Daniel makes stuff, and, in his spare time, writes about things like movies, kid culture, and geek stuff.
NPR: New Trend Shows Kids Snacking Every Few Hours

Mmm, snacks.

Mar 03, 2010 :: Tagged under: , , , :: #

How to Raise a Hero

Christine Carter, of the Greater Good blog, writes about how parents can raise children who take a stand against injustice, instead of standing by. I really, really love this essay – it reminds me of my “Social Change” class back in undergrad. Read it.

Feb 12, 2010 :: Tagged under: , , , :: #

The Junior Meritocracy

A piece about the increasing pressure – on parents and schools – to test children’s intelligence at increasingly young ages, for admission to kindergarten. In-depth in a way that only the New York Magazine or the New Yorker can be:

Given the stakes, it’s hardly a surprise that New Yorkers with means and aspirations for their children would go to great lengths to help them. Rather, what’s surprising is that a single test, taken at the age of 4, can have so much power in deciding a child’s fate in the first place. The fact is, 4 is far too young an age to reach any conclusions about the prospects of a child’s mind. Even administrators who use these exams—indeed, especially the administrators who use these exams—say they’re practically worthless as predictors of future intelligence. “At information meetings,” says Steve Nelson, head of the famously progressive Calhoun School, “I’ll often ask a room full of parents when their children started to walk.” Invariably, their replies form a perfect bell curve: a few at 9 and 10 months, most at 12 or 13, a few as late as 15 to 18. “And then I’ll ask: ‘What would you think if you were walking down the street, and you saw a parent yanking a 1-year-old child up from the sidewalk, screaming, ‘Walk, damn it?’ ” The same, he says, is true of a system that insists a child perform well on a test at 4 years of age. “Early good testers don’t make better students,” he tells me, “any more than early walkers make better runners.”

Feb 12, 2010 :: Tagged under: , , , :: #

How Will the Apple Tablet Change Our Kids’ Lives?

GeekDad’s resident GeekMom, Jenny Williams – on Apple’s revolutionary new iPad, and what it means for our kids:

The possibilities are really endless, limited only by our imaginations. We shall see how the tablet really affects us, but children will instantly invite this technology into their lives. Watch how they use it, and you’ll learn new areas to develop. Inevitably, children invent new ways to use technology, so pay attention. You might learn something.

I can’t help but think that we’ve gotten one huge step closer to a glorious “Star Trek”-like future – and I’d be so excited to be a kid today, amid all of it. Sure, it can scare us all, and as adults and parents, we might not know how to react to new technologies like this. But as in “Star Trek,” humanity always adapts, and usually ends up the better for it. You just have have some trust in the future – and in our own and our kids’ limitless capacity to boldly meet that future.

Jan 27, 2010 :: Tagged under: , , , , :: #

The Worst Swear Word in the World

Jon Robson, writing for The Guardian:

My eight-year-old son, Joel, comes into my office to ask if there’s a worse swearword than fuck. “No,” I say.

There’s a silence. “You’re lying,” he says.

“There’s none worse than fuck,” I say.

Joel narrows his eyes. “I know you’re lying,” he says. He leaves the room.

Great quest for the worst swear word ensues. Dad wonders how to sidestep said quest. Much hilarity in the followup tale about the whole thing.

Newspapers need more pieces like this.

(Via Daring Fireball.)

Nov 18, 2009 :: Tagged under: , , :: #

A 10-Year-Old Who Won't Pledge

The story of fifth grader Will Phillips in Arkansas – who respectfully refuses to stand and say the Pledge of Allegiance in his school, out of a moral dismay at efforts to take away the rights of homosexuals.

“I’ve always tried to analyze things because I want to be lawyer,” Will said. “I really don’t feel that there’s currently liberty and justice for all.”

After asking his parents whether it was against the law not to stand for the pledge, Will decided to do something. On Monday, Oct. 5, when the other kids in his class stood up to recite the pledge of allegiance, he remained sitting down.

The decision landed him in a lot of hot water: first with a substitute teacher and the principal, and then with many of his peers, who ridicule him for his support of the gay community. Still, he’s continuing his refusal to pledge.

