Idolising Children?

Ah. It has been a big week. Aren’t they all. Anyway, as a consequence, less words this week. Less articles. Less blog posts. Less GeekDad.

But, there is a backlog of Whispers at Bedtime. And, there have been books, and a Christmas Tree put up. Boys are writing Christmas lists and Santa is going to have his work cut out with “Agents” Lego.

This week’s Whispers at Bedtime gives props to my favourite song writer of all time Anthony Atkinson. I understand he is now also a primary school teacher. Lucky kids!

Anyway, I pull out the guitar after bedtime stories and sing a few songs. Anthony’s work is high in my repertoire. The boys favourite song at the moment is “ecstatic” and gradually they have asked questions about all the lyrics. I’ve done my best to explain. But, how do you explain the concept of “ego” to a five year old? You can see a youtube clip of The Mabels (Anthony’s old band) playing the tune at the Bridge Mall Inn  in Ballarat on youtube. I showed my boys. Surely that is another aspect of the internets we hasn’t thought off. I can take my children back into the pubs of my misspent youth through youtube. They loved it!

Song: Ecstatic from “Scenes from a Midday Movie”, The Mabels (circa. 2003)

Tags: anthonyatkinson, ecstatic, the mabels, songs

Today’s Whispers at Bedtime was inspired by reviewing some old home video footage. My little boy was being asked far too many questions, but giving each one due thought.

More Whispers at Bedtime here

Tags: comic, children, pets, whispers at bedtime

I really enjoy reading domestic father (Blake) and I’ve been meaning to write about his series of post that use his skeptical approach to the impact of TV viewing on young children. I’d like to do this because TV is a focus of a chapter in the book that my wife has written (and which I’ve thrown bits and pieces into). It is due in mid-2009 and clearly you’ll get more information in coming months.

It all starts here with a post questioning whether TV is a positive or negative influence on children’s lives. Blake admits that he and his wife did limit TV in their daughters early years, not because of a wealth of research, but simply through their own personal experience. He writes:

I enjoy it when skeptics get intuitive. I think there is room in an evidenced-based approach to allow decisions to begin to be made by posing and questioning through the lived experience. And, in this case, that is clearly what has happened. As the following posts then explored the research in a very nice way.

Television and Infants is a fabulous blog post. It systematically asks the questions we all pose, and looks throughly at the evidence available to cut through the marketing hype and recognise that TV is having an impact on the development of our children, especially in the early years, and in ways that we can recognise, but still do not fully understand.

I recommend all parents and parents-to-be read it. But, I also recommend that parents then don’t suddenly beat themselves up if their children have watch a large amount of TV before they were 5.

Which, is where the next question comes in that Blake hasn’t addressed - yet: When should my child start watching television and when should they watch?

This is where our new book will come in, exploring the research behind not just how much TV is enough, but what children should watch and more importantly, how they should watch it and how you should watch it with them.

If we are toi raise good critical thinkers we need to teach them how to watch TV and engage with new media technologies in the same way we teach them to read books. We need to give them the vocabulary, the processes and teach them rules about how to be a good media consumer - how to challenge where the information comes from, teach them to ask who made this program, what are they telling me, why do they want to tell me that, are they trying to sell me something?

This is what we need to think about and consider as parents - and in doing so we need to accept there is not a single solution. There is no one book, one way, one TV show that can provide us with the answers. All our children are uniquer and require us to critically engage with their own development, and travel the journey of mistakes and successes with them.

Tags: children, capacity, tv, early years

You know the drill. When bedtime becomes a battle of wills.

More Whispers at Bedtime here.

Tags: comic, bedtime, children

I’m still really enjoying having the chance to contribute bits and pieces to the GeekDad website. The team of contributors are great, the information sharing amazing and the foster a strong sense of belonging - which is just dandy at the moment.

If you haven’t checked out the site - you should - the posts are always current and engaging covering a very broad range of ideas that are right in the corner pocket (IMHO).

Anyway, GeekDad has exposed me to a small but active group of people promoting the value of role-playing games for children. As a consequence, I will be researching and writing more about the value of RPGs for kids and continuing to explore the potential with my own boys. I think part of the appeal to them is that every fortnight I still role-play with a group of blokes, we visit each others houses, cook a meal and tuck into a Friday night of imagination, rule disputes and complex narrative. We use the GURPS system these days, I think it appeals to the rules-nuts amongst us, but for me it is about the flexibility of creating any world, fantasy or real, at any time in history and creating a story within it. For the kids, they get to see grown men coming over to continue to use their imagination and particiapte it story telling - it is a lot different to sitting around watching sports on the TV. Of course, as a parent I want to place greater virtue on my own activities than they probably deserve, but what the hey.

So, thanks to GeekDad for helping challenge and facilitate new ways of engagement with my own children. As we raise kids, we need to draw on as many diverse and different resources as possible. As I wrote in “Idolising Children” parenting should not be the preserve of parenting-experts who write and sell books telling us what we should be doing. For each individual child the strategies will vary, for parents the process is one of experimenting and doing the best with the knowledge you have.

Role-playing games are one way I think we can continue to foster creativity and imagination, story-telling and cooperation in our kids well into their teens. You see, children role-play, in early childhood education we call it “domestic role-play” the act of children making sense of their world by playing out scenes from the everday, education circles are seeing the value of primary-aged children undertaking play-based learning and role-playing should be a way that we make play acceptable and important into adulthood. Just because we become older. doesn’t mean that make believe and play are any less important. So, don’t take it too seriously. Maybe you need to do some role-playing with your kids.

Tags: roleplaying, raising children, imagination