New web address and look coming soon to Play. Fight. Repeat.

Hello Play. Fight. Repeat. readers!
I wanted to let you know that the look of my Play. Fight. Repeat. blog will soon be changing slightly along with its web address.

For those lovely people who have subscribed to Play. Fight. Repeat. and receive posts via email or RSS feed, if you stop receiving posts, please go to playfightrepeat.com and re-subscribe!

I’m excited to let you know that soon I’ll be releasing an eBook called, What is Enough? A Guide for Today’s Parents which you can receive free when you subscribe to Play. Fight. Repeat. So be on the lookout for this as well. And for those of you already subscribed, we’ll make sure you get a copy of this eBook too.

See you in the new format!
Suzita

How Hard Could Coaching Ten Year-Olds Be?

Sam, the youngest and smallest player on our basketball team had been desperate to “bring the ball up” in a game all season.  My husband Todd, Sam’s coach, was hesitant because he could see what Sam couldn’t.  If Sam dribbled the ball up, he wasn’t likely to make it past half court before it was stolen.  This was 10 year-old Sam’s first time playing basketball and truth be told, he hadn’t even mastered dribbling yet.

But toward the end of the season, in the final minutes of a game, Todd let Sam bring the ball up.  At half court Sam was quickly swarmed by players twice his size and lost the ball.  When he looked over at Todd tears were welling in his eyes.

A moment later our team got the ball back and a kind soul passed it to Sam, who was then fouled as he attempted a shot.  Next Sam was whisked to the free throw line with all eyes on him and the score tied.  He nervously prepared for his shot. (They only get one free throw in this league.)  Sam eyed the basket and hurled the ball with all his might.  We’re still not sure how, but the ball went in.  I could almost see the synapses in Sam’s young brain laying down a long-term memory of that moment, which became the high point of Todd’s and my season as well.

Coaching our kids and their buddies was something Todd and I always assumed we would do.  Todd’s a teacher.  I’m a child psychologist.  Between us we’ve done quite a few sports, and have had a wide-range of coaches.  I naively thought this combo would make a pretty good coaching partnership.

Here’s how it went.  Todd was the head coach and I was an assistant coach of sorts, which often looked more like a good cop and a bad cop.  I was usually the one who put kids who misbehaved into short time-outs on the sidelines.  And I soon acquired the nugget of wisdom that the quickest way to stop an elementary-aged boy from talking when he should be listening was to have someone else’s Mom (me) sit right next to him.

The honest truth is coaching turned out to be much more challenging for Todd and me than either of us expected, for reasons which changed with each new group of kids.  In coaching basketball for 4 years at the YMCA, for instance, Todd became the one who always said yes to adding boys who’d never played basketball to his roster.  I mean isn’t this what the YMCA is all about, introducing kids to new sports?  But because of this we often had “Bad News Bears” teams who rarely won.  We noticed that as the boys got older, this was more challenging for them to accept, no matter how much we praised the effort they put in.

We did at least follow the advice of sports psychologists Ronald Smith and Frank Smoll of the University of Washington, in concentrating on player effort.  These researchers advise focusing on effort and commitment because those are within the players’ control, unlike the skill-level of the other team.  Smith and Smoll also emphasize the importance of a positive relationship between coach and players.  I’m reminded of the kids on Todd’s teams who’ve pulled him aside before or after practice to share some non-sports accomplishment with him.

My energetic and upbeat friend Lila has coached her daughters’ first through fourth grade soccer teams for the last 4 years.  She also understands the value of getting to know each girl on her team.  At the beginning of their work together, Lila talks to each player about her personal hopes and goals for that season.

Although Lila has been successful in many areas as a girls’ soccer coach, she has struggled with her younger daughter’s response to having her mother as coach.  Last year Ava, age 7, didn’t appreciate the attention her mother gave to the other players.  “You act like you like them more than me!”  Eventually Lila talked with Ava about this at home, and they came up with a hand-signal code Ava could use with her mom to let her know when she was upset at practice.  Then they agreed on some small overtures Lila could make to Ava at those difficult times.

