Most people enjoy eating. Some enjoy it too much! Then there are the Ectomorphs who can breathe heavily near a steaming pot of soup and be filled up for a week..God Bless them; they are enviable in some respects, but I enjoy food too much to actually be jealous.

Eating is supposed to be a pleasurable experience. That’s the natural order of life…think about it. If food is not important or not pleasurable or not sought after, we would all be Ectomorphs and food would be at the bottom of our “to do” list.

So if food is so important and so pleasurable, why is eating the worst struggle of the day with my child?

Let’s put two truths out there right now. You cannot make someone eat, and you can’t make someone poop. Having said that, let’s proceed with all the usual reasons why a child is stubborn about eating. Pooping is another whole ball game.

The desire to eat begins at birth. Most children love to nurse. Human milk is sweeter than condensed milk and being near mom is what all babies want. Human milk has everything in it that each individual child needs for the first six months, so breast feeding is a win win win all the way around.

There are those who say “Food before one is just for fun.” That’s not only false, it’s a dangerous idea. There is little iron in breast milk, so children who are exclusively breastfed throughout their first year may fail to thrive.

Also, children who are not taught to eat foods in the first year will necessarily be picky eaters which might last a lifetime. Here’s why. The sweetness of breast milk does not translate favorably to the tang of fruit or the neutral flavor of most vegetables with the cognition of a year old child. He has put enough, toys, soap, sleeves, fingers, animal tails, cardboard, and whatever in his mouth to know what tastes good and what doesn’t. He’s discerning because he’s human. If he’s never had a spoonful of peaches or applesauce or plums, he’s going to find it sour reject it like soap.

So when do you begin to feed a child fruit and veggies? About the time they can pick up something and shove it in their mouth. The infant uses his mouth to learn, to test, to taste the world, so when he begins to taste the world on his own with his own two hands…the food alarm should go on with great bells and whistles.

Next step…establish a meal time!  “Too much to do and too many places to go,” is a common plea when cornered about meal time. But a real meal time, when the whole family sits down to eat together…TV off…and discusses the day, is more important than reading to a child. That conversation, that time together does more to keeping children on a positive road to life than anything else in their whole lives. FACT.

My beautiful fifteen year old grandson leaves whatever he is doing to attend dinner with his family every evening. When he explained that he wants to eat with his family to his friends, his friends were jealous. “I wish I had a family to eat with,” said one of his friends. Children love their families!

Meal times should be established and kept while there are young children in the home. This helps young children understand the order of the day. “I eat dinner with my family; I take a bath; I watch TV; I go to bed.” Children LOVE order, and they miss it when evening is chaos. If a child does not learn to sit down at a table and eat a meal with his family, how can you expect him to understand how to do that in school?

“But I don’t cook,” say many modern men and women. This is a primary reason many young children don’t eat. There is no one to cook for them, so most of their food is unimaginative and the variation is limited to a few things: macaroni and cheese, chicken nuggets, canned spaghetti, pizza and cold cereal.

There is no nutrition in boxed macaroni and cheese, chicken nuggets (mostly skin) and canned spaghetti. These foods do not have enough food value to be called food by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. They are extremely high in salt and sugar and fat and chemicals.

Fast food, which most children don’t really eat, is a nightmare of grease. A doctor friend of mine told me that there are children with eighty percent clogged arteries at age six from all the fast food.

Now let’s write the scary scenario of a three of four year old child going off to school for the first time. It’s a good place where the staff cares about giving the children good nutrition and lively fun meals. Breakfast is a homemade blueberry muffin, four ounces of orange, and a cup of milk. The child does not know what the muffin is, has never tasted a fresh whole orange, and doesn’t drink milk because soda doesn’t go bad in the fridge. He leaves it untouched.

Lunch: Homemade spaghetti with meatballs, a salad, fresh apples and grapes. It doesn’t resemble canned spaghetti, so the child doesn’t know how to eat it or if he should. He doesn’t get apples or grapes at home, he has never really tasted a salad, so he just sits and waits for this little nightmare to end, and his calorie count is zero for the day. Not good.

Snack: Homemade chocolate chip cookies…recognizable…but they have a strong taste of chocolate which is unfamiliar…so we eat half. Calorie count for the day? 75. Needs? 1000 – 1400.

A whole can of Spagettios will add calories, but not nutrition.

By the time a child reaches six, his eating likes and dislikes are usually set, and they are set at home, not at school. The bland no taste glue of canned and fried mainstays and fast food create a block that some children never get over.The very idea of eating something as exotic as broccoli, or asparagus, or a salad, or an ethnic meal of sweet and sour, or curry or anything pungent or challenging is off limits for life.

But what if parents cook? Maybe food is abundant in the home, and little Johnny balks at every night’s dinner?