All I can say is that it’s kids like Will who make me proud to be an American.

(Via Michael Johnson.)

Nov 13, 2009 :: Tagged under: , , :: #

Considering Kids and Stress, Part II

Lisa Belkin, of the New York Times, takes a more in-depth look at the American Psychological Assocation’s recent “Stress in America” report that I mentioned earlier, drawing attention to some of the statistics that I glossed over.

(The disparity between children’s stress levels concerning certain things and how little their parents recognise those levels is particularly interesting. I can only conclude that most adults are really, really bad at understanding and sympathising with children – sometimes especially their own.)

Belkin also considers recent research that looked at stress and college students. Gee, that’s unfortunately all too familiar.

Nov 07, 2009 :: Tagged under: , , , :: #

Seeing Childhood Through a Child's Lens

If you’re in London anytime soon, I’d heartily recommend stopping by this unique exhibit at the V&A Museum of Childhood:

An exhibition of photographs from a dynamic photographic collaboration will go on display at the V&A Museum of Childhood from 7 November. Photographers Gideon Mendel and Crispin Hughes have been working with children from Hackney’s Kingsmead School for more than six months encouraging them to make reportage photographs of their surroundings.

When treated seriously, photography and the arts seem to provide such a uniquely profound voice for children – and it’s this magical, creative and empowering relationship between art and child that never ceases to amaze me. Often children can demonstrate incredible prowess and skill in taking photographs, but its their unique photographic perspective – how they see their world around them and capture it – that is most powerful. If you haven’t already, watch the 2004 documentary “Born Into Brothels” to get a better glimpse at this.

Nov 07, 2009 :: Tagged under: , , :: #

The Language of Lego

When Giles Turnbull stopped to think about it, he realised that a whole, often completely unique nomenclature crops up among families that play with Lego bricks.

Every family, it seems, has its own set of words for describing particular Lego pieces. No one uses the official names. “Dad, please could you pass me that Brick 2×2?” No. In our house, it’ll always be: “Dad, please could you pass me that four-er?”

And I’ll pass it, because I know exactly which piece he means. Lego nomenclature is essential for family Lego building.

Faced with this realisation – and operating in the name of Good Old Curiosity – Turnbull set out to see how the nomenclature for the same pieces varied among different kids and families. What follows is a tremendous reference table comparing four different kids’ takes on the names for pieces – and a pretty doggone good example of how to do quality, respectful research with kids.

Oh, and for the record: My own personal Lego nomenclature, it seems, tends toward a mix-up between six-year-old Raimi’s rather whimsical naming system and seven-year-old Jem’s somewhat more precise language.

Nov 06, 2009 :: Tagged under: , , , :: #

Allowance For the 21st Century

An interesting first look at what might eventually be very well-appreciated online chore and financial management software for families: Kidzillions is a new web app, currently in alpha testing, that gives parents a way to let their kids manage their chores and money online. Parent sets up a list of chores to be done, attaching “reward” values to them, and kids can then go about fulfilling them and then setting up a list of things they’d like to spend their hard-earned cash on.

Here’s a young blogger’s take on it:

The traditional way of teaching the fine art of money management to young children is to expose them to the concepts like gathering up pennies, counting and storing them in piggy banks. As a teen, I still do that, and I love it, especially the process of seeing my money grow from a dollar to 1000 bucks.

To teach financial responsibility to your children requires a lot of time and patience. If you’re a busy parent and need to do many things on a daily basis, this is when technology helps you to be a better parent and yet at the same time accomplish your tasks.

This seems like a giant step forward for many parents raising kids in Western world, probably for two reasons:

  1. It recognises the increasing “cashless” reality of the world; I’ve yet to see a web service beyond this one that recognises a kid’s next purchase might not be at the corner shop with a jar of spare change, but on Amazon.com with a credit card. It looks like Kidzillions is doing everything they can to facilitate this, and perhaps add some concreteness back into what kids often might might otherwise see as a sort of mystical “online shopping” world.
  1. It attempts to put the power back into the kids’ hands: as they bill it, with Kidzillions “parents complete the transactions, but kids make the decisions and learn the lessons.” Again, keeping the financial lessons focused on the kids has been a bit tough in a world of online shopping – when kids aren’t actually handling any money. This is another way to incorporate kids more fully into the process.

