Mind Like Child

Share Time: Where Have All the Playgrounds Gone?

Posted by Karen O'Hanlon

So what is going on with playgrounds these days? That’s basically all I want to know. Even a lot of the spiffy modern ones don’t seem to offer the kind of possibilities for fun and development that I remember as a child.

When I look back at the community playgrounds that I knew in the '50s and '60s, they weren’t necessarily all that remarkable looking. The swings and climbing bars were made of ugly steel pipe. Seesaws were made using straight wooden boards with indentations cut out near the ends for legs. And the merry-go-rounds were just flat metal disks, mounted to a center post, with a few arched bars on top. Most kids would sit in the middle while a few ran around the outside, pushing to get it spinning fast, before hopping up onto the edges for the best ride of all. For me, the greatest swings were the really tall ones, with their long metal chains and a half-circle strip of rubber that snugged up against my bottom and made me feel securely tucked-in. I could swing so high that I had a clear view of the tops of the trees. It made me feel like I was flying. The tall slides were great, too, although their metal sometimes got too hot in the burning mid-day sun. Even that was okay, though. I learned to test the metal before I got on, or use a piece of cloth to sit on before zooming down.

Why were these simple playground structures so enjoyable? It's not just because they were the only thing available. There was something more to them than that.

At least in part, it was for the same reason that I loved cardboard boxes. The materials were simple, but open with possibility. What the playground didn’t offer visually, my friends and I filled in with imagination. The tall swings became an airplane where my friends and I were the crew. (We pulled those planes out of countless near crashes!) We became actual monkeys on those monkey bars. We hung from them like the branches of high trees, contentedly swinging, perching, and twirling from bar to bar. Sometimes the merry-go-round transformed into a boat out on the ocean, caught in a whirling current. Or maybe it was a spaceship hurtling through the stars, the launchpad for whatever new adventure we could imagine around the playground.

Every piece of playground equipment, just like every cardboard box, offered endless opportunities for imaginative play. Nothing about them needed to be fancy. Yet in today’s world, the kinds of equipment I played on have been labeled far too dangerous for kids. This is a shame, and generally, I think playground safety concerns have been blown out of proportion. Now, I’d be the first to admit that as a kid I got my fair share of bumps, bruises, skinned knees, and splinters along the way. Yet I don’t remember a single broken arm or leg. (I do remember someone falling on the blacktop during a chase game and ending up with a severe sprain. Ironically, no play equipment was necessary for that injury!)

As an adult who became a teacher, I remember pieces of equipment vanishing one by one from the school playgrounds where I worked. The merry-go-round was the first to go. Then the slides disappeared. By then the seesaw was already long gone. The monkey bars lasted the longest, but the modern playground became devastatingly bare. For much of my career, all the kids had to play with during recess were a few balls, a handful of jump ropes, and each other. Without props to bolster their imaginations, kids fell into degraded games filled with competition over limited equipment. Their frustration was compounded by too many chasing games, often leading to pushing and name calling. 

There’s always a certain amount of aggression that arises when you have a group of kids immersed in unstructured play—regardless of the environment—but I think it was less pronounced back when I was a kid. We were more interested in preserving the pretend games we had created, leveraging the equipment that was available, than in bickering with one another. The magic of our imaginations gave all of us something to work towards together.

And when I think about the loss of the old play equipment, it’s more than just the loss of imaginative stimulation that I lament. By taking away play equipment (and often not even replacing it with anything at all), kids are being denied some great developmental and problem solving opportunities.

For instance, why does a seesaw work beautifully sometimes and not at all other times? If two similarly sized kids wanted to ride the seesaw together, you were in business. But what if two kids were not the same size? Then you really had to think. Sometimes the littler kid could scoot more toward the end of their side of the seesaw, or the bigger kid might be able to slide in more to the center. Other times we would invite an extra small child to join the first small child. Then two little ones equalled the weight of one big one. We figured out the balancing problems in order to have more fun. (And again, this was not a source of constant, serious injury.)

