Apr 29, 2019 | Direction
Within my family I’m a great-aunt, and to some of my friends, I’m “like-an-aunt” to their kids or grandchildren. I’m also “like-a-grandma” to two dear children. What spiritual impact can extended family have on kids?
Time well spent
We’re inching our way toward time well spent with the children we love. I find that kids appreciate one-on-one time most. Sherry Turkle, psychologist at MIT, says,”There’s a brand-new dynamic. Rather than compete with their siblings for their parents’ attention, children are up against iPhones and iPads, Siri and Alexa, Apple watches and computer screens.” Extended family can give children additional undivided attention outside of busy everyday family life. We listen and mirror back to a child what we hear, which helps them process and accept what they feel and think.
Discover life’s purpose
When’s the last time you pulled out your phone to do something and you get distracted, and 30 minutes later you find that you’ve done 10 other things except the thing that you pulled out the phone to do. There’s fragmentation and distraction.
For kids who do this, there’s something on a longer-term level to keep in view: that sense of what you’re about.
Extended family has the luxury of spending a child’s free time with them. As we have fun together without gadgets, we adults can create a shared narrative with a child, a shared truth or shared facts. All of these strengthen a child’s foundation upon which they discover their moral purpose. We’re empowering a child to become the person he or she wants to be.
Tweetable: Two more easy ways to empower children to become the person he or she wants to be. But first, put down those gadgets but not before you check this out! Click to Tweet
Apr 1, 2019 | Direction
“I asked the boys to find something they wanted to give each other (in secret), and told them that afterwards we would use some scrap paper and wrap the “gifts” up. They happily ran around trying to find things (my two-year-old usually came back with things that were way too big to fit into the paper) and I helped them fold the paper around the objects before they gave them to each other.”
“They also asked me to give them presents (and gave presents to me), so we all took turns sharing the wrapping paper and presenting gifts to each other. It was amazing how much fun they had with this!”
Handling gifts, a frequent childhood occurrence
Janice Kaplan’s story from her family is a reminder of the year-full of birthday parties to which kids will take all kind of gifts. Then there are the gifts kids are going to receive on their birthday and various holidays throughout the remaining months of this year.
My Aunt Alice likes to say that class isn’t wealth or beauty or education; class is manners.
Janice Kaplan says that the simple activity described above was one way she helped her sons learn the manners of gift-giving, and she is teaching them to:
- Practice thinking about other people while we choose gifts.
- Practice saying “thank you.”
- Practice looking for the good qualities of the gift (for example, “Wow that is a really bright highlighter!”).
- Discuss that someone gives a gift to show love to the other person, not necessarily because the other person wants the thing they are receiving.
- Discuss the possibility of not getting what you “want.”
- Remember the purpose of gifts, that they are a sign of love.
I like Janice’s use of “practice” because it indicates that gift giving and receiving is a skill children can use to express their love and appreciation. And when they receive something from us, don’t all of us like hearing those magic words, thank you?
Tweetable: A mom’s excellent idea for reinforcing the skill of giving and receiving gifts in her young sons. Here are the details. Click to Tweet
Aug 13, 2018 | Nurture
“Awe is the feeling of being in the presence of something vast or beyond human scale, that transcends our current understanding of things,” according to Dacher Keltner. He leads UC Berkeley’s Social Interaction Lab and he helped Facebook create the recent additions of emoji’s to the Like feature.
When is the last time you felt awe?
For me, it was experiencing a whole sequence of events line up so that I was in the right place at the right time to be of assistance to someone. The sheer number of converging variables demanded an explanation beyond coincidence.
For Immanuel Kant: “Two things awe me most, the starry sky above me and the moral law within me.”
Michael Lerner says: “Nothing is more contagious than genuine love and genuine care. Nothing is more exhilarating than authentic awe and wonder.” He says that the universe produces a feeling of awe for him.
Goodness. Beauty. Truth.
Adults and children alike experience awe. We hold that in common. Feeling amazed by goodness, beauty or truth seems to be a universal human response. I ask myself, “Is awe one of the pathways God provides for humanity to experience God? Could it be that feelings of awe are yet another attempt made by a loving God to connect with each of us? How can I provide awe-inspiring experiences for the children in my life?”
Ideas for kids
The second half of this article gives specific ideas of how families can experience awe.
Paula Scott, from her article here on awe, adds another idea, “High school teacher Julie Mann takes her students on ‘Awe Walks’ to connect with nature or art. When they write about these experiences and share them in the classroom, she says, kids who never talk in class or pay attention come to life. ‘It helps them feel less marginalized, with a sense that life is still good.’ She suggests journaling, collage, photography, drawing as ways for students to reflect about awe for time, space, amazing events and people.”
Click to Tweet: We call it goosebumps, spine-tingling, tears in our eyes amazement. Good ideas here to add more wonder to everyday life. Click to Tweet
Jun 4, 2018 | Nurture
Lucky moms! Kids are in school when Mother’s Day rolls around. Teachers and aides orchestrate the card and gift projects. Dads are not so fortunate. But you can step into the teacher’s shoes and provide fine gift ideas–and for the cards, some messages for the handmade Father’s Day card, courtesy of those holiday professionals at Hallmark. See the complete article here.
