Part 1 of many here.

Part two of many here.

Part three of many here.

Part four of many here.

Okay the survey results are as follows:

92% played with Fevicol and loved it.
44% loved coloring and erasing with markers, 20% yes on only coloring, 20% yes only on erasing.
92% loved pencils and sharpeners.
Candle wax seems to be the biggest hit with 96% love.
57% did not like ripping newspaper. What a bummer?! I strongly recommend you guys try it. It is such a cathartic release.
50% love swirling paint, 28% like it, 14% are okay with it.
72% make rainbows in the shower and I am happy to announce that we all believe in showers and soap.
57% rolled chapathi dough and then ate it. 38% played and discarded the dough.
62% did not scribble in the house, no experimentation and wondered about my mother’s reaction.

My grand conclusion based on the poll results…….

As children, most of us just played for the sake of playing, without bothering about what we produced at the end of it. These are the found memories that we carry with us. These are the memories that we might have forgotten, but when kindled, put a smile on our face. This is process orientation. This is what your young child is doing. Just doing something and taking pleasure at that moment without a bother about the past, future, accolades, recognition, praise and the mess. Soon they are going to grow up and slowly get in to the product oriented mode. For now, just let them be.

This, my dear peeps, is the ulterior motive behind the survey.

Give them the art materials. Give them the space. Give them the freedom. Stand back. Let go. Let them play. Let them discover, understand and love their material. If you feel like they have to create something meaningful to an adult, get in touch with your Fevicol days. Set limits. Like for example, paint only on designated area. Because, not many of us have studio work space. So, parents need to set limits to protect the walls, furniture and carpet. If it is their first time with paint or messy material sit with them to make sure that they understand their limits. Children and mess, many a times it is not intentional, they just cannot help themselves. Even better, sit with them and participate without taking over or interfering. It provides the children with a good model and you get to realize how much fun the whole process is.

The first six years of their life, children learn their world and express their thoughts through art. So it is essential that parents understand that the process is ‘learning about the world and communicating through art’ which later, around age 7+, becomes ‘art through learning and communication’. You cannot ‘formally teach’ a three-year-old-child to make art, but you can show them the different ways to explore.

When it comes to tips, techniques and pointers, there are overwhelmingly large number of resources. But when I look for open ended art exploration for the preschool age, I carefully avoid projects that have a finished product to show for. But, hey, it is just me. Given my personality, I have to consciously stop myself from controlling what the children do. In my opinion, when we follow some one else’s instruction and strive towards a finished product, it is craft. Not that craft is any lesser, but it is some one else’s baby, not mine.

Coming up next: List of resources for open ended art and books on art appreciation.

Technorati Tags: art exploration, difference between art and craft, process orientation and product orientation, survey result

Part 1 of many here.

Part two of many here.

Part three of many here.

We all would have colored, painted, made some kind of art as a kid. Many of us do it even now. So dip in to your memory bank or your current experiences and answer some questions.

There are just 10 questions. and you can choose to be anon. So don’t be intimidated. 9 questions are about you and the last question is for me. Indulge me please. Pretty please with a cherry on top ???

You will see only one question at a time. I have provided some answers. For folks who want to tell more there is a text area. After you answer click on next. Please make sure you answer all 10 questions.

Survey will be open till Jan 18, 4.00PM PST.

Get…Set…Go

Technorati Tags: Survey

Part 1 of many here.

Part two of many here.

A child comes in to this world all geared up for survival. Think about it. Who taught this itty-bitty thing to latch on, to suck from the breast, to root, to paddle while in water, and imitate walking? All this within minutes after birth? The only explanation is new born brain is wired to handle certain reflexes. Few other things the newborn brain is designed to do is to communicate, to absorb language and to bond. These are the essential tools for survival.

If one looks at language development, music development and art development in children, it follows the same pattern. Language for example, children start with receiving language before they start talking. Talking comes in a certain order. They start with cooing, progress to babbling, figure out everything has a name and hence understand symbolism, start to say single words, move on to telegraphic speech and then comes the talking.

Children view art as a form of communication, especially in the first three years. They understand the concept of communication – thinking up something and expressing it to other people. Then they understand that communication can be using words or physical body movements like pointing gesturing etc or using paper and pencil/crayon. (The beauty about art as a tool for communication is that children use it to communicate to themselves at times. They think of a visual idea and many a times putting that visual on paper clears a lot of things for them) By this time they are masters in cause and effect, otherwise they wouldn’t know that pencil causes an impression on paper. They are developing hand-eye co-ordination and fine motor skills, otherwise they cannot manipulate the pencil to make marks on paper. We are talking about a 12month – 18month old child now.

