Mary’s School Blog

I had such fun looking at my valentines. I know the children like to look at them, but I had forgotten how much I like it, too. I got home from school, ate my lunch, then sat in front of the heater and looked at each one. Read them, looked at the names. I loved all of them: not just the handmade ones, which are wonderful, not just their working on writing, which is so effortful and wonderful. I love seeing what they love- the princesses, the superheros, the animals, the characters. They pick things (it seems) that express part of themselves, and I love that. How they see themselves, perhaps.

This might be the most important thing I can say to you, to myself as a parent.

You cannot make your children happy. I cannot make my children happy. I cannot make my husband happy. I cannot make you happy. I cannot make your children happy. I am there to provide an environment for them, one that I think serves them, that is all.

What I see, in parents, is pain and guilt that you cannot make, guarantee, control your childrens’ happiness. I see that you feel responsible for how they feel, how they respond.

Yes, you teach them, have taught them, a lot, but they get to decide how they feel, how they respond, how they react. I see this happening every day at school. They decide it 300 times in a morning.

We are having muffins for snack. They don’t like muffins, or want muffins. They can decide so many things, do they eat them, do they eat snack, do they throw them, do they scream, do they hit me, do they go and read a booK? This is only a 50th of their choices.

At school, I trust the children to learn to make choices that make their lives easier, and that work well in a community, which we are. If I didn’t, I could not be what I see as a Montessori teacher. What good is being able to make choices about our education without learning to make choices about how we feel and what we do about it?

I allow children to move through these choices. I do not tell them how to feel, or what to do, outside of how the classroom works: we wear shoes inside, toys stay in the cubbie, we wear coats on cold days, we wash our plates after snack, we put our work away. A child might choose to be angry or sad about something that is true: my mom is not here, today is my day to be at school, I didn’t get to wear my church shoes to school, I chose not to eat breakfast before school, the thing I want to do first is not available, I don’t want to go to the potty right now.

Then, what do they do? That is up to them. Learning to have feelings, but not to let your feelings have you, takes work. I have to work at it! I believe that the more we practice it, the easier it is. Like everything, it is easier for some of us than others, easier some days than others.

If you do not believe this, you will be working against what we do at school, and you will be frustrated with us.

This is what self-regulation is, at Mary’s School.

Please, feel free to respond.

Warmly,

Mary

Self-Regulation In all things, at Mary’s School we want to teach independence. When a child is sad or hurt, and wants comforting, we provide it, encouraging their transition into independence as the sadness recedes At times a child is angry, or, for some other reason is choosing to persist in crying/yelling, while not wanting comfort or company. At these times, the teachers may tell a child that he/she will need to be outside while yelling, as it is disturbing our work. They are affecting us. I want the child to be within sight, and still part of the group (able to see and hear us). The door is left open, and they are told to come in when they can be calm, or when they want to be with their friends, or when they want help. The adults are not angry. An adult is always in sight. The other children will often try to help, but are often rejected, too, for a while. We say to the other children, who are concerned: sometimes we just can’t help If this persists longer than about 15 minutes I usually call a parent, as I am concerned that the child might be ill. In 99% of the situations, the child comes in long before 15 minutes. He/she often wishes to be alone for a while longer, which is fine. Perhaps they look at a book or work alone for a bit. Then, very quickly, it seems to me, they are part of everything again, and they have moved on. It is very impressive to me. I will sometimes comment on how well they dealt with whatever it was. I often do not know what was going on. Sometimes children have hard transitions from home. Sometimes not getting their way in some way will trigger an episode. We try to be available, but to make clear our belief that a child can ask for help, switch gears, self-soothe, calm down, given time. I believe that self-regulation is a valuable (maybe one of the most valuable) skill, and I see the great majority of children learn it rapidly in many different situations. This is one of the most satisfying parts of what I see children master. It is a lot of work, and I have a lot of respect for people of all ages who can deal with large emotions, and difficult situations. Notes: Resisting or inhibiting impulse gratification and sustaining attention are all examples of children’s self-regulatory skill. Planning, organizing and flexibly changing one’s strategies in accordance to environmental circumstances are also (also called executive components of children’s behavioral self-regulation. Self- regulation is a multifaceted developmental outcome of early childhood, having both social and biological origins. Clearly, differences in children’s genetic inheritance explain some individual differences in children’s regulatory competence. Also clear, however, is that children’s self regulation is an outgrowth of their history of other regulation-how effectively caregivers have regulated children’s behavior and the extent to which skills have been supported by adults. Another important piece of the self-regulatory puzzle is children’s language development including language in the (Child Development Research, George Mason University, Dept. of Developmental Psychology) **Self- regulation is also called core strength, an essential part of healthy emotional development. What helps the stress-response systems develop in an optimal way is repetitive exposure to controllable challenges. Every time a child in introduced to something new, a low level alarm response is activated. But with repetition comes mastery, and what the brain once interpreted as a potential threat is now familiar and tolerable. It is not bad for a child to experience low levels of anxiety when he is in a safe and responsive setting. Moderate, predictable stress in this responsive, controllable environment leads to resilience. (Self- Regulation, the Second Core Strength, Early Childhood Today: Bruce Perry, MD, PhD, of the ChildTrauma Academy, the Medical Director for Children’s Mental Health in Alberta, Canada.)

WISDOM

I don’t think it’s going to hurt that much, Rosie said. It’s more the sound.

She will have two of her wisdom teeth pulled at 3:00 this afternoon. We were discussing the pros and cons of general versus local anesthetic; she’s opting for a local.

Well, if you change your mind, just tell the doc, I said. I hate to think of her in any kind of pain, although she has had more than her share of surgeries for someone her age. Come to think of it, though, I had mine pulled under local anesthetic decades ago and lived to tell the tale — although I remember the pain afterward as not inconsiderable.

I must remember to tell her to ask for the teeth. Wisdom teeth are remarkable things: big, with an enormous tangle of roots which, left to their own devices, wind themselves around the jawbone in fearsome ways. They look as hard-won as the maturity after which they are named, and they often don’t let go without a fight.

They are the teeth that say you’ve come of age. You’re a grownup now, and you know better than to do half the things you’re doing. Socially, we don’t keep pace with our teeth any more: Americans remain adolescents for years beyond the year of the departure of our backmost molars. Longer than we need to, it seems to me: I’m not sure its good for us to be as sheltered as we are for as long as we are, but it’s the way we do things.

Unless you’re in the military. Check the enlistment bulletin in your newspaper. Look through the names of the fallen. Young, young people, almost all of them. Old enough to rotate back two and three times before even turning 21. Old enough to fight and die for us. Old enough to come home grievously wounded for us. Really, really different from the others in their age set who have not done what they have had to do. Permanently different. They grow up fast.

Come home safe, cherished sons and daughters! I will not call you children, for you left childhood behind when you left. Let the pain of having your wisdom teeth extracted be the worst pain you ever experience, let there be nothing more than that for you, for all of you! I know you cannot hear me, for your are too far away. And I know that if you could hear me, you would smile and thank me for my concern, that you would be polite and kind to me because it is your training to be polite, and you would say to yourself that this kindly grandmother doesn’t know a tenth of what you know, that you wish the pain of a tooth extraction really were the worse pain there was, and that you wish you still could think it was.

But I know that you will never think that again. You are far too wise now.

Copyright A(c) 2007 Barbara Crafton - http://www.geraniumfarm.org