You relate? Here’s TV producer Michael Peyton’s take on trying to hold it together while his kids are doing jumping jacks and band practice and his 4th grade son is “heading upstairs with a bag of yeast, a banana, and a plastic bag” for science class. Read Michael’s essay at Let Grow by clicking here. Photo from Unsplash by @mparzuchowski.
Author: lskenazy
Click here and just go enjoy a wonderful, rangy, funny essay by middle school teacher Elizabeth Peyton. She confesses to having a hard time with all the tech: “I barely know how to navigate Google classroom. I deleted myself from the staff email group by accident, lost access to all my lesson plans, blamed my assistant principal, and…” She also delivered part of her class on mute. But she’s also stunned by all the parents showing up online as if they are attending school with their kids. She has a 4th grader of her own, and when he asked her…
It’s never too early! “Teach kids to embrace listening to different points of view,” writes Holly Korbey over at Let Grow. In these polarizing times, it can make a huge difference! Example: When Irshad Manji was 14, she asked “too many questions” during her Saturday religious school, and they kicked her out. Irshad, author of “Don’t Label Me” and Let Grow’s director of courage, curiosity & character, walked the long way home to think about how to present this to her mother. But instead of demanding she go back and beg for forgiveness, her mother asked for something else.…
Vanessa Peoples was at family picnic in Aurora, Colorado, when her toddler wandered off. She noticed him missing and ran after him, but not before a lady had scooped him up and dialed 911 to report a missing child — and bad mom. By the time the fallout from this total non-event was over, Vanessa would be hog-tied by the cops in her own home and carried out, she says, “like a pig on a stick.” You can read the whole story over at the blog Reason, where it was written by my colleague, Diane Redleaf, a lawyer who has…
As horrible as I find banning books, the practice does have one thing going for it: Kids who may not be big-time readers seem to love them. In this extremely cool and original essay over at Let Grow today, Elizabeth Peyton, a middle school teacher, writes that: I’ve found that if I want to pique kids’ interest in a book, I just have to tell them they need a signed permission slip to read it. I teach kids who catch the school bus outside of low-income housing, ride through deprived neighborhoods, and learn in a building where the heat and…
Hi all! Let Grow’s Vice President for School Programs, Andrea Keith, has a new podcast about bringing our childhood independence initiatives to elementary and middle schools, via things like our Let Grow Project and Let Grow Play Club (both free free free!). In the first podcast, she talks to Dr. Michael Hynes, the superintendent who brought both initiatives to his schools and saw a change not just in the students, but in their parents. They kept trusting their kids to do more and more on their own. Everyone’s anxiety abated as their confidence grew. And these are ideas that…
If you’re wondering, “Can I get my child do to laundry?” the answer is usually yes, unless they are still in utero. And if they need help — no shame there. Let Grow’s new Life Lessons video series presents: “How to Do Laundry at the Laundromat.” Video below. And click here to read the story of a mom who left behind her days of being the “Laundry Fairy.”
Never grown anything that I can recall. But at Let Grow we have a very short explanation about growing “micro-greens” — a clever name for, basically, baby plants that you can harvest before they get bigger. It looks so easy even I — not only not a “green thumb” but basically a thumb-free person — am considering giving it a try. In 2 weeks you’ve got something edible! Here’s the post with all the instructions. The video (made in conjunction with Birds & Blooms Magazine) is below. If you or your kids DO become micro-gardeners, let me know.
“Is there a way to stop always worrying my kids?” is the question I address in today’s “Ask Lenore” blog post, which begins: Short answer? No. Long answer? Noooooooooooooo. Read the rest here, by “brave” me. (Ha!) As I go on to say: No one is as self-directed, well-behaved, and uncomplicated as you think your friends’ kids are. No one is as perfect in private as public. And no one who’s a parent (or even a “parenting expert”) has gotten to this point without amassing a giant pile of worries. These worries are like the evil twins of Happy…
We’ve got a great piece over at Let Grow pointing out that when Baby Jessica fell down a well in 1987, a nation banded together. “But today,” writes Katy Anderson, the mom of 3 boys, “I can’t help but think there would be an immediate collective outcry of, ‘Where were the parents?!?'” Her piece is JUST GREAT: When did it become socially acceptable to blame any accident that befalls a child on parental negligence? Have we completely given up on giving parents the benefit of the doubt? Society today demands a kind of hypervigilance with parenting. It feels like it’s…