Just like talking there are stages in drawing. Once there was a nice lady called Rhoda Kellogg. For 18 years she collected one million drawing sample of children in a certain age group. She researched the scribbles and concluded that

• Children first explore the art material, euphemism for your child eating crayon or grinding pencil. Or like in our house, a person who shall not be named painting their younger sister’s freshly tonsure head with red paint. And another person who shall not be named allowing their older sister to paint her head but insisted and rolled on the floor crying that her face needs to be painted too.
• Then they scribble. Children have 20 basic scribbles. Not all children use all the 20 scribbles, but they favor certain scribbles based on their intelligence style.
• They extend their scribbles, like making X and something resembling shapes. Invariably all children draw the circle as their first enclosed space. Happy face and sun figure in most of the children’s drawings. Then they combine shapes and such. This is when they draw ‘the house’ with one triangle for roof and a rectangle/square for the bottom. Even though they live in apartments with flat roof, they draw A-line roofs in their drawings!!
• Then they repeat and repeat and repeat, till they refine their style, placement, materials and they evolve their own individual style. By this time your child is six years give or take.

Are you blown away? Did your jaws will drop? Mine did when I first read about it

If one were to debate if art is nature or nurture, I would say both. When it comes to art, there are two things there is appreciation and there is creation. An artist is a person who has the ability to appreciate what she sees, figure out what makes the maximum impact on her, break it down in her brain in to simple elements and create it using a medium. The first part, appreciating what they see and capturing the main elements of the images that make the maximum impact on them comes naturally to young children (6 and under). Plus they are process oriented. Hence my belief that children are born artists (NATURE). As they grow up, they either grow in to people who create or grow out of art. This solely depends on their experiences with and exposure to art in the first six years (NURTURE).

So, should I run and sign up my two-year-old for art classes? What is art exposure? What do parents do to encourage and inspire their children? Will keep y’all posted. Before that indulge me in this survey pliss.

Technorati Tags: is art nature or nurture, Rhoda Kellog, patterns in children’s drawings, children use art to communicate

Technorati Tags: children use art to communicate, is art nature or nurture, patterns in children's drawings, Rhoda Kellog

Part 1 of many here.

Part 2 contd…

Art is open-ended. What is beautiful or meaningful to one person makes no sense to another. Personally, I love Raja Ravi Verma. My next best would be the impressionists. I love them all, I love the concept, I love the play of colors, I love the way the artist looks at light and dark. Recently I have been introduced to pointillism and all I can say is WOW, what a vision. This is in the late 1880?! I consider this some kind of rudimentary vision which later got extrapolated to the pixel concept now used in TV monitors.

Modern/abstract art, I simply don’t understand. I have always thought, a child could make it, what is the big deal. But one of my classmates, with a masters degree in art, explained to me that it is the process, not the product. During break time, we were discussing Jackson Pollack’s abstract expressions in particular and I said, “Jack the dripper??? Come on, my three year old can do it. I can do it. Drip, spit and roll in paint. Hah!” and my classmate said, “But did you do it? Did you have the guts to exhibit your three year old’s painting? A painting is an expression of a thought or the artist’s perception/reaction to a mental image. Pollack captured it in a way that no one had done before. He deserves credit because he was the first to think about that particular expression and had the guts to back it up.” Post that conversation my attitude to modernism and abstract expression has changed from condescension to respectfully saying, ‘two thumbs up, but not my style’. Jeez, I don’t want the enormous responsibility of looking in to some one’s mind. I am not quite ready.

But modern art does have its merits, purely from my POV. I have found from experience that children are likely to be less intimidated by modern art. They find some sort of kinship with the artist. May be it gives them the same, ‘hey, I can do this’ confidence?! May be because before six years of age children are still pure and process oriented?! I was blown away once when Chula (she was 4-ish I think) drew the drawing below and explained to me, ‘This is you amma and this is you dancing. The dancing you is moving, just like the picture lines in my class room is moving.’ The picture in her classroom she was referring to is a Kandinsky.

So what is art for a young child? It is nature, it is communication. It is a basic instinct.

Part 3, if art is nature, then why aren’t we all artists? Chk here.