On the high end, it’s true that some children stop eating for the day at 4:00 p.m. They are tired and they have consumed the necessary calories during their day. This is usually a temporary thing, and sometimes a no growing time in their lives. If a child has consumed what he needs, bring him to the table for the sake of family and let eating be his choice.

On the low end, a real taste-buster is the parent who short order cooks…Johnny doesn’t like…and the list goes on and on, so the meal provider substitutes a substantial meal for something gluey in a can or frozen package. There is a certain amount of discipline that goes along with the civilized table, and giving too many options on too many nice meals is not only insulting to the cook, it opens a doorway of selfishness and narrow mindedness that will rear its ugly head in many areas of life in the future.

If a child just sits and refuses to eat, let him refuse it. You can’t make a person eat. But not eating is not an excuse for leaving the table. He should stay at the table until the family meal is over. And after dinner treats should never be an option. Just don’t lecture or argue. Just smile and say, “I love you.”.

Eating should be fun. Arguing about it is NEVER fun. And the truth is neither adults nor children like every single food. So think about these things next time little Johnny is grabbing defeat at the cost of victory:

Make a meal at least four times a week that includes new things just to try.

Pick a meal time for the whole family that will fit into everyone’s schedule.

Turn off all outside noise like TV, music, and phones.

Eat at a table or at least where you can discuss the day. Discuss the day.

If you child refuses to eat, clear his plate into the garbage and let him sit without. It’s a choice he has the legitimate option to make. You can’t make somebody eat.

If your child becomes disruptive or balky…there is always the sweet quiet of his room.

If your child wants a substitute… tell him breakfast is in twelve hours. He won’t starve in twelve hours.

And BTW…if you don’t want your child to have soda, canned spaghetti, chicken nuggets, chips, store-bought cookies and other junk…don’t buy them. If the foods you don’t want your child to eat are NOT in the house, he can’t eat them. If you pass by the fast food on the way home without stopping, he can’t eat there.

Every new school year in August, when the very little children arrive for preschool, it’s always an eye opener for parents, because there is a vast crevasse between what teachers expect and what children are able to do.

Nature gives us guidelines for development many parents just don’t see. The first year of a child’s life is meant to teach safety. The child needs and wants to understand what feels safe, and who can be trusted. Life is small for a child, and his world should be cozy and uncomplicated.

At a year, nature throws in a complication…walking. As children delight in movement, they will spend this second year, age one to two, honing their body skills and learning what they can and can’t do. They spend most of their time climbing, falling, toddling, and running. It’s important for them to begin to put safety with kinesthetic play, and this is where parents play a new role. Parents who teach children what is safe and what isn’t have a huge advantage the next year, because the toddler will have learned what “no” means.

By age two, and the beginning of a child’s third year, the child has learned just exactly what his body will do and what he can do with it. Now it’s time to put that to use. It’s time to learn to dress including shoes and socks and coats and hats. It’s time to learn to sit at a table and eat politely with others. It’s time to talk and make conversation to understand that includes pronunciation of words and proper usage. It means to use the toilet, and that includes wiping, clothes management, flushing and washing hands. It means to take commands like “wait, no, stop, sit.” It means to go to bed when told, to play with toys in a constructive manner, and to understand that the word “no” is not a weapon but a loving reminder.

If children learn to manage their own bodies by the fourth year, or age three, the next step is to begin to listen for information, because a child discovers that there is more to this world than movement. He watches his parents talk, and he discovers that there are ideas, and he learns that communication matters, and he hungers for it like candy.

Most preschool teachers, especially those who have been teaching a while, will expect a three year old to be able to sit for a few minutes and be curious enough to listen to some things. When listening skills are no where to be seen by age three, the trained teacher will study the child to see where he or she is developmentally, and how much of the last year he or she needs to complete before preschool will make sense.

Constructive play is a big indicator of development. The four stages of building are 1, carrying the materials which usually begins by six months of age. 2, towers. Towers are a favorite beginning building activity, and children can usually manage to do this about age one. 3, snakes. Lining blocks, books, cans, toys, stuffed toys in a row is another favorite thing to do, and this usually happens just shortly after the mastery of towers. Stage 4 building is being able to join the tower with the snake. This usually happens before age two if children are given the tools and toys to work with.

Children who are exposed to blocks and building toys will begin to understand what creating means.They will enjoy beginning a project with an idea. They will work hard to complete the idea, and when they finish their project, they will have a great sense of accomplishment. The idea and accomplishment link are self esteem builders. So is cleaning up the project when it’s done. This is called early discipline.

Art is another indicator of development. Crayons, paint, colored paper and scissors are all things that can be managed by an emerging two year old turning three. Learning to use these materials help little hands grow strong and imaginations come alive.

