Spanish Language Immersion in Guatemala

Posted on February 10, 2011 by Suzita

(Names of our Guatemalan friends have been changed.)

As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, our family has traveled to Central America for Spanish language immersion two summers in a row.  Initially we went to Costa Rica which was a fitting first destination since we could drink the water there.  When traveling with kids, this little detail makes life infinitely easier.

For our second trip, when our kids were 7, 10, and 12, we studied Spanish in Antigua, Guatemala for three weeks.  In Guatemala we had a rich cultural experience, seeing and learning about Mayan traditions, and exploring ruins of old monasteries.  As in Costa Rica we lived with a family, and this time we could only drink filtered water which wasn’t always easily available. This required some careful planning, but it wasn’t all that challenged us in Guatemala.

Our Wet Arrival

We entered Guatemala along with Tropical Depression Alex.  Thus while we were learning our way around, it was pouring rain and fairly chilly.  During those first days we also realized that homestays in Guatemala do not provide towels or soap.  Sounds like a small thing, but it required us to trek across Antigua’s cobblestone streets to the massive and initially overwhelming mercado to buy these necessities.

The market had tiny stalls one after another selling every sort of thing, and was both in and outdoors.  The inside was fairly dark and dank, due to all the rain.  The crisscrossing aisles were narrow with no rhyme or reason as to stall placement: someone sold meat beside someone selling kids’ shoes. We quickly lost all directional bearings (even Todd, and this is rare).  Stephen, Daniel, and I began to feel pretty claustrophobic.  There weren’t exit signs or sunlight peaking though to suggest a way out.  When we eventually escaped, we vowed never to return to the inside portion of the mercado without a guide!

While Costa Rica was, in our view, a mostly developed country, Guatemala, wasn’t there yet.  The kids noticed this immediately and we spent much of the first afternoon attempting to pull them out of the homesickness that descended when they saw our room there.  It didn’t have much to offer.

Our Home in Guatemala

Our homestay was organized around a long, narrow passageway.  Part of this red-tiled walkway was covered and part was open to the elements.  The family we lived with included two girls, Emelia and Nadia, 5 and 11, whom our 7 year-old Annie quickly befriended.  They were very welcoming to her and their friendship with all of us was one of the highlights of our Guatemalan experience.

Upon returning from Spanish school each day, Annie would run off giggling with the girls to play some form of hide and seek or help them care for their baby cousin.  Soon Annie became much more familiar with the nooks and crannies of our foreign abode than the rest of us.

At one point along the narrow central hallway there was a small door, only a third the size of the others.  I thought it was a closet, since the door was sometimes cracked open and seemed to hold random supplies stacked every which way.  But one day Annie informed me, “No mama, a 90 year-old grandma lives in that room.”

Not being comfortable exploring the room myself, I couldn’t verify this fact.  I’d forgotten all about it until our final days at the homestay when the sun presented itself with some regularity.  At that time a sweet, diminutive great-grandma was indeed wheeled out of the room to spend time in the sunlight. Visions of the great grandmother character in One Hundred Years of Solitude came to mind.

Here’s one of my emails home describing some of the trials of our daily living in Guatemala:

It’s amazing how much energy it takes to simply live life down here.  Consider, for example, when it’s raining at night (a common occurrence) and a kid needs the bathroom.  For this we must bring a flashlight, an umbrella, and flip flops, or we will literally come back soaked since we must walk outside to the bathroom.  The flashlight has become even more crucial of late because after all this rain, a foot-long hole has opened up in the middle of the cement walk.

The other night while walking through the rain with most of the necessary items, minus an umbrella, I noticed the lemon tree had dropped perhaps eight small lemons onto the walkway.  I was kicking them to the side so no one would sprain an ankle, when my oversized, green flip flop flew off my foot into a puddle.  I had to momentarily decide, “What’s worse, leaving the flip flop and walking back with one bare foot (picture the floor of a public shower), or getting poured on in my only set of  PJs?”

I chose the latter and was pretty wet upon returning to bed.  And this doesn’t even address the issue of not using the water for brushing our teeth, not getting it in our mouths when we shower, not drinking it, not eating off of a plate that is still wet having been washed with water we shouldn’t drink…

Spanish School in Guatemala

All the Spanish schools in Guatemala have a one-to-one teacher to student ratio.  At our school, we sat around a pretty courtyard at small, wooden tables with white boards.  There was a lovely stone fountain in the center with a jungle of plants tangled around it where we regularly spotted butterflies.  But the courtyard could also be a tad noisy and distracting with perhaps 40 other tables of teacher/student pairs.  Life in Central America was simply noisier than life in most of the US.

My Spanish teacher, Maria, was an energetic, recently divorced, 60 year-old Guatemalan woman who had lived the majority of her life in Antigua.  She had three grown children and three grandkids.  She also had a liberal view of the world and strong opinions.  She soon told me she thought that kids in Guatemala didn’t read enough and didn’t have enough access to birth control, and that overpopulation was the main problem in the world.

Maria was on book three of the Twilight series and had read all of Harry Potter.  We talked about Isabel Allende’s books a lot.  She and my son Stephen enjoyed discussing the Harry Potter series (in Spanish).

It was rewarding to work daily with Maria for three weeks because we became quite close.  Over time I asked her about her personal experiences during the Guatemalan Civil War.  It was sad, frightening, intense, and fascinating to hear about that time in her life and the experiences of others she knew during the war.  And it was challenging but gratifying to be able to understand the majority of her stories, since she told them in Spanish.

