You’ve heard about the brain research and are thinking, “Am I doing all I should be doing to help my child be as smart as she can be? Should I be playing Mozart or buying computer programs?” Your David is having difficulty with reading and writing and doesn’t seem to care. The teacher says to do more reading and writing at home, but the last thing David wants to do when he comes home is to sit and read a book! School was a challenge for you. You don’t want it to be a challenge for your child, but you don’t know how to do things differently than the way you were raised. You are beginning to feel like your child’s chauffer. You take your child from sports to dance class to clubs. Dinner together is at McDonald’s, and the most talking you ever do is when driving in the car. You are a grandparent who would like to do more with your grandchild, but you don’t know how you might make your time together more meaningful.
Parenting Challenges Today
No matter your income or educational background, being a parent isn’t the same as it was in the past. And being a child isn’t the same either. Today’s schools are often competitive and ominated by tests. A wealth of new information about the brain is telling us that the experiences we provide our young children shape their intelligence. Should you be teaching your child French at age 4? Signing your child up for another class? You know too much TV isn’t good for children, but what do you do after you turn off the TV? Is this what raising children is all about? Isn’t having kids supposed to be more fun than this?
In our experiences of being parents and in working with children and families, we meet parents with questions like these all the time. We also see parents everyday who love their children and want the est for them but who may not be making the best choices about experiences for their children or pending their limited time together in the best ways.
In our work as educators and in our own parenting experiences, we have come to recognize that in-depth engagement in learning reaps enormous rewards for the growth of children’s knowledge and skills.We have also found that those times when
we are involved in projects with our children—when we are exploring, learning, and talking about real things of great interest to our children (both our own and those in our care)—to be immensely satisfying to us as adults.
Yet increasingly the times when children are truly engaged in learning and discovering are not occurring at all, or they are occurring when the child is with adults outside the home. For some families, learning has become something that happens at school or in a class or with “professionals.” Classes, such as museum classes, can be helpful to children when there are specific skills and knowledge that they are ready and wanting to learn. However, there are many other productive ways for children, especially young children, to learn. For many parents today, the parenting role has become custodial: dress and feed them, transport them, and become their cheerleader. Although these tasks are necessary and beneficial, they are not all that parenting can be.
As parents, sharing project work with our children has enabled us to meet many parenting challenges. Through project work we have had something meaningful to talk about with our children. We have a vehicle to teach them what we value and at the same time create strong bonds between us.
What Is a Project?
A project is an in-depth investigation of a topic that is interesting to children. In families, projects are what children are “in to”—what gets them excited and what they like to talk about. Projects involve hands-on investigation, finding the answers to questions, reading about the topic (or being read to), visiting sites or places, and talking to other people (adults and children) who know something about the topic. Projects also involve documentation—collecting information and preserving the experience by writing about it, taking photographs, or videotaping.
As parents, we have experienced projects with our children. One of us, Judy, has vivid memories of the summer of the caterpillars, when her children were immersed in collecting, studying, and observing the metamorphosis of a number of caterpillars. The project involved trips to the library, studying plants and leaves, and learning about how to care for the caterpillars.
Sometimes these projects become lifelong pursuits and hobbies. They become part of the family tradition. There is the “band family” whose interest in music blossomed into the whole family’s involvement and support of music and probably— we don’t know yet—into a career in music for a child. There is the “baseball stadium” family whose interest in stadiums turned into a project to “collect” major league stadiums by visiting them on summer vacations. In the Helm family, the girls developed a strong interest in pioneers, including pioneer clothes and toys. As they became readers this interest was fueled by the Laura Ingalls Wilder books. When a discussion began on where to go on vacation, they wanted to see the Wilder historical sites. A few years later, as the interest continued, the whole family participated in a re-creation of the Oregon Trail experience where everyone learned about the history of the West as well as how to churn butter and make pioneer crafts.
Not all projects are extensive investigations. Some projects are short-lived, lasting only a week or so. One of the joys of childhood should be the opportunity and time to explore many interests and experiment with learning about different areas of knowledge and different skills. In this way children learn what interests them and what they are good at doing. This “sampling process” provides a depth of self-understanding that enables informed selection of subjects to study in high school and eventually to career choices that promise to be satisfying. One of Judy’s daughters had an intense but short-lived interest in rockets. However, her other daughter’s interest in early America became a quilting project that turned into a lifelong interest, bonding grandmother and grandchild.
For more details please visit www.cogenttsedu.com
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