When your children move from house to house whether every other weekend or every week, there is always a “settling-in time” at each home that is challenging for kids and parents. In spite of the excitement of seeing a missed parent or a loved bedroom, the switch is a reminder of the split and a heightened jumble of feelings. Kids often misbehave during this time and parents worry it is a sign of a difficult visit with the other parent, or take it personally believing their child isn’t glad to see them. While these are possibilities, the most common cause of acting out in the transition time is because the switch is hard, plain and simple.

Here are a few things that have helped kids and parents alike:

• Give them space. Let them settle in and approach you.
• Don’t ask how their time was with the other parent right away. Let this emerge slowly and more organically.
• Create rituals. Some kids love to take a bath when they arrive, to relax, to “clear the slate”. Some like to have a snack, some need half an hour in their room.
• Talk to your child about how hard it is to go back and forth and that you realize they might be “grumpy” or not want to talk when they first get home. Your understanding of how things look from their eyes will help them feel known, loved and soothed.
• Meet outside for the transition between parents, for instance at the park, or at a diner, so that you and your child re-enter the house together.
• Handle your own guilt or sadness inside so your children can have room to react without experiencing a need to care for your feelings.
• Schedule hand-offs with plenty of time before bed so kids can really settle in before having to manage going to sleep, which is for them, another separation.

A mother in an ongoing group was discussing her “spirited” and adorable 3 1/2 year old. She had come to a decision that after preschool, no matter what, they were coming home, and having “Siesta Time”- two hours of down time. Since her little girl rarely naps anymore, the “Siesta” is spent playing quietly with toys, spending time on her own and generally chilling. Later in the afternoon, they might see friends, or go to the park or take a class together but “Siesta Time” has become sacred. The mom hadn’t correlated an easier and more enjoyable phase with the addition of this new routine, but as we talked she discovered it was definitely associated.

This mother is on to something. Children need plenty of downtime during the day.  They can go along with a hectic schedule of school and classes, playdates and outings, but notice how much more pleasant they are when life slows down. In this hectic and pressured world we need to safeguard our children’s need for unstructured time at home. It is nutrition for their body, soul and brain. Building it into the schedule, naming it and sticking to it yields benefits for all.

This is the sorry state of the MIS-education of our children. The New York Times article, Picture Books No Longer A Staple, October 8th, 2010, reports that publishers are scaling back a staple of early childhood, illustrated picture books.

Parents have begun pressing their kindergartners and first graders to leave the picture book behind and move on to more text-heavy chapter books. Publishers cite pressures from parents who are mindful of increasingly rigorous standardized testing in schools.

“Parents are saying, ‘My kid doesn’t need books with pictures anymore,’ ” said Justin Chanda, the publisher of Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers. “There’s a real push with parents and schools to have kids start reading big-kid books earlier. We’ve accelerated the graduation rate out of picture books.”

The magic of learning to speak, let alone read, happens when words as a sounds and symbols come to represent objects. Much of the early intellectual dialogue between parents and children begins with a child on the lap and a picture book in hand.  From infancy into elementary school listening to, looking at and reading picture books with a grown up or alone sets the stage for the love of reading later in childhood. Do not drink the Kool-Aid. Read picture books with your children!

Mean girl bullying is showing up in younger and younger age groups. An article by Pamela Paul, in Sunday’s New York Times tackles this complex topic. Let’s look at some of the key issues. First, is the labeling of “mean girls”.

Paul writes,

A kindergarten teacher at one of New York City’s top private all-girls schools observed, “The mean girls are often from mean moms.”

Now that is a pretty big statement. Mean girls, mean moms. Nice girls, nice moms.  Seems too broad and more importantly, what do we do with that?

Who of us has not made many a snarky comment about how someone looks or acts? Or not had zillions of mean thoughts about someone?  Not you, not me. All of us have a mean part. Too often we label the whole person by looking at just one of their characteristics. No one is defined by one quality- we are all made up of a multitude of parts. A care-taking part of our personality, a sad part, a courageous part, and a part that lashes out.  This mean part develops to protect us- to make us feel better and to shield us from feeling shame, rejection, or loneliness.