Playing with other children is not as easy as it sounds. Most children play in tandem until late three or four and communication develops. A play kitchen or dress up encourages expression and communication skills through the drama a child experiences at home and brings with him to share. Good communication skills are honed by doing. A good preschool should dedicate a lot of play space to kitchen and dress up because this avenue of development is important to something a child will do all his life…communicate.

Never underestimate the power of play, the significance of toys, or the need for play. How to play is the most important concept a loving parent can teach a child, because play is something every human being seeks all their life. It’s the fun stuff we get to do when the work is done. We all learn more from the hours we engage with pleasurable activities, activities that have a point, activities that produce, activities that encourage other activities. more so than the drudgery that is put upon us in a demanding world  by mindlessness and unimaginative work.

Play with your child and teach him how. Talk with your child and teach him to respond. Build with your child and enjoy his accomplishments.

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There has been a lot of palaver about the so called damage Michelle Obama has perpetrated against the national school lunch plan. The school lunch program started after World War II. It helped kids get a meal when there were no meals at home. The USDA Child and Adult Food Program started in 1948 to ensure that children in care outside their homes had a diet that would encourage them to grow.

The basic principal of either lunch program is, was and always will be to feed certain foods that will encourage health. The problem is that not all foods encourage growth and development. Now, much of a child’s diet is “bulk” and only encourages weight gain. Working within the guidelines of the program gives a lot of leeway, and somewhere along the line, “bulk” took over the program, and that was fine for the kids until a bulky diet became a bulky body type.

The formula for the food program is not hard to understand. At breakfast, children should have a grain product. a fruit or veggie and milk.  At lunch we add to the grain and fruit or veggie, and milk, another fruit or veggie and a protein. A snack is a food from two different food groups. That’s not rocket surgery!

So here’s an illustration:

At School A, the kitchen serves a poptart, canned fruit and milk.

At School B, the kitchen serves a whole grain, homemade muffin loaded with extras like wheat germ and coconut, and the child gets half an orange and milk.

Both schools are in code.

At lunch, School A serves a hot dog on a bun, canned peas and tater tots.

School B serves baked chicken, French bread and butter, real mashed potatoes and half an apple.

Both schools are in code.

At snack, School A serves a graham cracker and milk.

School B serves a homemade whole grain brownie and milk.

Both schools are in code.

What Michelle Obama is trying to do is upgrade that bulk to a fresher and better menu, but her concept is trespassing into kitchens that have been trying to feed children on the cheap and lazy for a long time. What she has inadvertently managed to do is reduce the calories on the plate to a dangerously undesirable formula that is not working. The food is still there, but it’s not working because menu planners are not on board. The formula is the same and so is the money.

When a child is in care for ten hours a day, most of what he will eat will be provided by the care provider…so do it right. Right lost it’s definition a long time ago. Few would agree If a provider doesn’t know how to cook, she’s in the wrong business, or if a provider doesn’t  like to cook, she’s in the wrong business, or if a provider refuses to learn about this very important part of child care, she’s definitely in the wrong business. At a workshop I gave several years ago, a woman said she made the same thing for lunch for her family day care kids every day: boxed pizza, French fries and applesauce. She was in the wrong business.

It’s the same in big school. When the kitchen menu planners are looking for boxes and bags, instead of fresh and homemade; when dessert is a focus of the meal, when canned is the go to before fresh, somebody is in the wrong business. Lunches aren’t free, and for the price of a school lunch, something better than what’s on the plate can be done anywhere.

Cooking for children is a balance between what they will eat and what they should eat and working with the bad habits of simply not eating or the eating battle that goes on in many homes. Getting children to try things that really do taste good is the first order of feeding children and it’s not easy. That’s why keeping it simple, desirable and fun is key. Kids don’t like elaborate. They like filling things they recognize.

In any kitchen preparing a meal for a child, the first priority should be quality of food. Quality food does not come out of a package or a mix or a frozen box or a can, If the ingredients have to be listed, there are too many along with too many chemicals. Cooking fresh is not hard and it’s not necessarily more expensive than opening a box. But it is horrendously hard if there are five hundred options to keep up with. Reduce the options and offer ONE quality meal sans dessert with a good bread and something fresh. Focus on less and produce more.

Instead of name calling and laughing at what the First Lady is trying to do, maybe what should be done is to re-examine the menus we are “fixed” on and re-evaluate their quality and try to incorporate more fresh and less processed food for the children we say we love.

It’s not rocket surgery.

One of the things we both take seriously and pride ourselves on at the Garden School is the scratch cooking we do. We even teach our teachers how to cook while we turn out lots of really healthy foods for the kids.Scratch cooking scares some young moms and dads. They think it takes forever to do, and the mess and cost are too far to go even if it is healthier.