If you’re interested in this stuff, also check out Kidzillion’s blog – the Allowance Project – and you might also enjoy this New York Times photo slideshow about one social effort in the United States that give kids a chance to learn “millionaire habits.”

Nov 06, 2009 :: Tagged under: , , :: #

Hospitalized Children Without Insurance Are More Likely to Die

A new research study out of Johns Hopkins Children’s Hospital, which analyzed data from more than 23 million children’s hospitalizations in 37 states from 1988 to 2005, shows that children who are uninsured face a 60% greater risk of dying, compared to insured children.

The results are all the more striking because children’s deaths are so rare that they could be examined only by a very large study, said Dr. Peter J. Pronovost, a professor of surgery at Johns Hopkins and an author of the new study.

“The striking thing is that children don’t often die,” Dr. Pronovost said. “This study provides further evidence that the need to insure everyone is a moral issue, not just an economic one.”

Just chilling results.

Nov 03, 2009 :: Tagged under: , , :: #

Fourth Grader Asks Obama: "Why Do People Hate You?"

At a town hall event today in New Orleans, one young fourth-grader asked a question of the visiting President Obama that I think has been on a lot of people’s minds.

Talking Points Memo:

President Obama took a question from a fourth-grader named Tyren Scott who wanted to know, “Why do people hate you?”

“They’re supposed to love you,” he continued.

After the crowd swooned, Obama responded that the boy should take criticism of him with “a grain of salt.”

“One party feels like they need to poke you, keep you on your toes,” he said.

“When things are tough, you’re gonna get some of the blame,” Obama said. But, he added, “I’m a tough guy. Are you a tough guy? You look pretty tough.”

Sometimes I wonder if kids see the world a bit more clearly than most adults. At least Tyren does, I’d say.

Oct 16, 2009 :: Tagged under: , , :: #

Making the Music of 'Where the Wild Things Are'

A short five-minute documentary – shot by Lance Bangs, who frequently collaborates with Spike Jonze – about making and recording the music for “Where the Wild Things Are.”

To watch Spike Jonze and Karen O be so cool, free, and empowering with actual kids, nonprofessional kids, as they sing background vocals for the music – that makes me so happy. I wish all adults interacted with kids this way.

Oct 12, 2009 :: Tagged under: , , , , , :: #

Brilliant Words from Jamie Oliver

In an accompanying bio-piece in the New York Magazine’s annual Food Issue, Alex Witchel talks to celebrity chef Jamie Oliver about his work, life, and community activism – including talking about a project of Oliver’s where he helps train disadvantaged youth to work in the restaurant business.

Nestled in there was this truly sage bit of insight I couldn’t help but be impressed by:

“Look, I think the brilliant and beautiful thing in life is that anyone can do anything,” he said. “When I used to go to special needs, we got laughed at, but we’re not supposed to all be academic. What is education? A bunch of stuff that people think we should know. Ultimately if you can put a wall up, if you can paint, if you can work with other people and, most important, if you find out what you are good at, that’s the key. Kids can do detailed, technical things, and they can do them well. Have you seen them on skateboards and surfing? It doesn’t have to be a BMX, it can be a pot and a pan and a knife, but we wrap them up in cotton wool and treat them like babies and they’re not.”

Kids really are capable of the most impressive things. They just might not be things we expect, or value – and when we don’t recognise our own biases in this, that’s the tragedy.

Oct 11, 2009 :: Tagged under: , , :: #

Everyone Needs Adventure

By Daniel Bigler :: Wednesday September 2, 2009

For the past couple days, I’ve had quite a bit rolling around in my head that I’ve wanted to say about the recent ruling by the Dutch courts to (at least temporarily) not allow 13-year-old Laura Dekker to sail around the world on her own. Hers is an inspiring example that doesn’t come along often, and I’m left stunned that there’s such vehement opposition to her planned journey.