Then there’s the merry-go-round, which taught a whole different set of skills. When little kids would negotiate with the older and bigger ones about who should push and who should sit in the middle, play on the merry-go-round became a socially interactive exercise. True, the older kids who pushed got the satisfaction of being in control but they also became responsible for making everyone’s ride more fun. It was an early leadership role, and they learned to feel pretty good about taking care of the smaller children. For the smaller kids, there was modeling involved. They got to see what it meant to be a bigger kid, experiencing both the joy of independence and important roles of responsibility. 

On our playground, my friends and I were just having a ton of fun, not really conscious of the fact that we were also experimenting—learning math, science and social skills in the process. It’s hard to name any piece of modern playground equipment that fosters these same skills. As a teacher, I felt tasked with a whole lot more than just physical safety. We’re failing our kids when we don’t recognize that there’s more to playground time than mere physical movement. I can’t help thinking that we've sacrificed too much in the name of safety, without really recognizing everything we lost.

Related links:

• Can you have seesaw math without riding a real seesaw?
• Can a playground be too safe?

Share Time: Enjoying Your Own Kids Over Summer

Contrary to what some may think, a teacher's summer isn’t all fun and games. There are workshops and trainings, loads of preparation and planning. But in between all that work, it's true that we can often choose how to structure our time, and summer provided a special opportunity for me. Most of the year, I spent a lot my energy looking after other people’s kids. Summer was all for my kids.

We would look at the calendar and plan picnics. Many a week was spent camping, many an afternoon in the library, and of course many hours were spent at the pool for swimming lessons or marco polo. We made play dough and coffee can ice cream, and took walks through the woods gathering interesting twigs, leaves, and rocks. It was even fun to plan the kids' many overnighters with friends, even though once the friends arrived I didn't sit on the carpet with them and play make-believe.

When I did work during the summer, I did what I could to include my kids. One summer, in preparation for my first year of teaching 4th grade, I took an independent learning course through Fresno State University. I was supposed to read the 4th grade California history textbook and solidify my understanding of California history by visiting different historical sights and museums in Sacramento. The timing was lucky. My husband and I decided this was the perfect learning project for our two older kids, one of whom had just finished 4th grade and the other of which was about to begin it. But we also sensed a great opportunity to spend some special time with just them! On a long weekend, our friends graciously took our younger kids, and we packed up the older two for a California history adventure.

After an early morning three-hour drive, we arrived in Sacramento. It was a typically sweltering Central Valley day. After settling into our downtown motel, the four of us ate sandwiches, sipped lemonade, and even took a brief, refreshing swim. Next came Mom’s first assignment—visiting the California State Railroad Museum in Old Sacramento. This was followed by excursions to the Wells Fargo History Museum, the State Indian Museum across town, and Sutter’s Fort. We rode an antique train drawn by a 19th century steam engine and learned how settlers made cloth. I took so many pictures (before the existence of the digital camera!), and together everyone listened to the taped history tour provided by the university.

In the evenings after dinner, we all swam and read. The kids read their own books, and I read my assigned readings. It was busy, educational, and above all, a wonderful time spent with my own children.

I loved teaching, all twenty-five years of it. It’s challenging work, but work that’s so very rewarding. You could even say I grew to love other people’s children. But nothing matched the delight of giving my own kids my full and (nearly) undivided attention. I hope you teachers out there who also happen to be parents are making the most of your summer.

Share Time: Progress on Downs and Changing Times

Posted by Karen O'Hanlon

It was 1957. I was eight years old, and attending my friend Patty’s birthday. I remember the two of us were bobbing for apples when her brother joined us. I had never seen a kid with Down syndrome before. Bo looked and acted very different from other children I knew, and I had a ton of questions for my mom on the way home: Why hadn’t I ever seen Bo before? Why did he look that way?

My mother told me that Bo was so different from other children that he couldn’t go to school.

"Kids like Bo can’t learn,” she said, “so they are just kept at home. They don't usually go out in public.”

That’s how it was when I was a kid – children with obvious disabilities were hidden away from view. Mom didn’t explain that in those days Down children had a short life expectancy (only about 12 years if they were born in 1947), or that they would probably be institutionalized for most of their short lives.

