Wednesday, May 15, 2013

Ask Beverley: Biting Toddler

Need help managing this situation: 3 year old biting his 16 month old sibling. It's happening more than once daily when the child is frustrated, and wanting mum's attention when she's doing something else.

Pick up the bitten sibling, comfort her, make sure the wound is seen too, then distract with something while you talk to the one who did the biting: "I know you are feeling frustrated right now because I can't do what you want with you or you need help and I'm busy. It is hard to wait for something you want, I feel like that too sometimes. Biting your sister doesn't help though. Everyone gets upset when someone is bitten. It's important to say sorry to your sister for hurting her."

Maybe focus on positive reinforcement when he does it: "Gentle with other people, gentle touch."

Keep up a constant chatter to both children while you are doing other things. If he is feeling insecure (and thus the need for attention which drives the biting behaviour) talking to him (both children) will remind him that you know he is there, that you love him, are paying (some kind of) attention to him and what is interesting him.

Offer him something that has the same kind of give as skin/body to bite such as a 'chewy tube' when he does it: "If you feel like biting, have a go on this, as biting hurts people." Children of this age learn through their senses. They are more acutely aware of them than we are as adults. It may feel pleasant to bite, something we usually only associate with food. However, adults also bite their fingernails when anxious or bored. 

Does he understand that biting causes his sister pain? How would you gauge his empathy? It is not uncommon for children to take until age six to develop empathy. If you think he has the ability to understand, ask him to remember a time when he got hurt (easier to remember than when he was bitten, if he has been) and say that biting hurts. I used to do that with my kids: I would help them to remember how it felt to be in the same situation but as the copping the pain. Sometimes I'd have to lead them into the memory; just thinking about it wasn't enough, remembering the emotion, how it felt, worked better. This may be more useful for older children.

Remind him often that he can come to you and ask you before you get busy, or before he gets angry or frustrated, perhaps helping him recognise the signs that show that he is getting angry - feeling tense in the stomach, for example.

Jot down a note about what's going on when it happens and see if you can see a pattern...

Be assertive about 'no biting'. If you can don't react angrily. It's not easy, especially when one child is screaming in pain and the other child is ignoring the resultant chaos.

Encourage gentle play and touch with toys, notice and comment when he's playing gentle, more than when he's playing rough. I think we parents all fall into the trap of noticing and commenting more when our children do annoying things and take advantage of when they are being quite and 'good' to get on with the chores, have some time to ourselves, etc.

Further reading:


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Monday, May 06, 2013

Learning Difficulties, or an Opportunity to Learn Brilliantly?

Just wanted to share something my 26 year said to me the other night.

He was a late reader and writer, yet always called himself a writer. He would tell me his stories and I'd write or type them. There weren't many, but I trusted that he was a writer anyway. I don't think he's ever read a novel.

He is a reader and writer now of course. In fact, he's teaching TAFE students while he studies for his Advanced Diploma (IT). He was unschooled and spent his time learning naturally, playing and helping mum and dad do whatever. It was a busy, productive and constructive life. A little bit socially isolated for the most part, but that didn't seem to hinder his social development or socialisation process.

A couple of years ago, after starting TAFE, he revealed that he'd discovered he was dyslexic. I wasn't surprised. I'd borrowed a book about special needs and dyslexia when he was aged nine and did a few 'tests'. He didn't tick the boxes for dyslexia. As a toddler he would have the most amazing tantrums, but I quickly worked out he was frustrated at not being able to communicate his thoughts. He was my third child and I'd learned a thing or two from parenting his siblings. Being attentive and observant and identifying needs had started to become second nature by the time he'd arrived on the scene.

A year ago a homeschooling mum was talking to me about her son and the issues he had both at school and home. This little boy has dyspraxia, more specifically developmental verbal dyspraxia. Little boxes were being ticked in my head as she talked.

Our son's dyslexia becomes apparent when he noticed he couldn't spell when handwriting but had no troubles when typing. He also has troubles when spelling words aloud. He skipped handwriting during childhood and went straight to typing in his early teens. It was only when needed to write notes by hand for exams at TAFE that he re-discovered the problem.

While visiting us the other night he described what happens when he's reading numbers. Throughout childhood he did maths mentally, occasionally using paper as an aide. I asked him to work through a grade 8 (first year high school) maths book when he was aged 14, but only to give him experience with that form of learning should he need or want to go to school. And he'd also taught himself algebra using online resources a few years ago because he needed to know it for a TAFE course. 

Over the past year he has worked out that not only does he have problems with spelling, he also reads numbers incorrectly, for example saying 3 in 459, instead of 4. He knows it is 3, but says 4, not hearing or realising that he's said 4, thinking he's said 3. There is a definite disconnect happening somewhere in his head. Sometimes he reverses numbers too, for example 56, instead of 65, and only realises if he gets the sum wrong or it is pointed out by others.      

As his mum I knew school would destroy him. It would crush his sense of self-esteem, his confidence in his ability to learn, and his understanding of himself as a learner. They would not have been able to meet his individual learning needs. He would have had to conform to their learning schedules, study what they wanted him to learn, in the way they presented it. There would have been no flexibility, no allowances for his differences. And worse than that, they would have destroyed his instinctive understanding of the nature of learning.

At home we had all the time in the world to learn in whatever way worked for him. I knew he was different. I knew it was hard for him. I comforted him as best I could whenever his frustration got the better of him. Life wasn't always fun and games. 

