Gently into Sleep: A Bedtime Ritual

"Listen up, everyone!" the excited mom cried out as she rushed into our evening workshop. "For the first time in two and a half years, Thomas went to sleep without sobbing!" She was exultant! Just the week before, the class of young parents cried out, in unison, for help.

"Bedtime should be the sweetest part of the day," they lamented. "But it dissolves into tears and tantrums and angry words. It's exhausting!" So we stapled together the pages of a simple, step-by-step bedtime book. That night, Thomas went to sleep without sobbing. Eventually, all gussied up professionally with pocket pages and charming, collage-cut illustrations, the little book became Gently into Sleep: A Bedtime Ritual.

Bedtime begins in the morning. If a child has your focused attention only at bedtime, he will do all he can to prolong your closeness. But a child who is comforted and cuddled during the day is more likely to sleep well at night.

Then, because you are the authority in your home, your child needs you to set the beginning and the ending of bedtime. But all the choices in between are his. Going to sleep becomes his responsibility. Wait! A contradiction? No. Good parenting! When you give a child ownership of a decision, you open the door to his cooperation. I've rarely known a child to say "No!" to a choice he has made. A little guy who sequences the steps of his own bedtime ritual will follow it. Happily. Right into bed. And gently into sleep.

Thomas and his missionary mom took his bedtime book with them to Germany. No matter how strange the sounds of the new language around him, Thomas knew the sounds of these words by heart: "Sleep well. Sweet dreams." And he did.

A Colorful Thought:
A bedtime ritual warmly colored with love is the security blanket of childhood.

Moments of Learning

Many years ago, my artsy friend Val taught me an extraordinary lesson about childhood.

I was leading young moms in a discussion in Val's charming (and child-proofed) family room. Our topic was how a child's confidence, or lack of it, develops between the ages of one and two years. Surprising as it sounds, that is the major developmental task of a one-year-old. A little one's confidence is either built up by loving approval of her impulsive moments of learning, or torn down by endless no-nos and corrections. It is confidence to explore with all her senses that brings explosive new learning into a child's brain.

Val nodded. She stood and reached for a lovely "objet d'art" looking down on us from a shelf above her head. Val placed the ballerina, dressed in gorgeous hues of gold, on her coffee table. Then she called her two toddlers to come and touch! The children's fingers wandered like shy sand crabs over the delicate dancer while Val explained the words "smooth" and "glassy" and "fragile." Satisfied, the girls watched Val return the treasure to a waiting shelf.

"One day, when my children's hands and feet are steadier, I'll put the dancer on the coffee table to stay," Val explained. "The girls will know a friend is joining their play and they'll watch over her. But for now, I'm teaching them to notice and respect beautiful things, like my artist mother taught me. I'm confident (she smiled at her use of the word) that, like me, the children's love of beauty will bring joy to their lives."

In that moment, I was the learner. Val taught me, just as you will teach your children. Don't wait for elusive hours of time that never come. It is in moments – in clumsy, curious moments of discovery – that children gain confidence to be a learner. A vital part of that learning is to "notice and respect beautiful things." Perhaps that is what God intended when He colored His majestic world.

A Colorful Thought: Color your child's confidence with the crayon of approval that lasts a lifetime.

Mae Mobley's Remembering

In The Help by Kathryn Stockett, a wise and loving black maid devotes herself to the seventeenth white child she is raising. Mae Mobley is her Baby Girl! Dismayed that the child's mother demeans her, Aibileen speaks in whispers to Mae Mobley's heart. Her whispers fill the child with good thoughts she can believe about herself, thoughts no one can steal away. When Aibileen is forced to walk out of the child's life, she tells it this way.

"Law, I feel like my heart's gone bleed to death. 'I got to go, baby, you my last little girl,' I say. It just ain't by my own choosing. 'Baby Girl,' I say, 'I need you to remember everything I told you ... about what you are.'

