Glitter & Razz Blog

If I had to pick the one thing that matters most to human happiness, I would say that our relationships with other people matter more than anything else.

Step #2 in Christine Carter’s Raising Happiness is entitled “Build a Village.”  This chapter breaks down why it is so important to your child’s overall health and happiness to be positively connected to other people and how you can help him/her be that way.

Inspired by this chapter and my own personal experience working with hundreds and hundreds of likable and unlikable kids, I care share with you the top 5 things you will want to teach and practice with your kids to make sure they have the social and emotional skills to be liked by and connected to other kids.  And yes, it can be taught!

1) Active Listening
Listen when someone is talking.  Make eye contact.  Ask the other person questions.  You know for yourself that you feel more important, valued, and appreciated when someone is really listening to you.  When you are with someone who makes you feel appreciated, you will most likely like that person, right?

I think this is the number 1 thing we can do to teach kids to be connected to other kids because it is so easy to teach.  All it takes is practice.  The reason why I see so many kids who don’t do this is because we don’t expect that they can.  But they can.  Even 4 year olds can.  I take that back…ESPECIALLY 4 year olds can.  4 year olds are just coming to the time in their lives when they understand the power and appeal of friendships.  Developmentally, they are shedding their completely self-centered ways and starting to believe that other people can actually be interesting.  This is the perfect time to teach them and practice active listening:

• Insist that your kids give you eye contact when you are talking to them.  Here’s the trick – make sure you give them the same courtesy.
• Coach them through a 2-sided conversation.  For example, “I just asked you how your day was and I listened to your answer.  Now, it’s your turn to ask me how my day was and you will listen to my answer.”  Here’s the trick – don’t talk too long.  They are only 4.  They will get bored.
• Celebrate them every time they are actively listening.  “Thanks so much for listening to me talk about my day.  I feel very special when you do that.”

2) Self Regulation
We know that kid that gets angry and frustrated all the time and takes it out physically and verbally on other kids.  We also know that kid who cries and whines all the time whenever something doesn’t go her way.  These kids are hard for other kids to be around.  For obvious reasons.  These kids need to learn how to control their feelings in healthy ways.  The main way for you to help them is for you to make it VERY clear, on a consistent basis, that their behavior is not okay.  Check out this cool article from PBS Kids that says, “From the start, set clear limits and provide simple explanations (”No biting. That hurts mommy.”) As your baby grows, try to be consistent as you express expectations and set rules or consequences.”

At Glitter & Razz, we begin each class and camp with a community circle where the kids have to experience a moment of silence together.  We talk about how this is the time for them to transform their free play energy into focused energy.  It’s a very successful practice.  Most of the time kids take this moment very seriously.  However, when they don’t, it’s a wonderful opportunity for modeling and reinforcing self-regulation.  The rule is to be silent.  That’s the boundary.  Any behavior outside of being silent is not tolerated.  So, when someone laughs or makes a silly noise or even breathes too hard, we either start the moment of silence again or we ask that person to step out of our circle.  This is teaching the kid that it is up to them to take care of themselves and that certain behaviors are appropriate at certain times.

3) Navigating Conflict
Kids will fight.  As Christine Carter points out, kids are more comfortable with conflict than adults are.  Conflict is not a problem.  Conflict is a good thing.  The problem is that kids have not yet learned how to work through conflicts.  It’s our job as adults to teach them.  People who can work through conflicts in peaceful, loving ways are well connected people, indeed.

We use a Peace Place to work out conflicts.  It’s a dedicated part of the room where a script hangs on the wall that helps kids work through conflicts.  It’s a classic I-Statement: I Feel___When You___I Need You to___and I promise I will____.

Read this to learn more about what Christine says about this.

4) Kindness
As a transition from “Kids Choice”, our free time time, to focused class time during our camps, we often give the kids an opportunity to share a celebration of someone who was kind to them during  Kids Choice.  We hear stuff like, “I celebrate Sarah because she played with me” or “I celebrate Ben because he helped me clean up the animal toys even though he wasn’t even playing with them.”  Kids appreciate kindness and generosity and want to be around it.  Christine writes in her book, “My guess is that most parents hope their children are kind, but few deliberately teach kindness in conscious ways.”  But, like all of  these skills, kindness can be taught if we as adults are modeling kind behavior ourselves, telling our kids what it looks like, and celebrating them when they do it.  “Raising Happiness” is chock full of ways to teach kindness to our kids.  Here is another good article I found online.

5) Play and Have Fun
Kids like kids who they can play with, have fun with.  This may seem like a no-brainer but we are seeing more and more instances of kids who just don’t know how to play.  We know the story.  Modern kids are overscheduled, have a lot more distractions, spend less time outside, spend more time isolated from other kids, etc. etc. etc.  My 8 year old niece once told me about a girl in her class at school that she didn’t like very much because, “she has no imagination!”

Kids, whose only real work IS to play, to make-believe, are coming to us at Glitter & Razz not very good at it.  When prompted to use their super power of imagination to make up stories or games or simply to play with wooden blocks or plastic animals during Kids Choice, we hear “I don’t know” or “what should I do right now” more often than feels natural. In these situations, our job as adults is not to tell them what to play.  That does not let them learn how to play.  My teachers and I just keep asking questions – questions that will inspire their creative muscles:

• Only you know what to do.  What do you think you should do right now?
• What does this block remind you of?
• What can you do with these blocks?
• What would happen if a zombie came in the room right now?
• What would happen if a zombie came into our story?

