Getting Parents to Read to Their Children

This post will deal with the sometimes nearly impossible task of getting parents to read to their young children.  The research on the benefits of reading aloud to young children is so strong this should be a given in every American household, but it isn't.  Developing strong readers should be on of our nation's strongest priorities, but it isn't.  Early childhood literacy is my passion.  Therefore, finding ways to get parents to read to their children will be one of my lifelong endeavors.

Why Don't Parents Read to their Children?
The list of excuses could go to the moon and back.  However, the main excuses are that parents are too busy with other things both personal and professional, some parents don't read well and are embarrassed to try to read to their children, and some parents do not see the need.  Whatever the excuse, the fact remains that some children will not have someone read to them at home.  If they are not in an another environment where they are read to regularly, these children will hit school with language deficiencies.  As child care providers, this is one of the most important jobs we do every single day.  If we do nothing else to promote language and literacy beyond reading many good books to the children each day, we will still accomplish quite a bit toward developing a love of reading in the children.  Sadly, not every child care provider reads to the children in his/her care every day.  Many times the children in these facilities are from homes where they do not have someone to read to them at home.  Then these children struggle with reading in school and grow up to be parents that do not read to their children.  This is a sad cycle that many great foundations, programs, and schools have set out to correct.

The Dolly Parton Imagination Library
One foundation that I am quite familiar with is the Dolly Parton Imagination Library.  This foundation provides free books every month or so to children until their fifth birthday.  This program has put thousands and thousands of books into the homes of children in the state of Tennessee.  (I do not know if this program extends to other states.)  However, just because the book is in the home does not necessarily mean the book gets read.  There is a greater chance it will be read, but those parents that fall into the main group of excuses will still not read to their children.  I also know that many books go unclaimed and collect at certain distribution sites across the state.  I know this because many times these distribution sites will donate the books to local child cares and libraries.  We have many of those books at our facility.

What Some Schools Are Doing
Many schools around the country have gotten rather aggressive about parents reading to their children.  My grandchildren have just enrolled in new schools and both schools require the parents to read aloud to the children each night.  A planner is sent home, and the parents must document what was read and sign it.  Of course, some parents will sign the planner without actually reading to the children, but the youngest's school also has mandatory attendance for parent/teacher conference.  If a parent does not show up for his/her designated time, the teacher will show up at the child's home.  This school has 100% attendance for parent/teacher conferences.  A teacher can tell when a parent does not actually read by how the child is progressing in his/her lessons.  I am sure this is one of the main topics of discussion at these conferences.

The Traveling Suitcases
At my child care I have a sneaky way of getting parents to read to their children.  Many years ago I developed what has been called "traveling suitcases."  These consist of a clear backpack with a book, a prop of some sort (usually a stuffed animal that goes with the story), a journal for the parents, a drawing pad, and crayons.  Each Friday afternoon I bring out the traveling suitcases.  Every child 2 and older gets to choose one of the suitcases and take it home for the weekend.  I have half of the suitcases designated for 2 year olds and the other half is appropriate for 3 and older (the older children are allowed to take the 2 year old suitcases as long as the 2 year olds have already chosen).  These suitcases are a huge deal at my facility.  In all I now have 75 or more different books with props that are used for these suitcases.  I keep about 10 clear backpacks to use for the suitcases and store the others in large plastic bags.  I rotate in a new suitcase every week and read that story for afternoon group time on Friday.  If it is a long story, I will often only read half of it and tell them they will have to take this one home to hear the other half.

How has the program worked for me?  Honestly, it works fairly well.  Most of the time, those parents that don't read have the children tell on them when the suitcase comes back on Monday (or Tuesday, Wednesday, etc.).  Those parents will go out of their way to tell me when they read the book the next time.  Many parents have come in on Monday complaining about how many times they had to read the book over the weekend.  (That puts a smile in my heart.)  Keeping up with the suitcases can be extremely frustrating for preschool age parents, but I tell them this is training for library books in the future.  I have a rule that if the suitcase is not brought back by Friday morning, the child cannot take home another one.  After one Friday afternoon of having to deal with an extremely distraught child, the parents will normally be frantically bringing in suitcases on Friday morning to avoid another episode.  However, I have had parents that have refused to participate.  I have to replace crayons and drawing pads constantly.  Most of the time at least the book and prop come back intact, but I have lost suitcases entirely.  This was more of a problem when I was a bigger facility.  It seems to be less of a problem with a smaller group.  The benefits that these suitcases provide far outweigh the cost and hassle of maintaining them.  The language skills of the children at my facility far exceed the developmental norm.  Of course, these suitcases are coupled with a provider that takes early childhood literacy seriously to a fault.