Lila and Todd are both blessed with deep wells of patience which they draw on regularly as coaches.  (I notice this in others because my well tends to be slightly more shallow.)  But a coach needs more than simply patience to teach young players a new sport.  Smith and Smoll have created DVDs for parents and coaches which describe their coaching strategies supported by many years of research.  One of these strategies is that the progression for teaching a skill is:

1. Demonstrate.   2. Explain (briefly).   3. Practice.

These sports psychologists tell coaches that player mistakes should be used as teachable moments.  However, when a coach is using a mistake for teaching purposes, s/he should use the “positive sandwich” method.  First, note something the player is doing well.  Next follow this comment with specific technical instruction.  And finally end with a note of encouragement.  Praising players when they are giving their maximum effort goes a long way toward increasing effort and commitment during the season.

In one study Smith and Smoll found that girls who played basketball for coaches who’d been trained in these methods had decreased anxiety overall, while girls who played for untrained coaches had increased anxiety as the season progressed.

For many of the above reasons, and because Todd and I have each had coaches who have left negative marks on us, we put a lot of thought into choosing coaches for our kids.

What to Look for in a Coach for Your Child:

1. The coach shows good sportsmanship at games and spends consistent time teaching players about sportsmanship.
2. The players like and respect the coach and are motivated to work hard when they are around him or her.
3. The coach praises kids when they work hard, and doesn’t give empty, undeserved praise.
4. The coach is able to understand each child’s current abilities and pushes each appropriately for their level.
5. S/he wants the kids to enjoy playing the sport and isn’t focused only on winning.
6. In a recreational setting, the coach gives all kids relatively equal playing time at games.

What to Consider If You’ve Decided to Coach Youth Sports:

1. Try to find another team parent to be an assistant coach, but make sure his or her coaching style is similar to yours.
2. Get to know your players’ parents.  Ask them their goals for their child regarding this athletic experience.
3. Spend time developing relationships with each player, and ask them their personal goals for the season.
4. If your own child is playing on the team, talk to her ahead of time about her concerns about you as coach, and check-in with her regularly throughout the season.
5. Read some books on how to coach kids’ sports.
6. Come to each practice with many options, so that you can drop a drill that isn’t working.  Expect this situation to occur somewhat consistently.

I think I expected the experience of coaching youth sports to be more mild and calm, probably influenced by watching too many After School Special, Hallmark-sponsored TV shows as a child.  My vision of the coaching experience was similar to one of those hazy photographs where the bright colors have been tempered.

But what Todd and I found is that when you’re actually working with a team, it’s quite intense.  The highs are high and the lows are low (much more like adolescence than middle childhood).  The beginning of a new season can feel like strapping yourself into a rollercoaster you’ve never ridden before.

I guess I’ll just chalk coaching up to one of the numerous parenting experiences that did not play out as we expected, but I’m glad we took on just the same.

Please forward this to anyone you know who coaches kids’ sports!

And feel free to leave a comment below on your experience with coaches–

Teaching Kids to Advocate for Themselves – And 5 Ways to Help Little Kids Learn this Skill

Recently my husband Todd, and Daniel, our fifth grader, walked in the door on a particularly gray and blustery afternoon, their grim faces matching the outdoor weather.  “What’s wrong?”  I wanted to know.  “Daniel’s teacher put him next to Jonah for another month, maybe we should talk to her this time,” Todd said with that exhausted, one-more-thing-on-the-to-do-list look.  Todd is usually pretty good at not getting drawn into our kids’ problems, so either it had been a particularly tiring week at work, or Daniel was quite upset about this one (or both).

Jonah is a bright, interesting kid in Daniel’s class, but he can also be impulsive, loud, and off-topic, especially toward the end of the day.  Jonah’s apparently got a few mental health diagnoses which he gladly offered Daniel a while back as the reasons for his troublesome behavior.  Their teacher changes the class table arrangements every month, and Daniel was frustrated because after just one month off, he was sitting next to Jonah yet again.

“It’s so unfair and annoying, Mama!  Jonah talks all the time.  We’ll be working on writing or math and he’ll just blurt something out or ask me a question about the Bronco’s game this weekend.  And he always ends up getting me in trouble!”  Daniel didn’t come right out and ask me to call his teacher, but I could tell this was what he was thinking.

However, what my frustrated child didn’t realize was that I’d been reading, Getting More: How to Negotiate to Achieve Your Goals in the Real World, by Stuart Diamond.  I’ve decided to read this rather thick tome at least once a year because there is so much to be gained within its pages.  (Here’s the post I wrote after last year’s read.)  Getting More is a summary of the semester-long negotiation class Diamond teaches at the University of Pennsylvania’s Business School.  My sister, who took the class, says it’s a favorite among students.  And Daniel also didn’t know that I’d just been reading the section on teaching your children to negotiate.

