A Parenting Resource for Indy’s Christian Families

• Hold hands during mealtime prayers.
• Walk one-on-one with each child.  Swing hands and talk.  Tell jokes.  Sing.
• Bad day?  Sigh dramatically and say, “I sure could use a great big hug from someone special.”
• Wonderful day?  Shout, “Hey, everybody!  Come hug me!  I had the best day!”
• Make Hug Sandwiches.  With your spouse, gently surprise unsuspecting children–no matter what age!
• Declare a 100 Hugs Day among your family.  Count them as you go.
• Do four-direction kisses: north (foreheads), south (chins), east/west (cheeks).
• Wrap your arms around your children during church and while waiting together or watching TV.
• APply the Pat Principle: “When in doubt, pat.” God made lots of patting places–heads, cheeks, knees, hands, shoulders, backs.

–By Lorri Cardwell-Casey, From HomeLife Magazine

Recent research is confirming the fact that we can live longer, and be sharper, if we keep our brain stimulated with enjoyable mental, physical, and social activities.  Work & Family Life (February 2009) shared these research-based brain-boosting tips:

Breathe deeply. Before you tackle any mental chore, take a few deep breaths.  This will send oxygen to your brain and will also have a valuable calming effect.

Try new things. Do something different every day.  Introduce yourself to someone and start a conversation.  Make a mundane change in your routine such as taking a different route to work.  Or even do something silly like eating di nner with your non-dominant hand.

Eat fish rich in omega-3. A diet that includes regular servings of baked or broiled fish is great for the brain.  Many studies have identified the omega-3 fatty acid in fish as uniquely helpful in slowing age-related mental decline.

I could not resist including this funny, nostalgic and compelling argument for why Encyclopedia Brown books are still relevant, fun and engaging for the older reader! I just read through the first two Encyclopedia Brown books with our school age classroom, the Arborists, over the summer!  They loved them. For any of you who may not have read these books as a child, Encyclopedia Brown is the son of a police chief who helps his father and the little town of Idaville solve crimes, often over the course of only a few pages. Encyclopedia Brown books contain several short mysteries and invite you, the reader, to offer your thoughts on “who done it” before the culprit is revealed. I love them because they offer clues to the careful reader, stimulate kids’ minds, make book sharing an engaging back-and-forth time for parent and child and are very entertaining! Enjoy Kate’s blog on the pint-sized detective!

From “Kate’s Book Blog“

I’ve just reread the first of Donald J. Sobol’s Encyclopedia Brown books, Encyclopedia Brown, Boy Detective, and it is readily apparent to me why I loved these books as a kid, and why kids today continue to embrace them. Here are some of the reasons:

1. Ten-year-old Encyclopedia Brown is an irresistible character. Sobol introduces him thus: “Leroy Brown’s head was like an encyclopedia. It was filled with facts he had learned from books. He was like a complete library walking around in sneakers.” People are always asking him questions. For example, old ladies stop him in the street to ask his assistance with crossword clues. He always knows the answer, but he pauses a moment before offering it up because he’s afraid people won’t like him if he comes off as too smart. When Encyclopedia uses logic to help his Police Chief father to solve a case for the first time, his mother suggests that he could be a detective when he grows up. But Encyclopedia figures there’s no time like the present and he puts out his shingle immediately. He sets up the Brown Detective Agency in his family’s garage, offering his services for 25 cents a day “plus expenses.” Just like that, he transforms what could be a social liability: his intelligence and his bookishness into a source of power, not just for himself, but also in service of other kids who are the targets of local bullies Bugs Meaney and his gang.

2. I don’t like Bug Meaney(he’s a nasty piece of work) but I do like his name, and I like that Encyclopedia has an archenemy with whom he does battle.

3. When you make a habit of besting the biggest bully in town, you need protection, so Encyclopedia acquires as a bodyguard the strongest person in Idaville below the age of twelve. That person? Sally Kimball. But brawny though she is, she’s no bully. She too uses her powers for good, protecting younger, smaller kids from Bugs Meaney, and also, together with a team of fifth-grade girls, devastating Bugs and his gang in a girls-against-the-boys game of softball. And besides her physical toughness and athletic prowess, Sally is also pretty and smart (almost, but not quite smart enough to stump Encyclopedia with a logical puzzle of her own devising). So she becomes not just Encyclopedia’s bodyguard, but also his partner in the detective agency. That’s a lot of stereotypes about girls and their capabilities sent tumbling via the character of Sally Kimball, particularly in 1963 when the book was first published.