Spanish Language Learning the Second Time Around

Having taken some Spanish in Boulder, then studying intensively in Costa Rica, we found it much easier to get by in Spanish in Guatemala.

Here are some of my comments at the time on learning Spanish:

It’s always interesting to observe the ups and downs my mind swings to during a Spanish lesson.  At times I’m sure I’m nearly there.  I can get around.  I can be understood.  I can understand.  Life in Spanish is good.  But then moments later I am drowning in some aspect of the language that previously I never even knew existed, and feeling completely hopeless.  It’s wild.  And I’m sure it has something to do with the challenges of being in such a foreign place.

By the way, all of us are having really strange and vivid dreams down here.  Magic realism type dreams.  Are they just a Central and South American phenomenon, these colorful nighttime stories?  If so, perhaps this is why their writing contains so many magical themes and images.  Or more likely our brains are attempting to come to terms with what we see and deal with each day.

Annie learned Spanish both at school and at our homestay running around with Emelia and Nadia. They played cards in Spanish and I’d overhear her saying, “mi turno,” “tu turno,” and “uno momento,” among other phrases.  One day Daniel asked, “Where are the scissors?” and Annie immediately repeated, “Donde estan las tijeras?”  She was also more comfortable being in a very foreign place the second time around than she had been in Costa Rica.

Daniel’s Spanish learning in Guatemala reminded us of Stephen’s in Costa Rica.  Often when we adults were speaking in Spanish he’d say, “I understood that!”  He spent many hours conjugating verbs with his teacher, when he wasn’t taking a break to pick the sour, green-skinned variety of oranges hanging from delicate branches above his school table.  Daniel’s interest in codebreaking came in handy when learning Spanish.  I kept reminding him it was like one big code to figure out.

Stephen’s Spanish really soared.  He and his teacher once read an article on the solar system and she informed me later that he’d updated her on all the facts the article omitted.  He didn’t become fluent, but he became much more at ease using the language to get around.

Even more so than in Costa Rica, our experience living in Guatemala taught our kids that not all parts of the world are like their home town.  Getting to know Nadia and Emelia allowed our three to stand in the shoes of other children who live significantly different lives.  There were no playgrounds or soccer fields in Antigua, and kids there tended to play inside rather than out.  Not only was this eye-opening for Stephen, Daniel, and Annie, but it helped them (as well as Todd and me) to appreciate many things about our home.

When the schooling part of our trip ended, we traveled to the Lake Atitlan area for a small getaway and to visit a non-profit we’d learned of in Boulder. We’d collected school supplies for them from people at home.  It turned out to be a wonderful organization which deserves its own blog post.  Read about it next week!

____

Recommended Reading:

The Family Sabbatical Handbook: The Budget Guide to Living Abroad with Your Family, by Elisa Bernick.  I really enjoyed this book!  It was helpful to read about the experience of the author’s family abroad, be reminded that a sabbatical can take many forms, and benefit from many of the lessons she learned “on the road.”  This book also contains many helpful lists and websites.

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Turning Kids Into Readers: Seven Tips I Never Learned from Schools

Posted on January 27, 2011 by Suzita

I knew having three kids would make me a more humble parent, I just didn’t realize how much more humble!

When it comes to reading, each of our kids has taken a different path. We have one who was a natural reader. He would have loved reading no matter what we did as parents. If we’d only had him, I wouldn’t be writing this post. Instead I’d be thinking, “What’s the big deal with teaching kids to love reading? It just happens.”

Our two other kids have required a more active parental campaign in order to learn to love reading. Much trial and error and, hence, lots of learning on our parental parts.

What I’ve learned:

1.  I can’t read aloud to a child at bedtime. I become too mind-numbingly tired and exhaust all my energy fighting sleep. It’s just not worth it. For the first 4 or 5 years of parenthood, I felt exceedingly guilty when I heard other parents talk about bedtime reading with their kids. Thankfully I’ve moved past this. Now I read to my kids after school, on weekends, holidays, or sick days.

2.  Reading aloud creates a shared memory. Especially when I do the hard work of finding a book we’ll both enjoy, reading aloud has become one of my favorite parenting activities. I’ve noticed that we talk about certain books we’ve read together again and again, the way we might fondly recall an enjoyable vacation experience.

3.  Let the child do what he needs to in order to focus on the story. With my son Daniel, the cozy image of me reading with him snuggled beside me was the first thing I had to let go of. He’s a ball of energy, and with him reading aloud works best after a strong dose of exercise. Then, before we begin reading, Daniel chooses something to keep his hands occupied (a floor puzzle, Rubik’s cube, cards) some quiet activity which doesn’t require too much concentration. Even though this may seem like a song and dance merely to read a book together, it’s exceedingly superior to the wiggly, unfocused alternative.

I recently read an article with the subheading, “Fidgeting may enable children with ADHD to stay alert.” It stated that all the children in this particular study fidgeted when remembering and manipulating computer-generated letters, numbers, and shapes. However, the children with ADHD wiggled even more. As far as I can tell Daniel does not have ADHD, but it was reaffirming to know that I don’t have the only super-squirmy boy.

4.  Use characters from your kids’ books to help you better understand your kids. This is an old child psychotherapy trick. You may have noticed that past a certain age, kids dislike talking about themselves. Yet they’re usually willing to tell you something about their friends. So ask them “what Amelia would do in this situation” or “what Ben’s opinion of something is” and you are likely to hear indirectly about your child’s views.