"I look deep into her rich brown eyes and ... I swear I see, down inside, the woman she gone grow up to be. She is tall and straight. She is proud. And she is remembering the words I put in her head. Remembering as a full-grown woman.

"And then she say it, just like I need her to. 'You is kind,' she say to herself, 'you is smart. You is important.'

"Oh Law, I feel like she done just given me a gift. I cry and say, 'Thank you, Baby Girl.'"

The whispered messages, colored with an indelible crayon, will keep playing on the tape recorder of Mae Mobley's remembering.

In the same way, whatever messages you give your child – with your tone of voice, or body language, or words – record on her internal tape recorder. The erase button on a child's tape recorder is elusive and erratic. The messages of childhood keep playing the whole of a child's life, like unforgettable melodies that linger in our heads.

And your messages? Catch her doing good. Notice when she's kind. Praise her for being helpful. Empathize with her feelings. Draw attention to her very trying to get something right. Smother her with approval.

She believes you! Your messages become the messages in her head that guide her, like an immense magnetic pull, to become the person you tell her she is.

Oh, how I hope they leave the scene of Mae Mobley's remembering, "You is kind. You is important." in the movie adaptation. For all of us to remember.

A Colorful Thought: Color the memory tape of your child's early years with a brilliant, positive crayon that never fades.

"Hey, Mizz Nelsen!"

I trumped the given curriculum for the entire school year with the theme of curiosity. DeShawn, my least-involved kindergartner, hovered for weeks on the sidelines of learning. I don't know what triggered the moment he announced in morning news, "Hey, Mizz Nelsen! I'm curious 'bout what we're gonna be curious 'bout today." Then DeShawn cracked up with pride over his own play on words. And I cracked up with him, delighted that we jumpstarted a child's mind with curiosity.

Crawling babies, toddlers, and preschoolers are the epitome of curious learners. You, too, catapult a little one's mind into learning when you 1) childproof your home and 2) never slap her hands.

Maria Montessori, a front runner in early childhood education, believed a child's hands are her tools for exploring. Maria was adamant that slapping or restraining a child's hands smothers the very curiosity that fuels her fire for learning. Imagine what would happen to the ecstatic face of the little one in the above picture if you slapped her hands for touching the diapers, the very things her hands insist she touch.

Oh, yes, you may have to remove your little one from tempting electronic controls, which draw her like a magnet. But repeated removals and redirection are far better than repeated slaps. Tell her, "You may not play with the television, but you may play with these toys." Redirection, substitution, and diversion are the effective tools of discipline for a small child driven to explore.

One well-meaning father told me, "I'll teach my child to mind on the spot. When I say 'don't touch,' I mean don't even think about it!" It is far easier to put away the lovely pottery you bought in Maine than to exhaust yourself protecting the very things your child's hands want to touch.

Some morning announce, "Hey, little one. I'm curious 'bout what we're gonna be curious 'bout today." Maybe you'll crack up together! (Look for my next blog on mere minutes of learning.)

A Colorful Thought: Color your child's curiosity with the warm reds and yellows of encouragement.

The Curiosity Collection

"The wind blew it up," my 4-year-old wailed, pointing to his nose. "And I can't get it out!" Tipping the child's smudgy face upwards, I could see nothing. He'll go to college with a stone up his nose, I thought, rushing him to the car.

The kindly pediatrician brought out the truth. "I just wanted to see if it would fit," the child confessed, eyes wide-open, begging.

The shiny instrument bore an unnerving resemblance to my husband's needle-nose pliers. But I exhaled when the doctor retrieved the small stone. "Aha, one for my curiosity collection," he exclaimed, reaching for a round, red-satin-lined container. The doctor dropped the pebble amongst the popcorn kernels, beans, broken twigs, cheerios, pencil eraser, button battery (scary) and baby tooth!

"It's good you brought him in right away. If soft tissue swells around an object, that means surgery," the pediatrician explained. And to my son, whose apprehension had disappeared into the strange collection, he said, "Time to go home."

