mychildfeels.com » Creative

How This Grandparent Feels

rickieglickman — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 17:52:32 +0000

One morning, I was sitting enjoying my cup of coffee when the phone rang.

“Hi Rickie, it’s Marsha Jacobson. I was wondering if you would join mychildfeels.com as a contributor. We are looking for a perspective from a grandparent and I know you would be great. I still remember advice you gave me years ago.”

“Yes,” I replied. “I would love to share my thoughts, but what is blogging? And why can’t we just sit and have a cup of coffee and chat?”

After Marsha explained it all to me, I now understand what blogging is and feel excited at the prospect of sharing my ideas. They have been seasoned along the way by a 38 year old marriage to my childhood sweetheart, being a mother of my two (now) adult children and their mates and a grandmother to my boys.

My job as a preschool principal for 25 years has fine tuned my perspective and allowed me to see the world through thousands of eyes. My parents, siblings and their family’s life experiences have provided me with the platform to work towards my doctorate in life.

So, get a large lasagna dish, fill it with eggs and then gently, very gently walk on the eggs… but don’t break them. Welcome to the world of grand parenting.

I love being a grandmother. But, in order to ride this trolley, there are rules that must be followed. Three great rules I try to work by are: Stop, Look and Listen.

Stop: Give no advice.
Look: Observe your grandkids being parented by their parents.
Listen: Support the parents. As grandparents, we are cheerleaders not consultants.

As a grandparent, my goal is to sit on the sidelines and enjoy a new team playing a familiar game with updated equipment and new and improved rules. This team has to find their own way and develop strategies that will result in winning outcomes. Insisting on my game plan could sabotage their future successes and interferes with the team building process, necessary for any championship team.

We know it “takes a village to raise a child,” but it takes the wisdom of the world to be a grandparent.

I look forward to reading your ideas, comments or questions.

Rickie Glickman is a regular contributor of mychildfeels.com. With her degree in education and years of teaching experience, Rickie examines parenting issues through the eyes of a grandparent.

Children’s Literature and Emotional Intelligence

marshajacobson — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 15:36:19 +0000

Although concepts of emotional intelligence are evident in literature as far back as the early 1900’s, Daniel Goleman was the first to popularize this idea in 1995 with his book “Emotional Intelligence“. The belief that improving emotional intelligence can improve overall success in life grabbed the attention of the western world. Today, we find tools for assessing and teaching emotional intelligence flooding work environments, healthcare and even the US army!

While many books have been written about developing emotional intelligence in children, the materials for assessing and teaching emotional intelligence are largely aimed at adults. There is a shortage of hands-on material developed specifically for children, particularly ones that parents might use in the home. This is unfortunate and the time to act is now! The most efficient and potent time to teach emotional intelligence is during childhood. This can be achieved in schools as well as in the most important place of learning, the home.

What are the best tools for teaching emotional intelligence to our children? Obvious important tools are emotionally intelligent parents who make the decision to educate themselves using the literature existing in the marketplace today. There are also, very powerful tools that have been largely ignored as a means of developing emotional intelligence. These are children’s storybooks. With few exceptions, children love to read or be read to and any “teaching” using this medium will always be perceived positively.

Children learn best by example. Whether it’s observing the behaviour of their parents, influential adults or peers, they mimic behaviour. The old adage “do as I say and not as I do” doesn’t fly in this enlightened generation. Stories, if used correctly, can teach by example and can be an extremely potent way to direct children’s learning.

Choosing the correct books is of utmost importance. Books of great value to the development of positive emotional intelligence are those that demonstrate empathy, exploration of feelings (both positive and negative) and in particular stories that show by example a child evolving and growing with the help of a parent or significant caregiver. The connection between the child and caregiver is an extremely important one and using this relationship in stories can be a powerful teaching tool. Adults should be depicted as demonstrating appropriate empathy, accepting the child’s feelings without judgement and helping the child identify their different feelings. They may suggest solutions but only after the child feels completely heard and understood. Teaching a child is always more effective if done at this point.

Parents or adult readers should not be afraid to become active participants during story time. It is a perfect time to explore feelings with their child. Use the story as a platform for further exploration. Discussion at the end of the story can be invaluable. Questions like “What’s another word for that feeling?” or “Have you ever felt like that?” or “What would you do if you felt like that?” can accelerate the acquisition of emotional intelligence.

Sharing your own feelings is another way to get the child to open up. Do this with caution; however, making sure that you are not putting words in the child’s mouth. Just by letting them know that these are your feelings and that everyone has different feelings is often enough.

This is not to say that these kinds of books have to be dry and boring. Far from it! Exciting and interesting stories that capture the child’s imagination and attention will deliver their message with much more punch. Teaching children emotional intelligence can and should be a fun and positive experience.

Teach an adult emotional intelligence and change a life, teach our children and change our world.

Marsha Jacobson is author of "Boom... Boom... Boom...: A Story to Raise Your Child's Emotional Intelligence". She is a regular contributor of mychildfeels.com and you can visit her website at marshajacobson.com .

Perspectives on Perception

jonathandanson — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 13:00:13 +0000

The experience of ourselves, others and the world is not bestowed upon us, but created by us. The objectivity of events is an illusion, an organizing force born out of our creative minds but attributed to our rational brains. We know what we think and therefore think that we know. Personal perception, however, is anything but the impartial and unbiased entity that we love to imagine it is. Though our insight or intellect may inform our perceptions, they are ultimately guided by an endless array of variables such as biology, personality, upbringing and circumstance. They are moulded by the people we meet, the books we read and the types of people we strive to be.

No one, of course, is wholly guided by perception. Our rational minds are constantly evaluating and revising our perceptions in an effort to more closely approximate the “real” – the true meaning of an utterance, gesture or incident. Often, to be sure, our perceptions are dead on, such as when the intent of an ambiguous gesture is accurately discerned (e.g. a friendly hug is recognized for what it is and not misconstrued as romantic). Other times, contrarily, our perceptions lead us astray, obscuring the reality of a situation with a host of ideas that can result in needless negative emotional experiences (or, sometimes, risky positive ones).

These are hardly new concepts, and they are taken into account by the majority of people at least to some extent in their daily lives. We recognize, for instance, that motivations are often hidden and that we must use the information available to us in order to form as accurate a perception as possible. What we often fail to take into account, however, is that perception in interpersonal interaction is a dynamic process that involves a thinking, interpreting and evaluating mind other than our own. In other words, when we attempt to get at the “true” meaning of another individual’s actions, we may forget that that person’s actions are themselves based on interpretation. Thus, where we seek truth we find only more subjective perception.

Taking a fresh perspective, as is often preached through the adage “walking in someone else’s shoes”, is in my opinion one of the most important steps towards empathizing with and understanding others. By recognizing that our ways of interpreting the world are complimented by infinite variations, we can begin to understand true motivation; that is, the motivation behind motivation. The reasons why some react with anger when we would have reacted with kindness, or how someone’s opinion can be so drastically different from our own, for instance, become more available as we realize that the same forces acting upon our perspectives are acting upon others in varying degrees and combinations.

Asking the question “what might I have done in a situation” will provide some important insight into others’ behaviour and help you to understand their motivations. It is equally important, however, to wonder how others’ unique perspectives lay the foundations for the way they feel, think and act. Teaching children (and recognizing ourselves) that others respond to their own perspectives, no matter how off track they appear to be, with the same conviction that we respond to ours, will undoubtedly help to foster social intelligence, self-awareness and empathy.

Jonathan is a Masters student at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto (OISE/UT). His current research focuses on interpersonal variables that affect emotional experience, expression and growth in survivors of trauma.