Posts Tagged ‘kids’
June 3rd, 2010
My wonderful children getting into the Soccer World Cup spirit with the help of mom’s face painting skills.
8 days to go!
Posted in 
Tags:
May 27th, 2010
A fun and essential 16 minute watch for any parent IMHO – Ken Robinson’s May 2010 TED talk “Bring on the learning revolution!”:
A few snippets which I like:
- And I was up in San Fransisco a while ago doing a book signing. There was this guy buying a book, he was in his 30s. And I said, “What do you do?” And he said, “I’m a fireman.” And I said, “How long have you been a fireman?” He said, “Always, I’ve always been a fireman.” And I said, “Well, when did you decide?” He said, “As a kid.” He said, “Actually, it was a problem for me at school, because at school, everybody wanted to be a fireman.” He said, “But I wanted to be a fireman.” And he said, “When I got to the senior year of school, my teachers didn’t take it seriously. This one teacher didn’t take it seriously. He said I was throwing my life away if that’s all I chose to do with it, that I should go to college, I should become a professional person, that I had great potential, and I was wasting my talent to do that.” And he said, “It was humiliating because he said it in front of the whole class, and I really felt dreadful. But it’s what I wanted, and as soon as I left school, I applied to the fire service and I was accepted.” And he said, “You know, I was thinking about that guy recently, just a few minutes ago when you were speaking, about this teacher,” he said, “because six months ago, I saved his life.” (Laughter) He said, “He was in a car wreck, and I pulled him out, gave him CPR, and I saved his wife’s life as well.” He said, “I think he thinks better of me now.”
- You know something? Human communities depend upon a diversity of talent, not a singular conception of ability. And at the heart of our challenges — (Applause) At the heart of the challenge is to reconstitute our sense of ability and of intelligence. This linearity thing is a problem. When I arrived in L.A. about nine years ago, I came across a policy statement, very well-intentioned, which said, “College begins in kindergarten.” No, it doesn’t. (Laughter) It doesn’t. If we had time, I could go into this, but we don’t. (Laughter) Kindergarten begins in kindergarten.
- A friend of mine once said, “You know, a three year-old is not half a six year-old.” (Laughter) (Applause) They’re three. But as we just heard in this last session, there’s such competition now to get to kindergarten, to get to the right kindergarten, that people are being interviewed for it at three. Kids sitting in front of unimpressed panels, you know, with their resumes, (Laughter) flipping through and saying, “Well, this is it?” (Laughter) “You’ve been around for 36 months, and this is it?” (Laughter) “You’ve achieved nothing, commit. Spent the first six months breastfeeding, the way I can see it.” (Laughter) See, it’s outrageous as a conception, but it attracts people.
- And he [W.B. Yeats] says, “I’ve got something else, but it may not be for you.” He says this: “Had I the heavens embroidered cloths and wrought with gold and silver light of blue and the dim and the dark cloths of night and light and the half light, I would spread the clothes under your feet; but I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; tread softly because you tread on my dreams.”
And every day, everywhere, our children spread their dreams beneath our feet. And we should tread softly.
Full interactive transcript and more details available on the TED site. On the subject of parenting, Julia Sweeney’s talk – about “the talk” – will also appeal to most parents :-)
Ken’s bio: http://www.ted.com/speakers/sir_ken_robinson.html
October 25th, 2009
June 27th, 2009
Two birthday parties – thumbs up to puppet shows, Adrian the magician and winter sunshine.
February 10th, 2009
Dr. Arun Gandhi, grandson of Mahatma Gandhi and founder of the M.K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence, in his June 9 lecture at the University of Puerto Rico, shared the following story as an example of nonviolence in parenting:
“I was 16 years old and living with my parents at the institute my grandfather had founded 18 miles outside of Durban, South Africa, in the middle of the sugar plantations. We were deep in the country and had no neighbors, so my two sisters and I would always look forward to going to town to visit friends or go to the movies. One day, my father asked me to drive him to town for an all-day conference, and I jumped at the chance.
Since I was going to town, my mother gave me a list of groceries she needed and, since I had all day in town, my father asked me to take care of several pending chores, such as getting the car serviced. When I dropped my father off that morning, he said, ‘I will meet you here at 5:00 p.m., and we will go home together.’
After hurriedly completing my chores, I went straight to the nearest movie theater. I got so engrossed in a John Wayne double-feature that I forgot the time. It was 5:30 before I remembered. By the time I ran to the garage and got the car and hurried to where my father was waiting for me, it was almost 6:00.
He anxiously asked me, ‘Why are you late?’ I was so ashamed of telling him I was watching a John Wayne western movie that I said, ‘The car wasn’t ready, so I had to wait,’ not realizing that he had already called the garage.
When he caught me in the lie, he said: ‘There’s something wrong in the way I brought you up that didn’t give you the confidence to tell me the truth. In order to figure out where I went wrong with you, I’m going to walk the walk home 18 miles and think about it.’
So, dressed in his suit and dress shoes, he began to walk home in the dark on mostly unpaved, unlit roads. I couldn’t leave him, so for five-and-a-half hours I drove behind him, watching my father go through this agony for a stupid lie that I uttered. I decided then and there that I was never going to lie again.
I often think about that episode and wonder, if he had punished me the way we punish our children, whether I would have learned a lesson at all. I don’t think so. I would have suffered the punishment and gone on doing the same thing. But this single nonviolent action was so powerful that it is still as if it happened yesterday. That is the power of nonviolence.”
(found here)