I hope you have enjoyed this post.  Goodbye and God bless!! Check out Natalie's children's books at:  https://www.amazon.com/author/nataliewade7457 

Teaching Children to Focus

This post will deal with the overwhelming task of getting 21st century children to focus on something for longer than two seconds.  Recent research has plainly pointed out that children with the ability to focus do much better in school than those who cannot focus.  Therefore, teaching this skill in early childhood is of paramount importance.

What Is Focus?
What exactly do the researchers mean when they talk about focus?  This actually involves many skills including but not limited to self control, perseverance, the ability to listen (which I covered in my previous post), the ability to follow directions (which I also covered in an older post), and the ability to finish a job.  Children with these skills in their arsenal arrive at school ready to go.  Instilling these skills in children in today's society can be extremely difficult.  Why?  Many adults do not even have these particular skills in abundance even though these skills are required to succeed in the adult world.  These skills are not flashy.  They take time and effort to instill.  People in today's world want flashy and easy, which is why they are so scarce.  Parents and caregivers need to begin in toddlerhood to instill these skills in children in order to be to the point they should be before entering school.  However, if you have a four-year, a ten-year old or a fifty-year old, you can start the process.  It just might be a little more difficult to undo entrenched bad habits.

Self-Control
I will start this discussion with self-control.  The very first step to instilling self-control in children is to teach the meaning of the words "no, stop, and don't."  If a child does not truly understand these words and is not capable of obeying them, he/she will not be able to tell himself/herself "no, stop, or don't."  That is just common sense.  This process should start when the child reaches toddlerhood.  However, it can start when he/she is older.  It will just take a lot more effort to undo what these words have come to mean to the child, which is usually "start the hissy fit negotiation."  This process will also probably take some retraining on the part of the caregiver.  You must mean "no, stop, or don't" when you say these words.  You must convey that the situation is not up for negotiation at all.  If you give in, you teach the child that you didn't really mean "no, stop, or don't."  Do not use these words flippantly.  The next step involves teaching the child to take "no" for an answer without pouting or throwing a hissy fit.  At our child care we teach the children to take a deep breath and say "that's okay" when they are told "no" or do not get their way.  This is not a lesson that can wait for a teachable moment.  It must be taught regularly.  In the heat of the moment, a child will have great difficulty following through with this without prompting until he/she has been trained in this concept for months.  We teach this during character training lessons we have throughout the week and prompt it when the heat of the moment arises.  It takes both types of instruction to see results.  Once a child has mastered the ability to be okay with "no" for an answer, you will have accomplished teaching self-control at the preschool level.

Perseverance
The next part of the equation is perseverance.  This means to keep trying in the face of difficulty.  For the most part, this is a caregiver issue more than a child issue.  Caregivers step in too fast and too often because it takes an enormous amount of patience to let the child do it himself/herself.  I didn't say it was entirely a caregiver issue.  I am quite aware of the children that sit in the floor and wail until someone does whatever for them.  Establishing this skill takes everyone involved in the process to have the attitude "whatever the child can do for himself/herself, he/she will have to do."  When I use the phrase "have to do," I mean that the caregiver/parent will not step in unless the child runs into technical difficulties beyond his/her abilities.  This may involve hissy fits galore.  Let them have at it.  We have a saying at our child care and it is, "If it's hard, keep trying."  This is how perseverance is taught on a preschool level.

