Are Boys Overscheduled?

You've heard it before: Kids today are too busy. Between school and sports, church and community, there's simply no time to just be.

Writer Laura Vanderkam disagrees. The author of the forthcoming book 168 Hours passionately argued her point in a recent Wall Street Journal article, The Myth of the Overscheduled Child.

Vanderkam argues that everyone has the same 168 hours a week. (7 X 24) By her calucations, a boy who sleeps 9 hours a night and attends school 30 hours per week still has 73 hours left. And according to data from the University of Maryland, homework usually only takes up another 5 hours. Sports, 4 hours. Other organizations, less than 1.5 hours.

Obviously, those are averages. Some boys do more; some do less. The point, Vanderkam says, is that our children are not grossly overscheduled.

I'm not entirely convinced of her point -- and I was less convinced when I when read that she thinks moms have plenty of time in a day as well.

But one sentence made me think. Talking about the 40% of American children who are uninvolved in extracurricular activities, Vanderkam writes:

"Unfortunately, these young people tend not to fill their free time with the high-quality unstructured play that pundits praise. Many are at home, by themselves, watching TV..."

What do you think? Do you think boys are overscheduled? Or do you think they need more outside stimulation? Are too many of our boys frittering away their time?

Mars and Venus

Remember the book by Dr. John Gray, Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus? The idea was that men and women have different emotional needs and different ways of communicating (and expressing) those needs -- and that by learning to communicate with our partners in ways they can understand, we can improve our relationships.

As a mom of four boys, I've thought about that book a lot. There are some things I just don't get about boys, like their constant need to fight or their biologically-based inability to hold a stick without swinging it. I understand some of those things now, thanks to to experience, reflection and a slew of books about boys, but I don't get it. I will never intuitively think like a boy and I've wondered at time whether or not my inability to see the world through male eyes might inhibit my relationship with my sons.

I've often thought there should be a Mars/Venus book aimed at parents of opposite sex children.

Dr. Robyn Silverman, a child and adolescent development specialist I've had the pleasure of interviewing in the past, recently penned a wonderful article on just that topic, Daddy's Little Girl and Mommy's Little Boy: Bonding with your Opposite Gendered Child. Among her suggestions:

• Take the cultural labels with a grain of salt. Best line: "Don't let anyone taint your relationship with your opposite gendered child."
• Open up communication. Best line: "Just because you might not understand some of the things your opposite-sex child is interested in doesn’t mean you can’t. "
• Treat your child with kindness and expect the same back. Best line: "Character does not need to be sacrificed in lieu of self expression."

For more tips, check out her full article. Then drop me a line and let me know how you bond with your son.

Snapshot Sunday: Ingenuity

A plastic slide, a kayak paddle and a lake. What more do you need?

Tool Safety

After my First Day of School post the other day, Christine at Origami Mommy asked if I had any tips for teaching boys how to use hacksaws safely. She brings up a very good point.

Normally, young children aren't given tools to use. Plastic tools? Maybe. A real life, straight-from-Home-Depot hacksaw? Not so such.

But when Daddy stopped to pick up the hacksaws, his thinking was right on. He knows our boys, and he knew that as soon as the boys saw the tubes, their creativity would kick in. He knew that sooner or later, the boys would ask, "Can we use the knives?"

He also knows that one of the first rules of tool safety is to Use the right tool for the job. Kitchen knives are designed to chop celery and slice bread, not hack through cardboard tubes.

So he picked up the saws, which are lightweight and feature very finely-toothed blades. If handled properly, the blades will cut, but they're not so sharp as to deliver a cut at just a touch. The saws also have study handles which keep little hands far away from the cutting field.

I also implemented the second rule of tool safety: Supervise children using tools. Young children need to be taught how to use tools safely (which brings up rule #3: Model proper tool use.). Then, they need direct supervision as they learn to handle the tool on their own. It's not enough to toss your son and hammer and say, "Here, use this." First, you must show him how to hold the hammer and, more importantly, how to hold the nail. Then you watch and guide and tweak as needed. Only when you feel confident in his abilities do you step away -- and even then, it's best to remain in reach.

We also talked about rule #4: Store and carry tools safely. My kids know that screwdrivers must be carried point down, and we talk constantly about the need to put tools away after the project is completed. I'll be honest, though: My boys aren't so good at this rule. They left the hacksaws laying on the floor ("But Mom, I was going to use that again! I swear!") and their three-year-old brother picked one up -- and dismantled the saw before I knew what happened. An engineering project for him, but a slightly dangerous one he had no business undertaking.

For more information about kids and tools safety, check out this article from This Old House.