The truth is, scratch cooking is cheaper, it doesn’t take nearly as long as you think. A full from scratch dinner for lunch with whole foods and whole grains takes about an hour to make, set up, and serve to forty people. It does not make a huge mess if you know how to clean as you go, and it is MUCH healthier than pre-mades and packaged food and YOU have the control of what YOU eat!

I’m a veteran cook. I’ve been cooking since I was four. While I saw a lot of mess in my mother’s kitchen as she used every single pot, pan, plate, spoon and utensil in the kitchen; I noticed early that she never put anything away or wiped a counter while she was cooking, and guess who had to clean up the mess? So I’m a neat cook, and the lack of mess calls me back to the kitchen time and again.

I know about the cost too. As a young mom, my husband worked for the church, so there was never any money to waste. If you wanted a premade item, it was probably too expensive. When my daughter Katy was five, a friend handed her an oreo cookie, and she asked me what it was…so you get the picture. When you think about prices, you have to remember that with a premade item, you get only what is in the package and then it’s gone. When you buy fresh food, you have a lot of choices, left overs and you control the quality.

Cooking neatly, cheaply and from scratch begins with a well set up kitchen.  I have an antique kitchen with a modern stove, sink and refrigerator. The rest of the room is antique, built in 1830. But even with old furniture and a brick floor, I’ve organized my kitchen a very modern way  so it’s easy to cook.

Basic foods like flour and sugar should be easy to reach and appliances you use frequently should be available without digging in the back of the closet. Establishing a place for everything should not be a horrendous chore. I have an antique jar with flour in it that sits on an antique cabinet. I always know how much flour I have, can get at it easily and it becomes part of my antique collection. I also have a Vitamix that sits on another antique counter, and I can make whole wheat flour in thirty seconds with that machine. Having things out should not destroy the look of your kitchen.

When you buy food, buy only what you need. Because it’s priced by the pound, doesn’t mean you have to buy it by the pound. An adult healthy serving is four ounces of meat, that’s a quarter pound. A serving of veggies or fruit is four ounces. A serving of noodles or rice is half a cup. So when you buy an item, consider storage.

Clean out your fridge every single week so you always know what you have. If you do it weekly, it only takes five minutes to do, and it reminds you what you have on hand. Use paper towels and a spray bottle for cleaning the kitchen. Dish rags and sponges harbor bacteria.

Always cook in a clean kitchen.  If you clean out your oven before you use it, it will never have to be “cleaned.” When the kitchen is clean, run half a sink of hot soapy water. Throw in a clean dish rag. You’re ready to cook. As you use each utensil, put it in the hot sudsy sink. Wipe your counter when you spill. Soak pots and pans so when your meal is cooked, you won’t have a mess.

One of the great questions good parents ask generation after generation is, “How do I instill a work ethic in my child?”

The two fold answer is simple, “Model one for your child that he can copy, and be consistent.” In other words, “This is what I do, and what I expect from you every day.”  The every day part is usually the tough part.

Part of going to school at the Garden School means a daily dose building life skills, and that includes developing a work ethic. As an example, the privilege of going into my classroom at recess belongs to my Kindergarten. One of my classroom free-time rules is simple. “If you go into my classroom to accomplish a task like building a train track, looking at my collection of geography books, or even cleaning the board, and you fail to do one of those things, which is part of the production, then you don’t belong in my room. Find something else to do out of my room.”  The privilege is for those children who are developing a work ethic. No work ethic, no privilege. I think this teaches children many good lessons.

It’s not unlike my reading class.  All the Kindergarten children were issued a school bag with all the supplies they would need to do some fifteen minute lessons at home. They were issued little readers, the laminated words to go with those readers, crayons, pencils, a sharpener, a laminated writing page, and their name written properly to copy. Every week in school, we work on learning to read. Those children who have gone home since August and practiced for a few minutes three or four times a week learned to read easily and are now reading on a first or second grade level. Those children who did not practice at home for a few minutes three or four times a week are not so advanced.

What parents need to remember is that the window of opportunity for reading opens for most children around four and five. Most children show they are ready by being interested. Most children love to learn to read, and happily figure it out quickly. Even children who do not have help at home still manage to figure it out if they are interested and then WORK at it.

Work, work, work…are we always interested in work? Of course not, but those children who have put at least the minimum effort into the everyday work have found that they have learned something of value. Because my Kindergartners are so young, some being four, this is often the first great lesson in developing a work ethic. By putting in a child’s effort a few times a week, the lesson learned is: If I work this much, I get this much. 

Consistency is also a big part of learning a work ethic. Every day is not a friendly expression to a lot of children and many adults. We are promised by Hollywood that the constant search for recreation in a sea of work calling is a good thing. That Hollywood lure often overrides the best intentions. Dishes sit; laundry is in piles on the floor; bills wait; the refrigerator is a vacant place, so dinner is bought too many times in a row…kind of matches the toys scattered all over the house, the lights and TV left on, the toilet unflushed, the bath towels lingering… and the homework not done. Children are watching and learning whether it’s a good model or a poor one.