The Behavioral Aspects of Listening
I covered the academic aspects of teaching children to listen in my previous post.  Here I will discuss the behavioral aspects.  How often do you as a caregiver find that you must repeat yourself multiple times to get a child's attention?  If that child is older than three and has no developmental delays, you have stated your wishes way too many times.  Again, this will require a caregiver to retrain himself/herself as well as the child.  When you want a child to do something, the first step is to make sure the child is looking at you.  Some people would say that you have to get down on a child's level, but I have not found that to be absolutely necessary.  As long as I have eye contact, I expect that child to do what I say the first time.  If I do not get compliance, I do not repeat myself.  I ask the child to tell me what is expected.  Nine times out of ten, they are fully capable of telling me what is expected.  What does that tell you?  Children have selective listening down to an art form.  If you have eye contact, they heard you.  They just chose to test and see if you really meant what you said.  It is all about expectations.  Children know if you don't really expect them to do it.  They learn very quickly where that line is that marks where you switch from just trying to get them to do something to fully expecting them to do something.  Move the line.

Following Directions
In an older post I covered the subject of following directions.  Here I am just going to give a short overview of that post.  This one comes down to the same bottom line as listening - expectations.  We as a society have become entirely too lenient in our expectations on this subject.  So many careers require precision and yet we do not expect our children to follow directions exactly.  Most of the time as long as the child gets in the ballpark, we tell them "that's good enough."  Then when those same children reach adulthood and can't hold down a job because they take too many liberties with their employer's instructions, we scratch our heads and wonder what went wrong.  Even preschool children need some activities that have to be done exactly to specifications to begin to develop this skill.  It can be as easy as a certain order a certain routine must be done such as handwashing.  At my child care we have several routines that have a specific order to them including handwashing.  We teach these like we teach basic rules, and we expect the children to follow these precisely.

Finish the Job
Some might say that finishing the job and perseverance are the same.  I put them both on the list because in our society many times we separate effort from a completed job.  This is especially true when dealing with children.  As long as the child gave a good effort, we many times do not expect them to finish the job.  Before I started writing this today, I read an article on New Hampshire's new education initiative.  They are trying to get away from grouping children by age and grouping them instead by competencies.   A child has to finish a skill before they move on to another one.  They do not just count seat-time and consider that adequate.  I stand up and applaud this state!!!!!!!  We must begin to finish the job and teach our children to do so as well.  However, a child cannot finish the job if we do not define what a finished job looks like.  This is especially true in the preschool years.  Let me give you an example.  When the children at our facility pick-up, I check the centers to make sure they were done correctly.  If I find something, I point it out and tell the children they missed something.  This can be done without being snotty, and it is absolutely necessary for the children to understand what finished means.  Children will define "finished" however they are allowed.  Make sure you are teaching them to actually finish the job.

Two Year Olds and Developmentally Delayed
Before I finish I want to discuss two year olds and developmentally delayed children.  Both of these groups require basically the same techniques when dealing with following directions and listening.  These groups must be talked through routines.  You will repeat yourself so many times it is maddening, but that is necessary.  Keep calmly repeating each individual step until it is accomplished, and then move on to the next step.  Do not move on until you have compliance.  This takes a great deal of patience, but this is how you teach two year olds and developmentally delayed children to focus in all its forms.  For those of you who like me have mixed-age facilities, it can be extremely difficult to change gears between two and under strategies and three and older strategies.  Don't beat yourself up if you make mistakes, but do try to remember the different strategies for the different age groups.

I hope you have enjoyed this post.  Goodbye and God bless!! Check out Natalie's children's books at:  https://www.amazon.com/author/nataliewade7457 

The Lost Art of Listening

This post will deal with what has become a lost art in our society - listening.  This is not even remotely just a children's problem.  It cuts across all age groups and socioeconomic status.  I cannot possibly cover this subject on that wide a scale.  This post will zero in on the problem as it relates to children's ability to listen.

Half Listeners
As a society we have lost the ability to truly tune in and listen to just about anything for more than a few minutes.  We half listen to just about everything.  This is true in our relationships, in our professional lives, in our schools, and even in our recreation times.  I saw a series of pictures recently showing all the different times people check their cell phones, blackberries, etc.  It showed people at a basketball game texting on their cell phone.  It is impossible to avoid.  We are a distracted society.

We have actually been a distracted society for much longer than you would think.  Before it was cell phones and computers, it was television and talking on the phone.  For most of the second half of the 20th century, we as a society transitioned from being a society that relied on what we hear to relying on what we see.  Of course, now it seems to be getting much worse with every passing year.  Is this such a big deal?  Does it matter that we now don't really listen?

