Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Rebecca Walsh: Hello and welcome to Parenting Matters. Real Talk from toddlers to teens. I'm your host, Rebecca Walsh, director of Early Childhood Matters in San Francisco, and I'm joined by my longtime mentor and co host, Belan Gioreto.
Together, we're here to answer your parenting questions from the early years through adolescence. As seasoned and humble parents and early childhood educators, we bring over 50 years of combined experience in teaching, directing and coaching parents.
We started this podcast to help you raise resilient, confident kids and teens and to give you practical tools that can increase your confidence, effectiveness and your joy in parenting.
This is Real Talk where we share multiple strategies because every child is unique and we always explore what to try when just nothing else seems to be working.
So let's get real and let's get to it.
[00:01:12] Speaker B: Welcome back everybody. I'm your host Rebecca Walsh and my co host Belen Gioreto is actually out for the summer. But do not fear because we have an amazing lineup of guests this summer. So stay tuned. You will not want to miss our lineup here, but we are going to kick off our summer sessions with some questions we've been getting from all of you around what to do with the kids home for the summer. So we have several different questions. I've kind of put them in order from questions about children who are just starting kindergarten in the fall, all the way through third or fourth grade. We will have another session after this, so stay tuned on those middle school, high school questions as well.
And actually my son Joey is going to be joining me for that episode. So you won't want to miss the opportunity to pick a teenager's brain about what they do during the summer.
But let's go ahead and kick it off with our first question. It comes from a mom with a five year old. She says, my five year old is joining kindergarten in the fall and there's some stuff I want her to work on, lowercase Alphabet writing, phonics, etc. But I want her to have fun in the summer. How to and what's a good balance for her age.
Okay, great question. Those of you that know me well enough will probably know my first response is going to be not to worry too much about the things that she's going to learn in kindergarten. I'm a firm believer that when children start kindergarten with the social, emotional literacy and the self confidence to see themselves as capable and as learners, then they will, they'll pick up on these things pretty quickly. So I really wouldn't overly worry if your child doesn't know how to do their, their letters or their lowercase letters or if they're not comfortable with phonics. Now I know that many of you may be coming from a more play based preschool program and entering into a public school program where there could be an expectation to have some of this already in their, in their repertoire. And of course, with the introduction of the TK programs here in San Francisco and across California, I can understand how this could be a bigger concern for parents because children in the TK are getting some of that more formal education in those TK years now don't necessarily think that's a great thing, that they are learning those things earlier than they need to. What the science really tells us, what research has shown us over and over and over again, is that it is through play that children learn the skills that their brains need to be successful in school in those, those later years. So, okay, but back to the mom who has a child joining kindergarten and maybe doesn't want her to be behind her peers, who's who maybe have had more of that formal, in this case Alphabet phonics, etc in their TK programs or in their preschools. To be honest, I was very strict with my own children about really not teaching them to read before kindergarten. I think first of all, some children will pick it up quite easily and then they can be bored if they already know how to read. And secondly, we know that the most important things that they can do with their brains is to focus on those skills of experimenting, building new ideas, seeing themselves as capable and as children who are confident in their play and in their creativity, which will really translate to the classroom. But I do understand, you know, this added pressure of some children coming from TK or from more academic preschools. And although I don't agree with that, I would say if you did want to work with them, I would really try to follow their lead and not turn it into something that have to sit them down and force them to do for a certain amount of time each day. I would instead maybe buy some really fun workbooks. I think definitely staying away from computer based models for things like this would be great. You know, getting some fun workbooks and just having a variety of different, different ones around that they might engage with and seeing where they're at.
One in particular that I really have liked for my kids as they've gotten older is called Summer Quest. And it's a resource particularly focusing on between, you know, grades one and two or between grades two and three and it has a map at the end and there's stickers for each activity that's completed and some other sort of things that they can find and discover along the way. So I've actually really enjoyed those books. I think they do have one for pre K to kindergarten. But I would really, you know, try to make it fun. Like, like if you want to work on letter writing, maybe she writes a letter to grandma, maybe she can send a postcard to a parent at work and they can receive that postcard.