We all know, or at least have read somewhere, that we’re supposed to have our kids solve their own problems.  But so much of the parenting literature just stops there, or perhaps gives the vague advice that we can “help” them to solve their own problems.  How do we do this exactly?  Turns out Diamond’s book on negotiation has some very practical advice, because after all isn’t advocating simply negotiating for oneself?

I think the message our kids often get is that advocating for themselves involves going to the person they are having a problem with and telling them what they want as clearly as possible.  We kind of feel like we’ve done our parenting job if our kids manage to pull this off.  But my guess is that usually our kids forget to consider what Diamond emphasizes is the most important consideration in a negotiation – the person you are talking to.  Diamond’s second negotiation strategy (right after clarifying your own goals) is:  It’s about Them.

“You can’t persuade people of anything unless you know the pictures in their heads: their perceptions,sensibilities, needs, how they make commitments, whether they are trustworthy….Think of yourself as the least important person in the negotiation.  You must do role reversal, putting yourself in their shoes and trying to put them in yours.” 

Diamond also suggests thinking about whether a third person (perhaps a boss or teacher) could be playing a role in the situation without our realizing it.

It occurred to me that we parents could help our kids get into the head of the person with whom they’re negotiating.  We have more life experience and can often better generate ideas of what else might be happening in the situation.

So my relieved husband walked off to grade some papers, and left me to try my hand at teaching negotiation skills to Daniel.  “Okay, even though your problem is with Jonah, you are talking to your teacher about this situation, so it’s her we want to think about first,” I said.  I pointed out that Daniel is one of the older kids in the class, while Jonah is one of the younger ones and asked, “Is it possible your teacher purposely puts you next to Jonah because she knows you’re older and you may be able to help Jonah stay focused on his work?”

Daniel thought carefully about my question.  “Yes.  I think this is why she keeps putting Jonah next to me, because she also asks me to stand next to Jonah when we line up to go somewhere.  But I don’t think she realizes how much it bugs me when he talks to me when I’m writing!”

I then asked Daniel whether he knew of parents who’d complained about Jonah to his teacher.  Daniel said at least one had, and that Jonah regularly met with the principal too.  As Daniel and I discussed the situation as fully as we could, we wondered whether his teacher and the principal were feeling pretty frustrated with Jonah.  If this was the case, I told Daniel that it wasn’t likely his teacher would simply move him away from Jonah, because she may need Daniel to be her helper on this one.

Daniel decided to email his teacher.  He figured emailing would be easier than talking with her in person where he might get nervous not follow through.  He didn’t ask his teacher to move him to a new table.  Instead he told her how distracted he got when Jonah talked at him while he tried to concentrate on writing and math.

The next day Daniel’s teacher had a proposition for him, after reading his email.  She suggested Daniel use certain words with Jonah each time he was distracting.  If these words didn’t help after three times, Daniel could ask her for help.  She also told him he would not get in trouble for speaking out in class without being called on in this particular situation.  Daniel felt immediate relief and agreed to try the new plan.

I was glad Daniel was successful with advocating for himself, because then next time he faced a similar problem, I could remind him how this one had worked out.  And honestly this had been enough work for me, and I was ready to take a little break from thinking about negotiation.

Of course I was I forgetting one crucial thing.  When you have three kids, you don’t always get to decide when to stop thinking about negotiation.  That evening as I drove Annie home from gymnastics class I could tell she was in a bad mood.  She angrily informed me that her teacher had not let her try a flip into the foam pit at gymnastics.  “It’s so unfair!  I’m as good as the other girls.   She let this one girl who’s only seven try one, but not me and I’m eight!”

I don’t think Annie was factoring in that I’d stayed to watch her gymnastics class this time.  Though I’d spent some of the time reading my Getting More negotiation book, I did catch the part of the class where the girls were doing front flips, with the teacher’s help, into a pit of soft foam blocks.  I’d seen that Annie needed quite a bit of help from her teacher.  I’d also watched the other girl Annie spoke of demonstrate she was clearly ready to try a flip on her own.  This same girl, who Annie claimed was seven, was also at least a foot taller than Annie and wearing a bra.  I’m thinking she was more likely twelve than seven!