The Decline in Education
It should come as no surprise that the timing of this transition in our society coincided with our decline in education.  Being able to listen affects our ability to focus.  Recent research shows that children who cannot focus have a hard time in school.  Have our brains changed over the last 70 years?  No.  What has changed is what we develop.  From the time we are infants, we are bombarded with visual stimuli.  We no longer have to rely on oral stimuli to process our surroundings.  Most of the time, we quickly decipher the situation visually and tune out a great deal of the oral stimuli.  This was not possible for the people who lived 100 years ago.  They had to depend on oral stimuli as much as visual stimuli to make sense of their world.  They developed their ability to listen as much as their ability to see.  We as a society handicap ourselves by our over-reliance on visual stimuli.

Listening Is a Skill
Fortunately listening is a skill, and like any other skill it can be developed.  We as a society must raise its importance.  Our educational system seems to be going in the wrong direction.  Instead of putting more focus on developing listening skills, the schools keep transitioning to visual stimuli at a faster pace.  Visual stimuli does not increase our focus.  Until we start putting more emphasis on listening skills, we will continue our spiral downward.  Fortunately, all we need to do is resurrect some old traditions.

Storytelling
With the breakdown of communication in our society, another very valuable tradition has been lost - storytelling.  When I was young the older generation still felt it their duty to pass on to the younger generation the stories of the area.  However, that faded by the time my own children were small.  Until recently, I did not realize how little my own children knew of the stories I took for granted as a child.  Somehow storytelling has fallen by the wayside, and that is one of the greatest travesties of the last 70 years.  Therefore, number one, we need to resurrect storytelling.  This is not the same as reading picture books to children.  Storytelling involves no pictures.  Children are forced to picture the story in their own minds instead of relying on the pictures in the book.  This is an absolutely invaluable skill to develop reading comprehension.  If a child cannot picture a story that is told orally, they will not be able to picture in their minds a story that they read without pictures.  One of the greatest gifts my third grade teacher gave to us as a class was orally reading books to us that were beyond most of the reading levels of the class.  It was our after lunch ritual.  She did more to expand the entire class's reading comprehension level in that one act than a great deal of what passes for reading comprehension instruction today.

Other ways to build these types of listening skills might include the following.  Partner with the senior citizens of your area and have them come in to tell stories to the children.  At first, the children will struggle with listening to stories for more than a few minutes.  Therefore, have them start with short stories and gradually build the children's ability to sit and listen to stories this way.  It really doesn't take that long.  It just takes persistence.  Another way involves reading poetry to the children without pictures.  This is what I did for my own children, and their reading comprehension scores were very high as children (by the way, I homeschooled).  Poetry demands a greater level of visualization than regular stories.  One poem a day goes a long way to building children's listening and reading comprehension abilities.  Start with nursery rhymes without pictures and build to short poems.  Many good poetry books for children are on the market.

The Adventures of Polliwog Pond
At this point I want to have a quick commercial for one of my other blogs "The Adventures of Polliwog Pond."  The purpose of the blog is to build listening skills and reading comprehension skills in children.  Basically, this blog consists of a series of stories surrounding four characters - a frog, a turtle, a dragonfly, and a duck.  The stories are to be read to children orally.  Then the parents or teachers ask the children to draw a picture about that story.  When parents or teachers send those pictures in to me, I post them on the story that the child illustrated.  The posting of the pictures is not the point.  The point is to have the stories read orally and have the children draw what they picture in their minds.  The posting of the pictures acts as a catalyst to get the children to actually listen to the story.  I partner with parents, child cares, and elementary classrooms to provide teachers a means to help develop listening skills in children in today's society.  You can see the blog at http://summerbug1226.blogspot.com.

I hope you have enjoyed this post.  Goodbye and God bless!! Check out Natalie's children's books at:  https://www.amazon.com/author/nataliewade7457 

Developing Character in Children

This post will deal with the nuts and bolts of developing character in children.  Like everything else worth having in this life, it takes hard work over time.  Nothing worth having is instant.