Back to books… This strategy can also be used with characters in books. While reading aloud or talking about your child’s current book, ask for details about her favorite characters. What does she like about these characters? What does she think a character would do or feel in various circumstances? You get the idea.

5.  Don’t purchase video games until a solid love of reading has been established. This rule was enacted mostly for our dear Daniel who would likely trade his left leg for the chance to play 2-3 hours of daily video games. I haven’t actually seen this happen (the game playing marathon) but Todd and I know it’s true. Parental intuition. It’s been hard to hold the line on video games, but not having them in the house has definitely allowed Daniel to focus more on reading. I’m not exactly sure how to determine when “a love of reading has been established” but I’ll know it when I see it. We are slowly getting closer.

A study at Carnegie Mellon found that even average 8-12 year-old readers had stronger white matter connections in the brain area called the anterior left centrum semiovale than poor readers. However, when poor readers in the study were given six months of intensive instruction, their white matter connections improved significantly.

6.  Do what you need to in order to hook a child into a book. Unlike our son who loves reading anything and everything, our second two children often have a tough time getting into a book. If I am quite sure the book is a good fit for the child, I often read the first chapter aloud to them. Then they read the rest of the book on their own. Or if the book is slightly above their ability level, I’ll sometimes buy an audio version for them to listen to first. Then later they read the book unaccompanied.

I also periodically encourage confidence boosters. When Daniel is struggling through a challenging book, I’ll have him put it aside and instead open an old favorite. It was at one of these moments that I realized Geronimo Stilton would be part of my life for so much longer than I ever wished or hoped for!

7.  Reading really does improve writing. Okay, I have heard teachers say this before but I never completely understood it until recently. While reading one of Stephen’s school essays this year, I finally saw how reading enhances writing. He wrote about coring trees at science club and his essay included the sentence, “The tree was in a group of similar Cottonwoods, most of which were now succumbing to the forces of Fall.” I mean, we just don’t speak this way in our home. Alas, would that we did. And I know they don’t talk that way at school!

Stephen must have picked up this language from a book. Although he’s only in 6th grade and his writing is still evolving, I love that he has a huge store of ideas and techniques from his reading to inspire his writing. Between this and improving my brain’s white matter connections, it’s enough to encourage me to read more!

I’d love to hear other people’s tips for creating readers!

____

Recommended Reading:

Esperanza Rising, by Pam Muñoz Ryan.  Third through seventh grade girls would love this one. This is a story about a girl from a wealthy Mexican family. When she is 13, her father is killed and her life changes drastically. Now poor, her small family immigrates to California and they become migrant workers. This book is fiction, though based on the life of the author’s grandmother. I read this aloud to my kids and we all loved it, though some parts were pretty sad.

The Circuit, by Francisco Jiménez.  Try this one especially with third though seventh grade boys. This is an autobiography by a man who is now a college professor in California. His family immigrated to America from Mexico when he was a young child. They too were migrant workers in California, following a circuit of fruit and vegetable picking from year to year.

I recently read this aloud to Daniel, though Stephen and Annie also listened at times. Daniel really connected with the main character and it helped him to understand the importance of family over possessions. The story only follows the main character through age 14, so Daniel and I looked the author up on YouTube because Daniel desperately wanted to know how things turned out for him in the end.

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Spanish Immersion in Costa Rica: Unexpected Highpoints for My Kids

Posted on January 20, 2011 by Suzita

If you read last week’s post about our family’s experience learning Spanish in Costa Rica for a month, you no doubt got the impression that it was a fairly trying adventure, but an adventure nonetheless!

My summary at the time of this type of travel with children was:

On the one hand it is incredibly taxing to travel in this way with 3 kids.  Each of us is our own sherpa, carrying our daily needs in our backpack as we walk and bus everywhere.  The days we forget to bring our additional bag stuffed with raingear we’re quickly punished with one of the frequent downpours.

But traveling like this is also a wonderful way to meet people!  We have met so many Costa Ricans (Ticos) through our kids asking their kids to play.  People here love children and are more willing to talk with us, I think, because the kids are with us.

A man came up yesterday, said hello, then mentioned that he sees us out walking each day with our kids.  Daily, people approach Annie, say something like “muchacha” or “linda” and squeeze her chubby cheeks.  She’s actually been quite good about this and just smiles back.  Since there are not many American families in this town, people are definitely getting to know us.  Today as we walked to Spanish school, a bus driver going the other direction honked and waved hello.  We’d taken his bus last week.

We rewarded ourselves for completing 3 weeks of Spanish school by traveling to what we referred to as the other Costa Rica.  We visited the rainforest and observed probably 20 different types of animals, most memorably the White-faced Capuchin monkeys who played together like children in the broad-leafed trees directly above us.  Our entire family ziplined through the Cloud Forest.  And we visited a bubbling, gurgling volcano. Totally cool.

The kids loved these experiences as did we, and many amazing photos were taken.  But these times didn’t turn out to be the parts of this trip our family still talks about regularly.  Instead, our most frequent Costa Rican conversations center on the weird and unexpected experiences we tended to have on the local buses.

To give you a visual, here’s my description from week 3:

We’ve totally gotten the hang of the local buses now.  As some of you know they are old American school buses, though painted all different colors, not merely yellow.  In the afternoons that we don’t play futbol at the park, we often take a bus to explore a nearby town.  The first time we did this, I feared we wouldn’t know when we’d arrived and where to get off.  However, I now know not to worry.  Simply wait until you see the big Catholic Church with the town square right across the street, and get off there.