Take this scenario: You show up at the park with your kids and see two mothers from school sitting together on the bench talking. You automatically feel nervous because you are a lone adult and would love some company. In a nano second the following inner experience takes place: You wonder if you should approach the two mothers. You think one of the women sees you but turns away. Immediately, the mean part jumps out to protect you by thinking, “They are such snobs, and their kids are out of control. At least I pay attention to my kids in the park!” You walk to the other end of the park.

When looking at it closer, that mean part just doesn’t want you to experience those uncomfortable feelings. It wants you to feel strong, better in fact. The same is true with children. Imagine the same scenario at the writing center at school. The mean part in a little kid is just as protecting as an adult, and an intimidated child will likely have the same reaction.

Talking to kids about their mean parts -not telling them that they are mean- will help them to stop bullying.

But here’s the really tough part.

“The mean girls are often from mean moms.”

Parents of kids that bully or condescend to others need to hold up a mirror to their own behavior. One-upsmanship, criticizing others for not being as smart, as rich, as pretty, as athletic, etc. in an ongoing way will create children who feel they have the freedom to do the same. Parents that have a strong mean part will most likely have kids that develop one too. So the first step in combatting relational bullying is to shine a light on your own need to put others down. Take that mean part in hand, recognize that it is protecting you and help that part of you to stop hurting other people.  This is the key to making our children safe psychologically, emotionally and physically.

Finding balance between acknowledging that a new grade begins in a months’ time and reveling in summer fun is hard to strike. Here are some ideas about how to do it:

• Don’t talk about school everyday. Let your child be in the present, without the new school year hanging over their head.
• Do answer any questions that come up, like, “Will so and so be in my class?” or “Will you stay with me at school”, honestly and simply. No long monologues.
• Do go and walk by school the week before class begins. Point out landmarks, like the pet store, the deli etc. so you can look for them on the walk to school the first day.
• Do get a little back pack or lunch box to bring on the first day.
• Do expect stomach aches, difficulty falling asleep or grumpiness around the first days of school.
• Do tell stories about your first days of school.
• Don’t talk about the beginning of school with your peers and assume the kids can’t hear.
• Do remember that a parent taking their child to school is one of the most important jobs. Try to adjust work schedules so one parent can do drop off at least a few days a week.

How could praising your child be anything but good for them? Here’s how. It turns out that praising a child’s intelligence or performance too much backfires in several different ways. With too much performance focused praise – kids will start to shy away from doing things that they are not naturally good at. They begin to see their worth in terms of stellar accomplishment and fear the loss of approval if they perform in a mediocre or poor manner.

The other is that they start to relate accomplishments to their intrinsic abilities and not effort. In a sense, the idea that effort has to be made is seen as negative or unnecessary. In many developmental studies, children whose effort is praised over ability actually do better on tasks.

Of course all praise isn’t bad. Sincere, specific, praise like “You can climb like a fast monkey on those bars!” or “Your paper is so well-written, awesome job!” does make children feel seen, appreciated and loved. Just don’t overdo it!

In the last year the most used piece of advice I have given is this – ‘The little things matter.’  The walk on the way to school, eggs together at the diner, the conversations at bath time – all of these seemingly simple activities mean so much in your relationship with your child.

Parents are sadly bombarded with pressure about which school, what activities, feeding only breast milk-the list goes on and on. Many get a skewed sense of what is important about being a parent and get caught up in the sweeping tide of anxiety about over achievement for their children and for themselves. They will admit, “I spend more time pumping when I get home from work than hanging with the baby, I have to get the milk.” “I leave the bath to the babysitter so I can check my email when I get home so I am not over-run with work when I get into the office the next morning.” Or “I spent every night in the last two weeks working on the school auction, I want her to see how dedicated I am to her school.” The frantic energy and the desire to do a good job is palpable.

We are on the wrong path here. The culture is pushing us to ignore the little things. Small opportunities for closeness with your child, looking at the world with them, just being. The big busy picture means nothing to them. And when you slow down and take time to think about it–it isn’t that important to you either.

Mornings are hard for families.  There is always so much to get done. The clock is ticking as mom, dad, kids – all need to get up and get going. The ‘Morning Rush’ can feel very hectic especially if you expect children to move at the rate of adults. By honoring the pace of children in the morning, you are more likely to walk out the door without feeling like a week has passed between 6:30 and 8:30 am.

