In my life, there are 2 things that I long for above all else, joy and peace. It seems that the current American lifestyle fights these 2 things like nothing else, especially in the lives of children. I feel like society is telling me, "If you want your children to succeed they must keep up with the Jones's or at the very least with the Common Core standards." This can mean hours of rigor and failed expectations.
Since childhood, I have had unreal expectations of myself. This has caused me great stress and anxiety as I do not feel like I have done enough to succeed. I fight these feelings that I believe were instilled in me at school where I would always compare my grades, scores, etc. against my classmates and my brother to see how I measured up. I felt joy when I learned, but the fear of failure often trumped this joy. Further, as I strove for success, I would constantly push the line for success in my life further back. Thus, I often robbed myself of peace and joy.
In one of the high school classes that I taught, I would take one day a week for 5-8 minutes for what I called meditation time. This is where I would take the students outside to sit without eye contact, digital contact, physical contact, verbal contact with anyone else, to just sit and listen. At first this was very difficult for the students, but distinctly enjoyable at the same time. Many of the students discovered how to claim peace, even if just for a few moments. It was often my favorite part of the week, as I believe was the case for many of my students as well.
The excitement of learning something new is a reward unto itself. As a teacher I have seen it many times, though not as often as I would have hoped. This is how I want my children to learn, not out of expectation or comparison to those the same age, but out of a deeply driven desire to learn, recognizing and claiming the joy when learning occurs.
I define my personal success as the amount of peace and joy generated by my actions. In the picture with this article, joy is evident on my son's face! This was generated by an afternoon out at the park followed by yogurt pretzels as a snack. For a two-year-old, this intentional event led to this wonderful expression. As is clear from my previous statements, teaching joy and peace does not come easily for me. The peace and joy that I claim and that I try to provide for my children is very intentional as I could easily focus on the chaos and failure in my life which would lead to to stress and worry.
I want to leave a legacy of joy and peace, thus I must claim it in my own life first, modeling it for my children. I do not define success by the American Dream. My children could be the richest, most famous, most beautiful, best [insert anything here], but if they fail to find joy and peace in their lives, then I would not consider them to be successful. Thus, I have to be intentional to teach my children the important things which are how to find joy and peace in life.
Written By Jay Melashenko
Dad and Co-teacher of 3 joyful boys ages 2,5, & 8
It's baseball season and this is the first time I have ever coached a team that included one of my kids, Colben. I see these little 5-year-old faces every week that look up to me to see what they are supposed to do.
I had to ponder what it meant to be a coach. Is it my job to win? Is it my job to teach the fundamentals? I am supposed to have fun with the players or be hard and mean, whipping them into shape? Now you may be thinking that I am over thinking this as it is just T-Ball. Yet, I realized that the approach, the emotion, the very energy of a coach gets embodied in someway by each of the players.
In my experience, when the coach expected a lot from me, I expected a lot from myself. When the coach was disappointed in me, I was disappointed in myself. When the coach chose me to be on the team, or chose me to be a starter, I felt valued. When I was not chosen, I felt a sense of worthlessness.
Here are a few impressions I have seen from coaches over the years that I want to avoid as the lessons learned are not how I want my kids to perceive the world:
1. "It's all about winning"
Life Lesson Learned: Unless you are at the top, unless you are the best, you're not good enough. This teaches that there has to be a winner and a loser in which the other team is an enemy.
Alternative: "It's all about fun"
Life Lesson Learned: Sports are meant to be enjoyed. Having a team to play is a gift in which the opposite team are friends for being willing to enjoy the game with you. In life a win-win always supersedes a win-lose, e.g. diplomacy is better than war.
2. "Only the better players can take risks and call the shots"
Life Lesson Learned: Play it safe until you are the best, then you can take risks. Always defer taking chances and taking a risk to someone with more authority.
Alternative: "If you try and miss, adjust and try again"
Life Lesson Learned: Trying and risking, recovering from failures and mistakes lead to success.
3. "By playing the better players in the best positions, and by playing them longer in these positions I will have a better team"
Life Lesson Learned: The rich get richer while the poor get poorer. If you struggle, you will continue to struggle forever always labeled as a bench-warmer.
Alternative:"If you are on the team, you play as part of the team"
Life Lesson Learned: You deserve the chance to test your skills with others. By experiencing and growing, you will improve. Everyone has strengths to offer, and each person needs the chance to grow and test their strengths.
When I coach, I try to look at the implications my tone, attitude and actions have on the players as I convey to them life lessons through a simple game of T-Ball.
Written by Jay Melashenko
Dad and Co-teacher of 3 impressionable boys ages 2,5,&8
One skill that I have chosen to teach my children is imagination. Every so often, I will take my children on what I call an imagination adventure. It doesn't require anything but one's imagination (Note that this is a great game to play in the car) As my kids develop their imagination skills, I can see what they have learned, and how creative they really are.