4. But the greatest pleasure of the book is, just as I recalled in my previous post, the opportunity to follow the clues and solve the cases (10 contained in each book) alongside Encyclopedia. When his mother asks him, after his first success, how he went about it, he explains: “I got it from a book I read about a great detective and his methods of observation.” This is a nod to Sherlock Holmes, I think. In any event, a combination of close observation and deductive reasoning is certainly the secret of Encyclopedia’s success, and the key to the same for the reader who aspires to solve the cases him or herself before flipping to the back of the book where the solutions are revealed. Some of you know that I’m a lawyer and a law professor. Much is made of the mystical process by which students learn in first year law school how to “think like a lawyer.” On reflection it occurs to me, with apologies to my first year law professors, that I may in fact have received my earliest lessons in how to think like a lawyer from Encyclopedia Brown. At the time I couldn’t have connected Encyclopedia’s brand of logic with the work that lawyers do (I think I may have to credit Nancy Drew with making that connection explicit for me(another current reread). But in all likelihood it would have been in the solving of those puzzles that I first developed the taste and talent for logical reasoning that ultimately led me to pursue a legal career.

I’ll stop there, but stay tuned for a follow up post on Nancy Drew, and possibly a forthcoming law review article: “Learning to Think Like a Lawyer from Encyclopedia Brown and Nancy Drew”. . .

Time for play in most public kindergartens has dwindled to the vanishing point, replaced by lengthy lessons and standardized testing, according to three new studies released today by the Alliance for Childhood. Classic play materials like blocks, sand and water tables, and props for dramatic play have largely disappeared from the 268 full-day kindergarten classrooms studied. The studies were conducted by researchers from U.C.L.A., Long Island University, and Sarah Lawrence College in New York. Their findings are documented in Crisis in the Kindergarten: Why Children Need to Play in School. The researchers found that:

• On a typical day, kindergartners in Los Angeles and New York City spend four to six times as long being instructed and tested in literacy and math (two to three hours per day) as in free play or “choice time” (30 minutes or less).
• Standardized testing and preparation for tests are now a daily activity in most of the kindergartens studied, despite the fact that the use of most such tests with children under age eight is scientifically invalid and leads to harmful labeling.
• In many kindergarten classrooms there is no playtime at all. Teachers say the curriculum does not incorporate play, there isn’t time for it, and many school administrators do not value it.

Child development experts have been raising alarms about the increasingly didactic, test-driven, and joyless course of early childhood education. “These practices, which are not well grounded in research, violate long-established principles of child development and good teaching,” states the Alliance’s report. “It is increasingly clear that they are compromi sing both children’s health and their long-term prospects for success in school.”

“In my experience, people don’t ‘get’ the important messages leaders try to send the first time around,” writes Rosabeth Moss Kanter in Harvard Business Review On Point (Fall 2009; www.hbr.org).  She explains…

“This isn’t intentional, but there’s too much noise and too many distraction.  And leaders with a lot of ideas find that people wait to see which ones take priority, which ones will be acted on, and which ones leaders really care about….

“Even if people hear something once, they don’t necessarily remember that they did.  Busy people with multiple projects might forget that something has already been discussed….  Leaders cannot assume that just because it has been said it has been heard.

“So use the principle of redundancy.  If the message is very important, send it through multiple media, in various forms, and view it a few times….  As for speeches, make those headlines dramatic, repeat them several times, and keep them going in the next few speeches.”

Looking for something fun to do today?

Have a family dance. Everyone can bring partners.

Invite friend’s over, make it a potluck dance party!

How often do you hug?  Do you like to sit close and hold each other’s hands?  Recent research shows it’s good for your health.  Between loving partners, between parents and children, or even between close friends, physical affection can help the brain, the heart and other body systems you might never have imagined.

For centuries, artists have examined love through poetry, painting, music and countless other arts.  In the past few years, scientists supported by NIH have begun to understand the chemistry and biology of love.

At the center of how our bodies respond to love and affection is a hormone called oxytocin.  Most of our oxytocin is made in the area of the brain called the hypothalamus.  Some is released into our bloodstream, but much of its effect is thought to reside in the brain.

Oxytocin makes us feel good when we’re close to family and other loved ones, including pets.  It does this by acting through what scientists call the dopamine reward system.  Dopamine is a brain chemical that plays a crucial part in how we perceive pleasure.  Many drugs of abuse act through this system.  Problems with the system can lead to serious depression and other mental illness.

Oxytocin does more than make us feel good.  It lowers the levels of stress hormones in the body, reducing blood pressure, improving mood, increasing tolerance for pain and perhaps even speeding how fast wounds heal.  It also seems to play an important role in our relationships.  It’s been linked, for example, to how much we trust others.

Dr. Kathleen C. Light of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill studies oxytocin in married couples and those permanently living together.  She and her colleagues invite couples into the laboratory and ask them to spend at least 10 minutes holding hands and talking together about a happy memory, usually about how they met and fell in love.

“What we’re trying to do in a lab situation,” Light explains, “is recreate some of the experiences in real life where they felt close.”

The couples then get their blood drawn and fill out a questionnaire about the quality of their relationship.  When the researchers compared their responses to the levels of oxytocin in their blood, they found that people who have a more positive relationship with their partner have higher levels of oxytocin.

Light and her colleagues are now trying to understand how conflict and other factors in relationships affect a couple’s oxytocin levels.  The results of those studies aren’t yet in.