The Right Foundation
In the previous two posts I dealt with the two greatest hindrances to developing character in children - overemphasizing choices and self-esteem.  Once these two areas have been put in their proper place in the list of priorities, developing character becomes much easier.  If they are left at the top of the list of priorities, developing character will seem like it is stuck in a vicious cycle of getting nowhere.  You will essentially be creating the monster and trying to tame it all at the same time.  Therefore, step number one is to get on the right foundation.

What Is Important to You?
The next step is to decide which character qualities are most important to you and the parents you serve.    The best place to start might be a quick survey for your parents where they rank a list of qualities from most important to least important.  This exercise may greatly surprise you.  Many parents want their children to have qualities they may not necessarily possess themselves. Most parents place much more value on qualities like obedience and respect than most early childhood professionals.  Remember, these are not your children.  It is not your place to usurp the parents' authority and push an agenda off on their children.   When you choose a list of qualities to use for your survey, make sure the list you provide them is neutral in its tone.  I have seen lists of this nature that word every conservative trait in a way that makes it unappealing and every liberal trait as if it is the most desired trait in the world.  The point is to find out how your parents feel and not make them want the traits the early childhood professional world thinks is important.

Deliberate Teaching
Once you have your list of traits, you must decide how you want to go about teaching these traits.  As with anything in a preschool setting, teaching character must be a deliberate act.   It needs a time on your weekly or daily schedule to ensure that it gets done.  I have found in my setting that if I don't schedule it, it gets lost in the shuffle.  I personally do weekly character lessons that are specifically designed for that purpose.  Many of the other lessons we do cover some of the character traits, but I have the one very specific lesson that deals with one particular trait each week.  I have found this to be highly effective.  Covering only one character trait at a time is important.  Focusing on one quality helps the children to absorb what you are trying to teach them.

In teaching these lessons I have found that if I act out the opposite of how I want them to act, it has greater effect than just talking about the quality.  After I have done my exaggerated (or not so exaggerated) version of the opposite, I then demonstrate the correct way.    Children need you to model both ways.  It is not enough to just model the correct way.  They need to understand what the wrong way looks like.  They always giggle when I do my impressions of them acting in a way they shouldn't, but they get the point.  It also helps them to recognize when their friends start acting that way.  Many times I have had the children say to each other, "You are acting just like Mrs. Natalie does."  Rarely will they actually realize this themselves during the heat of the moment, but they straighten up much faster when their friends point this out to them.

Teachable Moments
Now I want to turn my attention to teachable moments.  Teachable moments are those times where circumstances give you a perfect opportunity to teach a concept on the spot.  Teachable moments are valuable, but you can't rely on teachable moments solely as the means of instilling character.  Sometimes teachable moments are few and far between.  Sometimes the moment passes before we realize it could have been used.  As teachers it is important to learn to recognize teachable moments and make the most of them, but the times of direct instruction are equally as important.  The times of direct instruction will actually help you to tune into the teachable moments and use them to reinforce what was covered in the times of direct instruction.

I hope you have enjoyed this post.  Goodbye and God bless!! Check out Natalie's children's books at:  https://www.amazon.com/author/nataliewade7457 

Developing Character in Children: The Trouble with Self-Esteem

This post will deal with the second largest hindrance to developing true character in children - the overemphasis of self-esteem in our culture.  The idea of self-esteem I will be discussing is the blind love of self without regard for faults.

Too Much Self-Esteem?
It is no secret that teenagers in the United States rank highest among developed countries in self-esteem but lowest in math and science.  We have children who feel really good about themselves without any regard for character or productivity.  We as a nation should have a real problem with that.  However, if anyone tries to move self-esteem down the list of priorities in our nation, he/she is in for the war of a lifetime.  It is so entrenched in our national psyche that self-esteem is one of the most important attributes to be developed in children, it is hard to have a serious intellectual conversation about the contrary.  Nothing, and I mean nothing, should ever be done to children that will make them feel shame or anything but warm fuzzies according to our psychologists.  If we as a nation do not correct this egregious error, we will soon go the way of the Roman Empire.

