Parent Resource: "Taking Back Childhood"

I heard about this book on NPR, can't remember which program it was on, but it caught my attention.  Taking Back Childhood: Helping Your Kids Thrive in a Fast-Paced, Media-Saturated, Violence-Filled World by Nancy Carlsson-Paige seemed exactly the type of resource I should have on my book shelf once I am a counselor, so I got a copy from the library and have been perusing through it these last couple of weeks.  So far, I have found several interesting ideas that would be helpful to me as a school counselor and teacher.  Nancy writes that all children need several key factors for healthy development: creative play, security, and positive relationships.  Of course, parents and guardians are the first and best providers of these elements in children's upbringing, but the school is a place where children spend a lot of their time, interacting with peers and adults, and providing access to these three essential factors in their development can also be done there.

I haven't read through the whole book as of yet, but I have found several key points that will be important for me to keep in mind as I work with students, especially in the elementary school setting.  One of those is power and being ever conscious of its role in our relationships with children.  We learn, as counselors, that the relationships we build with our students are the most important factors in how successful our work with them will be.  In order for students to feel comfortable and safe with us, they need to be able to trust that we will be fair and non-judgmental and that we will not hold our "power" as adults over them, but will work with them as equals, allowing them to be the experts of their concerns and problems.  Remembering to do that can be difficult sometimes when we have to work under time constraints of the class room or an individual session, or we have a hard time with a child who is being willful and disobedient.

Nancy writes that, "Often when kids 'act out' or 'misbehave,' they're hoping we will interfere to restore for them the sense of security they need us to provide."  This does not mean that we will step in to punish or judge the child immediately.  What Nancy is promoting is a sharing of power with the child--this means in this case, giving the child an opportunity to face their actions and misbehavior and to see the impact of what they did.  She writes also that this type of parenting/education allows the child to develop appropriate social skills, such as cooperation, control of impulses, ability to work things out with peers and adults.  Insisting on obedience alone through use of punishment and cajoling will not lead to children (our students) being able to self-regulate themselves appropriately.  Obviously, as educators, we cannot control the type of environment and parenting that our students grow up with, but we can control our interactions with them, and keeping in mind some of the ideas from Nancy Carlsson-Paige's book would be a good start.

Source:
Carlsson-Paige, N. (2008). Taking back childhood: Helping your kids thrive in a fast-paced, media-saturated, violence-filled world. (1st ed.). New York, NY: Hudson Street Press.