Sometimes the most effective help for those bitterly resented chores is the clock.  When parents expect that children will get up, get dressed, make their beds, brush their hair and teeth and get their supplies together BEFORE they come to the breakfast table where breakfast is served at a particular time, the work gets done. When the same schedule of work is completed BEFORE the TV set is turned on or the video games commence after school, the advantage goes to the work. I remember not setting places at the table for my kids if their toys were not cleaned up before dinner.

How often at work, at home, even in public places do YOU simply do what needs to be done because the task has not been done by the assigned person? Every Sunday at Mass, when we leave, people drop the doors of the church on each other. Every single Sunday at Mass, Terry, who is perhaps the 40th or 50th person out the door will stop and engage the door stop.  People with strong worth ethics do things like this. They bring their carts back, they hold doors, they watch out for the elderly, and they always get into the right line with the right payment plan. You can depend on people with a work ethic. They always do their work; they are always there to do their work; their work is always completed. That means, they often have legitimate time to spend in meaningful play.

The real weevil in the absence of a work ethic is the child or adult who constantly makes excuses for why something can’t, wasn’t, isn’t, and probably won’t be done. It takes more energy and thought to design an excuse for not doing the assigned task than it does to simply do it on time every time.

My favorite classroom excuse goes something like this:

“We didn’t have time to do my homework last night.”

“Did you watch TV last night?”

“Yes.”

“Did you play video games last night?”

“Yes.”

“Well if you did those things, why didn’t you spend some time doing your homework?”

“My mom wouldn’t let me.”

One of the lessons I learned as a young mother was to get up first; get dressed first; have the day started before the family got up. I learned early that every single task was worth doing well each and every time, on time, and completed, whether it was tying a shoe or writing a novel…

When all is said and done, those children who develop a work ethic because they see all that it produces in life for them will be the winners. Those who miss the opportunity to work hard as young children will always struggle to work hard, because the window of opportunity is open in these years to establish work as a priority and recreation as a reward.

Every year, there are days when school needs to close simply because teachers or students have a real hardship getting there or being there. “So what,” you say, “roads bad, buck up little private.”

It’s the same thing with illness…”Just take a pill, and it will be over before you know it.”

And my favorite, “No power? Well, when I was a child…”

Closing a school, much less a whole school system, is a huge decision. Quite frankly, I can’t imagine how a superintendent must feel at making the decision for thousands of people. It means that parents lose work time; it means that children are often left at home alone; it means that hourly workers lose livelihood pay, and it means that the whole week is turned upside down by in today out tomorrow…half day here…and the continuity or progression of learning is sideswiped.

So far this year, I have tried to stay open on two occasions when all other schools have closed, and the end result was chaos and danger to my teachers and quite frankly the kids who were picked up in the middle of an ice storm.

When the first priority is safety in all other endeavors, why are dangerous roads suddenly not a matter of concern? Is it that once a child leaves YOUR building it suddenly becomes the parents’ responsibility? When reading, discipline, manners, and all other formations are parent-teacher partnership, why does it end at the door? It shouldn’t.

Jobs are important, and everyone knows that. But between mom, dad, and four loving grandparents, some kind of safety net for the saving of job hours should be able to be worked out before it happens. We all know that there are school closings and delays., holidays, vacation weeks, and sick days.

This has been a particularly difficult year with more half days and snow days than we usually have. Right along with the ups and downs of the daily temperatures, comes the flu bug, the bronchitis dragon, the sinus elephant…the ear infection snake that sets his teeth in and grips on and won’t let go. And this makes providing a boss with a parent’s full attention about as easy as quantum mechanics done in your head.

So the idea is that we work together to get through this winter with as much charm and success as we can. Please be aware that we are trying to accommodate everyone. So as I take off first this morning in my seventeen year old car (love my jeep) onto my sheet of ice road that has not been plowed, and take the “hill” that would defy the Archangel Gabriel, I will see you all later…I hope.

Every once in a while, I re-evaluate the Garden School, and I am always reminded that our little school, which so many people put effort and love into building, is a true work of art. When I ask myself who we are, I come back to the same response, “We are a group activity place.” When I ask myself what this means, I have to answer, “It means that we focus on every child as part of our group.”

The ultimate question is why has the Garden School become focused on “the group?” The answer has never eluded me. I have seen from the beginning of my career of working with children, that my job is to greet the early learner coming directly from his own personal home with his family, and take him through the process of learning how to be part of a group, and then watching as he waves goodbye and marches off to big school. The Garden School is a child’s first group, and he will be experiencing groups for the rest of his life, and he has to know how to be a vital part of that group.