My mom’s tone was matter-of-fact, but something about Down's felt very tragic to me. It was so sad that Bo wouldn’t have friends from school, that he wouldn’t get to do all the things that school and friends and going out provided. No school performances. No hanging out in back yards on summer nights with neighborhood kids, listenining to ghost stories. No trips to the state fair to ride the ferris wheel and the bumper cars. No overnighters at your best friend's house. With each addition to the list, Bo's life seemed more and more sad and limited.

Years and years later, after I had taught for quite a while, I took an administrative job in special education. Part of that job was to visit preschoolers and help get them established in the support programs provided by my school district. This is when I first met Chad and his mother.

Officially I was there to evaluate Chad's adopted older sister. She had special needs and was enrolled in a Head Start program. I thought she might qualify for some district-sponsored speech and occupational therapy services.

But in the course of meeting with mom and evaluating Chad's sister, I got my first introduction to how radically things had changed for Down syndrome kids. No longer were children with Downs hidden away, isolated from learning. In fact, the emphasis had switched to emphasizing early intervention for Down syndrome babies.

Chad was a relatively quiet, not very active ten month old when I met him. He was sitting on a blanket placed on the living room floor. It surprised me that he seemed more interested in me than any of the toys surrounding him. Peering at me through almond-shaped eyes, he watched attentively as mom and I talked. I didn't expect him to be so responsive when I spoke to him, obviously listening and waiting. When I picked him up, his legs and arms had a soft, spongy feel. Mom explained that low muscle tone was pretty typical with Downs. This was why he didn't crawl or walk yet. Any stimulation had to be brought to him, since he couldn't explore on his own.

A pediatrician had most likely made a referral to the local Early Start Program soon after Chad’s birth. Early Start is for 0-3 year-olds and supplies in-home, early intervention services by sending a therapist or teacher to work with a developmentally disabled child. But mom had also done research. She knew that medical advances would allow her son to live a much longer life (60 years for more than 40 percent of those afflicted), and she also knew that specialized early intervention could drastically change the quality of her son’s life. So she was dedicated to procuring the best services she could for her baby.

For me, talking with mom was an eye-opener. Early education for the general ed classroom was my area of expertise, and I was still taking night classes to finish up my special education credential. Still, I was already working in early intervention and doing everything I could to train myself.

Mom told me how the occupational therapist came twice a week to work with Chad and did a variety of activities. I found many of the activities interesting, but the one that most intrigued me were the brushing techniques. Mom demonstrated how she used a brush to sweep across the palms of Chad’s hands and the soles of his feet for 10 minutes, three or four times a day. How come? Because Downs babies frequently have immature nerve endings in certain parts of their bodies. This occurs frequently with their hands and feet, and since all infants rely on tactile information to develop physically and intellectually, it is important that babies have mature nerve endings to process information. Although experimental, the sensation of the brush bristles is thought to aid nerve ending development, leading to better tactile sensory input, which in turn leads to better development of the brain. The therapist recommended “brushing” to improve Chad’s overall development.

As a child, I was struck by the social tragedy of Downs. As an adult, I was amazed at the energy being directed towards making sure people with Downs lived the fullest life possible. How did we go from hiding Downs kids away to providing this kind of specialized early intervention? When I met Bo, the cause of Down syndrome hadn’t even been identified yet. Then, in 1959, a French researcher named Jérôme Lejeune discovered that Downs babies have an extra chromosome that causes the condition. Medical advances became key in treating their heart abnormalities and other physically threatening conditions, thus lengthening the life span of these children.

Attitudes also began to change. President John F. Kennedy, whose sister, Rosemary, was mentally disabled, initiated a series of steps that revolutionized perception about the treatment of mental retardation. In 1963, these culminated with the passage of two pieces of landmark legislation. The first earmarked funding for states to improve mental retardation and prevention programs. The second set aside money for research into the causes of mental retardation. The Civil Rights Movement also played a role, and Special Education services became mandatory in public schools in 1975. In recent years, a lot of criticism has been leveled at the public school system. Some of these criticisms are fair and some are utterly baseless. But everyone seems to ignore how much we've grown, and I think that our increasing attention to early intervention is one of our great successes.