Then I found that earlier today Graham – writing at the We Love You So blog – said everything I could wish to say about the ruling, in a way that’s ten times better. So, I’ll leave you with that instead:

“Every child needs an adventure of some kind. The process of becoming an adult is predicated on exercises in independence, facing up to intimidating circumstances, and finding out what it means to be alone. Laura Dekker is simply ahead of the curve.”

– We Love You So

(Via David Anaxagoras.)

Tagged under: , , , , :: #




The Battle of the (Gendered) Toys

Brian Reid, a parent writing for The Washington Post’s “Smart Living” blog, ponders why boys always get the cooler toys at fast food places like McDonald’s:

At your larger, more-marketing driven outlets, you have a choice: there is a “boy” toy and a “girl” toy.

At a rather young age, my eldest daughter determined that this was a total crock. She has a vivid memory of dinner at McDonald’s with a friend where “boys” were offered some cool spy gear and “girls” … well, she doesn’t have a vivid memory of that. Even though that’s what she found when she opened the Happy Meal.

He’s conducting an (admittedly unscientific) experiment to see whether fast food employees – when asked by a parent to “surprise” them with either a “boy” toy or “girl” toy – are more likely to give out “boy” toys, because they seem less gendered. (Via KidScreen.)

Aug 31, 2009 :: Tagged under: , , , :: #

The End of the 'Rainbow'

By Daniel Bigler :: Friday August 28, 2009

It’s probably the saddest news in the past ten years for children’s television:

Reading Rainbow comes to the end of its 26-year run on Friday; it has won more than two-dozen Emmys, and is the third longest-running children’s show in PBS history — outlasted only by Sesame Street and Mister Rogers.

I’ll leave you to read the NPR story, but suffice it to say, “Reading Rainbow” was a show that inspired countless and played a big part in nurturing a national love of reading.

Two things of note about the joint decision by PBS, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and the Department of Education to end the show:

  1. This marks the last passing, to my recollection, of the “simple” genre of children’s television – shows that invite children to experience commonplace experiences and places in the real world, through the invitation of an involved host. LeVar Burton filled a truly unique place alongside Mr. Rogers in being a guide and traveling companion to children as they explored and experienced the world. “Sesame Street” all but stopped featuring this kind of thing as a show back in the early 1990s (a bit after Snuffleupagus was outed and right around the time that Elmo began to edge Grover out of his job), and “This is Daniel Cook” was one of the only recent shows that I can think of that attempted this with any success.

    I always cherished these more free-flowing natural, holistic “exploratory” shows as a kid, and developmentally they fill a valuable role in helping children process and understand the world around them. Prepackaged, superficially constructed educational programming just can’t come close to doing the same thing.

  2. That the decision to end the show came primarily out of not financial, but educational reasons has me incensed. To declare that the mechanics of reading – the phonics and spelling of reading – matter more as an educational priority than the cultivation of a love and desire to read is, simply, revolting and wrong. Countless people from my generation can attest to that; if the motivation’s not there, the mechanics couldn’t matter less. In a related NPR story, Richard Long, head of the International Reading Association, succinctly exhorts: “TV is not a tool to teach explicit reading skills. That’s a job for schools — with parents doing their part, too.”

    It looks like somebody over at the Department of Education needs to consult with “The Rights of the Reader”, pronto.

With any bit of good luck, hopefully an independent producer will pick up the tab and keep the show running.

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Teaching Kids That There Is A Battle Of The Sexes

Lisa Wade, writing for Sociological Images:

We socialize young children into thinking with gender (it’s always, somehow, boys vs. girls) and seeing the other sex as an enemy or competitor. Illustrating this, izhero sent us links to a set of t-shirts for young girls sold at David & Goliath Tees. The message for girls is, essentially, “boys drool, girls rule,” situating women and men in opposition, and setting girls up for a lifetime of battling the “opposite” sex.

Aug 21, 2009 :: Tagged under: , , , :: #

The Yankees' Best Game of the Season

Often the most memorable moments in professional sports come after the crowds have left and the lights are dimmed.