We had so many slightly stressful, surprising, and/or funny experiences on buses in Costa Rica.  These are what Stephen, Daniel, and Annie love to reminisce about to this day!

Once we were riding on a crowded bus and were packed in beside the back door, which the whole time never closed.  I clung to Daniel who was a little too excited about the rapidly passing scenery.  Or the time our family group became divided and only one part could wedge their way through the congested bus aisle and out the back door when our stop came.  Another time the only available seat left on the bus didn’t possess a cushion, just a hole in a metal frame.  Daniel willingly sat there.

But probably the most popular bus story is one about me.  We’d had a long day exploring a new town and had been waiting a while at one of the dirtier, busier bus stations I’d ever experienced.  There was an unhealthy odor coming from somewhere nearby.  Being in a foreign country we were never sure if we were standing in the correct spot or which bus was ours.

By the time we stepped on to our bus, a humid darkness had descended.  Our driver climbed surprisingly speedily up a steep, winding hill toward the area in which our hotel was located.  Todd and I carefully scanned the surroundings so we wouldn’t pass by our somewhat unfamiliar lodging, when suddenly the bus did indeed drive right by it!

I won’t say I panicked.  What would you call just below panic, hypo-panic maybe?  That was me.  I found myself banging on the dusty bus window while loudly pleading, “Para! Para!” (meaning Stop!)  See, if I was fully panicking I would have yelled in English.  The generally low-key Costa Rican women on board all paused their conversations to stare at me.

Then the bus driver halted the bus, at a regular stop.  It turned out our stop was just past our hotel, not before it.  Not my best moment.  However the kids love this story and retell it with zeal perhaps monthly!

Our time learning Spanish in Costa Rica was both a difficult and incredibly enriching experience.  Annie, Daniel, and Stephen lived and ate with a family from another culture for 3 weeks, which Stephen later said felt like a year.  (I actually consider this a positive thing.  I’m not sure he did.)  Being in Costa Rica led us into a myriad of conversations we wouldn’t otherwise have had with the kids:

“What are the advantages of having one’s waste water system below ground versus above ground?”

“Mama, did you notice that not all the kids have bikes here like they do at home?”

“Why would Costa Rica choose not to fund a military?”

Here was my final email home from Costa Rica:

We are on our last day of this adventure, and as all parents of young children will understand, I feel the desperate need for a vacation.  How I would love to visit one of those beautiful spa or yoga retreats one hears about in exotic places, like Costa Rica perhaps.

Our family did in fact take a similar trip the next summer. This trip, to Guatemala, turned out to be even more challenging than the first one.  Read about it in here two weeks from now.

Have you taken any trips like this one with your family?  Leave a comment below!

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Learning Spanish as a Family in Costa Rica

Posted on January 13, 2011 by Suzita

Two summers ago our family traveled to central Costa Rica for a month to live with a local family and learn Spanish at a language school.  Our kids were 11, 9 and 6 at the time.

I’d conceived of the notion of learning Spanish as a family and thought we should do it during the summers when Todd, being a professor, has some time flexibility.  I loved the idea of becoming fluent in a second language, while showing our kids different cultures.  But, we didn’t just want Spanish by the beach, margaritas in hand.  We wanted more of an immersion experience.

Todd and I had taken 5 months of intensive Spanish before we set off.  Our sons had taken a year-long, after-school Spanish class, and Annie had merely listened to Spanish CDs and watched Muzzy, the BBC kids’ language program.  So you can see, we had a lot to learn.

As with all grand plans, this one looked much easier on paper than it was “up close and personal.”  I am writing about it now with the perspective of time, but want to use a smattering of my emails from the trip to underscore the intensity and vibrancy of the experience.

Here was my first email home:

I don’t have a ton of time, but I wanted to jot down some first impressions of our Costa Rican experience.  First, I’m so glad we spent the time and energy on all those Spanish classes last summer and fall because, contrary to what many Americans told us, we are not running into many English speakers here.  This is likely because we are off the tourist path, at least while we attend Spanish language school.

Our homestay mother does not speak any English, the bus drivers don’t speak English, our Spanish teacher doesn’t speak English.  Our new friends we met at the local park when we asked them to play frisbee, don’t speak English.  We are immersed in another culture!

This of course is what I wanted and hoped for in this trip.  However, I’d like to clarify that taking 4 hours of Spanish every morning, speaking Spanish at home and out and about, attempting to order food for 5 that will be eaten, and making sure the kids don’t get mown down by a car while crossing the hectic streets is not a vacation.  It’s an adventure, but not what one would call relaxing.

That first week was pure survival.  Some things we learned:

  1. Don’t just go for one week or you’ll never exit survival mode.
  2. Maintain low expectations and offer the family frequent treats during that first week.
  3. Let the kids watch some tv, at least it’s in Spanish.

Here’s what I wrote about our Spanish language learning after week 2:

Todd and I are definitely learning more Spanish and have ample opportunity to practice it.  For those of you who know Spanish already, we are currently swimming in a deep pool of the subjunctive tense and will be in these waters for a while.  But it’s been so helpful to study and practice with a partner.

As for our kids learning Spanish, the jury is still out.  Todd and I have contemplated this and have generated a hypothesis.  Numerous people told us the kids would learn Spanish in no time if they traveled to a Spanish-speaking country and spent time with local kids.  We are now assuming the definition of “no time” is one year.   To be honest, this feels like less of a surprise to me than to Todd.  He’s always been an optimistic soul.

