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You are here: Home / 2011 / Archives for February 2011

Archives for February 2011

Book Review: Simplicity Parenting

February 28, 2011 by sue campbell

The day we got back from the beach, Nora went to visit the neighbor and Ben and I entered her bedroom with a few large trash bags.  In the bags went markers without caps, plastic fake food, various bits of string, broken toys, annoying toys, perfectly good toys, dried up play-dough and even some books.

We threw the bag of decent toys in the trunk of the car, which Ben drove straight to the nearest Salvation Army donation station.  Meanwhile, I made Nora’s bed, dragged another half dozen large toys downstairs into storage, and set up a kid sized table and chair in her bedroom.  All play clothes went in a bin on the shelf, musical instruments in another bin.  A large wicker basket holds some open-ended, mostly wooden toys and some stuffed animals.  The top of her dresser displays rocks, pinecones, chestnuts and seashells she’s collected: her “nature table.”

When she came home, I showed her to her room.

“We cleaned your room for you!”

She stood in the middle of the room and spun a slow circle in wonder.  I held my breath.

“I love it!  I always want it like this!”  she said.  She then commenced to play alone in her room with legos she hadn’t touched in months — because there was room on the floor to do it.

A bit later, I gave her some rocks she’d collected at the beach and a glass milk bottle.  She sat at her table and carefully, tidily, sorted her rocks.  Those that fit in the bottle went to her nature table, the rest went outside.

She soon fell fast asleep in her bed.

It’s been several days and not once has she asked for any of the toys we discarded.  Each night, we pick up all her toys and put them in their place.

I’ve read a book, you see.  It’s called Simplicity Parenting:Using the Extraordinary Power of Less to Raise Calmer, Happier, and More Secure Kids by Kim John Payne.  This books asserts that tsunami of modern culture that assaults our children is stealing their childhood.  Children have too much, too soon.  They are assaulted with every kind of screen, and every kind of commercial and nearly buried in a deluge of toys. 

It’s no coincidence that as the pace of modern life has sped up, our children are diagnosed with more and more attention and compulsion disorders.  Payne, a therapist, says that he in all his years of practice, has never met a “disobedient” child, only “disoriented” children.  He has found that by simplfying a child’s home life, behavior problems — hyper-activity, explosive responses, blurting at inappropriate times and controlling behaviors such as picky-eating — melt away.  Restoring balance also helps their specific potential blossom.  He’s seen kids go from diagnosable, to quirky, to their own special genius.

Payne advocates “four pathways” to simplifying: declutter, create a rhythm in your home, stop the over-scheduling of our kids and filter out the adult world (this includes screen time).

Regular readers of this blog know that we don’t have a television in our house.  We follow the same routine nearly every day and always eat dinner together. We are already on the “simple” end of the spectrum compared with most American families.  But, there is always room for improvement. 

Lately, I’ve been noticing that my penchant for listening to NPR is causing disturbance in our household.  The awful news from places like Afghanistan and Tucson are repeated every half hour.  During the news coverage of the Arizona shootings, I became depressed and upset over the news — and worse — the coverage was beginning to be absorbed by Nora.  At one point, she looked up from her play and said, “They said ‘Arizona!'”  She was pleased she recognized the name of a place where her dear Nana Sandi happened to be, but I was disturbed.  How long until she deciphered what the story was really saying?

And, of course, clutter has been an issue at our house for sometime. Now that Nora’s room is done, it’s on the the closets.

You know how once you become counscious of something, you suddenly see and hear about it everywhere?  Well, I heard of the book after my mother-in-law mentioned it, then, while researching an article I was writing on bullying, I found the work of Kim John Payne.  Then, at a parent council meeting, I found out that Payne would be in Portland to deliver a lecture and a workshop on Simplicity Parenting.  I’d be a fool not to notice what was suddenly all around me.  I registered Ben and I for the lecture and workshop, with Ben’s enthusiatic blessing.  He couldn’t wait to prove how right he’s been about clutter all these years.  And right he was. 

Payne is a gifted and engaging presenter.  He had a rapt audience for his lecture at a local Unitarian Church.  

And he finally gave me the counter argument to people who tell me that I’m depriving Nora by not having a television.  The fact is that screens are everywhere, and they overwhelm the human brain —  they de-volve us. 

Payne described a lecture he attended where a dozen or so images of brains were shown.  On one end of the spectrum, the brain was lit up in all areas, a beautiful rainbow of activity.  At the other end, only the emotional center of the brain was lit active.  The middle images were in between.  These were primate brains, from the most intelligent ape to the least, reacting to the sound of a thump!.  The lit-up brains were thinking, “what’s that, where is it, can I eat it? Is everbody okay? Can I play with it?”  The lesser apes thought only of “fight or flight.” 