As told in this great story from Rick Reilly, featured in ESPN Magazine, that was literally the case a few weeks ago: it was 3 a.m., the Yankee Stadium had been emptied hours earlier, following a solid Yankees 6-3 victory against the A’s that night, and was now submerged in near-total darkness. And then, out onto the field trotted a handful of kids from Camp Sundown – all kids that are afflicted with the rare disease xeroderma pigmentosum, which makes it near fatal for them to be in bright or sunlit conditions. Together with the Yankees players, they played pickup wiffleball games, sang songs, and had the time of their lives at Yankee Stadium.

They high-fived Derek Jeter, ran madly around the bases and wallowed in the instant carnival the Yankees had set up — from the magician to the bouncy castle to reliever Alfredo Aceves strolling the yard, strumming his guitar while Cashman sang the Police’s “Message in a Bottle.” For one night, at least, these kids found out they are not alone in being alone.

Not that they don’t play baseball at Camp Sundown. They do — at midnight, to the accompaniment of owls and bullfrogs — against the local fire department. “We’re pathetic,” says Caren Mahar. “But we always play.”

By 3:30, it was time to go, and there was no time to waste. They had to make it back to Camp Sundown before sunup. Welcome to life lived like a vampire.

On board the bus, Katie Mahar, 17, was whipped. Her hearing is down to 50 percent, and her vision is going fast, and her words are starting to lack vowels. But anybody could understand her as she kept saying, “That was a blast! What a blast!”

If only every major sports team had their own Jason Zillo – the media relations man who had spent 14 years dreaming up the whole night.

Aug 12, 2009 :: Tagged under: , :: #

When Giant Children Ruled the City

A fun, whimsical – and artistically stunning – photography series from Dmitriy Sklyarenko:

A long, long time ago, giant children ruled the city. A force to be reckoned with, these gigantic cuties recklessly used the world as their playground. Picking up cars, and doing cartwheels in the streets, they threw temper tantrums causing many people to suffer.

Aug 06, 2009 :: Tagged under: , :: #

How to Lick a Slug

New York Times columnist Nick Kristof, about a recent backpacking trip he took with his young daughter to Mount Hood, Oregon:

We debated whether to put up our light tarp to protect us from rain. “No need,” I advised my daughter patronizingly. “There’s zero chance it’ll rain. And it’ll be more fun to be able to look up at shooting stars.”

It was, until we awoke at 4 a.m. to a freezing drizzle.

The rain not only punctured the doctrine of Paternal Infallibility but also offered one of nature’s dazzlingly important lessons in perspective, reminding us that we’re just tenants — and ones without much sway.

We’re just tenants.

We need to remember that. We need to give our kids the opportunities to be outside – by sharing with them our own joys of being outside, and by giving them permission to roam freely – so that they remember that, too.

Kristof echos the sentiments Richard Louv expressed in his book, “Last Child in the Woods”, and ends with a poignant message: “Let’s protect nature, yes, but let’s also maintain trails, restore the Forest Service and support programs that get young people rained on in the woods. Let’s acknowledge that getting kids awed by nature is as important as getting them reading.”

Not only do our forests and societies depend on it, but our kids’ lives do too. If nothing else, how would they ever know how to lick a banana slug?

(Via Free Range Kids.)

Aug 02, 2009 :: Tagged under: , , , :: #

Six-Year-Old Watercolour Artist

The Daily Mail:

A street scene from the paintbrush of a child usually involves triangle-topped boxes for houses. And often an unnaturally large dog. But Kieron Williamson’s attempts are so beautifully rendered that artists ten times his age will be filled with envy.

Experts have said that the six-year-old’s atmospheric paintings, which began with harbour scenes and expanded to include rural vistas, animal portraits and landmarks, have perspective, shadow and reflections that demonstrate an ability well beyond his years. He is even preparing for his first exhibition in a gallery near his home in Holt, Norfolk.

Here’s one of his paintings:

Young six-year-old's watercolour painting

Kieron’s mother mused, “We often think about why Kieron has chosen art in this way and I think it’s because we live in a top-floor flat and we have no garden or outside space, so perhaps he’s had to create his own scenery.”