I listened to Annie vent all the way home about the injustice of it all, but in my head I thought highly of her gymnastics teacher for setting limits with a child who wasn’t ready to try a new skill on her own yet.  I quickly decided this was a negotiation I wasn’t going to enter into.  My eight year-old was more likely hungry, tired, and thus cranky after her gymnastics class.  No doubt there would be more appropriate situations in the future within which Annie could practice advocating for herself, but I was secretly relieved this wasn’t one of them.

5 Ways to Begin Building Self-Advocacy Skills with Young Children

1. Have kids order for themselves at restaurants.
2. Have kids make eye contact when talking to adults they know outside the family.
3. If a problem arises that can be solved via email, have a young child dictate an email to you.  Type it in their words.
4. Help the child think through a problem by asking open-ended questions such as:  What do you want to happen? What do you think you’ll do first?  What do you think he’ll say?
5. Role play the negotiation with your child before they make their official attempt.

 

I’d love to hear other examples of children advocating for themselves.  Please leave a comment below!

6 Inexpensive Ways to Weave Exercise Into Your Kid’s Life – And New Reasons You (and Her Teacher) Will Be Glad You Did!

Here’s my little secret:  When my kids were young (maybe ages 2-7) I spent far too much time worrying about how tireless/active/hyper they were.  In my own non-scientific playground research, I came to the unfortunate conclusion that my kids were on the extreme end of the spectrum for physical activity.  This finding exhausted my already-tired self.  And honestly it felt unfair.  I had three kids — at least one of them should have come out as one of those calm children who spend hours drawing!  I was also tired because no matter how many hours those sleep books said my kids should be sleeping, they seemed to need a good 1-2 hours less than recommended, and each rose at 6 a.m. like clockwork.

On one particularly moody day, I shared these insights with my Mom, assuming she’d feel some sympathy for me.  She’d had two girls, and I was sure we were vastly easier to manage than my brood.  “That’s exactly what I used to think about you,” she responded emphatically.  “It was true too! You were more active than the other girls you played with and don’t even get me started on how little you slept!”  My first thought was, I think I’ll keep this from my husband.  All these years I’ve been secretly blaming him for our over-active non-sleepers. 

Still, my Mom helped me settle down and accept my plight.  In the large scheme of things my burden was obviously quite light.  I simply had to embrace exercise!  My kids were telling me with their bodies that exercise needed to be a large part of our days.  I started giving myself regular pep-talks, “These kids are going to keep you in shape!  And you can get a lot done when you rise at dawn.  Target is practically empty at 8 a.m.”  This was the phase of my life when I never wore shoes I couldn’t run in.  Come to think of it, I still don’t.  Maybe some day I’ll wear flip-flops again.

The more I planned our days around getting enough exercise, the more I came across articles reminding me of its benefits.  This knowledge helped on those sleepy mornings when we were the sole people at our neighborhood park at 7:30 a.m.  We live in a small, cottage-like house which simply didn’t have the space for the rambunctious activity my kids craved.

Sometimes I look back on that phase of my life, now thankfully a blurry memory, and wonder did I really do that?  Then last month I was at a neighborhood party talking with a woman who lives across the street from our local playground.  She said, “I remember you!  You don’t know me, but I used to watch you playing with your kids at the park on early mornings.  I watched you through my kitchen window while I made my breakfast.”  So, it must have been me, or Todd, although he complained about it a lot less.  (He’s always been an early riser.  My kids get that gene from him!)

Okay, the benefits of regular physical activity.  It can:

• Boost Cognitive Ability
• Increase Motivation
• Improve Concentration
• Increase Creativity
• Lift Depression (and may be as effective as antidepressants for treating depression)
• Reduce Anxiety

It was motivating to be reminded of these benefits.  Most things we do frequently we eventually improve at.  Over time Todd and I got better at meeting our kids’ voracious needs for physical activity, mostly by appropriating the resourceful techniques of other desperate parents.

6 Inexpensive Ways to Keep Your Kids Moving Daily

1. The simple frisbee for modified golf.  Make sure each child has one of their own.  Go to an open space with sporadic trees, fences, or playground equipment and challenge your kids to “hit that faraway tree with the frisbee.”  They can count how many tries it takes if this doesn’t start competitive arguments.  (In my family it often does.)  When they hit the tree, have them try for the next object.  Encourage running from throw to throw.  I’m slightly embarrassed to admit that we stole this idea from a man exercising his dogs.