You know, make it fun and enjoyable. Because the last thing you want your child to do is to go into school with this idea that learning is forced and miserable.
So if they haven't had that yet because they've been in a really wonderful play based preschool model, I think you really want to keep that up. The joy of learning, the joy of going to school and not put a lot of pressure on them. Most children are not really ready to learn these skills any earlier.
And of course, you know, Waldorf doesn't even teach reading until closer to age 7 in second grade because there is some research that says the brain is, is really not ready until even then.
Anyhow, it's just important to keep in mind that the goal, it's so important, right, for children to be wanting to learn to go to kindergarten, excited not to go to kindergarten, thinking that, oh my gosh, I'm not gonna know this, or, you know, mom was trying to get me to do that, to prepare, and I don't now I don't know it. And so I'm going into a classroom feeling timid versus going to a classroom feeling excited and thinking, my goodness, I might get to learn how to read. I might get to learn how to, you know, write a letter. So that focus is really important and not to be underestimated. Okay, Our second question is from a parent of a first grader, a child, sorry, who is entering first grade. And she says, my child is pretty much in different camps all summer. Aside from some family trips planned as my husband and I work full time, this will be his first summer camp summer as his preschool was open year round. Any tips for how to help him with all these transitions? While it sounded like a good idea at the time to try all these different camps, now I'm starting to panic that he will be transitioning to a new camp each week. Yes, it is a hard adjustment for children for sure to go from a year round sort of preschool environment to having to switch camps each week and a hard adjustment for parents as well. It does end up being a lot of work for parents And I know there are a lot of camps now that are doing two week options, so that might be something for next summer to look into. I think, you know, the first time you're doing this, you get really excited about all the offerings out there and it is easy to want to, to try it all.
But I think you'll see that your child, after this experience, they will, you know, he will present some preferences to you and so you can use that to build your summer next year. But I think there are definitely tools that we can think about for the transitions idea is to really, with each camp, you know, look up the website with your child and really go through the schedule that they have hope hopefully given you a schedule for the day. You know, reading that out to them, letting them know, you know, what the names of their teachers or counselors are going to be, if you know them, can be incredibly helpful. Maybe there's even some pictures on their website how the camp works. And I find that just a little bit of that heads up for the child where they start to get familiar with what, what this camp is going to be like and who the leaders might be and what the other kids might be, might be doing can, can really make a big difference for a child. The other thing that you can do if a child is really reluctant on a given week, let's say to, to go to a camp, is to, to give the child the opportunity to be the reviewer of the camp. Right. And so you can tell the child, well, how bad do you think this camp is going to be on a scale of 1 to 10? And they may say, you know, it's going to be a one, it's going to be horrible.
And then from there you could say, okay, well let's check after the first day and we'll find out if the rating goes up or the rating goes down. And this, I've used this tool that was given to me by a therapist many years ago and I've used this tool for my children for many different situations that they were either nervous about or hesitant to, to do. And I think it's really empowering for the child because it really helps them to have a little bit of a sense of control. And you know, in my experience, almost always they, they start off with a one and they come home, well, it was a five, it was a six and more often than not it was a nine, it was a ten. And especially with a summer camp, it can be a great way to say, okay, well today was a three. You thought it was going to Be a one. I wonder what it will be tomorrow.
And let's see if the rating goes up or down. And this, this can be a great tool. And the other thing is, you know, at the end of the camp, it can be pretty busy at camp pickups. But, you know, just taking the opportunity to ask one of the counselors, if there's something that your child enjoyed, something that you can talk to them about at home, or some questions that you can ask again, they may give you a schedule so that you may know sort of what they did. And so use that schedule to ask very specific questions. Do not ask, you know, was it fun or did you have fun? Because, I mean, aside from the scale, which, again, is more of like an empowering tool, often when we ask children, you know, if, if they liked it, and of course, we want to be very careful with how we approach that question.