Whatever his motivation, Kieron’s certainly found a wonderful mode of expression for himself. And while not to belittle his impressive efforts, I do wonder how many children beyond Kieron are capable of such work – provided we adults allow and encourage them to do so. The work being done to help support children’s literacy and expression through the arts in the early childhood schools of Reggio Emilia, Italy, for example, is simply stunning – and will undoubtedly impress a person of any age. (The first time I watched the video “To Make a Portrait of a Lion”, for instance – documenting a group of young children’s efforts to fully understand and make a portrait of one of the large marble lions in San Prospero Square in Reggio Emilia – I was simply floored with wonder.)

But what’s important to consider when we see great art coming from children is that it’s not so much a matter of talent, but of expectations. If we hold a powerful image of children in our heads – if we expect them to be strong, competent, thinking, and wise – then they will most often rise to meet those expectations.

Aug 01, 2009 :: Tagged under: , , , :: #

In Spain, It Takes a Village to Babysit

Jerome Socolovski, for NPR:

Summer in Spain can be hot and oppressive. But at night, city parks and village squares come alive with people of all ages. For an American visitor, one of the most striking differences is how unconcerned parents seem in public about their children. There seems to be an unwritten rule that anyone near a parent shares responsibility for that person’s children.

Now note the differences with North America. Collective sigh. And now let’s all go buy tickets to move to Western Europe.

Jul 21, 2009 :: Tagged under: , , :: #

Kids Busted by Police for Having a Lemonade Stand

The horrible, horrible dangers to society of kids selling lemonade. (Horrible, I say!)

From the Philadelphia Inquirer:

The call came in at 7:06 p.m. Juveniles, seven of them, on a quiet residential street, selling an uncontrolled substance: lemonade.

A neighbor had dimed them out, and a Haverford Township police officer responded in a hurry.

When he arrived at the two-story brick house on Maryland Avenue, he dutifully informed Dana Kleinschmidt, mother of four of the reputed offenders, who included 5-year-old triplets, that they were violating the law. They were selling lemonade without a permit.

Darn ruffians. They should know better than to take such entrepreneurial initiative and hope that their neighborhood would support them. Clearly, the kind neighbor who called them in was just hoping to guide them from their wicked, deviant ways.

Legality became an issue on July 10, when William Nickerson called to complain that neighborhood children were peddling the stuff. Nickerson said they were going house-to-house ringing doorbells, and he didn’t think they were being properly supervised by adults. “I’m not being Scrooge,” he said.

Everbody now: Nickerson rhymes with… [fill-in-the-blank]! And yes, Major Dickerson, you are a Scrooge. And you should surely expect your house to be TP’d come Halloween.

I’m seriously thinking about sending this guy a copy of James Vollbracht’s book, “Stopping at Every Lemonade Stand”. Maybe he’ll get the clue then.

(Oh, and I’m not nearly as incensed about this as Lenore Skenazy is. She’s downright funny when it comes to these things.)

Jul 20, 2009 :: Tagged under: , , :: #

New Electronic Park Hopes to Lure Kids Outside to Play

There’s just so much going wrong here I don’t know where to start.

A city near Salt Lake City, Utah, thinks they just might have an answer to the “epidemic” of children not playing outside anymore, due to those darn good-for-nothing video games that they play.

“We’re losing a lot of kids to the basement,” said Diana Ross, co-owner of Playspace Designs. “How do we get them back to the park?”

Oh, please say you have The Answer, Ms. Ross, please? Oh, you do? Why, it’s… it’s… a new-fangled electronic version of the all-time great American hallmark, the park! (Wha?)

“We can almost sucker them into thinking this is like a video game,” Ross said, “but this is very, very active play.” Three new pieces of electronic equipment, each supporting multiple games, are designed to keep children moving more than video games, slides or jungle gyms usually allow, Egget said.

Among the games going digital: capture the flag and tug of war. To play capture the flag, as many as seven teams gather around a network of pipes and lights that looks like a 21st century swing set.

The outdoor “electronic” park, which Ms. Ross helped design, is supposed to open within a couple of months – surely to the delight and joy of children everywhere.