In the beginning of every school year, there are forty children from as many as forty homes. Every home is different. Every family is different. Every list of needs is different. Our job at the Garden School is to take all the differences and create a mosaic of all those separate needs and backgrounds and make a cohesive engine.

That engine, like any engine, produces work. In our case, it produces activities and learning and play and projects that benefit the whole school. One child excels in reading, another becomes a master builder, another a nursemaid to the other kids. One child is our comedian, another is the tattler, another zeroes in on the play or geography, or story time, or chair stacking as a helper.

Within a short period of time, most children gravitate towards having a particular role at school that they feel comfortable with. Then, they begin to develop a public personality that will stay with them a lifetime. Our job is to help them create these public faces by finding out what they like, what they are good at, and what makes them want to work. This all SHOULD happen in what we call the Early Childhood Years…ages three through six.

Developing a public personality allows children to make friends and begin to understand what friendship is…all the giving and taking with people who don’t live in your house. “I will do this if you will do that, or  I will let you play with my building if you,” and the bartering, the communication, the exchange of needs that creates friendship begins to work.

One of the delights of my job is to see our Early Childhood friendships continue over the years. When a nice young man visited the Garden School a few months ago, one of our teachers, a former graduate, recognized him as someone with whom she had gone to school, and they struck up an old friendship. High school kids often reminisce about their years and friendships at the Garden School.

What first time parents often find amazing, is how quickly a child will develop a brand new public personality which is often quite different from their home personality. “Oh, he won’t perform in front of people…” says the parent of a formerly very shy child. When the parent sees the extraordinarily shy child robustly deliver a very funny line and gets a laugh from the whole audience, they begin to see what kind of public face their child is developing.

“He is a very picky eater, and he won’t drink milk.” After the first week, when the child is snarfing down every morsel on his plate and asking for seconds of everything including milk, parents are agog.

It all happens as a matter of course. We move from “getting acquainted” in September, to the big play at Thanksgiving and all the activities in between, it just kind of happens a little at a time. I am always amazed by how fluid this development is. One child arrives in September with his thumb in his mouth, barely able to use the bathroom with confidence, and by Christmas, he is building monster buildings of his own design or reading on his own merit on a second grade level.

When I ask myself how this happens, I realize that allowing the children the freedom to develop skills at their own pace with a lot of push in the direction they seem to be going, works. “Can I…” and my job is to make “can I” possible. My attitude has to be, “You can and you will, and let’s make that possible together.” Our job is to foster adventure. Adventure does not happen by sitting still. Every child should desire to get in the game and find a place to succeed simply because it’s an achievement for him.

There are many parts to a school year at the Garden School. Teachers, parents and kids all work hard to make these separate and individual parts not only fun, but learning experiences that increase lives and talents. Teachers often say they learn as much as kids about how things work and how people create a cohesive group. Teachers working together is as important as children working together. Last week we made globes at school, and when the fast painters finished they asked the slow painters if they could help. It was idyllic.

Then the school year begins to close, and we move into summer, and a whole new adventure begins. If you can teach a child to swim, you can teach him to read…that’s how it’s done…that’s what we do…because it works!

For many early childhood places, “It’s Play Time” would probably mean something along the lines of “free play…again” a regular morning or afternoon activity.  At the Garden School, Play Time is one of two times during the school year when we suspend our regular academics, and get the whole school together to do a real live play! That’s because the play offers more kindergarten activities and requirements than almost anything else we do.

The play offers children a cohesive activity that encourages memorization, public delivery, make believe and interpretation, group participation and dependence, invention, creativity, personality development, understanding, patience, kindness, and a real sense of self…

The play is written, the play is cast, the play is copied, and scripts are sent home…and then we start to practice. It’s not always easy for children doing this the first time. If the director tells a child to speak up…and say a line with gusto…that child might emotionally crash and the tiny mouse voice emerges in a cruel monotone…fear has struck the heart of the child…self preservation is taking the driver’s seat. One child came on stage, saw the audience and uttered a “oh crap,” and ran for his life. Needless to say he got a HUGE ovation.

How do you coax hesitant three year olds into saying lines? If they trust you, if you taught them to love the water last summer, if they went miles and miles with you on a school bus… if they have gotten enough praise in the classroom…they might believe you…they might take a chance…and little by little the balance of trust brings them out, and they do it, laugh and then love it.

This year, we have a new curtain back drop system to work with. One of our beloved families came to school on Saturday and put up the new IKEA ceiling curtain rod that will allow us to have four working backdrops, and the ability to close the curtain to change the set….needless to say I am very grateful and very excited all at the same time. We will now have the luxury of opening the curtain while our little actresses and actors are already on stage…

Working at the play takes the whole crew. Nobody has the luxury of slacking off. The director and co-director are busy with those who are acting, and it’s the job of the other faculty to keep the rest of the school occupied while the play is being practiced…this is no easy task. It takes a lot of work just to keep thirty-five children occupied and quiet so that we can hear the actors.