It's, you know, if we're like, did you like it? Was it okay? You know, then they're sensing, of course, that it was something that they should be nervous about. So we want to be. Try to be neutral and confident in our response and, and using that tool more to help them realize that often things that we're nervous about or we're scared about end up being much, much better than we ever thought.
So we want to use that tool in that way. But as far as getting specific information from our children, it's really important to ask very specific questions. Like, I saw that you were going to this playground today. What was it like? Who did you play with? Did you go on the swings? Right? Or I saw that, you know, you got to do some, some animal play with the, the reptiles today. What was that like? Were you nervous? Was it fun? You know, all of these questions.
Again, looking at the schedule and asking very specific questions will help you to get a lot more information than just how did you like it or did you have fun or what did you think? So, so that's my, my advice there. All right, our next question is I have my second and fourth grade children in some camps, but there are few weeks, we have nothing planned.
Any ideas about having some, but not too much structure?
Okay, so, yes, I love this question. I had the opportunity with my children to have a bit more flexibility in my schedule because of my, my own teaching schedule kind of winding down for the summer. So we did do several sort of mommy camp kinds of things. And I really think that if you, if you have the opportunity to do something like this, to really try it out, because I think it can Be a wonderful learning opportunity and growth for your children.
One thing I knew from teaching was that I really needed some structure, that children really thrive on structure. So if you take a child from a very structured school environment and then suddenly, you know, you're like, okay, you know, we're home and what do you want to do today? Or what should we do? Or let's do this. It's going to lead to a lot of conflict and a lot of unnecessary back and forth and indecision. So I would really recommend that if you have that flexibility and you are home with your kids for part of the summer, or even if you take off a week of work to. To try to have some more of this kind of downtime summer, that you would structure it pretty well. So the. The. What we did was Monday was our home day, and we did something called work play. This is something I learned from my mom, who was actually a special ed teacher. She would set a timer for them and say that they could do their schoolwork for 20 minutes, and then they would play together, maybe a card game or a board game, and then go back and forth. Well, I taught my. My children this concept pretty early on, and we would again use our Monday for a work play day. So during the work, the children had different chores that they were.
They had maybe a project we were doing together. You know, children can really do so many projects around the home, so I would definitely encourage you to incorporate them into that work. Even very young children could help with organizing a spice rack. Right. And cleaning, you know, wiping down the spice jars. Maybe you could try them together to decide do they need to be thrown out, do we need to get a new one?
And then organizing them maybe by category or alphabetically or however you wanted to do it. But, you know, organizing an art cabinet, organizing a closet or a pantry. Children actually love this kind of work, and I really recommend that they take on some of these projects with you. Obviously, you know, sometimes we think this is much easier for us to do on our own, but we're really missing an opportunity for our children to be involved. So I highly recommend that you pick a few projects like this that you want to do, and then on your work play days, you can do them. And then the play, you know, that is where they.
You can decide together what the play looks like. Sometimes a play would be independent play for the child. They'd be able to go and play something on their own. I think I did something like where every third play, they could have a little bit of screen time during Our work play days. Sometimes a play was something that we could do together. So sometimes the play was a board game or a card game, or maybe the play was actually going outside together and playing a little basketball or throwing. Throwing the football or doing some soccer, something like that. So sometimes the play was collaborative, sometimes it was independent. And like I said, every third or so play, they were able to do a little bit of screen during that playtime. And the work, again, sometimes it was collaborative, sometimes I had some work I needed to catch up on, and I needed them to do some work independently. So we will link in this podcast episode the ideas for chores that children can do. There's a great handout I've been using in my classes for years called Developmentally Appropriate Chores. And it will kind of blow your mind about all the things that children can do on their own. And I think if you set it up in this way of work, play, work, play, you'll find that children are really excited about their list of things that they can do, whether that's wiping the baseboards or folding some towels. Obviously, as they get older, they. They have more and more things that they can do. But I found that my children really enjoyed the work when it was in this combination of the playtime. So that was our Monday. Our Tuesday was San Francisco Adventure Day. So that was where maybe we had a, you know, museum membership or a zoo membership. We would do that. Sometimes we would just go to Golden Gate park, sometimes we would go to a new playground. But something in the city that's. That's fun and it doesn't have to cost a lot of money. I did always remind myself how much money I was saving by not sending them to camp, and so, you know, give myself a little bit of wiggle room. But depending on your budget, it really doesn't have to be expensive at all. We always knew that Tuesday was getting out of the house in our local adventure day. Wednesday was our pool day, and I would sign them up for swim lessons. And for us, because we live in San Francisco and it's not so warm here, I actually would sign them up for swim lessons in Palo Alto. Then we would drive to Palo Alto and swim. The lessons, of course, are only 30 minutes, but I would just turn it into a whole pool day kind of adventure. Rinconada Pool in Palo Alto is the one that we used to use, and we had a great experience where, you know, we would do that lesson, but then we got to use the pool and the facilities the rest of the day.