Another set of brain images was shown. The images were nearly identical to the first set.  But these brains were of children reacting to the same stimulus.  The most active brain belonged to a child who had zero hours of screen time per week.  The brain on the other end — showing only a stress response to stimulus — was a child with 48 hours of screen time per week.

The average American child gets over 7 hours of screen time a day.  Does that seem rational?  Does that seem healthy?  Absolutely not.  It’s up to parents to put an end to this madness and give our kids their childhood back.  By keeping TV out of our home, we are creating a sanctuary, a place for Nora’s brain to get the respite it so dearly needs. 

There are plenty of places and so much time to come for screens.  She doesn’t need them at home.

If you’re feeling the chaos of the pace of modern life, I urge you to check out the Simplicity Parenting website and check out this book. 

The beauty of this movement is you are able to create more harmony in your home without having to do anything special.  In fact, it’s about not doing stuff.  Fewer screens, fewer lessons. More time for children to create their own worlds, instead of having ready made ones thrust upon them. 

You will indeed be surprised at the power of less.

Filed Under: Book Review, Development Tagged With: Child Development, Kim John Payne, screen time, Simplicity Parenting

Practice Makes Perfect

February 25, 2011 by sue campbell

One summer when I was about eleven, I spent hours trying to teach myself to gleek.  You remember gleeking?  Pushing your tongue around the bottom of your mouth in such a way as to make a stream of spit jump out?  I’m pretty sure it’s an anatomical impossibility for me.  But believe me, I tried.

Nora has taught herself to snap her fingers.  Really.  Not quite four, the determined little thing has been feverishly rubbing her middle finger against her thumb for days.  And she really can snap.  As loud as I can.  She now wanders about, snapping as she goes.

This little feat made me realize: she’s at the brink of kid-dom.  No longer a baby or a toddler.  She’s mastered, walking, talking, running. She wants to jump rope and snap. 

She just walked up to me and said, “I can whistle!” and then squealed in a high pitched voice, “Eeeeeee!”

She needs a bit more practice on this one.

I wonder if she could teach me how to gleek, in a few years?

Filed Under: Development Tagged With: gleeking, snapping, whistling

What Day is This?

February 24, 2011 by sue campbell

 I’ve been at the beach for 95 hours.  Amazing weather for February in Oregon.  We even saw the sun several days in a row. 

Filed Under: Family Outings

Cowpoke Gender Confusion

February 17, 2011 by sue campbell

Filed Under: Anecdotes Tagged With: she's singing into a banana

Using Technology for Good

February 16, 2011 by sue campbell

“Mommy, do you have your phone with you?” Nora asked from her car seat.

“Yes, why?”

“Can you play the sweet little bee song for me?”

“Sure sweetie.”

Filed Under: Cultural Education Tagged With: All I Want is You, Barry Louis Polisar, Juno Soundtrack, Nora likes to play this song on a loop

Hearts Aplenty

February 14, 2011 by sue campbell

Hearts made from copper, leather, braised steel, set screws welded together, wood, railroad track, slate, rubber coated lead, steel with brass inlay, and brass with a second heart nested inside, to symbolize Nora in my belly.

Our first Valentine’s Day together, our relationship was only a few weeks old, so we both agreed not to make a big deal out of it. (This was 1998.  Good Lord.)

I went out to my car that day and found a small chocolate heart pinned under my wind shield wiper.  I thought it incredibly romantic.

Since 2000, Ben makes me a heart for Valentine’s Day.  He doesn’t just cut something out of red construction paper, he bends metal and melts steel.  He chips away at stone, pours molten lead into a mold.

Every Valentine’s Day, I remember that I’m the luckiest girl around.

Here’s hoping that someday I’ll be staring at a shelf with sixty or seventy hearts on it.

Happy Valentine’s Day.

Filed Under: Big Themes Tagged With: hearts, homemade, valentine's day

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What kind of blog is this?

This is a blog for PARENTS. True, the writer, Sue Campbell, writes books for kids. But this blog is for grown-ups. It has some swearing and would be super boring for kids. Except for the swearing.

The PODCAST is for KIDS and PARENTS. In fact, my twelve-year-old daughter is my co-host.

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MORE ABOUT SUE: She makes an ACTUAL LIVING from writing words and marketing books and lives with her husband, two daughters, six chickens and one messy house rabbit in Portland, Oregon. And yes, Portland IS that weird. She really couldn't be any luckier.

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