Children take great pride in their ability to tell a joke, it’s a real boost to their self esteem. At home, jokes give children a moment of undivided attention from adults and older siblings. When a joke works and everyone laughs, it’s a moment of pure joy for a child. It can be very gratifying for kids when friends laugh at their jokes. Children ages 5-6 years are learning that being funny is one of the easiest ways to get other kids to like you. Plus, kindergartners and first graders love having information that others don’t and knowing the answer to a joke makes them feel powerful.

Appreciating friends’  jokes has emotional benefits too. When kids laugh at a joke, they share a sense of complicity. Five and 6 year olds are beginning to notice their peerd, and they’re very concerned about what they can and can’t do. Being able to get a joke shows them that they are just as smart and competent as other kids.

We should look on the bright side. People often assume that a sense of humor is something you’re born with or without, but experts insist it’s a skill that any kid can learn and master. Encourage your budding comedian by laughing at his jokes, even if they’re only marginally funny. Parents who joke around with their children, share funny incidents from their own day, and generally try to see the humor in life’s day to day challenges are more likely to raise children who like to laugh and can roll with the punches. Let’s encourage are children to appreciate the lighter side of life.

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6 good books for kindergarten

Marshmallow fun furniture

Image Courtesy of CoolBaby.com

Kaboost is an alternative to booster seats or  high chairs.  The idea is that it has these adjustable arm things, so that instead of raising up a short kid by putting him on a booster chair or even in a high chair, you just raise the chair up, so the child sits squarely in the chair and at the right height just like everyone else.

Now, I’m not saying it’s not a kind of cool idea.  It does make it so that a little kid can sit on a chair  like everyone else and not be set apart or infantilized by having a special baby-ish chair.  And it does, admittedly, reduce the chances of the booster chair sliding sideways off the big chair and the kid landing on the floor.  In addition, it’s all plastic, so it won’t do any damage to your carpet or floor.  And it’s portable, so you can take it to a restaurant or Grandma’s house or whatever.

But this is one of those things that makes me wonder why bother with it?   At $37.95 each, you have to have some extra pocket change to get one, anyway–and that puts it in my category of things rich parents buy not because their kids really need them, but because they have the money to buy them.

For $37.95, my kid can sit on a couple of phone books.  I did a pretty thorough search, and I came across no reports of any child being injured by sitting on a phone book, and no reports of any child’s self-esteem taking such a hit that they grew up to be mentally unstable.

So, rich parents, knock yourselves out.  Kaboost seems like a cool thing to have.  I think the rest of us will just stick to normal booster chairs and their inexpensive substitutes.

Announced as a child enrichment website with easy-to-follow messages for young children, Kidz4Mation, a UK-based child development business, launched its unique, new website, http://www.kidz4mation.com on May 31, 2009.

“Our goal is to create a resource web site where parents and teachers can visit and download fully-illustrated personal development ebooks for children, materials that will make a difference in their lives and be fun and appealing,” said Hitul Thobhani, co-founder of Kidz4Mation.

“We want to be a resource when there is a need for parental and education tools to help in the ever-challenging support of raising children in their formative years.”

Kidz4mation.com features six beautifully illustrated ebooks for download, each with a message of positive development. Mikey Helps Toot Toot stresses that a thought is a thing: one positive thought leads to another. The theme of Tiggle Takes Off! is to be grateful for what you have. Mikey Says I Can Do It sends a message of limiting beliefs and addressing them with positive affirmations.

Mikey Aces His Test is about what to say to yourself to be successful. Mikey Takes a Moment! focuses on calming the mind with meditation. And the theme of Chik Chik’s Cap is raising self-esteem for the differently enabled.

The lesson in each story is reinforced by questions and exercises for children in the form of Mikey says sections. Also, parents/teachers notes help facilitate learning in the classroom and home.

Kidz4Mation plans to continuously add resource links to subjects like the influence of proper nutrition on a child’s behavior as well as online child development training.

Source

Today’s Wall Street Journal features a review of two books, The Parents We Mean to Be by Richard Weissbourd, and Free Range Kids by Lenore Skenazy.  I’m not sure why they are reviewed together, except that they do have a common theme of parents backing off and leaving their kids alone a little bit.

Weissbourd’s book focuses on how parents have failed to provide moral leadership, instead focusing on either self-esteem or success.  This can lead to a total failure to teach kids the hard lessons of life such as working hard and doing the right thing, or, conversely, it can lead to kids under so much pressure to succeed that they stagger under the burden.  In neither case are children becoming good, moral citizens–they’re just becoming some combination of selfish and successful. 

The book by Skenazy is about how we over protect our kids, so much so that they don’t learn to live with failure or to take care of themselves.  The WSJ article writes:

Ms. Skenazy, a humor columnist, believes we should give “our children the freedom we had without going nuts with worry.” She lampoons safety-obsessed parents who see a threat-filled world, from metal baseball bats and raw cookie dough to Halloween-candy poisoners and kidnappers. She advises turning off the news, avoiding experts and boycotting baby knee pads “and the rest of the kiddie safety-industrial complex.”

I can go with Weissbourd’s thesis that parents’ job is not to make kids feel good, but to make them be good.  I see a tragic lack of moral guidance from parents toward their kids.  I give my kids as much freedom as I possibly can, and my DH and I work hard to help them become independent and to responsible.  A big part of that is us explaining the moral implications of actions and words, and them accepting the consequences of their actions and words.  We seldom let them off the hook just because it would make them feel bad.

But I’m a little more hesitant to accept Skenazy’s idea that we shouldn’t worry so much about our kids.  Anyone who reads newspapers or magazines, who watches the news, or who gets amber alerts on their cell phones knows that there are scary people out there who actively want to hurt our children.  Clearly, we have to hold on loosely.  But if we don’t protect them, who will?  What are we here for, if not that?