Hope everyone had a good summer!
Since my retirement from Bridgewater Library I have been travelling a great deal and doing a lot of freelance programs and so it has been a while since I posted to this blog. But I wanted to get the school year off to a good start. Leave a comment and let me know if this is still useful. I love to hear from you. Also please feel free to send me things I might share. – Carol Simon Levin
Three ways to ease your child’s back-to-school jitters By Mari-Jane Williams
(Angel Chang/for The Washington Post)
It’s a familiar late-summer scene. As the opportunities to visit the pool and sleep late dwindle, the back-to-school jitters set in. The endless loop of questions — who will I sit with at lunch, will I remember my locker combination, will my teacher be nice — can rattle even the coolest of customers.
About 8 percent of children and adolescents have an anxiety disorder, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. But kids don’t need to have a diagnosable disorder to feel a little nervous about heading back to school….here are some suggestions to help your child(ren) cope.
Sometimes the anxiety stems from real social stressors: Little mean girls: Helping your daughter swim in those choppy social waters By Carol Kaufmann for The Washington Post
…I figured my daughter would eventually stumble into mean-girl territory, and that subversive manipulation, social rejection and alliance-building would leave her occasionally on the curb. But not until middle school, at the earliest. Right?
Wrong.
“The mean-girl thing is happening much sooner than everyone realizes,” our elementary school counselor told me when I called to talk it through. “I see it all the time.”
Bullying — or peer victimization — is “associated with depression and anxiety and social withdrawal and low self-esteem and academic problems,” says Catherine Bagwell, a professor of psychology who studies children’s social development at Oxford College of Emory University.
According to Katie Hurley, author of “No More Mean Girls: The Secret to Raising Strong, Confident, and Compassionate Girls,” research shows that severe bullying in childhood puts adolescents at a higher risk of mental-health issues, including suicidal thoughts and behaviors, debilitating depressive symptoms, and anxiety. And one survey in Oregon of nearly 12,000 kids in grades three through eight revealed that 41 to 48 percent of girls reported experiencing what is called “relational aggression” in a month. About 4 to 6 percent experienced it daily. Read more.
[How to help girls navigate tough social situations]
Bullying isn’t limited to schools & classrooms. White supremacist posters were posted in our area this summer. Here are some responses (printable copies available here) – feel free to post and share:
An important article on the Power of Play:
How to Play Our Way to a Better Democracy By Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff for The New York Times.
If we want saner politics, we need to start building better foundations from the playground up.
Before he died, Senator John McCain wrote a loving farewell statement to his fellow citizens of “the world’s greatest republic, a nation of ideals, not blood and soil.” Senator McCain also described our democracy as “325 million opinionated, vociferous individuals.” How can that many individuals bind themselves together to create a great nation? What special skills do we need to develop to compensate for our lack of shared ancestry?
When Alexis de Tocqueville toured America in 1831, he concluded that one secret of our success was our ability to solve problems collectively and cooperatively. He praised our mastery of the “art of association,” which was crucial, he believed, for a self-governing people.
In recent years, however, we have become less artful, particularly about crossing party lines. It’s not just Congress that has lost the ability to cooperate. As partisan hostility has increased, Americans report feeling fear and loathing toward people on the other side and have become increasingly less willing to date or marry someone of a different party. Some restaurants won’t serve customers who work for — or even just support — the other team or its policies. Support for democracy itself is in decline.
What can we do to reverse these trends? Is there some way to teach today’s children the art of association, even when today’s adults are poor models? There is. It’s free, it’s fun and it confers so many benefits that the American Academy of Pediatrics recently urged Americans to give far more of it to their children. It’s called play — and it matters not only for the health of our children but also for the health of our democracy...
Read more about how free play has been given short shift and what can be done to restore this essential component of children’s lives here: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/01/opinion/sunday/democracy-play-mccain.html
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Another way to combat bullying and encourage empathy is through books and storytelling. Here are three upcoming events that celebrate the power of story…
2018 NJ Storytelling Festival Saturday, September 15 Howell Living History Farm
Come listen to storytellers from throughout New Jersey and the Tri-State area at Howell Living History Farm as they regale visitors with a whole new crop of stories. There will be stories for all ages. I will be doing a set of farm-themed participatory stories and songs starting at 1:20 p.m. More info: http://www.njstorynet.org/about-festival/
https://princetonlibrary.org/childrens-book-festival/
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And finally, a piece on the positive power of words -- A friend posted this on Facebook:
To all my teacher friends out there - I don't know if this is a true story, but I hope it is. What a wonderful exercise... Please read, and put into practice if you're able:
Then she told them to think of the nicest thing they could say about each of their classmates and write it down.
It took the remainder of the class period to finish their assignment, and as the students left the room, each one handed in the papers.
That Saturday, the teacher wrote down the name of each student on a separate sheet of paper, and listed what everyone else had said about that individual.
On Monday she gave each student his or her list. Before long, the entire class was smiling. 'Really?' she heard whispered. 'I never knew that I meant anything to anyone!' and, 'I didn't know others liked me so much,' were most of the comments.
No one ever mentioned those papers in class again. She never knew if they discussed them after class or with their parents, but it didn't matter. The exercise had accomplished its purpose. The students were happy with themselves and one another. That group of students moved on.
Several years later, one of the students was killed in Vietnam and his teacher attended the funeral of that special student. She had never seen a serviceman in a military coffin before. He looked so handsome, so mature.
The church was packed with his friends. One by one those who loved him took a last walk by the coffin. The teacher was the last one to bless the coffin.
As she stood there, one of the soldiers who acted as pallbearer came up to her. 'Were you Mark's math teacher?' he asked. She nodded: 'yes.' Then he said: 'Mark talked about you a lot.'
After the funeral, most of Mark's former classmates went together to a luncheon. Mark's mother and father were there, obviously waiting to speak with his teacher.
'We want to show you something,' his father said, taking a wallet out of his pocket 'They found this on Mark when he was killed. We thought you might recognize it.'
Opening the billfold, he carefully removed two worn pieces of notebook paper that had obviously been taped, folded and refolded many times. The teacher knew without looking that the papers were the ones on which she had listed all the good things each of Mark's classmates had said about him.
'Thank you so much for doing that,' Mark's mother said. 'As you can see, Mark treasured it.'
All of Mark's former classmates started to gather around. Charlie smiled rather sheepishly and said, 'I still have my list. It's in the top drawer of my desk at home.'
Chuck's wife said, 'Chuck asked me to put his in our wedding album.'
'I have mine too,' Marilyn said. 'It's in my diary'
Then Vicki, another classmate, reached into her pocketbook, took out her wallet and showed her worn and frazzled list to the group. 'I carry this with me at all times,' Vicki said and without batting an eyelash, she continued: 'I think we all saved our lists'
That's when the teacher finally sat down and cried. She cried for Mark and for all his friends who wouldn’t see him again.
The density of people in society is so thick that we forget that life will end one day. And we don't know when that one day will be.
So please, tell the people you love and care for, that they are special and important. Tell them, before it is too late.
Here are some other ideas for spreading kindness this year: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/teachers-on-how-they-spread-love-in-the-classroom_us_58cc1a4ae4b0ec9d29dbce61
“May You Have a Sweet & Happy New Year”
– Carol Simon Levin
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