And Thursday was Our Nature day and I have some of my best summer memories with my children on these nature days.
Again, we will link some ideas, some best hikes to do with children in the Bay Area if you're local. But certainly googling or nowadays asking ChatGPT for some ideas of some great hikes and local nature adventures can be a wonderful opportunity. And again, it doesn't have to be a full hike, but just getting out into nature, we would get out of, out of the city for the most part on those days and just do something out at the, the beach or in the forest. And it was just a wonderful, wonderful memories that I have. And then Friday was our park library day. So we would go to the library, we would get our new books for the weekend and the week and we would go to a new playground. Now if you, if you are in a, in a big city like, like we are here in San Francisco, I found it really fun to go to a new library each week and a new playground each week if I could. And that was a really fun way to just see different neighborhoods. And they often have really different book collections as well. Yes. So just having again some structure for each day. So just to repeat that Monday was our home day where we did work and play 20 minute segments each. You can do longer if they're older. Tuesday was our SF adventure day, Wednesday was a pool day, Thursday was nature day and Friday was park library day. So really recommend adding some structure there.
And then last but not least, we have a question on how relaxed is too relaxed when it comes to screen time and bedtime over the summer. I want my kids to have more freedom, but I don't want them on screens all day and I don't want them total disasters from staying up too late. Well, I was talking to Evelyn Nichols, who runs a Mighty Bambinis and was a teacher for my son actually when she had her school in the city here and she's since moved to Marin and she does have a parent toddler group that she still runs, similar to our Explorers Program. Those of you that are familiar with our Explorers program, if you're looking for something like that in Marin, that might be a good opportunity. But anyhow, she let me know about a couple of resources that she's experimenting with her children. She also has three children and one is the Let Grow Summer Experience. And the Let Grow Summer Experience, their tagline is when children, when parents step back, children step up. And so really encouraging children to take more leadership roles and to be more in, in charge of their own play during the summer. But they have a great list of activities outside activities, activities in the kitchen, activities around town, and different ideas for learning how to, you know, ride your bike over to a friend's house or to walk across the street. So all of those like independent things that you can kind of focus on during the summer, especially if your children are, are getting getting older and teaching them to, you know, maybe walk to the corner store and get you some you milk can be a great one to start with.
But anyway, they have a great resource list as well as another resource that we'll link to is called Screen Sense. And it is, they have a campaign right now to make it an IRL or an in real life summer and so they have a few ideas there as well. Another, another resource for screens is to check out Pixel Parenting podcast and she also has an amazing set of resources for parents to really think about technology use.
She, she comes from a tech background and she has two young children and she is really making waves to think about and rethink about how, how we use technology, how and how to balance technology. But again, another great resource is a Screenshot Sense and we will also put a link there. And one of the things that they say is to get tech in check. So it's not the default activity that unintentionally crowds out the IRL or in real life possibilities.