Yesterday his dad proclaimed him a genius. The day before his older sister told friends he'd ace a MENSA test. We're all in awe of what he can do. He's a creative problem solver with a positive 'have a go' attitude.

Sometimes I look at him and think, "Wow. This kid did little else but play for the first twenty years of his life." And I think of all those kids in school and wonder what would happen if they were allowed to play too. Especially the ones that tick the 'learning differences' boxes. What a difference that would make!

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Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Don't Be Shy of Structure Just Because You Are Unschooling

In my online support groups (see below) I often come across comments such as, "I often lean toward unschooling and am really interested in how it works but then find myself feeling the need for structure".

I don't know why people think unschooling means a lack of structure. Perhaps they define structure differently to me, perhaps in the more narrow sense that a school teacher might. I prefer a much wider definition, one that makes sense to me in my life and works for me, rather than boxing me into something I don't want to do, or feel that I have to do to please others...
Structure works for unschooling too. It's just a different kind of structure - more akin to natural routines and learning styles that work for each person in the family and the family as a whole.

For example, we were owner builders. You can't build a house without some kind of order and structure. But we weren't doing it on someone else's timetable or structure - we worked to our own rhythms and to meet our needs. And our structure allowed for spontaneity and creativity - that's the beauty of doing something yourself and not relying on others. Same with our children's education. I had an idea of what I wanted, how I wanted to get there and what resources I wanted to use and a vague idea of when things might happen - but everything was flexible and adaptable, so it could be responsive to whatever came up each day. Goals were achieved and I relied on my structure - it helped to keep my confidence high.

Unschooling happens anyway. Homeschoolers have plenty of unschooling moments in every day. We don't school our children continuously as home educators! Although every moment is a learning moment, we're not on task capitalising on them in a schooly way! When your children are playing, watching telly, kicking a ball around, helping prepare the dinner they are learning, they are unschooling. When they are arguing and fighting they learning - natural learning. Living is learning, naturally!

To become a conscious unschooler rather than a homeschooler means moving further away from the need to coerce our children to do or learn things that don't make sense to them or for which they don't have a need to do or learn right now. It means consciously stepping back and acknowledging the learning taking place as our children simply get on with living. It means enjoying life with them, doing things with them, being a learning partner rather than teacher. It means relaxing and recognising that education isn't something that is done to children but something that simply happens.

See also Organising your Natural Learning Day and The Hidden Structure in Natural Learning.  


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Monday, April 22, 2013

Giving Up Controlling Behaviour

I see examples of controlling behaviour all around me - definitely learning more about my own controlling behaviour as a result. At the heart of controlling behaviour is insecurity and fear. Most of us don't even realise we are behaving in controlling manner. Sure we recognise it when we raise our voices, tense our muscles, experience frustration and anger and start making demands of others, but because we've been trained to see those emotions as negative we often fail to recognise the controlling behaviour we display when we're calm, confident, content, even happy. Controlling behaviour is a habit and like most habits we don't notice we're doing it at all!

An antidote to controlling behaviour is creating TIME for ourselves and others. Pause, reflect on our feelings and motivations. Create little spaces to simply stop, breathe, reflect. We're in such a hurry all the time. Do we need to be? Sometimes it feels like rushing towards old age: we're in such a hurry for our children to grow up, be 'mature', master this or that. Creating little pockets of time throughout our busy days might seem hard but it is isn't, it's just a conscious decision to pause, still our minds, resist the temptation to control the moment and experience fully through our senses what is happening. This tiny pause creates a space. This space makes room for us to be creative. And that's the space in which we solve problems. And it is the space in which we slowly but surely recognise our controlling behaviour and what motivates it and how we can meet our needs in other ways.

You don't have to be a radical unschooler to focus on giving up the habit of controlling behaviour. I've met parents of homeschooled and school children who practice attachment parenting and trust and respect children and regard themselves as learning partners working hard to give up the habit of controlling behaviour. However, it's definitely harder to help our children understand why it is important to guard against developing this habit when they are immersed in a culture that values it so highly. 

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Thursday, April 11, 2013

Don't Be Afraid to Be Wrong

"Don't be afraid to be wrong. You’ll learn a lot if you are."
Lisa Nielsen, The Innovative Educator

I ask myself, why am I afraid of being 'wrong' and the answer is usually I am worried about what other people may think of me. I forget that 'may' means I'm making assumptions. So I ask them, regularly, not only for reassurance but because I am interested in their thoughts and opinions, and more importantly, their feedback. And because most of my assumptions turn out to be fictions, run away figments of my imagination.

Understanding what motivates me to hesitate in situations like this is liberating. It's like opening a door to endless possibilities. Mistakes are learning opportunities.

It wasn't easy to learn how to do this, that's for sure, and it's a way of thinking I need to continue to be mindful about, especially when I'm tired or stressed. First of all I have to let go of the instant shame I was trained to feel, overcome the deluge of negative talk that threatens to swamp me, another legacy of my childhood education and training. And then I have to embrace what that negative self-talk calls 'error' or 'mess' or 'disaster' as a platform on which great things, new discoveries, awesome possibilities might develop...

Challenging the meaning of words and how we use them has helped me make this shift. Long ago I started to ditch the word 'wrong'. I tend to choose 'inaccurate', or 'inappropriate' or simply say, 'it doesn't work', or carefully select words which say I what I mean. But what works best is if I look past the 'wrong' into the opportunity... I then focus on solutions and what will work, what I want or need.




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