Technorati Tags: what is my art, preschooler art, child art, art product vs art process, is art nature or nurture, raja ravi verma, pontillism, impressionism, kandinsky, pollack, abstract expressions, what is modern art, do young children prefer modern art

Technorati Tags: abstract expressions, art product vs art process, child art, do young children prefer modern art, impressionism, is art nature or nurture, kandinsky, pollack, pontillism, preschooler art, raja ravi verma, what is modern art, what is my art

Inspired by Satish’s review in Saffron tree, some time last year we got the book Tanka Tanka Skunk from the library. When I picked up the book, Chula was not a self-reader. Montessori reading follows a certain pattern. For a long time the reading skills are dormant and they suddenly start reading. Many children start writing before they start reading. When you carefully analyze the process of reading it is amazing how we all even started reading. Print is made of sentences in a particular pattern. In most languages print is from top to bottom, left to right, right side up and front to back. Books are made of paragraphs, paragraphs are made of sentences, sentences are made of words, words are made of phonemes (group of letters, that may or may not be stand alone and that form a sound which is a part of the word) and phonemes are made of letters and letters are symbolic representation of sound. The grasp of the phonemes and sound of words/letters is the bridge between language and literacy where the child realizes that print can be read and speech can be written down. I am tempted to go on more about language development, but I will be digressing. Montessori reading follows a certain pattern that is developmentally appropriate and there are lot of aids like sand paper letters, sound discrimination activities and aural exercises that aid in language and literacy development. One fine day all this come together and the child starts writing phonetically and reading.

When we read Tanka Tanka Skunk, Chula was putting all this information together. In the book, they beat drums as the elephant and the skunk dissect words. Alligator would be A+lli+ga+tor, split in to four and hence four beats. She really enjoyed doing this. So during long car rides I used to give her long complicated words like Mississippi, ignoramus, cathartic, persnickety and ask her to beat to it and also names of her classmates. She was so fascinated that my appa’s name had 6 beats to it. We all had fun doing this. Dec 2008 we were making holiday cards for Chula’s teachers. She wanted to write her name, which she did from memory. But she put the pencil down, clapped her hands and kept repeating the words “Dear” -> “Di+yer”-> “D+i+y+e+r” and wrote “Diyer”, she has phonetically spelt her first word, all by herself. I was amazed.

March 2009, we were at a store and I was paying at the counter. There were lollipops arranged in a glass bottle with a sticker that said CANDY. Chula wanted one and I dismissed her saying, “Oh, you are just asking it because it looks pretty. Do you even know what it is?” and she said, “Hm. That is candy amma. It says that on the box. C.A.N.D.Y. Can I have one?” That was the first time she read to me. Today all she needs are books and can sit with them for hours, except that I must not say something like, “Can you read this book, I have some chores to finish”, in which case, she would crib, whine and insist that I read it to her. Anyways, it was amazing to see how she started reading and writing.

Now it is Mieja’s turn. She can write her name, all letters present. And she is trying to spell. So it goes,

Amma, what is KE+O  T+R+U+C+K?
Keo truck?!
No silly that is cow truck. Okay what is P+G  T+R+U+C+K?
Pg Truck?
Nooooo, that is pig truck.

So I get to enjoy this process for the second time. Lucky me.

Technorati Tags: self-reading in preschoolers, montessori reading, tanka tanka skunk, phonemic awareness, print awareness, phonetic awareness, phonemes, spelling phonetically, how children begin to read and write

Technorati Tags: how children begin to read and write, montessori reading, phonemes, phonemic awareness, phonetic awareness, print awareness, self-reading in preschoolers, spelling phonetically, tanka tanka skunk

Part 1 of many.

I have always wanted to be an artist.

I most definitely have the passion and the patience for it. But the environment I grew up in was different. I was expected to read my academic books and when I got bored, I had a choice of minding my own business without bothering the adults or browse through the college level books that were crammed in my house.

After I was born my father did his M.Phil and then his Ph.D in organic chemistry. This with a full time job as chemistry professor. The man would happily skip to college to do another degree in this ripe age of 64. For heavens sake, he did his M.Ed after he finished his Ph.D because he was going in to withdrawal. Last phone call, I became aware that he enrolled for Tamil Vedham class on Sundays because he is bored and misses learning. *Rolling eyes*

All this meant that my amma had extra responsibility at home. Oh! add two of my amma’s sisters to the equation. Yes, my two chithis were staying with us and went to school. When I was born the older chithi was 15 years old and the younger one was 13. Later the older one stayed with us and did her med school and the younger one did her engineering. Plus there were the usual obligations for my amma from both her mother’s side and in-laws side. So this translated to more expenses, lesser money, even more work for amma. So unless I was drawing something on my record notebook or for my school assignments, it was highly frowned upon.

