ideal environments for children
As I begin down the Siolta road, I find myself thinking a lot about the environments I provide for the children. In many ways I am blessed in this respect. I have a pretty big house in the countryside with a large garden which is so important to me as I really feel that children need to spend time outdoors every day.
The ‘back’ garden which is actually to the front of the house (which is ”L’ shaped and sort of wraps around the garden but has the road to the back of it, sorry if thats confusing!) is fenced on three sides and open to a courtyard on the fourth. We are in a lovely secluded area and there is usually nothing but the sounds of birds and children to be heard.
In the garden we have a wooden tree house which the older children use as a den. This provides their much needed privacy and the sense that they have a space which is ‘off limits’ to the adults. They have decorated it themselves and they spend many a happy hour there, playing games, listening to music, doing homework (ok, maybe not always so happy).
The ‘first storey’ of this building is a space for the toddlers which consists of some log benches, arranged in a semi-circle to provide for conversation, and a waterproof mat for those who wish to sit on the floor. And thats it. And this space gets tons of use too, the occupants usually consist of the three year old and the 16 month old, using it as an extension of the beloved play house, which is a little pokey when they want to play together.
Another popular environment in the garden is the sand pit. I wrote with amazement a few weeks back about the wide range of age groups that find a use for it here. In the past few months children aged from a few months to 12 years have found a way to play here. It really is amazing the calming affect it has on them, but if you try it for yourself, you begin to see the attraction, just drawing a rake through it is akin to meditation. For more on this topic see Janet Lansbury’s post
This post has been edited for use on a public blog.
Kiddie Cocaine
I try to take a moderate approach in my parenting and childminding practice, but this is often difficult. For instance, like all other mums, I try to ensure the children have a pretty healthy diet. But rather than ban any food type, or force feed them brocolli (as was done to me by a childminder when I was a child) I just don’t buy certain foods, I leave the fruit in easy reach and cook vegetables into their meals. I guess you could say I’m just more sneaky about it !
The one that’s really foxing me at the moment though is that old chestnut, television. About 6 months ago I thought I had it sorted, but as we all know the golden rule with children is that once you think you have it sussed, things change.
Since I am still on maternity leave after having no.3,(just coming out of that now) the only little lady at home during the day is my own 3 year old. So it was quite a simple task to wean her off the little tv she was used to seeing through distraction, setting up other activities, walks etc and the tv was never turned on at all for months.
Now, just as we finally succeeded in having it switched off (they really don’t want you to go) my little lady is demanding her fix again. What changed? Well, I think that its down to an accumulation of moments when my resolve and that of other family members was weakened and we gave in.
For instance, it has happened twice in the last three weeks that we (hubby and I) have been doing a big clean up of the house say on a Saturday morning and have fallen into the trap of getting out of our swing pushing, doll carrying duties by turning the tv on. I can see from her reactions that when it comes to kiddie cocaine, moderation is not possible. You just can’t get away with turning on one program, maybe thirty minutes of it, as soon as she gets a taste, she wants more.
Part of this is of course down to how the children’s channels are set up. Most of the ones for pre-school children have no ad breaks. I’m sure if we asked them they would have us believe that this is so that our little ones are not exposed to advertising, but a nice little added bonus to this from their view point is that there is no break, no natural point at which the child will get bored and want to turn it off.
If you watch these channels for awhile, you will notice that everything about them is designed so that the children want to keep watching. there is no boring end part with a roll call of the people involved and the theme. Now, even the end of the program is interactive so they stay watching and no sooner do they get to this part of the program than some other ‘fun’ character pops up and tells them whas coming next!
More than once in the last few weeks I have found myself reminiscing about my childhood and the way that children’s programs only came on for an hour or two each evening and on Saturday morning. There was something in the fact that you knew that it was finite that broke the spell it holds now, it wasn’t possible turn on another channel and get 24 hours of your favourite program, you had to wait till next week and our lives had much more freedom for that.
So I think that these children’s channels may be their own worst enemies to some extent. The solution we have reached in this house is to turn off the satellite channel and so rid ourselves of these ‘always on’ children’s channels. On terestrial tv, children’s programming is still limited to a few hours in the afternoon.
Am I looking at my own childhood through rose tinted specs and trying to create a utopia for my children? Of course I am but it became clear to me that moderation would not work here. Like any recovering addict, she would not be able to have a few minutes of tv and walk away and where distraction worked 6 months ago, its having less impact now that her memory is better (she’s nearly 4).
So we went cold turkey on her and this is how it panned out:
day 1 – wailing, crying, nashing of teeth, refusal it do any other activites
day 2 – large breaks in wailing
day 3 – today – ahh, peace! no noise, blanket over the ‘you know what’ (as its referred to here) and the only request so far today was to un-cover the sand pit.
If you aren’t convinced of the impact of tv on children, read some wise (and funny) words from a wise man who really understood children, Roald Dahl: http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/television/