Feel-Good Junkies
Isn't self-esteem important to keep children from suffering from depression?  Actually no.  Since we have put so much emphasis on self-esteem, we have not improved the rate of depression among children.  Actually, I believe we have made it worse.  We have made it worse by creating "feel-good junkies."  When our children do not "feel good about themselves," they fall into depression.   What we now have in this country is self-esteem with no moral character base to it.  There is a huge difference between feeling good about yourself and loving yourself.  We have made self-esteem be about feeling good about yourself instead of unconditionally loving yourself.  One is based on feelings.  The other is based on knowledge.  Actually, a better term for unconditionally loving yourself is self-acceptance.

What's the Difference between Self-Esteem and Self-Acceptance?
As I stated earlier, self-esteem, as we as a society have defined it, is based on feelings.  We are training our children to "feel good about themselves" when they are mean as snakes, lazy, and completely unproductive.  On the other hand, we have self-acceptance.  This is knowledge-based.  It is understanding yourself with all your good points and bad points.  It has nothing to do with feelings.  The real difference, however, plays out in the real world.  A person who has self-esteem doesn't have to do anything to earn the "feel good."  Whereas, the person with self-acceptance understands their short-comings and works on them in order to earn the "feel good."  The first type of "feel good' is empty because it has no basis in reality.  The second type of "feel good" is real because it was earned.  The first type of "feel good" is fleeting and will end up in an endless cycle of searching for the empty "feel good" and sinking into depression.  The second type of "feel good" can actually help lift a person out of feelings of depression.  Let me put it this way, when a person feels good about themselves in a blind way, they see no need to change.  When a person looks at himself/herself in a realistic manner, they see the areas that need work.  A person who sees no need for change will never change, and a person that does not change over time does not grow emotionally or socially.

We as a society start this process in early childhood.  We don't correct the children because it will damage their self-esteem.  We don't force them to do anything, because it will damage their self-esteem.  We try to create for them this magical world where they can always feel good about themselves regardless of their input in that process.  We are creating "feel good junkies" from the very beginning.  What should we be doing instead?  We should be teaching them to look at themselves realistically.  Everyone on this planet has areas in which they master quickly and areas in which they struggle.  A child should be taught this reality from the very beginning.  It is only when a child has to work on mastering something that is difficult that he/she gets his/her first taste of a real "feel good about themselves."  We want our children to chase after the real thing and not the fluffy substitute.

Two Types of Shame
At this point I want to have a discussion about the concept of shame.  Shame in our society has been demonized as being one of the most evil attributes an adult can place on a child.  However, there are two different types of shame, but we as society have lumped both types together as evil.  One is evil, and it is shame that leads to defeat.  This is shame that demoralizes another human being by putting them down.  For example, telling a child he/she is worthless and won't ever amount to anything falls into this category.  The other type of shame is shame that leads to repentance.  This type of shame must be present for a person to truly have self-acceptance.  This type of shame says "I expect more out of you.  You know better than to act that way."  The child who is shamed in this manner realizes that they have done wrong and needs to change.  The adult in this situation conveys the message that the child has worth beyond his/her actions.  The actions must change for the child to reach his/her full potential.  We must as a society resurrect this type of shame.  We must convey to our children that they are capable of being better and doing more.  We must raise our expectations.  We basically get what we expect, which isn't much.  The fluffy, fake idea of self-esteem needs to be eradicated from our national psyche.  Our children deserve to know how to find the true way of feeling good about themselves.  This comes from a realistic knowledge of who they are as people, both good and bad, and understanding that life is a process of change that never stops.

I hope you have enjoyed this post.  Goodbye and God bless!! Check out Natalie's children's books at:  https://www.amazon.com/author/nataliewade7457 

Developing Character in Children: The Trouble with Choices

This post will be the first of a three-part series on developing character in children.  The first two parts will deal with the two greatest hindrances to developing true character in children  - the overemphasis of giving children choices and the overemphasizing of self-esteem instead of self-awareness.