So again, really thinking about have we exhausted all the other possibilities? Do we have a balance? What does that look like? And I think, you know, there are a lot of different checklists that parents sometimes do, simple checklists before screen time happens. Like have I, you know, brushed my teeth, gotten dressed, have I done my chores, have I played outside? And then when the child can check all of those things, maybe they can have 30 minutes of screen time. But I would say, you know, my best advice for keeping screen time in check is to really know that if you allow your child to sort of have some kind of unlimited screen time or just it becomes a default, you really lose a lot of your power. I mean, I still to this day can't believe how much mileage I could get out of my children by delaying the screens. And when they know that they only have, let's say, 30 minutes a day on summer weekdays or that they, you know, need to do these other things first. It really, you don't want to give away that, that power, that if they are doing screen time every day, that it's a very set schedule, that they know when it's coming and they know what they have to do before the screen time and also after the screen time. So you don't want to just give away your ability to negotiate. Here you have a lot of negotiation power before the screen time is given. Once the screen time is given, your ability to negotiate with your child and and to plan other activities is really minimized. And the reason is we know that screen time is very demotivating from a brain chemistry perspective.
So we know that once screen time is has happened, children have less motivation to do creative things, to go outside, to be independent in their play.
So again, we really want to make sure that that we keep that bargaining power with our screen time.
And again, over at Pixel Parenting or the the other links we'll have in the notes, you can find a lot of good resources to how to balance this.
And then lastly, part of the question was on bedtime. I had a doctor once say that the weekends should be no more than an hour after their regular bedtime.
So that has really helped that if it is a special occasion or you know something is happening, try not to have bedtime any more than an hour later than normal because often that's when you'll start to see the overtired child. And you will see many more behavioral issues when you have that overtired child during the day. And it does add up over time.
So I would recommend for the most part really trying to keep your bedtimes as consistent as possible and not wavering too much from their regular bedtime. But if you do waver, if there is something special that's coming up, you know, keeping in mind that hour, the children can usually handle maybe an hour of sleep schedule. Being off on one side has been really helpful to us.
Okay, our last question is any tips for last minute camps or activities if we didn't schedule as much as we needed? Yes, I did find that occasionally myself during the summer that I realized that we needed a break sort of from each other and we needed some other things happening. And so I actually did find here in San Francisco any anyway a lot of opportunities for some last minute camp signups. I will put some of those links we do have as of now we do have a couple spots. If you have a preschooler. We do have a couple spots left in our preschool summer camp and that is from nine to three. I believe we have two spots left in our July first week and we have one spot left in our August 10th week. If it's not too. You could still snag those. But I found Activity Hero to be a great resource here in San Francisco for some different camp openings because you can search, you know, by the week that you need and put in your child's date of birth and then they will show you what's available.
So that can be a great resource. Bay Club SF was a great resource for kind of last minute camps but there are last minute camp opportunities out there and so definitely just doing a little search and, and finding what's available if you need it can actually result in, in more than you think. But hopefully you'll find with the structured time it won't be as tricky as, as you thought it would be.
So that's all for now. Like I said, we are going to do a follow up session to this on the adolescent teenager age which is a little bit different. Oh, my final tip is actually to create a list with your child of things to do when I'm bored and together. And you can, you know, you can use Internet search to help you with this. There's those spinning wheels where they can create a wheel and put in, you know, all the different, they can create their own wheel of boredom so to speak. But we always started our summers with sitting down with each child and having them write as many ideas as they could think of. And, and like I said, you can, you can look online together, you're, you're coming up short.
But start with just how many ideas they can think of of different things to do when they're bored. And that list will, you will come back to over and over and over again in the summer and will be a great alternative to screen time. But again once the screens are given, the motivation to do all those things is going to diminish. So really we had a rule like you had to do five things on board list before you could have a screen or you know, a set time of the day that the screens were happening, you know, from 3:30 to 4 or whatever it is.
But that, that helps them to take that option off the table. Unfortunately, screens are are very addictive and they're going to tap into a part of our brain that's you know, just like for adults it's very hard to motivate ourselves to do something.
So we really, with our developing minds of our children, we really want to make sure that that dependency is not being set up and the summer is a perfect opportunity for them to really learn all the amazing things that they can do. And so again we'll put a couple links in the notes here of different ideas and resources of lists but definitely start with, with your child and together or separately come up with as many things as they can think of of.
And so with that, we wish you a very happy summer. Keep exploring and having fun.
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