The play must come from them.  From their ideas and their imaginations.  The more they use their imagination muscles, the stronger they will be.  And the stronger they are at playing, the more fun they will be to the other kids.

This post is part of a series of posts as I read Raising Happiness: 10 Simple Steps For More Joyful Kids and Happier Parents in preparation of our event with the author, Christine Carter, PhD on March 20.  Click here for more information and to register for the event>>>

Monday is our first Play in a Day Camp in honor of the life and work of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  I decided that the theme of the day will be peace and freedom.  We haven’t done this particular theme yet so I am up this morning doing some research.  I, of course, first went to the Teaching Tolerance website.  Their stuff is an amazing resource to teachers and us teaching artists.  They are high quality teaching materials that they provide mostly for free.  Any of you who are exploring issues of diversity with your work will definitely want the get connected to these folks.

So, I am definitely inspired.  Here is an activity I am looking at called Freedom Flag.  What I like about it is that it uses multiple art forms – music, words, and collage.  The purpose of the activity is to engage kids in a discussion of freedom to get to heart of what it actually means.  I was challenged by figuring out how to do this so this is is good start.  However, I will have to adapt the activity…here’s why…

“Using red, white and blue construction paper, create a class “Freedom Flag,” by writing the key words for freedom on strips of red and white paper…”

Using red, white and blue construction paper?!?  How are kids supposed to learn about freedom if we tell them they can only use 3 colors in their flag?  Actually, limiting it to 3 colors is not the problem.  That’s actually a nice parameter.  The problem is that we are telling them which 3 colors they can use.  I understand that these are the colors of the US flag as it currently exists but the purpose of teaching kids art is teaching them how to notice things that exist and comment on it in their own way.

To me, freedom is being able to be and create your true self without anyone else imposing on you what they think that is.  I might say to the group, “we are going to create our own flag that represents our own freedom here in Oakland at Glitter & Razz.  Our flag should have 3 colors.  What 3 colors should we use to create this flag.  What 3 colors would represent us?”  And then take them through a process of voting as a group.  Now, the activity is teaching democracy in action through a creative process.  It is also helping them build their identity as part of a community.  It even provides a fertile ground to discuss dissent (”yuck, I don’t like pink!”) and how important it is to freedom.

I will run it by Martin, our art teacher, and see what he says.  And I will keep researching to figure out how to take this same idea into our creative movement and drama classes.  Either way, I am very excited about this.

Oh, another little criticism about Teaching Tolerance…they do not seem too friendly to those of us who work for ourselves…their free materials go to classroom teachers, administrators, church leaders, and employees of non-profits.  You even need a signature from some boss.  Maybe I will contact them and let them know about us small business artists who are doing important work with kids too.

Maybe we’ll see you Monday.

The work of artist Shara Hannah Finerman

2010 is the year when artists will take over business.  I can feel it.  This article in the New York Times clearly shows that business schools are looking at the current state of the economy as an opportunity to prepare its students with the critical thinking and problem solving skills so necessary to the creative process that artists tend to have these skills by the truck load.  In fact, just the other day, as I was having tea and toast at Pizzaiolo with one of my new favorite teaching artists, Shara Finerman, I told her that we were all in a great position to start and run successful businesses because we have what many business people work so hard to attain – creativity, innovation, flexibility, etc.  Personally, I have found it much easier to enter into my business with these skills and then teach myself Quickbooks later.  You know what I mean?

Anyway…Shara shared with me that it was her desire to teach full-time in a school.  She wanted to have the experience of working with a group of students over a longer period of time – an experience not often associated with being a part-time teaching artist.

Then, I challenged her.  Since Shara and I originally met back in October at TAO’s Mind Your Own Business event for teaching artists, I asked her why she felt the need to be in a school in order to have this experience.  Why couldn’t she go into business for herself?  She could find a small group of students, a group that wants quality art instruction (one they may not be getting in school).  She could find a little studio or they could come to her place.  She could meet with them weekly.  She could help them build their portfolio.

And she could do it all her way.  Build up her own philosophy of art, teaching, and learning.  She does not have to limit herself to the traditional pay scale of a teaching job and, with the money she earns, perhaps even make a bigger impact on the kids and families in the community who do not always have access to quality arts experiences.

We are in the business of creating.   Let’s create strong and sustainable businesses that will support us, our communities, and strengthen our economy as a whole.  For more inspiration about arts entrepreneurship, go where I go…I am really into Rebecca Stees’ creative biz wow and Dennis Baker’s blog.

We know from the latest science by folks like Carol Dweck and books like Nurtureshock by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman that the praising children can actually help them do worse, rather than better.  That it’s much better to say “I see you working so hard” than “I see that you are so smart.”

This learning is key for the creative process.  Did you know that Ancient Greeks and Romans believed that genius had nothing to do with the individual talents or competencies of people?  In fact, geniuses were spirits assigned to us to help us do great work.  In this definition, the spirit provides the inspiration and we do the hard work to make it manifest here, on Earth.  Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love (one of my personal favorites) has an amazing TED Talk about this…

Whether or not you believe in spirits, the fact of the matter is that, this idea that we have been holding that some people are just born very very smart and others are not is not getting us anywhere.  It’s definitely not helping our kids learn any better.  When we start to understand that we may not understand exactly where genius comes from, but we do in fact understand how to work hard, make a bunch of mistakes, and keep working anyway, then we will at least be good partners with genius.  And we can pass that on to our kids.