2. Time your kids while they move fast.  Use the secondhand on your watch, or even better, a basic stopwatch to time your kids doing almost anything aerobic.  You’ll be surprised at how many activities kids come up with for you to watch and time.  We’ve found it more motivating to measure them against themselves than comparing their time to an older sibling’s.

3.  Find other ways to measure your kids’ athletic prowess.  I once had 6 kids running back and forth for 45 minutes straight by setting up a long jump course at the playground and measuring their jumps.

4.  Fly a kite.  As an adult who is not an avid kite flier, I had no memory of how much running went into kite flying.  Not only does the person trying to launch the kite run back and forth, but the three kids “chasing the kite” also run like crazy.  You just need to make sure the goal isn’t to get the kite flying high (that’s when all the standing around takes place), but for the kids to run around pulling it behind them.

5.  Create an indoor obstacle course on rainy days.  Crawl under a chair, jump up the stairs, hop in and out of a hula hoop.  To keep them going longer, pull out the stopwatch again.

6.  Bike with your kids to do errands.  Once kids are old enough to bicycle safely on their own, it’s amazing how much calmer they are in the grocery store when they’ve used up their extra energy biking there.  Walking at a good pace is also an option for errand-running, and more conducive to conversation.

Of course all this activity wasn’t about training my young kids for future Olympic bids.  It was merely satisfying the strong drive their little bodies had to move.

Use Exercise to Support Emotion Regulation in Kids

Early Morning Exercise.  When one of my kids has a stressful event taking place at school, I take an early morning walk with him or her that day.  Sometimes we talk about the upcoming event or situation, and sometimes we talk about everything but the stressor.  But brisk walking before school calms my kids on anxious days.

Exercise as an Antidote to a “Day After Christmas Mood”.   This idea was spawned this month out of desperation.  Daniel, our 11 year-old, recently played a main role in a musical.  He loved everything about it:  the practices, his fellow actors, the camaraderie, the performances.  And then it was over.  I see now that after such a wonderful experience, Daniel had nowhere to go but down.  He’d been in a cranky, irritable, fight-provoking mood for two days by the time we finally talked through things.  One of the strategies we came up with to help Daniel through this emotional rollercoaster period after his next play, was to have him exercise even more than usual during the post-excitement transition.

3 Ways Well-Timed Physical Activity Can Make a Parent’s Life Easier

1.  If kids can run around hard after school, they can put the school day behind them, and sit down to their homework in a calmer state of mind (and body).  In addition to this, brain science shows that exercise increases brain volume (both gray and white matter), vascularization, blood flow, and additional functional measures.  I’m not even sure what all of these things are, but they sound like they’ll help my kids get their homework done more efficiently and accurately.  To me this says less homework help (by parents) and less homework complaining (by children).  This works for me!

2. My friend Tina’s daughter has always been a light, finicky eater who hates to stay at the dinner table for long.  One year it happened that her daughter’s soccer practice (during which the kids ran all out for much of the time) ended about an hour before dinnertime.  During that soccer season, Tina noticed her daughter began eating much more at dinner and was less fidgety at the table.  From then on, Tina made it a priority to get her daughter some type of exercise during the pre-dinner time period.

3. I’ve heard similar stories of families with poor sleepers who upped the level of physical activity in their children’s lives and found that the children fell asleep more easily and stayed asleep better.  One caveat to this strategy is that the exercise must end at least two hours before bedtime so that the children have enough time to fully wind down from it.

We used to laugh at this sign when we were kids. "Where are all the Slow Children?!"

Now that my kids are older, their bodies seem more and more under their own control.  Again, sometimes I wonder if they really were as active as my memory suggests.  However, the other day my children found videos we’d made of them as preschoolers.  In one I was attempting to interview my 5 year-old son about all his favorites (friend, color, toy, playground activity, etc.).  The camera is focused on his chubby-cheeked face as he stands in front of me.  But in the corner of the frame you can see the top of another head popping in and out of view.  It’s my 3 year-old son Daniel jumping up and down (for no real reason at all) the entire time I’m speaking with his brother.

I guess not quite enough time has passed yet because the image of that day, as cute as it was, gave me a mini post-traumatic reaction to those times of exhaustion.  Maybe I need to go get a little exercise now so I’ll feel better!

Other creative ways to keep kids moving?  Leave a comment!