What? Off-the hook for deliberate misbehavior? Or what is curiosity? Every child is programmed to learn with his five senses from birth. His developmental clock insists that he touch and drop, push and pull, build and knock over, and find out what fits into tiny spaces!

Curiosity drives sensory learning. Not television. Not computers or flashy tech stuff. Not "learning" toys or expensive reading programs. A child's developmental growth is fueled nonstop by play. Play is the birthplace of hands-on learning.

Your child can create his own curiosity collection. Help him search for colors and smells; patterns (feathers, moth wings); textures (tree bark, pine cones, mud); and the mysteries of water. Will it fit? Spill over? Research scientists at play.

A Colorful Thought: "Satisfaction of one's curiosity is one of the greatest sources of satisfaction." Linus Pauling, Ph.D., recipient of two Nobel Prizes.

The Road Well Traveled

It was seven in the morning. I shifted into fire-drill mode. I loved the early morning calls in my brief stint as a substitute teacher. They meant income. But I also dreaded them because of the frenzy that followed. This morning, Buchanan School needed a kindergarten teacher: my favorite grade, a nearby school, and a one-hour countdown. "I can do it," I answered cheerily.

First, the children. "Hurry, please. Mommy has to teach today!" They knew that no-nonsense voice. They dressed as they came to the table. I rushed them through the breakfast-cereal routine while I stuffed bag lunches. My three boys, loving the drama, grabbed their backpacks and took off at a clip for the bus stop. I called the dear grandma down the street to come for my youngest child, bewildered by my flurry of guilt kisses.

Next, the animals. I fed the dogs, cats, guinea pigs, parakeet, and mice in stopwatch time, promising them a treat when I got home. I left the snakes for later.

Last up, me. I had the two-minute routine down pat. I can make it! I pushed open the garage door, and stood there. Paralyzed. How could I forget? We were a one-car family. It was my husband's week to drive car pool!

The school never called again.

Why that story? We all love story; we all learn from story. However, my view of story is through the rear-view mirror, remembering what I learned from parenting a quiver of children on the road you now travel.

The rear-view mirror reminds me of what we have in common on this road well-traveled. Stress. Children. A clock-driven world. Work. Guilt kisses. Rushing little ones. Pushing ourselves. I'm eager to share my insights with you, to give you confidence on your journey. That's what I do best.

A Colorful Thought: Good parenting is like a promising sunrise on the road we travel.

The Art of Roughhousing

The topic is in the news today, but we've known it all along. Good old-fashioned roughhousing is often what fathers do best – tossing a child into the air, playful wrestling, tumbling together on the floor. Roughhousing is a welcome release of both love and stress for work-weary dads. For children, it is over-the-top, laugh-out-loud fun.

Our children are natives in a technology world, which does little to get their bodies moving. Their outside play is often limited in the name of safety. That makes the body-building physical involvement of father play all the more important.

In The Art of Roughhousing, authors DeBenedet and Cohen suggest pillows on the floor, guidelines for safety (huge!), and limits on "going too far." Horseplay quickly goes over the line. Children cannot instinctively gauge their own power, or play by the rules. My word of caution: what begins as fun, like tickling, often leads to tears. Sometimes not even dads sense when to stop. And when a child transfers tickling into his own play, he too pushes the limits. Maybe with the hilarity of tossing, tumbling, and wrestling, you don't need tickling. Remember, if a father – the ringmaster of roughhousing – winds a child up, he must be sure to wind him down!

A father's rough-and-tumble play is an ideal complement to a mother's nurturing. Know also that, intertwined in the layers of play, a child:

• Gains higher intellectual, motor, and social growth as early as his first year
• Acquires gross motor skills, which precede fine motor skills
• Learns to give and take, build self-control, and manage himself within boundaries

And you thought you were just having fun!

A Colorful Thought:

Your playful presence colors your child like the sun's radiant light over water.