The Liberal "Trump" Card
One of the biggest hindrances to instilling character traits such as diligence, patience, kindness, obedience, and respect is that society does not value these traits much anymore.  This is especially true of obedience and respect, which is nearly considered evil in our society.  Many prominent psychologists and sociologists place obedience and respect at the very bottom of the list of traits that children should be taught.  What do they put at the top?  The traits at the top of their list is self-esteem and having choices.  I will deal with self-esteem in my next post, but the real culprit that causes so much of our grief as a society is the overemphasis on giving children choices.  I call it the liberal "trump" card.  Like in the card game "Rook," choices trumps everything including all common sense.  It aggravates me to no end that early childhood professionals accept this without question not realizing that this prioritization of traits undermines a lot of the good traits we want to see in our children.  The best way to undermine diligence is to give the children the choice to quit.  How in the world can children develop patience if they always get their way?  Of course, it should make sense now why obedience and respect are so demonized.  If children have complete choice, adults have no right to push anything off on the children for any reason.  Therefore, the first order of business to instill character into children is to put giving children choices in its proper place in the list of priorities, which is much closer to the bottom.  Notice that I did not say it was not important at all.  I just said it is not all important.

The Need for Wisdom
Where does choice fit in the grand scheme of it all?  Many of the early childhood theorists believe that the only way to teach children to make good choices is to give them complete choice.  They believe that the act of making choices will eventually produce adults who can be decisive and make good choices in their lives.  There's a little flaw in that theory, and it is called the sin nature.  Because these theorists deny the sin nature, they do not take into account that selfishness and greed will more often come into play in a child's decisions than wisdom.  Wisdom has to be taught.  Being selfish and greedy does not have to be taught.  The simple act of making decisions without wisdom will never produce adults who make good decisions.  They might be decisive, but we all know people who are decisive and very unwise.  Therefore, the teaching of wisdom must come first coupled with opportunities for the children to make some decisions.

Two Positive Choices
At this point I want to deal with the practice of giving "two positive choices."  When in life do we as anyone above the age of 5 get to choose between two positives?  Most of the time we have to choose between the lesser of two negatives.  Choosing between two positives is not really developing the ability to make good choices.  All it develops is being decisive.  When a child has to decide between doing what they are supposed to do and what they want to do because they have weighed the consequences, that develops good decision making skills.  That is how decisions for the rest of their life will have to be made.  Why in the world would we present them with such a unrealistic scenario as two positive choices?  The answer to that question lies in the fact that most early childhood theory is based on relativism and adults should not enforce a definite "right and wrong" on children.  They will say that when a positive and a negative choice are given to a child that is not really a choice.  Oh really?  That child can choose the negative and does so quite often because of stubbornness.  Then that child learns that negative choices beget negative consequences.  How are children supposed to learn that lesson when all they ever get are two positive choices?  They won't.

Choice in the Real World
In an early childhood world where relativism is stripped away and the provider takes the sin nature into account, what does choice look like?  In a situation where a child is misbehaving it is perfectly acceptable to point out to that child the positive way of handling that situation and the negative consequences if they do not.  Then that child has to decide if they will be obedient or suffer the consequences.  In situations where children must choose between neutral options, a wise way of teaching decisiveness is to make them abide by their choices.  In our facility we let the children choose centers at each center time, but they have to stay there.  Roaming is not allowed.  The children at our facility put a little more thought into where they go and who goes with them because for 15-20 minutes that is where they will be.  It doesn't take children long at all to figure this out once they start at our facility.  Making good choices can actually be taught much more effectively if the child is not given complete choice.  However, this can only be accomplished when relativism is thrown out the window.  It is our God-given responsibility to teach children the difference between right and wrong.

I hope you have enjoyed this post.  Goodbye and God bless!! Check out Natalie's children's books at:  https://www.amazon.com/author/nataliewade7457 

The Art of Teaching Rules

This post will deal with my expertise in establishing rules in a child care setting.  Like everything else in life, getting children to follow rules takes time and effort.  Just putting a rules display on the wall will only get you brownie points for displays on an assessment scale.  To create an environment where children actually follow the rules takes a multi-front effort.