But I wouldn’t exactly call it an environment devoid of art. My amma was an expert in kolam, embroidery, basket weaving, stitching and an occasional pencil sketching. When I say kolam it is not the small and simple apartment kolams. I am talking the 4 to 5 feet diameter free hand kolams, with symmetry. May be it was because my amma has been doing all this since she was six or seven, it had already become a daily chore and may be she just wanted to get it over with and move on to the next in her agenda. Or may be because my amma being the oldest daughter, she had been the ‘teacher’ for her four siblings. Though I was her first biological child, I was her last baby, so may be she thought she had time. Plus amma comes from the belief, ‘Kan parthu kai seiyanum’ which translates to you must look at how it is done and start doing it. Both my chithis studied ALL the time, but when they did an occasional art like painting a piece of pottery or drew something, they were awesome. Perfect work, absolute symmetry, great perspective…all this without any kind of practice.

So I must say that I kind of wanted to do art. Though I had owned only a couple of sets of sketch pens, one set of water colors and a few color pencils all through my childhood, I did it in a small way I could. The pictures in my record note books were outsanding. Then there was this phase in college where I was head over heels in to making my own greeting cards. But they were mostly cutesy stuff. So I wanted some one to hold my hands to do serious art.

I took art lessons when I was 23. My first formal exposure being water colors. At the time I took the class, I don’t think it went well at all. I found it so very hard to control the medium. I could follow the demo to some extent, but observational drawing/painting and drawing from memory were Greek and Latin. Perspective left me perplexed. Then there was capturing how the light falls, depth, color mixing, technique, layering, form and movement. I would recreate at home some of the techniques such as masking, texturing, sponging but from my experiments I found I had three limitations.
-I couldn’t bring out the depth.
-I was too careful with the paint. Every time I squeezed out paint, I found something holding me back. “Got to be careful, do not waste” mantra kept ringing again and again in my head. “What is wrong with not wasting?” one might ask, I will come back to it later.
-I was always copying. I would like a painting or a photograph and would want to recreate it.

Around this time, I saw Bob Ross on TV and I was dumbfounded. He made it look like a piece of cake and I believed that acrylics were my destiny. Unfortunately it was a very short-lived experience. I needed step-by-step guiding and the teachers I had were amazing artists but poor teachers. What seemed basic to them was a giant step for me and the gap couldn’t be bridged at all. So I stopped acrylics in 12 weeks.

Oh I must mention the one stroke painting phase! Inspired by Donna Dewberry, I painted everything in the house. Flower pots, plates, lazy susan, wood storage boxes, serving trays….

Next in line was oils and I must say that I loved it. Th teacher was amazing. All along I had worked on a white canvas, layering it with dark colors. But this time the teacher started me off with a black canvas and helped me bring out the light with every step. The fact that I could finish a portrait was a big deal for me. I was able to come up with a finished product that had depth, but I still had the other two limitations.  This was around the time I was having my miscarriages and some old wife tale about heavy metals in oils and smelling turpentine fumes put a complete stop to any further development.

For a long time I had had my eyes on tanjore paintings. So I took a workshop and loved it. Again I must say that I had a wonderful teacher. I have made four tanjore paintings so far. One of which is hanging in my house and the other three are gifts. Lovely hobby, but expensive, both in terms of time and material.

Given my limitations and time restrictions I think my art experiments will be postponed for another 10 or so years. I am not giving up, because I enjoy the process of creating something even if it is a copy, but because I simply do not have the bandwidth for classes and practice. So I was clearing my art storage boxes in the garage, salvaging some stuff for the girls to use. All this got me thinking…..

What is art? How do I define MY art? How do I teach my children to find THEIR art?

Contd: Part 2 of many.

Technorati Tags: art, art for young children, art for adults, my experiments with art

Technorati Tags: art, art for adults, art for young children, my experiments with art

Part 1 of 3 here.

Part 2 of 3 here.

(Part 3 of 3 follows)I got to be frank. When I said part three would follow, I seriously had something running at the back of my mind. What that something is I am desperately trying to summon from the notes I made, but I am failing miserably. I simply do not have it in me. I can either wait for inspiration to strike and let the blog gather dust or fess up and get it over with. So some random blah that I am hoping would tie up loose ends.

2.5 years back I did a post on preschools and the popular streams. Back then I was looking for preschools for Chula. Reading that post again, I am surprised that I wouldn’t change much of what I had written. Except that I would correct my thoughts on child centered learning. A child centered method fits for all children, provided, yes there is a disclaimer, provided the teacher is a well experienced guide. We are talking about ‘THE TEACHER’ when we say teacher. Also I had mentioned that Chula would fit better in an academically oriented program. After her spending two years in this Montessori she is currently attending, I cannot say how wrong I was in my older post. I chose this Montessori purely based on gut and looks like I chose wisely.

