas tried, that they were learning every step of the way.

I like to relate my teaching to my parenting style because baby-led play is very similar to student led teaching. I can sit back and let go, while my son discovers his toys in his own time and his own way. And the outcome is similar to that of my students. Since adopting RIE at home, my son has a longer attention span and much more perseverance. Even though I exchanged many of his toys for simpler items like bowls, tubes, containers, and rings, he will play for longer periods of time. And like my students, I don’t care if he doesn’t play with something correctly (like I mentioned above with his stacking tower). I don’t even care if he ‘finishes’ playing with a toy.

We do less, so that our kids do more. I mentioned this idea when introducing how I feed my son and how I change his diaper. With teaching, I did less so my students were doing the heavy lifting. Consequently, they were the ones learning. Play time is the same. I trust my son and he feels trusted to do what he wants and to figure toys out on his own.

The best part is that I now feel so relaxed!

  • I don’t wave toys in front of him.
  • I don’t check Pinterest for activity ideas
  • I don’t take him to several classes during the week to entertain him
  • I don’t worry about songs to sing or making him clap his hands

I just let go.

At this point you may wonder what is so wrong with playing with a baby. When we wave a toy and they happily crawl over, that can’t be a bad thing? My mom often questioned me about this, saying that my son seems so happy when she plays with him and shows him toys. He is enjoying it!

Well, of course he is. Babies will enjoy when you play with them. The problem is that they will begin to rely on this stimulation. This will grow into a habit of needing someone (or something) else to entertain them. This is also a distraction, and we should never mistake distraction for enjoyment.

Moreover, when we do this, we are ignoring the ideas that our children are trying to form on their own. We might think they are bored, but they may be about to come up with something. This is like sitting down to write a blog. I can feel all these ideas coming up, but then my husband walks in and begins talking to me, or the doorbell rings. I lose my train of thought. As an adult, I have the ability to block out external distractors (doorbell or phone), and the capacity to often get back to my ideas. Babies aren’t like that. They are run by their emotion and the stimuli will take over. Therefore as the parent we need to provide the space to nurture their ideas.

The last and probably most important part about baby-led play is that being forced to be an observer lets me learn about my baby. Every day I observe him and take in all his wonder. I try to see the world through his eyes and learn who he is as a person, what his personality is like.

And I have learned that, ironically, he too is an observer. When I set him down in a new place, he likes to wait and see what is happening before jumping in. He likes to people watch, and baby watch.

He likes to find one object that is fascinating to him for whatever reason at the time, and hold on to it for a while before exploring more. He likes to test objects out by banging them on hard surfaces to see what they are made of and what sound they make.

He likes lids, anything with a lid to open and close.

He likes scooting forward in a superman pose, using his toes to propel him forward, and holding something small in his hand.

He likes the way the sun goes through the shutters in his bedroom in the morning, and the pattern it makes on the wall.

Because of baby-led play, I am learning who my son is. And at 9 1/2 months old, he is incredible.

 

the (new mommy) struggle is real

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At work I had a poster above the whiteboard that said

The struggle is real.

But where there is struggle, there is strength. 

It was a very crude piece of decoration in my classroom. I heard the phrase somewhere and quickly took marker to poster and slapped it up there for the next day. Yet, my students LOVED this poster, and would point to it sometimes when I gave them challenging tasks.

Sometimes, I would even give impossible tasks. I would tell them at the end that the point was the struggle, not the answer. Some teachers thought this was cruel, but my students didn’t. They loved it. Some were often unconvinced that the task was truly impossible and asked to keep trying as part of their homework. This always made my heart smile.

Anyway, this quote and the lesson I was trying to impart on my students, is one that I keep trying to remember as a new mom. Because the new mommy struggle IS real. Continue reading “the (new mommy) struggle is real” →

from teacher to mother

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When I told my husband, after being married about 6 months, that I was ready to have a kid, he was ecstatic! I still don’t understand how it happened, because if you had asked me the week earlier, I would have told you I will have kids in a few years. But one day it hit me and about 5 months later, we were pregnant.

At the time, I was still working as a high school math teacher in south Los Angeles. I had no intentions of leaving my job. I loved my work! I loved my students, my coworkers, and the type of teaching I was doing.

I also loved being pregnant.

Continue reading “from teacher to mother” →

mrs. shuter and aha moments

Desere

My name is Desere Shuter. I am 25, married, and have an 8 1/2 month old baby boy, Frank.

I decided to start this blog so that I can share the struggle of leaving a career I loved and figuring out how exactly to be a stay at home mom.

What I found through this struggle, was that I needed to start adopting the ideals I had as a teacher, to the type of mother I wanted to be. Therefore I first need to share exactly what type of teacher I was. Continue reading “mrs. shuter and aha moments” →