Tag Archives: better grades

What About Those Pillow ‘Fights?’

70615_PillowFight_J1J0983We’ve had several parents look at us at least quizzically, if not askance, when we mention our annual Pillow Play Day. Aren’t we promoting violence? Aren’t we sanctioning rowdy behavior?

We’re not trying to train the next generation of Wrestlemania stars! And we’re not an in-your-face, down-with-the- establishment group, either. We are out to bring parents and children together in an environment where it’s OK to pile onto each other, OK to “get” the grownups playfully, and OK to bob up and down in a small roiling sea of big and little people, seeing who is fun to play with, and how good it is just to play without a plan.

The world is a pretty structured place for children, starting in day care or preschool. Parents don’t have much time for horsing around at home, for time on the floor, giving horsy rides or playing “I’m going to catch you!” as many times as children love to play that game. And out in public, most parents are always on guard, always feeling the need to keep their children in line, lest others judge them harshly.

So we set aside a couple of hours a year when it’s OK to romp, OK to throw little pillows. The grownups all know that if a pillow is thrown, they are to fall over, crash, moan, and struggle back up, only to be vanquished again. It’s great to be a kid experimenting with power, great to be able to knock down an adult you don’t even know, and have them laugh and rise up to be knocked down again. Our experience is that, over time, children who have regular access to rough and tumble play with warm, welcoming grownups have a tendency to be tuned in to the feelings and needs of others, and to be confident enough to lead among their peers, and later, in the world at large.

We create a place where a child can’t go wrong. We try to create a place where the pillows fly for five or ten minutes at a time, so the grownups get a bit of respite. We offer other things to do–art to create and snacks to satisfy–for those children who aren’t attracted to the pillow play. Most of all, we hope family members will laugh, children will feel glorious, and rough and tumble play will be elevated in parents’ minds to its rightful place as an important part of children’s (and parents’) lives.

Join us for the fun this year.

– The Staff and Instructors and Hand in Hand

Homework Meltdown

homeworkMy daughter (almost 11) started middle school three weeks ago. Everything was going smoothly and it seemed like she was handling the whole transition in a very calm and cheerful manner. Well, life can never be that good, can it?

Yesterday, she came home with quite a bit of homework. She has never been scared by homework, she usually sits down and does it. Yesterday, however, she kept saying, “I can’t concentrate,” “I can’t do it,” and was asking me to help her. I did not understand what was really going on right away and I suggested she move to a quieter room, instead of the kitchen table.

After an hour she was still not progressing, and by then she was very nervous. She was crying, shouting, trying to hurt me physically, and yelling at me what a terrible mother I am. I decided it was time for me to set the limit, get closer and see what came out. I had her sit right next to me and do her homework, while I was timing her and watching closely what she was doing. I should add the task she was working on was really easy and on a regular day it would have taken her 5 to 7 minutes max. That’s how I realized that the stress had nothing to do with the actual task.

The whole time, a lot of steam and anger were coming out. Sitting closely and watching her, I also noticed she was using a very slow and meticulous manner of writing, which was not her own. I asked her to write faster. As she was writing and sobbing, she said something about how she can’t write as nicely and neatly as one of the other girls in her class, and I finally realized what had been bothering her the entire time.

After she calmed down, I spent some time admiring her qualities as a person and as a student, and reminding her how comparing yourself to others is not a smart thing to do. I can easily see how the fact that I was not fully attuned to her from the very beginning made the situation worse, but I feel good things came out of it.

Getting closer to my daughter as she did her homework allowed her to offload some of the things that were sitting there waiting for the right time to come out. (Like her high expectations for herself and her fear of not fulfilling them.) For the rest of the evening we were very close and connected, and I could see the thankful look in her eyes, and that’s worth it all!

- a mom in Israel

S-P-E-C-I-A-L Time

alphabetMy 7 year old, Jerry, has been struggling with not wanting to write or spell at home or at school. This is fairly new this year in first grade. It looks to me like the expectations of the first graders are significantly higher than those of kindergarteners.

One afternoon, we had a playdate at a park with one of his best friends and the friend’s mother and younger sister. The mother watched my youngest and her daughter so I was able to go exploring in the woods with the two older boys. I rarely get to have time with Jerry without his younger brother, so this was a treat for both of us. We got to climb some really high challenging rock cliffs with me being able to give him undivided, supportive attention as he pushed himself to do some hard stuff. At the top of the cliff we chunked rocks at cactuses and had some imaginative play.

Later we went out for his favorite dinner and he got some more good, physical play time. Then, I was able to run around and wrestle with him some. You could see that he felt really filled up, happy, confident, bright eyed, and connected. As we started getting ready for bed, he spontaneously started spelling hard words out loud to me. “Hey, Mom! I can spell ‘because’… and ‘sometimes’…”

He came up with this whole list of challenging words that he could spell! This is something we had never done before and he just came up with it on his own. It was as if his mind was just really clear and all of these words that had previously been blocked by (whatever) could come forward and he wanted to share that with me.

—a mother in Austin, TX

Chronic Teen Sleep Deprivation and the Biology of Adolescence

Contributed by Meri Gruber

I have been researching the topic of teen sleep deprivation and have prepared this backgrounder:

Chronic Teen Sleep Deprivation and the Biology of Adolescence

A growing body of research shows that most teens suffer from chronic sleep
deprivation, due to a biological change that occurs during adolescence. It is well documented that such sleep deprivation impairs the ability to be alert, pay attention, solve problems, cope with stress and retain information. In consequence it:

.       Reduces academic results
.       Reduces athletic performance
.       Increases physical and mental health problems.