My hope was to come down here and show the kids a very different culture than their own.  I wanted them to know that not all places are like Boulder.  Then I wanted them to have contacts with kids their ages from another culture, to get an up close sense of the differences.   I also wanted them to understand personally how hard it is for people who immigrate to our country.  I hoped that experiencing these things would then give the kids a motivation for learning Spanish they didn’t have before.  Then, it was icing on the cake for me if the kids learned a ton of Spanish as well.

After nearly two weeks, I’d say that there is no icing on this cake.  The kids will not be learning a ton of Spanish in one month, unless something very unexpected happens next week.  That’s not to say they aren’t learning anything.  Annie regularly states, “Tengo hambre” before meals, and Stephen is improving his verb conjugations.  They all have great natural accents.  But, the moral of the story is that this is the first (hopefully) of many of these trips that will move us toward fluency as a family.

5 Big Picture Lessons Gleaned from our Spanish Immersion Experience:

1. Learning a language is challenging however and wherever you do it. The kids had 4 hours of Spanish daily in Costa Rica with one substantial break during the 4 hours.  However, learning a language is not altogether different from say, learning math.  Would you expect a child to sit for 4 hours every morning to learn math?

2. Schools in Central America are still taught on a strict Catholic school model. Kids are expected to remain seated quietly at their desks, listen to the teacher, and copy a lot down.  It’s not the active, creativity-based model you see in American elementary schools today.  Our Costa Rican Spanish teachers taught us the way they’d been taught.  We practically had to bribe them to take the kids on a walk or to the store.

3. Make sure the kids have activities each day at which they feel competent. For example, after Spanish school most days we went to the central park to play soccer with some of the local kids.  Stephen and Daniel love and are skilled at soccer.  One doesn’t have to speak Spanish to play soccer.  Therefore, soccer helped them recover from the tough mornings of Spanish school.

Annie’s comfort activity turned out to be playing with 1½ year-old Sofia, the granddaughter of our Costa Rican host mother.  Sofia adored Annie and it didn’t matter that Annie couldn’t speak Spanish because Sofia couldn’t either.  Annie picked up the majority of her Spanish while playing with Sofia and being spoken to in Spanish by Sofia’s grandma.

4. Bring something the kids can share with other kids, which doesn’t require much language. We brought cat’s cradle hand strings which we made ourselves.  When we met a new kid, we gave him a string, and our kids taught him various tricks with it.  As it turned out many Costa Rican kids were familiar with these and showed us some figures we’d never seen.

5. If you happen to have a grandma who’s fluent in Spanish, definitely bring her along! Ours couldn’t join us the entire time, but when there, smoothed out many a cross-cultural rough edge.

One final lesson:

Your child may do fine with milk at home but then throw up directly after breakfast for 2 days in a row in a foreign country.

My quote:

Least favorite verbs I had to learn on this trip: vomitar and tolerar.  As in, Daniel vomito again this morning.  I don’t think his estomago can tolera milkshake smoothies for breakfast anymore.  (Had to say this to our host mother during week 2.)

In next week’s post, read about what our kids actually took away from their Costa Rican experience (since you now know it wasn’t fluency in Spanish!)

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Fall-back Skills

Posted on January 6, 2011 by Suzita

A few years back, I got my haircut from a woman new to our local salon.  She looked quite young, and later told me she was a part-time college student in her late twenties who cut hair 2 days a week.  She was one of 9 children and had learned to cut hair to pay her way through college.

It’s likely this young woman’s family circumstances forced her to learn a marketable skill at an early age, but I perked up when I heard her story because I’d already been thinking about a similar strategy for my kids.

With the recent shifts in our global economy, it’s risky to exit one’s twenties with just one work skill or profession in hand.  Why not encourage our kids to enter adulthood with more than one money-making possibility available to them?  I think of this as having a profession and a fall-back skill.  A fall-back skill would be one that people are continually willing to pay for, even during a recession.

Possible fall-back skills:

1. Haircutting

2. Plumbing

3. Fence building

4. Other basic carpentry skills

5. Certain computer or internet skills

6. Sewing

My kids are still young, who knows where their interests will lead them?  It’s possible they’d select one of the above options as their main work.  To that I’d say, “Fine, but choose another area as a fall-back skill.”

These days we parents do so much thinking and maneuvering regarding after-school activities.  Should he learn to play an instrument?  Should she join the soccer team now while everyone is still new at soccer?  Or perhaps her time would be better spent participating in math club after school.  It’s easy to focus only on sports and academics for our children, but job skills are another valuable area.

I recently read Plenitude, by Juliet Schor.  It’s basically about trading our old, broken down, unhealthy economy for a new type of economy.  She presents some extremely thought-provoking ideas and the research behind these.

In Schor’s “plenitude economy” everyone should work fewer hours on the job (like it so far?) which research shows actually reduces unemployment.

Sociologists Anders Hayden and John Shandra also found that hours of work are a significant predictor of one’s ecological footprint.  Reduce work hours, reduce overall energy consumption.  Households with more time flexibility can engage in slower, less resource-intensive activities, Schor notes.

“Recovering one’s time makes ‘self-provisioning’ (making, growing, and doing things for oneself) possible, revealing a liberating truth:  The less one has to buy, the less one is required to earn.”

Shor also uses the term “time wealth” in comparison to monetary wealth.  I love this concept!  She cites studies which have found that being time-affluent is positively associated with well-being, even when income is taken into consideration.