And why is all this work necessary? It’s not necessary…It’s desirable, it’s possible, it’s doable, and the children love it if the faculty works together to provide the activity as something fun to do. It’s fun because we are all making something of value to be shared with those we love. It would be a lot easier not to do the plays and not to work as hard as we do to put on the huge show that it is. It would be a lot easier to just have “free play” and stand in a corner and watch chaos ensue. But that’s not what the Garden School is about. We are in the business of “possibilities” and doing. We are in the process of learning, and learning never comes easily or by standing back…It doesn’t come by letting someone else, some other place, some other time.

The creation of a play is something children will not have the privilege of doing again until high school. It is in the preschool years that formation creates the framework, the interests of the child. It is here that he determines what he is going to spend his life doing. If that is missed, then he might go straight through school never knowing what he wants to do. Catch a child’s interest before he is six, and that interest will stay with him forever.

A play is a work of art, a living thing that can only be when everyone does their job. It’s a friend maker, a moral booster, a time when the shy find a voice, the lonely find friends, the left behind take a big front row place of importance. It’s a time when the younger children show their talents for the first time and make everyone think they hung all the stars in the universe. It’s a time when the old timer kids really shine, really excel, really find not only a voice but a sense of personhood way beyond what a five or six year old usually has the opportunity to experience.

The plays terrify me as the writer and producer and this year, director. Its whole production seems to be on my shoulders…this year I am promising myself that the new curtain arrangement will make it all easier, and that the play is cute and the costumes are gorgeous, and the lines will be expertly delivered by a host of wonderful little talented artists…

So tomorrow it starts…I’ll report back later and tell you how it all worked out…lol. And once again a big thanks to Collin’s grandparents for putting up the curtain rod.

There is a death knell for communication…I’ve heard it ring for years. Lots of people have quit communicating in any meaningful way and seem to resort to what we call “tweeting” in every day speech. My fear is the result: that children are losing the ability to listen and to respond, in other words, to communicate in a way that’s beautifully human, real, and rich.  In a time when we have more utilities for communication than ever before, are we throwing the skills and the desire away?

The question, of course, begins with is it true?  Do daily exchanges amount to thoughtless and vapid half remarks that are rarely taken in by those to whom they are aimed? Do we ever ask questions of one another that matter? Do we listen to inadvertent questions that we ask?  Have we come to despise the utterances of others? Would we rather put on head phones and listen to the same music over and over again just to escape a possible exchange with someone?

One of the joys of my life has always been spending “talk time” with a dear friend. Sitting quietly and talking with someone who matters to me has always been a delight. Family news, books read, films enjoyed, ideas exchanged, favorite foods talked of, and of course memories and stories told over a hot cup of tea and a nice piece of cake has, since I was a child, been my favorite time. Now, such an occasion is referred to as “dumping.”

My mother and I did not get along, and that’s a sad business, but when I was a little girl I LOVED sitting and listening to her talk to her friends about growing up. My mind was alive with what it must have been like when women wore long dresses…when medicine was as scary as it was. My mother’s funny stories about her life growing up was priceless to me. My mother and her friends would sit for hours over coffee and cigarettes…how much I learned…how delighted I was. How much I remember…all kept alive for myself because I am afraid I might commit the mega sin of “dumping.”

With a world limited to tweeting, where will children learn to listen? From television. I think people are all so afraid of “dumping,” that they tweet instead of discuss…children can’t learn from tweetings because tweetings don’t give enough information…cold, abrupt, insular, brief…so they turn on the television and are encouraged to watch parent like people who tell them stories…but they are not family stories, they are public stories, so kids are growing up without stories to really care about, so why listen after a while?

And television does not require a response, so the child has no place to take his questions should he or she have one. But he probably won’t have one because responding is the part of communication that usually follows a question, and if nobody asks a question, how is a child to learn to either ask one or answer one? Asking questions is at the heart of civilization. It’s in our very greeting: “How are you?” But the question can never be answered because someone might “dump.”

Is the demise of communication a matter of time? Do people simply not have time for others anymore? We see people race to work, to after work activities, to ball games, to children’s activities, to movies, parties, and shopping, but it’s all in a rush that has little if any communication involved. People sit mutely on bleachers afraid to talk to one another; walk miles of corridor in the mall never uttering a word to anyone; go to movies and sit and listen; exercise, exercise, exercise, and never a word exchanged…it amounts to a kind of planned isolation and children model parents, so children are destined to be isolated as well. As I watch them play together at school, eager for the natural exchange of one another…I lament their admission into the age of tweet….