One thing researchers can say with certainty is that physical contact affects oxytocin levels.  Light says that the people who get lots of hugs and other warm contact at home tend to have the highest levels of oxytocin in the laboratory.  She believes that frequent warm contact may somehow prime the oxytocin system and make it quicker to turn on whenever there’s warm contact, even in a laboratory.

The same holds true for mothers and infants:  they both produce higher levels of oxytocin when they have lots of warm contact with each other.  “Those women who hold their babies more at home have higher responses when they hold their baby in the lab,” Light says.

Much of what we know about oxytocin has come from research in animals.  Mother rats, for instance, can stimulate oxytocin in their pups by licking and grooming them.  This loving care has long-term effects.

When researchers separate pups from their mothers for 10-15 minutes a day and then reunite them, many mothers are so glad to see their pups that they lick and groom them intensively.  If the separation lasts for several hours, however, it can have the opposite effect; the mother won’t lick and groom her pups.  Some mothers just never lick and groom their pups when they come back.

Pups that are groomed a lot when they’re reunited with their mothers become more comfortable exploring new environments.  The ignored ones develop more anxiety disorders, produce higher levels of stress hormones and have higher blood pressure.

Research from other animals, including monkeys, confirms that the quality of care a mother gives her offspring can have long-term effects on their personality characteristics and mental health as well as physical problems like heart disease.

Animal research is also shedding light on oxytocin’s role in other social bonds.  Mice that lack oxytocin can’t recognize other mice, even after repeated encounters.  When they’re given oxytocin, however, they can recognize other mice again.

Dr. C. Sue Carter, co-director of the Brain Body Center at the University of Illinois at Chicago, has been studying oxytocin in prairie voles, which form strong bonds with their mates.  When the researchers block oxytocin, the voles don’t form such bonds.  Oxytocin is especially important for females to form bonds with their mates.  In males, a related hormone called vasopressin also plays a role.

Oxytocin and vasopressin aren’t miracle compounds, however.  Giving these hormones to other animals—even other types of voles that don’t normally form social bonds—doesn’t suddenly cause them to form loving bonds.  Animals must have the proper genes to respond to these hormones in the first place.

“Most of us are genetically programmed to form social bonds,” Carter explains, relating the results back to people.  But the ability to form close bonds, she says, is shaped by early experiences.  In the end, a complex interaction of genes and experience makes some people form social bonds more easily than others.

We may not yet fully understand how love and affection develop between people—or how love affects our health—but research is giving us some guidance.  Give those you love all the affection you can.  It can’t hurt, and it may bring a bounty of health benefits.

Information taken from www.nih.gov

1. The Wake-Up

It is important for a child to have some parent-love in the first conscious moment of his or her day.

2. The Send-Off

Horses, Olympians, and children run a good race when they get off to a good start.  As often as possible, you should be there for breakfast and for your child’s departure to school.

3. The Reception

If you want to get a real reading on how the “game” went, you have to be there when the “player” comes off the field.  Your presence when your child comes in the door says “I love you.” Your responsibility at the reception is mostly to hug, to listen without judgment, to notice your child is home, and to be available.

4. The Debriefing

This may come right after the reception.  Kids need to debrief their day–not to be interrogated but to report, celebrate, evaluate, or explode.  Again, your role is to listen.  Your undivided attention communicates that you care.

5. The Happy Ending

If “all’s well that ends well,” it’s good for a parent to be there at the end of the day.  It’s a time for an “I love you,” an “I’m sorry,” or a “thank you.” It puts a period on the end of the day.

By Ronald Hutchcraft from Five Needs Your Child Must Have Met at Home

Creativity! That headline on the cover of Psychology Today (November 2009; pyschologytoday.com) caught my attention as sure ExchangeEveryDay fodder. Indeed it had some deep and thoughtful articles.  But what I came away with for today was some snippets from throughout that issue:

“The first step to increasing your creativity quotient is believing you can.  Even if no one has ever assigned the adjective ‘original’ to anything you have ever done, you must acknowledge that you have inventive powers.  Don’t think about making something from nothing … just acknowledge that you can solve problems better if you approach them with a different mind-set.”

“The question isn’t ‘How creative are you?’ but rather ‘How are you creative?’  Innovation is rarely a one-step deal;  the trick is figuring out how you solve problems.  ; That way, you can build on your strengths and team up with people who compensate for your weaknesses.”

“Search for inspiration.  Go to a museum or sit for a few minutes in a beautiful building or park….  Try to notice all of the aesthetically pleasing details surrounding you.”

“Creativity guru Julia Cameron swears by free writing (no self-censoring) until you fill three pages.  Get intrusive worries out and productive ideas flowing.”

“… your waking hours are best since they enable you to apply your ’sleep thinking’ to glitches in your haiku-writing, furniture designing, or quilting….  Carving out morning time for a creative pursuit is a way to infuse the rest of your day with existential meaning.”

“Hit a blue note.  Decorate your cubicle or home office in blue, since a study showed that blue surroundings boost creativity.”