My fall-back skill plan would also give the kids the “I can do this myself” mindset that underscores self-provisioning.  My hope would be that possessing do-it-yourself skills would allow my kids to one day live the need-to-buy-less-and-therefore-earn-less lifestyle, if they chose.

Since I have elementary-aged children, I’m in the ideas phase of this venture.  Some thoughts regarding helping kids learn a fall-back skill:

1. Volunteer as a family for Habitat for Humanity. This one underscores many of our family’s values and I had been simply waiting until my youngest was old enough to safely and usefully volunteer there.  Recently, however, I discovered that you need to be 18 to volunteer at Habitat.  Thus, I am now looking for a similar organization.  Anyone know of a good one in the Boulder or Denver areas?

2.  When the kids are older, travel to the Shelter Institute as a family to participate in one of their weeklong programs. This family run organization has been teaching the skills of homebuilding, in addition to fine woodworking, for years.  And it’s located in beautiful New England!

3.  Mobilize the skills of friends and neighbors. When our neighbor, Danny, was building a chicken coop, I shooed the kids over to watch and lend a hand.  Then after the coop was in use, they learned chicken care (probably not a highly marketable fall-back skill, but good in other ways.)  I need to notice the many skills my neighbors have and set my kids up as worker’s helpers on their projects.

There are also psychological advantages to knowing you possess a fall-back skill.  Today, few people will remain at one job or profession throughout their lifetimes.  Having a fall-back skill in your back pocket would allow you to face a layoff or change of profession with much less apprehension.

Just don’t ask me what my fall-back skill is.  I think I’m still developing it.

____

Updates:

I asked my kids to make a green New Year’s Resolution this year, one that would help the earth in some way.  I said I’d help them if they needed ideas, then stepped back and tried not to be too intrusive.

Stephen (12) came up with writing to our congressional reps about a climate change issue.

Daniel (10) said, “My resolution is to not be as difficult about going to yoga.”  We decided that this was enough of a “green” resolution because if more people did yoga, climate change would be more under control.  This was merely our guess, but it seemed plausible.

Those of you who remember my post, My Humble Warriors: Yoga with Adolescents and Tweens, will recall that Daniel is the one who always gives us a hard time about yoga.  I was quite surprised, but delighted to hear this resolution.

Annie (7) decided that each week she would write down something good to do for the earth and then she would take this note around to our neighbors and ask them to sign off on it too.  I know, she clearly doesn’t have the resolution concept down yet.  But she was so eager about this plan that I just couldn’t burst her “green balloon.”  That day she wrote, “I’m going to turn off lights to save the Earth’s electricity,” on a piece of paper and took it to 4 neighbors who also signed off on this pledge.

Todd and I made green resolutions too and shared them with the kids, but they weren’t half as colorful as the ones the kids generated.

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Teaching Kids About Microfinance

Posted on January 1, 2011 by Suzita

For Christmas this year, Todd’s sister, Annie, gave each of my kids a $25 gift certificate to Kiva, an online microfinance organization.  Ever since I discovered Kiva it has been one of my favorite, inspirational nonprofits. Sometimes when I’m having a bad day I just hang out on their website!  They produce some wonderful little web-videos profiling their entrepreneurs.

On Kiva’s website you choose who to support from a cast of hundreds (complete with photos and life details) and thus feel a connection to the person to whom you are lending.

Stephen, our twelve-year-old, jumped online first with Todd peering over his shoulder.  Since we visited Guatemala last summer Stephen hoped to support a Kiva entrepreneur from that country, but sadly Guatemala was not among the options this time.

Stephen ended up proudly funding Eduardo from Colombia.  He owns a fruit stand and hopes to buy a small store from which to sell his fruit.  Stephen smiled when he related his choice, clearly feeling a bond with entrepreneurial Eduardo.  He then reminded me, “Colombians are supposed to be the friendliest people in South America, you know.”

Next up was Daniel.  He also wanted to fund someone from a Spanish-speaking country since we had traveled to two in past summers.  (One never knows when or where travels with kids will make an impact, but both Daniel and Stephen didn’t even consider lending to a non-Spanish-speaking person.)  Daniel chose Ernesto from Ecuador.  “I picked him because he has two kids he needs to support.  Oh, and he’s a goat farmer like Grandma used to be,” Daniel informed me excitedly.

“And Colombia and Ecuador are neighbors in South America,” Stephen hollered from the next room.

Annie, being only seven, needed a bit more help maneuvering around Kiva’s website, but there was one thing she was sure of:  “I’m definitely giving my money to a girl!”  Annie wanted to support a woman who ran a chicken farm in a Spanish-speaking country.  Two sets of our neighbors raise chickens and Annie spends much time tending to and studying them.  She was searching for a similar soul.

Alas the day we trolled through Kiva’s website, all the Latina chicken farmers had been loaned to already.  It’s quite likely Annie is not the only kid with chicken-raising neighbors.  Have you noticed this has become quite the phenomenon?

Annie enthusiastically chose a group of women from the Philippines who make and sell clothes.  And what 7 year-old girl wouldn’t love being part of a group of women focused on clothing?  This selection worked just fine for our Annie.  She marched directly from our computer to our world map to be sure she knew the location of the Philippines.  “I want to be able to picture where the girls live.”

It was a fun to see which Kiva entrepreneurs my kids chose and why.  I successfully kept my mouth shut while the boys made their selections, believing all Kiva loan requests are from deserving recipients.

However Annie’s decision to lend to women reminded me of the book I’ve been reading, Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide, by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn.  Kristof writes a weekly column in the New York Times about this topic and has become one of my current day heroes.