With the isolation of tweetdom, we have a consequence…a vocabulary demise. Choosing the right word used to be a pleasurable art. Listening to someone speak who had a wonderful vocabulary is a rich and exciting experience. Listening to my father talk, then my husband has been one of my great adventures, because of their vocabulary and ability to make spectacular nearly any subject.  Now, less is more, fewer is better, get the point across quick…the sin of dumping is lurking…

With no questions asked, no responses required, no exchange in the offing, no stories learned or told, it’s a cold still world…OK, so the old lady is lamenting a slower time and a more colorful past…we all get there…so is there anything we can do to assure that the children we are rearing now will have something more than tweedom? At this point I really don’t know.

As a teacher, I will continue to tell stories to my children, to read books to my kids, to ask them questions and wait for the response and respond to their response…mostly because I love them and communication is important to me on a level they may never understand.

This has been an interesting week. My church got a new Pope…He issued an incredible blessing few knew what to do with… and I had a disagreement…well about something called steadfast and lost an old friend.

When I examine my daily life with everything that comes into play, the word steadfast often pops into my scrutinizing mind. It’s a word I re-upped while writing an historical novel called, “Anne.” It means resolutely or dutifully firm and unwavering. It’s what I try to be about important things in my life. It’s what I encourage my students to adopt about school work and social issues.

One cannot be steadfast if one does not have a foundation. Foundations are also important to me because without  good life foundations, a person is likely to pop in and out of reality and growth with every trend and popular poison. People sucked into the importance of trivia every five minutes usually spend most of their lives in a tailspin about nonsense, and become undependable or frivolous friends. It’s not fun to be a sounding board for a constant stream of  nonsense and unimportant matters.

But if, on the other hand, you look at foundations as the beginning of adding to your life house, the building goes on all your life. Your hut as a child becomes a respectable house as a teen, and either a lovely home as an adult and mansion as an older person, or it stays a hut forever. People like the expression, “You’re in a rut,” I would say hut more than rut.

There are many foundations. Let’s talk about the language foundation. Henry Higgins could tell where any Englishman came from within a couple of blocks of his birthplace simply by his accent and use of English words. Americans are not quite that easy, but during an interview for a job, most of us cast off as many grammar mistakes as we can think to do on short notice.  Why?

Good grammar, we all know, says something about our communication skills. It means we care about appearing more or less educated to the public. It probably follows that caring about the way you communicate will also indicate that you care about the job you will do, the care you will give other employees and the company you work for. It’s a foundation…it doesn’t stand all by itself. It carries the structure…so when I correct a child’s grammar, I’m caring. I’m teaching. I’m helping a child master a good grammar foundation, which I think is important.

There are other foundations such as social foundations that include manners. Good manners begin with thinking about the needs and desires of other people. Putting self second or even last sometimes is part of creating a good manner foundation. Remembering that other people have their own points of view is important when entering a discussion. Children are wont to put anyone but self first. It’s natural for a child to be selfish, and unnatural to let someone else have the first bite of anything. Manners are learned, which means someone needs to teach.

There are education foundations such as arithmetic and history and grammar and literature and art, science and theology and philosophy and medicine…all important to build and all important to add to the life house we are building. When we stop reading books, articles and asking questions; when we stop looking at new things and trying to understand new things,  the education stops where it is and the life house stops growing. More than any other thing we do at the Garden School, that I think is important, is our ability to open new doors and ideas to children. It is at this wonderful preschool age that hope, dreams, interests and foundations begin to be built. The courage, the determination that defines a great life house is fostered here, and the responsibility is ours – parents and teachers to help the child build, build, build.

One of the foundations that is mostly avoided in this new age is discipline. Discipline has taken on a nasty connotation in the last few decades. It used to be a badge of courage…hence Lent…doing and fasting…and why discipline has gotten a bad rap eludes me about as much as steadfast eludes my sparing partner this past week. Discipline is a tool. It’s what makes one bounce out of bed in the morning rather than drag out of bed. It’s what makes chores get done NOW rather than later…it means always or nearly always having clean clothes to wear and a clean kitchen, bathroom, bed, cat box… It means never being late to work, late for a friend, late to church or other appointment.

When I review, with my scrutinizing mind, the incredibly disciplined and diligence I have witnessed by some of my parents this year regarding an enormously difficult reading project for our, and I say our with great love an affection, kids, I am elated beyond belief. So many of our incredible parents have, with great love and discipline, and I would throw in there steadfastness, worked on a daily basis with their very young children to help those children with a reading and writing foundation. I am speechless and filled with awe.

This not only demonstrates a real and deep love to the child, it shows the kind of commitment that teaches young children what it means to be fully in the world with command. This lesson in steadfastness will stay with each child given this wonderful gift.

I will probably lose lots of friends over the subject of being steadfast. I don’t think, however, that I have much of a choice…I have a job that is too critical to jellyfish over important things like foundations and life houses.