I also found this in my archives regarding the basics of children learning and found it very appropriate.

I have witnessed both topic based random knowledge dispersion as well as cumulative acquisition of knowledge where everything is interconnected and grows from the partnership between the student and the teacher. I thoroughly endorse the latter style, especially for the first six years I believe in on going learning without borders.

But if any one has any specific questions, do ping me.

Technorati Tags: types of schools, child centered learning, teacher centered learning, how children learn

Technorati Tags: child centered learning, how children learn, teacher centered learning, types of schools

Part 1 of 3 here.

(Part 2 of 3 follows)One fine day, at school, the teachers talked to the children about Afghanistan. They talked about the devastation, lack of schools, necessity to educate the children and things like that. They also showed a short movie clip and images being powerful than words, the movie really drove the point home. At home I heard stories about how the children do not have classrooms, they do not have food, some times they don’t have mommies or daddies, and how some mommies and daddies are building schools and how we can help Afghanistan by giving them our pennies. The seed was sown.

On a Saturday morning we went on a coin hunt and dug out all the coins stashed away at the most unsuspecting places. Chula and Mieja have loosely heard the term money, but do not know much about it. So I had a sudden spark to teach them the various money denominations. So we made different piles, one with pennies, one with nickels, one with dimes and one with quarters. Chula was able to pick up a coin, read the denomination and put it in the appropriate pile. For Mieja, I first showed her how to compare the coin in her hands with a coin in a pile and when she placed it in the right pile I said, ‘That is a penny’ or whatever was appropriate.

I noticed that Chula made two piles of every denomination – two piles of pennies, two piles of nickels, two piles of dimes. When I asked her what the two piles are for, she said that one was old and the other was shiny and she proceeded to tell me that she was going to throw the old pile in the garbage because…well they were old. So I had to explain to her that we could still use the old coins because it has VALUE. She was puzzled. As luck would have it, we had a bake sale by our junior high students in our school. They lay out their goodies at 2.30PM sharp and target the kids skipping out with a parent and ‘stressed-out-I-need-sugar-N.O.W’ teachers. I strongly suspect that they make more by selling to the latter category! Okays, at the bake sale we bought two pieces of banana bread for fifty cents each. I gave Chula five old pennies, a shiny nickel and four shiny dimes. She handed it over and got a slice of banana bread. I asked her if they accepted her old pennies or asked her for new money. Even if she only kind of got that concept of value, I was sure she wasn’t going to throw money in to garbage *whew!*

One of the days that followed, we were a late for school and I was getting in to my irritable self and I snapped at the kids and Mieja reminded me in her usual loving and kind manner, “I am not your friend. I am not listening. I will scratch you and run away with appa and akka and go and live in a different house.” So I launched a lecture on how it is my job to be in my classroom at a precise time, we are all working for money, without which we will not be able to buy anything, even for this other house she was going to live in her appa has to work for and he needs to be ON TIME for that work. Okay not the best way to teach that money does not grow on trees. But soon, I will find a sensible way to make them understand this concept.

Now, HOPE accepts donations in our neighborhood on a regular basis. I give away things like the children’s books, toys, puzzles, clothes etc. I have been doing this for the past three years. All of a sudden, Chula made a connection and asked me if all this stuff is going for Afghanistan. I clarified that people in need are all over the world, not just in Afghanistan and we help in some degree that we can. This she hasn’t completely understood because she has seen images of Afghanistan and none like that in the US. So she continues to believe that the donations we are making for the holiday toy drive our school is doing and the canned food we buy for second harvest are going to Afghanistan. Every day she wonders loudly, “May be teacher X will go to Afghanistan to give the children without mommies and daddies the toys/soup.”

Pretty soon, there will be questions about poverty most importantly, ‘what is poverty?’, ‘why are some people poor?’ etc. I do not have an answer for them right now, but I am sure, I will come up with one at the time of need.

Correlating my thinking process and how the children responded I could come up with a web, that roughly looked like this.

Disclaimer: This was mentally mapped in 6 minutes and by no means a comprehensive list. It varies much with the personality of the adult and the personality of the children.

But the point is one simple seed like Pennies for Peace has lead to something called a ‘curriculum web’.

Links

Pennies For Peace

Part 3 of 3 on teaching styles, learning, broad learning Vs deep learning, how children for associations.

