Newsflash: You don’t have to entertain your kids. Just download the free June Calendar over at Let Grow (click here) and they’ll figure out something to do. It’s filled with creative ideas to get them going, like: *Build something you can use *Complete a YouTube tutorial *Create art outside In other words, it’s basic but also really helpful. And post photos of your kids doing stuff over at Let Grow’s Facebook page! Love to see what they get up to! Photo by bady qb on Unsplash
Author: lskenazy
Let Grow’s Executive Director, Tracy Tomasso, is sick of all the mom-shaming when it comes to screen time. As if “screen time” is just one thing. As the mom of a 5-year-old who uses a screen to do everything from learn about reptiles to Zoom with friends (and, okay, mainline Paw Patrol), Tracy’s sick of the unthinking equation: Screen time = bad. “We wouldn’t think to demand our children spend less time reading, looking at photo albums, or finding out what frogs eat.” Yes, get off it some time. Of course! But the screen is a door, not a drain.…
Have a “Name That Food” taste-testing contest. Play balloon volleyball. Take over a chore of mom or dad’s. Make origami. Find these and 96 MORE IDEAS over at Let Grow by clicking here. Cut them out and put them all in a jar. Kids can pull one out when they say, “I’m bored!”
In a recent episode of Amy Poehler’s new animated series, “Duncanville” (Amy plays the mom AND the teen boy, Duncan), the parents discover a new way to raise their kids. Someone has been doing their homework! The shoe-tying seems to relate to a story I heard at a school now doing the Let Grow project (remember: Let Grow is the nonprofit that grew out of Free-Range Kids). After kids had been doing the project for a little while — the project being to go home and do something on your own without an adult — the principal told me that…
WOW WOW WOW. And, what the heck, WOW. The Let Grow Independence Challenge asked kids to send us stories, pictures and videos of the new things they are doing on their own. Click here for our incredibly heartening 2-minute video of the kids baking, biking, building — growing! And click here for the blog post featuring our winners, including a fantastic collage of kids bursting with pride — and, in some cases, pancake batter. Scroll to the bottom, roll your cursor over each kid and you can see what they wrote. Like, “Since my grandpa cannot go out and…
I’m putting this out there as if I personally have ever had the patience, creativity or gumption to make a stop-motion video myself. I haven’t. But this 6-year-old has and he makes it look not totally impossible. (The ending is the best.) Click here to go to Let Grow for clear instructions on how to start making stop-motion videos like Arias.
Prepare to be charmed by this Let Grow video! \
Most of us don’t live on a river. But Amy Lynn Kuhl, the mom writing today’s Let Grow blog post, does and she is all for allowing her nature-loving 6-year-old to go out there and explore. The girl loves building, exploring, gathering shells and sticks. What’s weird is that this idea is, to some, radical. Nonetheless, Kuhl writes that: Within my own family, we are a bit of an anomaly. At her grandparent’s suburban home, she plays outside on her own in the yard—with permission; my siblings don’t allow this for their children, who are 11 and 13 years…
“Thanks to the pandemic, children have been stepping up to the plate—and sink, bike, lawn mower and toilet brush. Sprung from their super-busy, let-me-do-it-for-you-honey lives, they’re becoming the kids they might have been if they’d been born a generation or two earlier, back when parents seemed to expect more of kids independence-wise and less of them achievement-wise.” That’s what I wrote in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, taking a look at how this year’s Mother’s Day is different from last year’s, because this year a whole lot of kids have started doing things on their own. For instance, one mom told…
This flow chart, created by University of Virginia Psychology Professors Jim Coan and Daniel Willingham, is just plain terrific. “Could a child do this alone?” asks the chart. Then let ’em! “Could a child do this with some instruction?” Then let ’em. Etc. etc. Check it out — print it out! — by clicking here. And don’t forget — if you want some ideas for giving your kids more independence, here is our free Let Grow Independence Kit!