In a New York Times Magazine article last year (August 23, 2009), he noted “there’s a growing recognition among everyone from the World Bank, to the U.S. military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, to aid organizations like CARE that focusing on women and girls is the most effective way to fight global poverty and extremism.”

“The world is awakening to a powerful truth: Women and girls aren’t the problem; they’re the solution.  Half the Sky describes research on this issue, and gives numerous colorful descriptions of how microloans, for example, help women the world over.  Studies have found that “when women hold assets or gain incomes, family money is more likely to be spent on nutrition, medicine, and housing, and consequently children are healthier.”

One Hen bookWhen my kids were younger, I wanted to teach them about microfinance but hadn’t had much success, when I came across a lovely children’s book: One Hen: How One Small Loan Made a Big Difference, by Katie Smith Milway.  I adore this book!  But more significantly, my kids love it too.  It’s an uplifting story about a young African boy who buys a chicken and how his life slowly changes from this day on.  But the book also subtly gives children a lesson in economics as they read.  I’ve seen each of my children return to One Hen more than once, after their initial read-through with me.

Since Stephen, Daniel, and Annie made their Kiva loans last week, each has wondered aloud about some aspect of their entrepreneurs’ lives.  This process also led to some significant conversations about gratitude.

I look forward to selecting three more Kiva loan recipients in the future with my kids when these loans are repaid.   What a thoughtful, long-lasting gift!

Ideas on additional ways to teach kids about microfinance?  Leave a comment below!

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Sibling Rivalry: Five Strategies to Reduce It

Posted on December 23, 2010 by Suzita

I was in the library a few days before Winter Break and ran into my friend Sherry, a regular Play. Fight. Repeat. reader. Being an astute parent, Sherry was aware that our upcoming school vacation with kids home for much longer than our parents ever had to deal with, would not be a “vacation” for her.

“Will you write something on sibling rivalry?  It could be a long break at our house!”

Okay Sherry, here goes…

In my experience sibling rivalry is in the Top 5 Hardest Things about Parenting, a position it shares with the entire family succumbing to the stomach flu. I won’t overwhelm you with the other three on the list, but you’re sure to read about them in future blog posts.

In our home the level of sibling rivalry is a barometer for how well we are doing as a family. It ebbs and flows with Todd’s and my stress levels. When we are on top of our game, sibling bickering drops to an ignorable minimum. But come the end of a semester when Todd is facing mountains of grading, and the kids’ school parties, performances, concerts, and tournaments all occur during one intense, hectic week, sibling rivalry rears its ugly head endlessly.

Here are some strategies we’ve used to combat it:

1. Run ‘em like puppies.

A child who’s just run around outside for 30 minutes (or longer!) is much less likely to pick fights with his siblings.

2. Make playing together a privilege.

When our kids are constantly fighting, fussing, or competing, we remove the privilege of playing together. We call it having a day of boredom, and it’s amazing how relatively quickly it generates new appreciation for one’s siblings.

3. Give young children the tools they need to play well together.

We spent YEARS teaching our kids how to share and cooperate. Yes really, I mean years. The kids have been watching home videos of their younger years lately, and it’s almost painful to watch us continually working on the same lesson as they hit each new age.

Day after day we’d give them words to use when they wanted a toy that someone else had. We’d demonstrate how to offer another equivalent toy as a trade again and again.

For those of you still living through this stage, it really does end eventually. For me it ended about the time I finally gave up hope that they’d ever learn these skills. One day soon after I let go of this, I heard a little voice saying, “You can have Thomas the Tank Engine in two minutes.  Go tell Mama to set the timer.” Hallelujah!

Many of the parenting books I devoured during this phase advised us to let kids “work it out amongst themselves.” Overall I believe in striving for this noble goal, and our home videos prove I tried. But let’s be realistic: There are foreign countries which have been trying unsuccessfully to keep the peace for years, and more often than not they revert to violence. Yet we are urged to let our 3 and 5 year-old kids work it out together unaided? Without some pretty strong negotiation skills, it’s never happened at my house.

I was excited to read about Laurie Kramer’s research and sibling program called More Fun with Sisters and Brothers. Rather than coaching parents to effectively respond to sibling fights, Kramer teaches siblings proactive social skills.

The authors of Nurture Shock write that Kramer’s beneficial program emphasizes sibling conflict prevention rather than conflict resolution. This approach has worked at our house.

4. Encourage different interests among your kids.

This is vital, especially with same gender, close in age children. Yet it took me forever to implement this one. My only excuse is that my sons loved the same activities for the longest time. Plus, I was in such survival mode during those early years that the efficiency model took over.

“You mean, you’ll teach both of my kids the recorder at the same time? It’s a deal!”

“Three swimming lessons in the same pool beginning at 4:00? Where can I sign up?”

Over time, as I’m sure you can see better than I could, this leads to even more sibling rivalry. My younger son always compared his abilities unfavorably to those of his older brother, no matter what logic I used with him.

I’m embarrassed to admit it took me so long, but it was just last year when I finally made a change. I recall the day it happened. My younger son was demonstrating one of his newly acquired skills. I don’t recollect which, with Daniel it could have been anything from yo-yoing, to whistling, to juggling.

Again and again, “Watch this Mama! Isn’t this cool Mama? Now watch this!” I remember thinking, “I can’t seem to give this child the amount of attention he needs right now. It would take a whole audience!” And bingo! There was the insight. Get thy son into a theater group! It’s been a perfect fit for him. Additionally it’s something his older brother isn’t drawn to in the least so Stephen is supportive of Daniel without any rivalry.