Technorati Tags: Pennies for peace, Afghanistan, Curriculum web, teaching children the value of money, preschool curriculum for money

Technorati Tags: Afghanistan, Curriculum web, Pennies for peace, preschool curriculum for money, teaching children the value of money

First of all thanks to all those who read my previous post on my anguish over the food battle ‘under the tree’. Also advance thanks to all those who successfully complete reading this detailed post.

Tharini asked me the dreaded ‘How?’ question. I was dreading this because it was quite vague in my own head. For the past ten days, I have been trying to crystallize the ideas in my head. Hopefully this post where I will be putting things in print will help me process my thoughts.

I believe introspection is the first step towards a solution in any problem. Because, in many situations our reactions are a direct consequence of the believes, values, judgements and labels that are embedded in our subconscious. So when we know what we are made of, we can pro-act and not react to the situation. When I am doing something, be it cooking for Chula and Mieja’s birthday party or even day to day dinner/lunch I always do it with great secrecy. When friends offer help I turn it down and when the R asks me what my plans are, I invariably bite his head off. This has created unpleasantness between R and I in the past.  My intentions were definitely not to hurt him and keep him out of the whole jing-bang-jix. Introspection revealed that I am person who  keeps improvising things till the very last minute or wait for inspiration to hit me and do things the very last minute. So when he asks me whats up and if he can help, I get irritated with myself for not having anything solid to offer and misdirected anger lashes out. OK, now that I have illustrated the value of introspection with a suitable example, let me move on.

Introspection in this situation led me to believe that:

(1)I believe food is the gateway to culture. My kids growing up away from India only made me more determined to offer them proper South Indian food. My ideas of a culturally consistent lunch boxwent down the drain long time back. I compromised and send pasta and sandwich for lunch 3/5 days. But while eating at home, I wanted to stick to the traditional kootu, sambar, morkuzhambu, poriyal types. When Chula and Mieja say no to South Indian food, I get agitated because I equate it as ‘no to food’ = ‘no culture’ = ‘people in India criticizing me as parent’ = ‘failed parent’.

(2)Children have to eat what was cooked for that particular day. Something that I clearly remember from my childhood is my father’s voice booming, “This is not a hotel. This is a home and you may not ask for a particular food in the very last minute and expect your order to be serviced.”

(3)I label children. There…. I said it and it is out in the open now. While I am at it I must also admit that I also judge adults. With adults and the children in school, these labels are okay because the relationship is non-personal in a certain plane. Actually at work these labels make my reflexes sharper and I am more efficient. Where as I treat my children as extensions of myself or even worse as versions of myself, UTBT Version2.0 or something. So I tend to be hard with the labels because the latest version must be devoid of all bugs, it has to be perfect right?!

(4)In my previous post Yaadayaada commented that I have patience and I made some generic quip. Actually, I do have patience. Unfortunately it is misplaced patience so it is hard for me to be consistently patient. Most of my patience is quantitative and not qualitative.

(5)I don’t know to ask, even if it is myself, for food.  I eat when it is convenient not when I am hungry. I have always thought of it as flexibility, but no. It is my disability to perceive that food is for hunger. So inadvertently I have modeled to my children that food is a leisure activity. If you are too busy involved in some activity, food can wait. All along I have been thinking that they get in to one activity after another to avoid food. But it is not the case. They haven’t given enough importance to food to make a plan to avoid it. They have a list of exciting things in their agenda and food break is just an inconvenience. I have to thank COS for this thought process.

(6)I feed them because it is in my to-do list. I look at it as a chore to be done before I have to go on to the next bullet item on my list.

(7)Last but not the least, I over analyze things. Some thing you all are aware of by now.

So the problems are/were not enjoying the food, tantrum for poori or something exotic in the last minute, food shoved in while the said children were distracted with TV etc.

Some of the problems self solved and I had to put my foot down for certain things. Watching TV while eating went out the window and in to the trash during summer vacation. For a while TV lunches/dinners were perfect because they would eat by themselves. Then it came to a stage where I had to pause the TV if they forgot to take the next spoonful or if they just sat with mouthful of food forgetting to chew or to swallow. Before I knew, I was feeding them with TV on. If I am doing the feeding, I might as well do it without TV! So I said no TV while eating. Initially there were cries of disappointments, but it quickly died down because we started doing family style sit down lunches/dinners or picnics in our backyard(it was summer an was perfect for picnics). Chula and Mieja are used to family style eating at school. The kids set the table with table cloth, placemats, napkins diluted apple/orange juice, water, silverware, plates, centerpiece from their garden, salad from their garden, bread and invite other children to eat. So we did the same at home. They would set the table/picnic mat, run out to the garden and get some flowers, place them in a vase for enjoying while eating and we would make some lingonberry juice(from IKEA, yum!).