While adults have big goals in mind, kids are living in the moment with their own smaller goals. Mushing the oatmeal, zooming the trains on the floor of their room, the water flowing from the faucet. Wherever they are in their morning, they are in the moment and unaware of the next thing to get done. Parents can experience this as dawdling, not listening, and of course sometimes it is. Regardless, keeping the child’s experience in mind while you keep your eye on the prize – getting out the door – helps the morning feel less like a battle.

Here are a few tips parents have found very helpful for pain-free mornings:

• Set your alarm at least 15 minutes before you need to wake your children or they would normally wake you.
• Get yourself up first and take care of at least one big task: make breakfast, hop in the shower, get the lunches made.
• Don’t let your kids drag you out of bed. You will end up rushed and impatient.
• Make getting dressed the first task for kids so that they are motivated to get it done and go have breakfast. Most fights happen over getting dressed.
• Don’t expect your young children to move the morning along on their own. They need you to shepard them through the morning.
• Make a list with pictures of everything that needs to get accomplished so you can ask your kids to check and see what they need to do. It encourages independence and ownership of their own self-care.
• Unless you have more than one and a half hours don’t use TV on a weekday morning – it creates more problems than it solves.

Remember to allow enough time, be ready yourself and don’t take it personally if your kids sometimes lose themselves in their teeth brushing or in selecting a book or toy to bring to school. Kids hate the rushing around that we get caught up in.

Phoebe Prince, the high school girl who hung herself last week, was purportedly “bullied” to death. Tortured is more like it. Hounded, cursed, humiliated in school and on-line. Defining bullying clearly is critical. Many adults think of bullying as a rite of passage in childhood. Clearly there is a difference between being picked last in gym class and being targeted by an individual or group of kids whose aim is to intimidate and shame.  Today’s landscape for children is also markedly different in that Facebook and email amplifies and exacerbates the intensity of peer relationships.We need to take a fresh look at bullying.

“Peer Abuse” is a phrase that more clearly defines the difference between teasing and belittling. “Peer Abuse” includes not only the physical aggression most associate with bullying, but also the verbal and emotional abuse that are a part of situations like Phoebe’s.

“Peer Abuse” are repeated acts over time of physical assault, psychological manipulation, name calling and using social power to ostracize an individual or group. This goes against our commonly held belief that bullies are loners, having been rejected socially. New research shows that it is often popular kids that use subtly abusive tactics to put down others to maintain their social status. Becoming the victim of malicious bullying can happen for a variety of reasons.

The message here for parents is that any of our children can, and most likely will be aggressive or cruel to other children at some point. Make this an open discussion in your family: Model respectful behavior, take seriously claims that your child is being bullied, talk about the pressure and responsibilities that come with popularity. Teach your child to speak up and stand up if someone is being abused. Adults need to do the same. The stakes are too high to be complacent.

President Obama is focused on supporting reforms in our educational system, but what if these reforms are based on faulty assumptions?  Susan Engel, head of the teaching program at Williams College, writes a simple, straightforward recipe for elementary education in her Op-Ed Play to Learn.

She argues that, based on developmental research, children should not be forced to accomplish the “laundry list” of tasks now present in many classrooms.  Instead, they should be immersed in language and literacy, collaboration and experimentation and steeped in play. Our current focus on early academics, testing, testing, and more testing is not what sets children up to be great learners in middle and high school. On the contrary, present day curriculum “is strangling children and teachers alike.”

“In this classroom, children would spend two hours each day hearing stories read aloud, reading aloud themselves, telling stories to one another and reading on their own. After all, the first step to literacy is simply being immersed, through conversation and storytelling, in a reading environment; the second is to read a lot and often. A school day where every child is given ample opportunities to read and discuss books would give teachers more time to help those students who need more instruction in order to become good readers.

Children would also spend an hour a day writing things that have actual meaning to them — stories, newspaper articles, captions for cartoons, letters to one another. People write best when they use writing to think and to communicate, rather than to get a good grade.

In our theoretical classroom, children would also spend a short period of time each day practicing computation — adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing. Once children are proficient in those basics they would be free to turn to other activities that are equally essential for math and science: devising original experiments, observing the natural world and counting things, whether they be words, events or people. These are all activities children naturally love, if given a chance to do them in a genuine way.”

Parents need to push their schools, Boards of Education and their representatives in government to change the direction of our educational system. Let’s put our focus and our money, not on propping up a broken system, but toward creating a new one that supports how children learn best.