Earlier is NOT Better

The Boston Globe ran a great article the other day, detailing the ways earlier formal academic instruction is hurting our children. From the article:

"There is a growing disconnect between what the research says is best for children -- a classroom free of pressure -- and what’s actually going on in schools."

This is a problem, I'm far as I'm concerned. We know, through years and years of research and anecdotal experience, how children learn best. Young children learn through play and experimentation, and boys in particular need movement and hands-on activities. Yet our schools don't reflect that reality. No wonder so many boys are struggling!

The best part of the article is that it includes voices of experienced and retired teachers. Check this out:

"Roz Brezenoff taught kindergarten in the Boston Public Schools for 36 years, retiring five years ago. 'I have heard stories of kids having what they call psychotic breakdowns in kindergarten, kids who are distressed because they are ‘kindergarten failures’ because they can’t read and they can’t write,' she says."

Is this how we want to start children off? Stressed out, anxious and labeled? Seems to me that getting children excited about learning by building on their natural curiousity would be a better way to go.

The problem is, no one knows what natural development looks like anymore. American children are hurried from the womb: rushed out via C-section or induction before their time, placed in daycare by six weeks and in academically-styled preschools by age 3.

Few people know the wonder of watching a child pick up a pen or pencil and trace letters from the cover of a book, just because -- because few children have the opportunity to come to letters and writing on their own. Far more children are taught to trace letters in a book at a predetermined time.

And that is why I believe homeschoolers have a lot to say about education. We may not have all the answers -- no one does -- but homeschoolers are some of the last hold-outs against our earlier-is-better culture. Many homeschoolers have consciously chosen to slow down, and many of us can attest to the value of waiting.

Not that I think the Department of Education is going to be knocking on our doors anytime soon, asking for our collective wisdom. Most homeschoolers, in fact, would prefer they don't. Savvy to the current political situation, most of us know that our best bet for continued freedom is to meet the letter of the law but avoid any unnecessary government interaction.

Maybe, just maybe, that's the answer. Maybe the government has no business in education. From the article again:

"Early childhood experts have been publishing books, releasing reports, and testifying before Congress, with little change in public policy. Why isn’t anyone listening? '“It’s not the educators, it’s the politicians,' says Russell of the Boston schools. 'The schools don’t make the decisions. The politicians are making the decisions to meet political needs.'"

What do you think? Is earlier academic instruction a good thing, or a bad thing? Should government be invovled in education? How would you reform our school system to make it more kid-friendly?

This is Courage

Courage is a big theme in a boy's life. So is purpose. In that spirit, I offer you this video. Watch it alone, then watch it with your boys. Then tell me what you think.

The First Day of School

Today, kids all around town woke to alarm clocks and backpacks. Mine awoke to a pile of cardboard tubes and hacksaws.

While other kids crammed into desks on a beautiful, perfect 73 degree day, mine were sawing tubes in two. While other kids rose and sat to the sound of a bell, mine created contraptions of their own imagination. While other kids sat through History and Reading, mine learned about the Battle of Fallujah and listened to Huck Finn -- and spent the afternoon with great aunts and uncles who lived through the Depression and World War II.

We're a homeschooling family and today, I was glad.

Dozens of research studies have revealed a multitude of differences in the ways boys and girls learn. For the most part, boys are more active, hands-on learners than girls. Boys learn best when they see how a lesson directly applies to life and boys, biologically, require movement to absorb information.

Cut back to the tubes.

The tubes (and saws) were their Dad's idea. His office was clearing some space, so he loaded his car with the carboard tubes (think Christmas wrapping paper tubes, but much larger and more sturdy) and stopped by Home Depot to buy hacksaws and duct tape. Then he deposited the supplies on the toyroom for the boys to discover when they woke up.

Their creativity immediately took over -- and apparently, the focal points for creativity and bickering are located in the same lobe of the brain, because while my boys were actively engaged, the house was almost peaceful. I say almost because, well, hacksaws sawing through cardboard are not exactly peaceful.

Today, I saw boys learning in a way that suits boys. They were moving. They were using tools. They were creating structures that had meaning in their lives. Boy #1 is working hard to make a fort. Boy #2 has half a robot completed. Boy #3 was inspired by the tubes to finally build and paint the bench he'd wanted to make. (Not exactly a typical first-day-of-school assignment for a first grader).

They kept moving even while learning in a more traditional sense, while watching the Fallujah documentary and listening to Huck Finn. They might have looked like they weren't learning -- after all, there was cardboard everywhere and they continued to saw -- but I guarantee, they were learning.

At one point, Boy #1 walked through the toyroom and saw Boy #4 intently sawing a tube. "This doesn't happen in most houses," he said.

Nope, I agreed. I wish, though, that it did. I'm willing to bet that most boys would pick hacksaws and tubes over alarm clocks and backpacks anyday.