This culture of the whole family eating together has primarily taught me to respect my food. Hopefully it would do the same to my children. I am trying to model that food is a not just an extrenal need, but to some extent a bonding process that brings the whole family together. This addresses introspection#5.

Also they started getting involved in food preparation over the summer break. I would plop one child on the counter or put a step stool over the sink. They helped/watched/played but whatever they did, they did get a vague sense that food does not magically appear. It takes time and effort to cook. So Chula now changed her request from, “I want poori now” to “Amma, can we make poori for dinner on Sat?”. This works well with my introspection #2 and tantrums for exotic food.

With respect to introspection #1, I had to make compromises. I still offer them South Indian food, but the twist is I offer it like they like it. They like their rice plain, white with ghee on top, no nonsense mixed in. So plain white rice it is with veggies on the side and a teeny serving of sambar kind of stuff in the teeniest cup you have ever seen, also on the side. This plate comes with the condition that they cannot say no without tasting the food. They have to take one taste for every birthday they have celebrated so far.

As to introspection #6, all said and done, for a mother feeding the children IS a duty. It would be ideal if it is not a chore. Right now I am not doing anything to address it directly, but hoping the other things will indirectly contribute to this.

I am working on making my patience qualitative and consistent and on taking things on their face value. If they say no, it is just a no with no strings attached. It is nothing personal. I simply have to travel back in time and remind myself that I have had days when the food simply wouldn’t go through my throat and the mere thought of it made me gag. As to the appreciations from people from India, well, I know that my close relatives have confidence in my parenting skills. So, I must not bother about the ramdom comments from people who meet me in passing. Sometimes people say stuff just for the lack of things to make a conversation. In this ear, out that ear, makes the world a much better place at times.

If the food is on the plate for more than 45 min, it is dead. It is my cue for asking them to clean up. I try encouraging them to finish their plate, but if it is not done, its better to end it in the best of terms. I get “Hey, I called it quits” kind of silly closure.

Lastly the bribes. Of course there are bribes. Sometimes I read a book for them while they are eating. Sometimes I tell them stories. Sometimes I tell them that we are going to eat how I ate when I was a child and was no summer vacation and mix the food, make it in to balls and put it in their palms and add a story to go with it. This spiced up with plenty of “Oh! my goodness, you muscles look very strong. Did you finish all your veggies by any chance?”, “Oh! your eyes are so shiny, look at your skin it is glowing, did your hair just grow?”….and the likes of it.

 BTW, should I categorize this as mommy development instead of child development???

 

Technorati Tags: children eating, preschooler eating, children love for food, how to improve the eating habits of you toddler, picky eaters, children eating nutritious food, cultivating good eating habits, making eating a happy experience

Technorati Tags: children eating, children eating nutritious food, children love for food, cultivating good eating habits, how to improve the eating habits of you toddler, making eating a happy experience, picky eaters, preschooler eating

It is a classroom setting. There are about 8 children between age 14 months – 28 months, boys and girls and of different ethnic backgrounds.

On the table is a warm, ready to eat main course, cooked by one of the parents – a simple nutritious meal consistent with culture of the family that cooked the meal. The second course is a salad with two raw vegetables of different colors, some of which are picked from the school’s organic vegetable garden and prepared by the children earlier in the morning. Dessert is organic fresh fruits – two fruits of different colors picked by the parents from a local health food store. There are two pitchers one with water and one with milk.

In the cupboard next to the eating table are place mats, plates, bowls, spoons, forks and glasses for drinking. One teacher is standing next to the cupboard. The other teacher is standing next to the bathroom sink monitoring the hand washing routine.

After washing their hands the children come and pick up one of each item from the cupboard in order – placemat, plate, bowl, spoon/fork (as directed by the teacher depending on what they are eating) and lastly the glass. They carry these items one thing at a time, coming back to the cupboard for the next item and if there is already a child in front of them they wait patiently till the other child is done.

After set up, they sit at the table with their hands on their lap. Because they are taught to keep their hands on their laps when there is no food in their bowl. As soon as there are four children all set up and ready, the teacher fills their glasses with water and serves them one small portion of the main course telling them the name of the main course and from whose house the food is from.