Try to make this fun!
Start by asking some conversation starters to help you and the child focus.
- How are you and your dad the same?
- What is your dad really good at?
- What makes you proud of daddy?
Father’s Day message starting points:
Now the child might be more ready to write a brief message of appreciation.
- “You taught me many of the important things I know like….
- “I don’t know where I’d be without your….
- “You’re in some of my favorite memories like….
- “Thank you for being there with just the___ (eg. love, wisdom, guidance) I need.
If the relationship is complicated
One Hallmark writer suggests that the child, “Be warm and sincere in your message. Focus on what’s positive and true between you. Tell him you’re thinking of him. Or simply wish him a great day.”
Family relationship not required for Father’s Day cards
There are plenty of father-like figures in people’s lives, even it’s they’re not officially relatives. Even if the child’s father is present in his or her life, a card for a man who is making spiritual, emotional or relational deposits in the child’s life deserves to hear about it.
- “Having you in my life has made all the difference in the world to me because….
- “You’ve always gone above and beyond to support me and celebrate important times in my life, like when….
- “I don’t know where I’d be without your….
If the child is very young
Consider doing a questionnaire or interview format with the child, like this example. It’s the kind of activity some teachers do for Mother’s Day.
“When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years.”— Mark Twain
May 7, 2018 | Nurture
By guest blogger Tara Miller
Often in life, we are faced with choices between two—or more—good options, but we don’t have the time, energy or money to do all of them. We have to choose. It’s especially difficult to choose when both options seem quite good.
When the person making the choice is a child or teenager, it can be particularly tempting to simply tell them what you think they should choose. After all, you have experience and insight that they don’t. However, if you want them to truly commit to their own decision, they’ll need to take ownership of it themselves.
The “forced choice” approach
Here’s a coaching-based exercise you can use called the “forced choice” approach. In this case, I used it with my 18-year-old daughter who was choosing a college this spring, but it could be applied to any situation where there’s a choice to be made between options.
Knock-out factors
My daughter had first narrowed down her choices using some “knock-out factors.” These are criteria that would make her decide against a school outright. For a serious student athlete, a knock-out factor might be a school not having a good basketball team. My daughter had two knock-out factors: she wanted a school that was out-of-state and she wanted one where the campus felt like a positive fit on an intuitive level. One school looked perfect for her on paper, but when she went to visit it failed the knock-out test. It quickly fell off her list and she didn’t apply there.
After the narrowing process, she was left with two colleges. Both of them seemed to be equally good choices, she had been accepted to both, and she could picture herself attending either school rather easily. So how should she make this decision?
Think through the reasons
I started by asking the opening question: “What are you seeking to accomplish by going to college?” This question was designed to help her think through her reasons for going at all and to consider what she most wanted from the experience. She responded that she wanted to get a degree so she could go on to graduate school; she wanted the opportunity to make friends and live away on her own, and she wanted what she called, “the college experience.”
Criteria to evaluate
Then I asked her, given that processing, what criteria she wanted to use for evaluating a college. Here are the options she generated in no particular order:
- good opportunities to make friends
- professors who are engaged and available
- good preparation for graduate school
- good financial package/pricing
- opportunities for fun off campus
- good study abroad program
- an acapella group
Compare options: Which is more important?
Then came the forced choice part. I asked her to compare each option with each other option and ask, “Which is more important?” No ties or passing, and sometimes she found the choices very difficult, such as when I asked, “Which is more important—a good financial package or a good study abroad program?” Whichever option she deemed more important got a tally mark, which created rankings.
So she made 21 choices– comparing each item with each other item. Here are the rankings she came up with. The tally marks at the end of each item reflect how many times that item was chosen over other items, resulting in a weighting of how important each item was to her.
- good financial package/pricing (6)
- good study abroad program (5)
- good opportunities to make friends (3)
- professors who are engaged an available (3)
- good preparation for graduate school (3)
- opportunities for off-campus fun (1)
- acapella group (0)
Some takeaways
The financial package held a lot of weight for her as she was concerned about going into debt. She really, really wants to study abroad– even more so than she had thought. An acapella group is just a nice-to-have, not an essential. Off-campus fun doesn’t mean as much to her as opportunities to make friends on campus.
She can now use these criteria—weighted by importance—in order to decide between colleges. And if two schools come out basically the same even when compared, there’s always the coin flip test: toss a coin in the air, call it, and when it lands gauge your level of disappointment or excitement.
What are some choices the kids in your life are currently facing? How might you use this exercise to help them make decisions that are most in line with what they value?
Tweetable: Is your son or daughter processing an important decision? One mom shares a coaching exercise she used that helped her daughter choose which university to attend. Click to Tweet
Within my family I’m a great-aunt, and to some of my friends, I’m “like-an-aunt” to their kids or grandchildren. I’m also “like-a-grandma” to two dear children. What spiritual impact can extended family have on kids?
Extended family has the luxury of spending a child’s free time with them. As we have fun together without gadgets, we adults can create a shared narrative with a child, a shared truth or shared facts. All of these strengthen a child’s foundation upon which they discover their moral purpose. We’re empowering a child to become the person he or she wants to be.