Bit by bit, life has been improving for Down syndrome individuals. I don't know where Bo went in life, or what he did. But I can't help but feel he was unlucky to have been born in the late 1940s. Chad, on the othe hand, was a lot more fortunate to have been born in the 1990s. In fifty years so much has changed. I'm amazed to hope for what the next fifty will bring.

Related links:

• March of Dimes work with Down syndrome
• A list of common physical problems associated with Downs

Share Time: Testing Doesn't Work

Posted by Karen O'Hanlon

Make no mistake. We have a testing addiction, and it's doing more harm than good. The shame is even greater when you realize that we have much better tools, like assessment. In education, assessment is the observation of children in order to determine their level of development, and their mastery of certain skills. Assessment provides invaluable information that teachers can share with parents, and tells teachers about the effectiveness of the curriculums we are using. Compared to assessment, the information derived from testing is shallow at best.

I had a striking introduction to the value of assessment when Galen, my oldest son, was in first grade. I received a notice from his elementary school saying that he had performed below grade level in math on a standardized test that had been given. His low score qualified him for ‘special tutoring’. If I gave my permission, he would be pulled out of his first grade class regularly for one-on-one instruction.

I was confused and unsure. Knowing my son, it didn’t seem like him to struggle in math, and being pulled from class regularly could cause a lot of disruption to his day. Perhaps it might even interfere with his learning other skills.

I went to discuss this notification with his first grade teacher, Mrs. Prather. I was immediately happy that I did, because this is what she said: “I am not concerned about Galen’s math skills. Every question that he completed on the test was correct! He was very meticulous, checking and re-checking every answer to make sure they were right. The thing is, this was a timed test. Because he was so careful, he didn’t finish a lot of the questions in the time provided.”

At that point I had begun studying child development, but it was only after years of training that I realized how Galen fit a typical six-year-old model. Like other children his age, he was process-oriented and not goal-oriented. It didn’t make sense to give him (or any other kid that age) a timed test. He had no concept of completing all the math problems ‘on time’, but he understood being accurate with what he was doing. Mrs. Prather probably observed Galen during test-taking (as well as other times) and the conclusion was obvious to her. As I accumulated more experience and began doing observational assessment as part of my own masters degree, I came to value what I could learn about my students by setting aside time to observe them.

For instance, when I began teaching primary teachers had a certain amount of controlled free-choice built into the school day. We recognized that children solidify all kinds of skills through play, and we wanted to provide that opportunity for the children. These periods had the added bonus of allowing me some time to put on my observation hat and record behaviors I saw among my students.

Take the following example which demonstrates how useful assessment can be. In my kindergarten classroom, there were several areas children could choose to play including a play-house, writing, reading, art, block-building and math. One day, while setting up a pretend meal in the house area, Sarah and Andrew discussed and counted place settings. They used math language like “That’s not enough”, “We need one more”, “That’s too many”, and “How many more?”. As they continued to set the table, they demonstrated one-to-one correspondence by matching one fork, one knife, one spoon, one napkin, and one cup next to each plate.

As a teacher I found these gems of information to be invaluable. I could see that Sarah and Andrew were integrating learned math skills into their play. Their actions and their discussions showed they were beginning to have number sense. If they had one-to-one correspondence to five, I should check to see if they also had one-to-one correspondence to ten. If so, they were ready to begin learning addition with sums as high as five, and then maybe ten. This is just one example of the useful information assessment brought me.

During such observation times, I was able to take a lot of notes about each child’s behavior. I would define categories of skills, and then set a goal to record a certain number of observations in each category for each child. Aside from academics, this kind of observation also let me see which kids were still working at simple social interaction. Then, using the information I gathered, I frequently shared my observations during parent conferences in order to illustrate a child’s strengths and areas of potential growth.

Now, a certain amount of teacher-designed testing can challenge older children to master skills and has its place, but there is no replacement for assessment as a tool for professional teachers. On the other hand, standardized tests fall short in a multitude of ways. For starters, standardized tests (as in Galen’s case) are totally inappropriate for younger kids. They have little to no concept of time, and I taught many young students over the years who thought the important part was filling in the bubbles quickly and neatly. Needless to say, they finished well before the time ran out.