The children eat the main course. They are served the main course till they express interest in their food. When the children are done they put their bowl to their right side and wait for the salad. Most of the time the whole table is done with the main course at the same time. There is also very little food wasted. The teacher then serves the vegetables naming each vegetable. Milk is served with the vegetables. The fruits are served in the same manner.

The teachers constantly ask questions like, “Would you like some more rice?” or “Would you like milk or water to drink?”. The children respond with a polite “Yes please” or “No thank you” and if they are done quickly they ask, “Can I have some more rice please?”.

If there are very young or new children, there is a teacher sitting directly behind them helping them scoop the rice, assisting the child to eat and settle in to the calmness. For good eaters, believe me, it is not even necessary! The children use the tools they are born with namely their fingers to scoop the food from their bowls in to their mouth.

After they are done eating, there is a whole clean up routine they are adept doing, but our main focus is how much these children love eating, so let us not go there.

This is the description of a typical lunchtime in the room I work. Any one who has witnessed the lunch routine would attest that not one word is exaggeration. The children are calm, they are secure that they will get what they want and not one extra morsel will be shoved down their throats. Even picky eaters whose parents worry that their child never eats vegetables starts eating raw vegetables within four weeks of being in the program. In fact he/she demands fresh peppers or raw carrots. It is such an awe inspiring experience to any one who witnesses the lunch routine in our room.

If you still don’t believe it, I wouldn’t blame you. Because the very first time I was in the room during the lunch routine, I refused to believe what I saw, inspite of being there and fully knowing that children that age are too egocentric to put on a show for the benefit of other people.

It was everything opposite to what I have experienced in regards to feeding my children. My experience with the children in my class only shattered my belief that it is easy to make the child an independent eater when you are serving them western food. When you are serving typical South Indian food like rice, sambar/rasam/kootu with a vegetable and curd rice to top it off, I always thought that the children needed assistance. But the kids in my room were able to handle any kind of food, no matter what they were served they were adept at eating it. The reason being the love for food.

When it comes to the feeding routine at home, I had my own theories, mostly based on the way I was bought up. Two of my personal values that influences lunch/dinner at home are making sure that my children get a well balanced meal and not wasting even one morsel of food. Couple of things I didn’t want to carry forth from the way I was bought up are running around behind the kids and feeding them (I didn’t mind feeding them, I just wanted them to sit at the table and eat) and dumping all the left-over food from my children’s plate in to my plate. If my value was not to waste food and if I was not going to eat the left-overs, guess where the food went? Yes, in to my children’s system. Because of my value #1 of providing them a well-balanced meal I did not feel guilty by shoving food in to them. This coupled with not knowing exactly how much food they need per meal and life getting busier and not having hours to finish a meal only made life worse for all of us.

I had known a change was in order for the past year, but the dinner on Aug 30th,2009 was the last straw that broke the camel’s back. I had made gongura+paruppu masiyal, rasam and paneer+red and green capsicum sautee to be served with white rice and yogurt. Chula was picking on the food like it was her punishment. She had swallowed one spoon in 45 minutes – this inspite of her having an active day with lots of fresh air and running around. So I took the plate from her, asked her to finish her grapes and go to bed. Of course I didn’t do it calmly and gracefully. I made quite a scene that she cried herself to sleep.

Thinking hard that night I found that I don’t have the energy to battle two children three times a day. I didn’t have the heart to let go either. To be truthful, I had let go out of frustration quite a few times before, but I always came back and started from where I left off. So I have to hold on without being overly passionate? Honestly I don’t know what to do, but I am hoping that this awareness brings about a significant change my attitude and reaches out to the children.

I know that it is not the food but the experience with food that matters. I also know that its is going to take time for all of us to establish trust in order to create a calm and peaceful dinner/lunch time. All I pray is for patience to get through this time. Hopefully announcing my resolve to everyone I know, I don’t know, barely acquainted and to googlebot, which seems to hit my blog more often than any living person, will keep me from going back on my promise to myself.

To healthy, happy meals and good memories.

PS: Even though I am not required to, I cook for the children in my class once a week, just a simple rice and kootu or vegetable kichdi, just to watch them enjoy the food I made. I can’t even put in to words how much satisfaction I get when all the food I cooked is gone and the little ones are still scraping their bowls asking for more. The next time I make a little extra, but it is still gone

Technorati Tags: children eating, preschooler eating, children love for food, how to improve the eating habits of you toddler, picky eaters, children eating nutritious food, cultivating good eating habits, making eating a happy experience

Technorati Tags: children eating, children eating nutritious food, children love for food, cultivating good eating habits, how to improve the eating habits of you toddler, making eating a happy experience, picky eaters, preschooler eating