Ending sleep deprivation in teens represents a challenge for school districts because:

.       Many adults unfamiliar with the research have a knee-jerk reaction that teens who are tired in the morning are “just lazy” or “should go to bed earlier,” when the cause is a biological one.
.       Over-scheduling by parents or students is not the main cause.
.       Only changes in school and district scheduling policy can make a significant difference.

“Research shows the typical adolescent’s natural time to fall asleep may be 11 pm or later; because of this change in their internal clocks, teens may feel wide awake at bedtime, even when they are exhausted (Wolfson & Carskadon, 1998). This leads to sleep deprivation in many teens who must wake up early for school.”

School districts around the country have implemented later school start times to impressive outcomes:

.       23.4% Net decrease in teen crash rates
“Average crash rates for teen drivers in the study county in the two years after the change in school start time dropped 16.5 percent compared to the two years prior to the change, while teen crash rates for the rest of the state increased 7.8 percent over the same time period. “

.       212 Point increase in SAT scores
“The best known of these is in Edina, Minnesota, an affluent suburb of Minneapolis, where the high school start time was changed from 7:25 a.m. to 8:30. The results were startling. In the year preceding the time change, math and verbal SAT scores for the top 10 percent of Edina’s students averaged 1288. A year later, the top 10 percent averaged 1500, an increase that couldn’t be attributed to any other variable.”

.       15 minutes of sleep is worth a grade point
“Dr. Kyla Wahlstrom of the University of Minnesota surveyed more than 7,000 high schoolers in Minnesota about their sleep habits and grades. Teens who received A’s averaged about fifteen more minutes sleep than the B students, who in turn averaged eleven more minutes than the C’s, and the C’s had ten more minutes than the D’s. Wahlstrom’s data was an almost perfect replication of results from an earlier study of more than 3,000 Rhode Island high schoolers by Brown’s Mary Carskadon. Certainly, these are averages, but the consistency of the two studies stands out. Every fifteen minutes counts.”

.       Better sports results, more participation
The Wilton School District, Connecticut has five schools with 4300 students and made a 40-minute change in start times. “Wilton is a self-described ‘sports town’ and feared that any change in the high school start time would jeopardize status in their athletic conference. In fact, despite some challenges for students who had to be pulled out of class early for away games or who were participating in more than one sport, Wilton High School had one of its best athletic seasons earning several state championships and saw a continued rise in participation after the start time change.”

These are just a selection. Additional case studies are available at the
Sleep Foundation Website.

While there is progress to be made on the sleep loss related to staying up too late due to other demands (i.e., over-scheduling, homework), teen sleep deprivation is not correctable in this way. For grade school children, parents can set and enforce a bedtime. Once students enter adolescence, most can’t get to sleep before late evening because of their biological clock, and no amount of parent schedule setting or reduction in commitments is going to change this. Teens need developmentally appropriate school schedules to address and correct sleep deprivation.

While changing school start times is by far the most effective way to address chronic teen sleep deprivation, there are other steps that can be taken towards healthier and more age-appropriate schedules. The comprehensive research on the issue of teen sleep deprivation has shown that there are many incremental steps school districts could take. By making the ending of teen sleep deprivation a district priority, and moving activities later where possible school districts can make an immediate difference. Examples are scheduling finals later in the day, moving staff meetings to mornings, and shaving minutes in the daily schedule. The research is clear: “every 15 minutes counts.”

For more information, please leave a comment for Meri Gruber.

References:
1. “Backgrounder: Later School Start Times”
http://www.sleepfoundation.org/site/c.huIXKjM0IxF/b.2511711/k.9022/Backgroun
der_Later_School_Start_Times.htm
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/06/070613071054.htm
2.  ”Adolescent sleep, school start times, and teen motor vehicle crashes.”
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez
3. “Starting High School One Hour Later May Reduce Teen Traffic Accidents”
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/12/081215074351.htm
4. “Snooze or Lose”  http://nymag.com/news/features/38951/index1.html
5. Ibid.
6.  ”Changing School Start Times: Wilton, Connecticut”
http://www.sleepfoundation.org/site/pp.aspx?c=huIXKjM0IxF&b=2511905&printmod
e=1
7.”Changing School Start Time Case Studies”
http://www.sleepfoundation.org/site/c.huIXKjM0IxF/b.2511895/k.FAA3/Changing_
School_Start_Times_Case_Studies.htm
8. Teenagers Sleep
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2009/mar/08/teenagers-sleep-education-se
condary-school

A Nasty Math Surprise

colorcalA father in one of our groups tried Staylistening when his 3rd grade daughter ran into a tough patch with math homework. She had left her math homework for last, it was late in the evening, and she was in for a nasty surprise. Her math homework was a whole page of 30 math questions!

“I can’t do this! This is impossible! It’s too late already. It isn’t fair that I’ve been given all this Math homework on top of my other homework!” she said.

Our father said that before he took our class he would have just told her to tough it out. Instead, he moved close to her and said, “You’re right. It’s not really fair that you’ve been surprised with this homework.” He then gave her 5 minutes or so to vent.

Then he had a suggestion, “Why don’t you start with the first problem and I’ll look at the second problem and offer some suggestions if you get stuck on it?”

She breezed through all 30 questions in under 20 minutes and her father only had to offer one or two short suggestions about the problems along the way. He said it was a vast improvement even over how well she did her homework when she wasn’t tired and at the end of a hard day!

A little Staylistening can go a long way.