Secondly, if standardized tests are well designed, they still only measure isolated skills and facts. They are artificial and inaccurate for giving parents and teachers real information about a child’s working skillset. I have yet to see the test that measures motivation, curiosity, effort or creative thinking. On the other hand, if poorly designed, standardized tests sort students by comparing them to one another, forcing a small percentage of them into categories of success or failure. The large majority of children tested fall into the middle range of scores, and are consigned to mediocrity. No one should have any doubts that these tests are poor indicators of actual learning: If too many students do well the tests are redesigned to ensure that the same number fail as always failed before, the same number excel, and the same number fall in the middle.

Lastly, timed tests teach students to be test-takers. The kids learn to memorize and regurgitate quick right answers, but such tests do nothing to encourage in-depth thinking. I myself was very good at memorizing and had high standardized test scores in both language and math throughout my young academic career. But guess what? I never understood advanced math concepts until I revisited them as an adult.

I hope that some day giving standardized tests to kindergarteners, first graders, and second graders (as I was required to do) will be permanently abandoned, but I also think that a reliance on standardized testing in any grade is questionable. Maybe people like standardized testing because they think the numbers are clean and simple, but life is messy! Learning can be messy. Understanding how and to what extent children are learning is a complex business. Our obsession with standardized tests isn’t actually helping us with that business. Instead, we should be going below the surface to faithfully assess children’s learning.

I'm glad that Mrs. Prather and I didn’t let the official test results sidetrack us from allowing Galen to pursue detail and accuracy in his work. Today Galen is a computer engineer and entrepreneur, a profession where deliberate and meticulous attention to detail in his work is very important. Is this outcome surprising considering his "early struggles" in math? That depends on which test results you trust. A year after taking the first grade test, Galen got a different standardized test result—one that declared him to be especially gifted. - So much for the reliability of standardized tests!

 

Share Time: Christmas Swag vs. Christmas Memories

Posted by Damon O'Hanlon

It's been a great month here at Mind Like Child. Earlier in November, Karen talked about how to teach gratitude, and on Thanksgiving we both got to chat in our first ever Four Square post. Now the turkey’s been cooked and the fridge is full of leftovers. As we wave goodbye to Thanksgiving, many eyes will be turning toward Christmas. 

Maybe that's because many feel the end of Thanksgiving marks an official start to Christmas (so much so that Thanksgiving has been shuffled around a bit). That feeling must be particularly true for those who celebrate the pseudo-holiday ‘Black Friday’. Stores are packed, and every holiday season we seem to hear news bulletins about people getting stomped, stabbed or shot over this year’s equivalent of a Tickle Me Elmo.

Some would have you believe that the black in ‘Black Friday’ is so named because it’s the first time in the year that many stores get out of the red, probably an example of folk-etymology. Instead the best evidence points to the Philadelphia Police Department originally coining the phrase. Philidelphia’s downtown shopping created so much pedestrian traffic that its officers had to spend twelve-hour shifts away from their families the day after Thanksgiving. They gave the day an appropriately dark nickname, adding to the irony that so many choose to be away from their families on Black Friday. 

We’re impulsive by nature. I get that. We're prone to want things, and recent evidence suggests even more prone to seek things. So are we doomed to glut ourselves on holiday gifts? Racking up holiday debt for ever bigger and better piles of loot?

I admit to remembering many a treasured Christmas gift from my own childhood. But for every stuffed bear with a hat, or awesomely bendy Spiderman action figure, there are a heap of gifts that I just plain don't remember today, and even then had probably forgotten by January. Did that make me an especially rotten or ungrateful child? I doubt it, and here’s why: Getting things, and being surrounded by things, doesn't make us any less impulsive or needy. It actually exacerbates the problem; much the same way that delicious looking food on the table in front of us can actually make us feel more hungry. 

I would argue it is experiences, not things, that give us the most enduring satisfaction. Which has the more lasting impact: The four out of five Christmas gifts that recede into obscurity, and then vanish into the garbage? Or an evening spent out as a family seeing The Nutcracker? Or even (my favorite) watching A Muppet Christmas Carol huddled together on the couch at home?