The Rules Display
Let's start this discussion with the typical rules display.  Most of us have a copy of our classroom rules on the wall.  If you don't have a copy of the classroom rules, this is an excellent place to start.  For a preschool setting the rules should be short and to the point with not more than 5 or 6 rules.  However, put good thought into the wording of the rules.  They should not be so specific that four year olds will find loopholes and yet not so vague that they are hard to enforce.  Never underestimate the ability of four year olds to find loopholes in your classroom rules.  When that happens, you will need to reword your rules.  Finding workable rules is about a 6 month process.  Many experts will tell you that you should allow the children to help with the setting of the classroom rules.  This can be good and bad.  It is true that the children will initially be more willing to follow the rules if they help make them, but this won't last forever.  Also, I have a problem with children only being willing to follow rules that they help create.  When they hit public school, they will have to follow many rules they had no say in making.  They need some experience with this before they get there.  If you do allow the children to help set the rules, you need to have a good sense of what the rules need to be in the beginning and gently guide the conversation in the way it needs to go.  Many times four year olds will actually help with the wording because they will foresee the loopholes, but there will be some concepts the children may avoid on purpose that you will have to bring up.

A Daily Process
Now that you have the classroom rules written and displayed on the wall, what do you do with them?  This is the most important question.  If all you do is create the display, it will be a waste of time.  If all you do is read the rules occasionally, it will be basically a waste of time.  Teaching rules is a daily process.  I have a time built into my schedule for daily rule instruction.  Each day we take one of our general rules and discuss it.  We do more than just read the rule.  If all you are doing is reading the rule, you are having a language lesson and not a rule lesson.  Children need to understand why that rule is necessary.  They need to be told what happens when they break that rule.  For example, one of our rules is "no toys on the tile."  Someone who is unfamiliar with our facility would think that is a silly rule.  However, our facility has two different types of flooring.  We have wood flooring in all the rooms where the children play.  We have tile in the kitchen, dining room, and bathrooms.  Toys need to stay out of the kitchen, dining room, and bathrooms.  Those are not places toys should be.  When we talk about that rule, I ask them why we need to keep the toys off of the tile.  I help them understand the sanitary reasons behind that rule as well as the tripping hazard reasons.  It helps to maintain that rule when I bring in the yuck factor of what can be on the floor of kitchens and bathrooms.

The Other Sets of Rules
Up until this point I have only discussed general classroom rules, and that is where you need to begin.  It is not where the process ends, however.  Many centers have their own set of rules that need to be maintained.  For example, art areas must have their own set of rules unless you want absolute chaos.  If you have an indoor sensory area, that center will need its own set of rules.  Also, the everyday routines will have their own "rules" that go with them.  All of these different sets of rules also need attention regularly.  In my daily rule instruction I rotate all these different sets of rules as well as doing the one general rule each day.  For example, one of the rotations is on paper towels and toilet paper.  We had serious issues with the children wasting both of these items.  Therefore, when I have this particular discussion, we talk about how to use the paper towels correctly, how many towels to get at one time, how much toilet paper to get at one time, and where both types of paper are thrown away.  We actually flush the toilet paper instead of putting it in the trash.   Having this discussion regularly makes it exponentially easier to handle this routine on a daily basis.  If they break the rule, many times their peers will correct them long before I can even say anything.  I also incorporate basic behavior rules in the rotation as well.  One of the rotations is on the difference between tattling and reporting.  Tattling is trying to get someone in trouble.  Whereas, reporting deals with situations that are dangerous or involve injury.  We discuss different scenarios as to whether that would be tattling or reporting.  This has greatly cut down the amount of tattling we have.  For your information the following is a list of the rotations we do on a regular basis - art center rules, puzzles, sensory table rules, 3 room (this room is for children 3 years and older and has its own set of rules), the difference between tattling and reporting, rules for meals and snacks, the difference between inside and outside voices, how to use paper towels and toilet paper, and the difference between pretending and lying. The rules you choose to include in this rotation should reflect the issues you have in your facility.

Words of Wisdom
Finally, let me give some words of wisdom.  Anything you try to establish in a child care setting takes 6-9 months.  Many people give up on good ideas because they do not see immediate results.  For the first month or so it will seem like you are making no progress whatsoever.  However, keep after it.  There will come that moment when you start to correct a child and one of his/her peers beats you to it.  Then after a couple more months you will realize you are correcting the children less and less.  The true test comes when you start a new child and realize how much the other children are helping the process along instead of hindering.  Then you will know the full value of training children to follow the rules.

I hope you have enjoyed this post.  Goodbye and God bless!! Check out Natalie's children's books at:  https://www.amazon.com/author/nataliewade7457