How to play:
1. Have everyone playing close their eyes (Unless you are driving).
2. Everyone must picture what is happening.
3. As the story changes from what you were thinking, let it change, don't fight it (You can't say: "no, that is not what happened, what really happened was...")
4. Everyone gets an equal chance to share telling what happens next, sharing back and forth
Let me give you an example of the most recent imagination adventure with my middle son Colben. Colben and I were the first people ever to bike across Antarctica in which we popped one of our tires on the South pole. This was after getting our bike equipment from an underwater bicycle shop run by his brother Jaden. We also turned into killer whales for a little while in order to get to the bike shop.
My oldest son, Jaden, picked up some story telling tips from his great grandpa. The skill that he is working on is that when you tell a tall tale, you must include something real in order to make the imagination adventure feel real.
The most recent imagination adventure with him included a boy that never aged who longed to get to Everlasting Amusement Park in which he had never been. This boy lived in the town of Nowhere. In this story this boy found a friend in a glowing salamander and met a boa constrictor inside a tree. The boy was able to help the boa constrictor find a wife in exchange for helping him get into the amusement park with season tickets that never expired. This boy chose to live at the Everlasting Amusement Park where he became the owner of it raising 6 flags to honor each of the 6 individuals that helped him achieve his life goal, hence starting the first every 6-flags theme park.
Fostering this creativity in my children gives them the tools to truly visualize with their minds eye. This also helps them to role play, share and make wise decisions. As I play, I can tell that it exercises a part of my brain that I need to use more. Lastly, I often learn more about my kids knowledge, fears and desires in an imagination adventure than through any other method.
My children also get overly excited at times. I have used this as a tool to calm them down where the story has a calm, cool meadow with tall grass and a pleasant breeze or a sunset on a beach with water lapping at their toes in which their feet sink into the sand. For the calming imagination adventure, I usually tell the whole story start to finish where there is absolutely nothing exciting, but everything calming. Honestly, these stories rarely have a plot at all. They have helped me get a screaming toddler calm and to sleep within 10 minutes.
As we usually play these games before bed, I try to avoid or make light of anything frightening as this is essentially the same strategy for telling scary campfire stories. As a child, with my vivid imagination, I could never sleep after such campfire stories. Now as a parent, the last thing I want is for my child to stay awake any longer than he needs to.
What do you do to teach imagination?
Written by Jay Melashenko
Dad and Co-teacher of 3 creative boys ages 2,5, & 8
To assume makes an... well you know the saying [Or maybe I am assuming too much]. Attempting to assess what someone else knows can be difficult. This requires collecting as much information as possible to make such an assessment. So let's say that you want to see if I know my alphabet and you ask me, "What letter comes after A?"
If I respond with, "The letter Y," then you might assume that I do not know my alphabet. This assessment would be incorrect because in fact, Y does come after A in the alphabet, just a lot further down the way. Also, Y comes after A in my name, Jay. So this would make Y a better answer than B.
Every question, and every assessment I make comes with a set of assumptions. When I give my son, Jaden, a math test, I am assuming that he actually took the time to read the directions. If he fails my test, I am going to assume that he didn't know the math concepts when maybe he just read the directions too fast, misunderstood the question, etc. I need more information before I assume I know where he got stuck.
My children look up to me and other adults to affirm their strengths and identify their weaknesses through the developmental process. If I just left my son with a poor number or letter score at the top of his page, he will assume that he is bad at math when in fact, he might just be going to quickly, thinking about the questions differently, etc. These misconception are primarily driven by poorly selected questions and hasty assumptions. There are a few things I try to do to avoid such pitfalls as I teach my children.
1. Listen
I try to get into the head of my sons to understand how they are thinking. The best way to do this is to listen.
2. Ask Why
When Jaden gets an answer right or wrong, I give him the chance to explain his reasoning.
3. Affirm
As my kids learn, I try to help them make connections with the things they already know. Look for the positive and correct parts of the reasoning chain to affirm when a wrong answer is given.
4. Discover
I like to delay just giving correct answers whenever possible. This takes a lot longer, but it is worthwhile. This gives my children the chance to discover the answers for themselves and will encourage and strengthen their drive to learn. As I watch my kids travel this wandering path of discovery, I usually get 10 times the insight into what they actually know and how they think than a simple right or wrong answer.
5. Open a conversation
Ask questions and explore ideas that may not have a right or wrong answer. For example, I asked my 4 year old son, Colben, "Why is The Hulk awesome!" This gave him the opportunity to develop critical thinking skills about his very limited knowledge of The Hulk [His only exposure to The Hulk is a cup he selected from Walmart and The Avengers advertisements]. His answer, "because he goes grrrrrr."
Written by Jay Melashenko
Dad and Co-teacher of 3 curious boys ages 2,5, & 8