How does this affect parents headed into the holiday season? I'm not telling anyone not to get their children gifts, if it is reasonably within their means. But no matter your economic circumstances, there are plenty of places in society drawing our attention to how cool, neat, and super-awesome new stuff can be. I am instead saying that each of us should consider if - 1) spending so much time shopping, 2) discussing shopping, or 3) talking about the gifts we bought while shopping - is really consistent with our priorities. It is often said that no amount of gifts will make a Christmas rich. It is not often enough said with enough vehemence that too much attention paid to gifts can actually make one’s Christmas poor.

If you are interested in making the most out of Christmas without making the most out of the pile under your Christmas tree, you might enjoy some of these links. Merry early Christmas, everyone!

• The No New Gifts Holiday Challenge by Zen Habits
• CreativePlay's Spirit of Generosity
• How to Shorten Your Holiday Gift List by Parent Hacks
• Handmade Gifts for Kids by PetitEco Kids

Share Time: Spooky Halloween Stories and Kids

Posted by Karen O'Hanlon

Halloween is a holiday rich with opportunities for vocabulary and language learning. Maybe because children are easily caught up by the magic and mystery of Halloween related images: the costumes, haunted houses, trick-or-treating, the pumpkin carvings. And there is a wide array of Halloween literature available to read to smaller children, literature that abounds with imaginary creatures and the patterned language that captivates young children.

As a teacher, I was often confronted with making choices about what to read to and discuss with the children in my class. Sometimes I heard from a parent who thought that a particular story was too threatening and scary to be read to their child, and, as I taught in a public school, I had to be mindful of these kinds of parental concerns. 

In my early years of parenting and teaching, I often censored or re-designed what I read to children (sometimes on the spot, if I wasn’t given time to fully review something before I read it). Frequently I would water down already depleted fairy and folk tales to make them less scary for kids. The wolf in Red Riding Hood was simply “frightened off” by the Hunter brandishing an axe—before the wolf could do any real harm. This is very different from my own childhood where I was exposed to the original Red Riding Hood story. In this version, the Big Bad Wolf swallows the grandmother and Red Riding Hood whole. Then the Hunter cuts open the wolf’s belly to allow the grandmother and Red Riding Hood to escape. Finally the Hunter fills the wolf’s stomach with stones, which causes the wolf to fall into a well and drown. It was still a happy ending for Red Riding Hood, but far scarier than anything I ever read to my students in the classroom.

The question to consider is whether or not it’s wise for adults to eradicate all that is frightening from children’s books. Over the years, I started to question the wisdom of denying children the opportunity to experience fear in a safe setting where we can discuss their reactions. Parts of life are inevitably scary. If we are so vigilant and over-protective that we constantly shield our kids from even imaginary fear, how will children learn to cope when confronted with very real fear?

I count myself fortunate to have grown up in a more open and free situation than many children get to experience these days. Especially on lazy summer days, I remember playing with other neighborhood children. Our play could go on all day long, moving from one house to another, and we often ate lunch at a neighbor's house because we happened to be there. Sometimes the play was so much fun that we wanted to continue it after dark and the neighborhood parents allowed us to set up a tent, using flashlights for light. And just what were we doing? Often we were telling scary stories to one another. The challenge was always about who could create or recount the scariest story—stories about Bloody Bones, ghouls or the woman who was so intensely frightened that her hair suddenly turned a ghostly white. And, yes, sometimes I had nightmares. I was one of the younger children who participated—perhaps only six or seven. But what is more interesting is that I had a choice. No one forced me to sit in on the late night story telling. I wanted to do it. I relished being frightened by the most recent ghost story.

I think what this really shows is that even if we try to protect children from scary stories, they will probably make up their own. Instead of trying to eliminate anything and everything that could be seen as “scary”, adults can make a conscious decision to help children through their fear by engaging them about it. It’s the difference between shielding and supporting. And in my opinion as a teacher, scary children’s literature can be an aid for discussing such fears in a healthy and helpful way.

For more on preserving the element of fear in children’s books, you can read Lisa Featherstone’s article Are we depriving kids by sanitizing children’s books? And here is a list of Halloween related books for kids—some scary and some merely very imaginative—for different age groups.

Did you read scary books as a child? Would you read your child scary stories now? Tell us in the comments below.