5. Spend one-on-one time with each child daily.

(See my Importance of Simply Giving Time piece for how experts recommend doing this.) This is one of those suggestions I gave out ever so freely as a child psychologist before I had kids. I still whole-heartedly agree with it, but now more humbly acknowledge it’s surprisingly hard to pull off. However, I’ve also seen that when we spend quality one-on-one time with each child daily, it’s as if the sibling rivalry energy just drains right out of their little bodies.

Other helpful books or anti-rivalry strategies? Leave a comment below!

_______

Recommended reading:

Siblings Without Rivalry, by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish. Although this book’s title is an impossibility which inspires false hope, the book itself has some excellent suggestions for getting to the cause of your kids’ sibling rivalry. It’s a classic that’s well worth reading.

Nurture Shock, by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman. The chapter about siblings contains research contradicting some of the conventional knowledge floating around. It also points out that certain books we parents commonly reach for such as, The Berenstain Bears or Arthur series, don’t present very positive sibling relationships and can actually teach kids negative sibling behaviors.

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Wordless Wednesday #2

Posted on December 22, 2010 by Suzita

This year’s favorite ornament, handmade by my Swedish friend, Ulrika 2010.

First Place in Category: The True Mood of the Season

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Paying Kids for Failing: A Backward Reward System That Worked for Me

Posted on December 16, 2010 by Suzita

My stepfather, Dan, passed away last June and I dearly miss him. The most recent reason is that he was the person I’d phone first when I’d failed at something.

Dan entered my life when I was 9 and heavily into my gymnastics phase. I recall being asked later, as a 12 year-old, what I wanted to be when I grew up. “A gymnast,” I responded. I actually have this written down in my curlicue handwriting of the time, so I can’t dispute it! A gymnast? For a career? You can see how deeply into the sport I was.

Dan sensed this too. His life had not taken a conventional course. He’d grown up during the Depression and had sold vegetables door to door as an 8 year-old to earn money for his family. Later, he’d lied about his age and joined the Air Force, learning to fly before he could drive. Dan never graduated from high school, but could multiply 4-digit numbers together in his head. After an Air Force career he ran a successful camping and outdoor equipment store.

Dan understood there were numerous paths to a good life, and he saw that I hadn’t learned this yet. My “all eggs in one basket” gymnastics intensity concerned him. So he drew up a plan.

After my gymnastics meets, rather than asking what went well, he’d ask what went wrong. When my routines had ended badly, he’d request a detailed description of my fall off the narrow high beam, or exactly how hard I’d landed on my purple leotard-covered bottom after the unsuccessful vault.

Then he’d respond, “Yeah, you’re right. That was a real failure. That was a good one. A memorable one. I think that one is worth some money.”

I remember my shock the first time Dan said this. I happily accepted the cash. It wasn’t much, but enough to make his point.

He explained to me that it was vital to learn how to fail. But, he clarified, he wasn’t talking about any run-of-the-mill failure. It only counted as a good failure, when you’d really tried hard for the goal, really wanted it, then failed. “Those are the ones worth money.”

As I moved out of my gymnastics phase and into a fairly intense academic experience in high school, Dan observed that it was becoming harder for me to take risks that might potentially hurt my G.P.A. He was often the sole voice reminding me it was imperative to try new things. “Remember, a good failure is worth money.”

And I did produce some good failures over the years. There was that C in calculus senior year of high school. That was painful. I accepted some money for that one. Dan’s plan didn’t end in high school, either. When I’d call home from college he would faithfully inquire, “Any good failures I should know about?”

The last time I received a failure payment was when my first professional article, based on my dissertation, was rejected by the journal I’d hoped to publish it in. I got a fairly substantial check for that one.

As the years passed, it wasn’t so much receiving the failure compensation (although honestly the cash did soften the blow), but knowing there was someone who wanted to hear about my failures, which made an impression. Dan would quickly put my current disaster into perspective, usually remind me of one of his doozies, and generally impart the message that it’s okay to discuss these things. We don’t need to hide them.

I want my kids to learn this failure lesson too. Rabbi Harold Kushner of When Bad Things Happen to Good People, says people who achieve everything they set out to in life obviously have set the bar too low. And that those who are never disappointed are the real failures. Dan would have agreed.

However, I have yet to instill the payment for failure system at our house. Looking back I realize that, being a step-parent, Dan was in the perfect position to pay us for failing (as long as my mother agreed, and she did). It’s trickier for a child’s actual parent to pay them for failing.

I’m not giving up on this yet! Perhaps I’ll recruit a family friend, or maybe an aunt or uncle to play this role for my children. And if that doesn’t take, I’ll talk regularly to my kids about Dan’s influence on me in this area. Maybe we’ll create a Dan Failure Payment and give it in his honor when “a good failure” occurs.

I’m also aware that this payment plan would only work with certain types of kids. I have yet to discern which of mine would benefit from this backward reward system (though day by day it’s becoming clearer).

Not only did my stepfather’s unique way of looking at life ease the pain of my failures and teach me to learn from them, but it encouraged me to try new things. (Remind me to tell you about my bicycle trip across the U.S. with my best friend when I was 16, an adventure much supported and cheered on by Dan.)

I won’t say I’ve completely lost my fear of taking substantial risks (and failing), but I’ve gotten much better at it. You might say it’s become a skill.

Would this work in your home?  Leave a comment below!

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