Rusty Keeler, author of Adventures in Risky Play, is the guest author of this blog post. I love this new book and invited him to submit an excerpt from it. Here it is! ____________________ There is a Zen saying “the world is upside down.” It means the way we look at the world is actually the…
There’s really nothing I can add to all of the meaningful conversations currently taking place in our country and around the world. Like so many others, I am hurting. When Barack Obama was elected president, I celebrated the idea that racism was, if not a thing of the past, then at least significantly waning in…
Boredom is something today’s children have rarely experienced – because they’ve never had the chance to get bored. Today’s children have had their lives filled with “schooling” and endless activities, all due to the mistaken notion that if they don’t excel in early childhood, they will never reach their potential. That their “resumés” will look…
Here are some of the tasks teachers have told me today’s children are unable to do: Poke straws into juice boxes Zip up backpacks Put a foot in a shoe Open water bottles Pull up their pants or skirts Put on their own jackets Granted, some of the difficulties with these tasks arise from the…
Buzzwords and goals come and go in every field. In the early childhood field, self-regulation has been both a buzzword and a very big goal for children for a couple of years now. I suspect that’s because, as I’ve written previously, challenging behaviors are on the rise in early childhood settings. If only every child…
How many of these scenarios are familiar to you? A child creates something, and a teacher or parent rattles off a quick “Good job!” without really acknowledging the child’s work. The children in a family have so many activities, many of which are scheduled during the dinner hour, that the family rarely, if ever, sits…
This morning as I listened to yet another report about the university cheating scandal, I wondered for possibly the thousandth time when parenting changed. Sure, it’s likely there have always been parents who’ve paved the way for their children, despite the legal or moral implications involved. But in one way or another, it seems this…