Meanwhile, I spent the day playing with kids in a decidely lower-tech way: by building with cardboard boxes and other found objects outside at the local farmer’s market.

And frankly, even though this new-fangled, high-falutin’ “electronic” playground does actually sound kinda cool, I still think kids will take play environments that they have control and power over any day of the week. Just spending more and more money to find new ways to entertain and dazzle children won’t make them want to play outside any more — because we’re still only offering them what is ultimately an adult’s conception of play, limited to within an adult-designed structure and environment.

If we want kids to go outside and play, then maybe we should just a) let them (it’s actually, after all, mainly sociological conditions, like our fear-driven culture, that are keeping kids indoors — so let’s all stop picking on video games now); and b) allow them to play however they wish, with them being the ones having control over their play. It is theirs, after all — or did we forget that?

Jul 17, 2009 :: Tagged under: , , :: #

NY Times: 'When Do They Need a Fig Leaf?"

Man, clothes are such a drag.

Jul 17, 2009 :: Tagged under: , , , :: #

Should Adults Help Kids Play?

By Daniel Bigler :: Tuesday July 14, 2009

Mike Lanza, of Playborhood.com, recently raised a particularly good question: Should adults help children play?

It’s only been relatively recently in history that adults have become infatuated with children’s play – recognizing its inherent values and, well, the inevitability of it. Of course toy companies have known this for the better part of a century, and the early childhood education field has also recognized it for many decades. The mainstream culture has been a bit behind the curve – only really becoming fully comfortable with the idea of play as not only natural but useful in the past 10 or 15 years, I’d say – but now you could say it has become a de facto standard in America: Children deserve to play, and crucially, it’s adults’ responsibility to support and guide them in their play.

While history somewhat obviously bears out that children have always played, it was still only until the late 1800s and early 1900s – marked most distinctly by a 1930 White House conference, where it was declared that “Play is a Child’s Work” – that adults began attempting to capitalize and control children’s play. As Howard Chudacoff writes in his stellar book, “Children at Play: An American History” (you can read a condensed version of Chudacoff’s central premise in Greater Good Magazine), “The intention was clear: Play was integral to childhood, but because play, like work, needed to be productive, its content was an adult responsibility.”

Thus, we’ve noticed a paradox emerge in this past century: while adults now recognize that children’s unstructured, free play is a valuable pursuit, we’re also now more keen than ever to control it – to extract every ounce of worth from it. As with so many good things before, we’ve made play into an economic good – a commodity that should be utilized well to extract its greatest value.

Lanza points out how this has manifested itself now into an actual adult profession: The Playworker. (I will note that, at least generally, within their European Adventure Playground roots, playworkers have always been rather respectful of this paradox.) We also see this capitalizing streak being spread through the efforts of nonprofits like Playworks and KaBOOM!, into our schools’ play yards and recesses and into our communities’ playgrounds – efforts that, intentionally or not, place the power to play in the hands of adults, not kids.

So what can we do, to truly honor play by letting it be – but also making sure there’s room for it? By putting respectively it in the control of kids themselves, but unconditionally encouraged by adults?

This, I think, is the greater question.

Thankfully, I am rather pleased that children might have already kind of answered that question. As Chudacoff attests – and this was my favorite part of his book – children have an incredibly powerful ability to subvert the most well-conceived ideas and efforts by adults, at anything that ultimately belongs in their domain. We tell children to play on this nice, wonderful playground that we’ve provided; they naturally play in the streets – or (rather brilliantly) come up with new uses for said playground. We give them the utopian, docile world of Barney to sing along to; children naturally come up with the “I Hate You, You Hate Me” version of it. (That, and Soulja Boy. ‘Nuf said.) And so on – never underestimate children’s power to creatively undermine adult’s best efforts.

But, as Lanza recognizes – and I agree – America is not a typically play-friendly place for children. Despite all our best efforts at controlling and guiding play, we’ve engendered a culture that simply doesn’t allow for the real stuff.

I like how Lanza describes the cultural situation, and what role adults may have in changing it:

Most neighborhoods today have no culture of children’s play. They are wastelands. There are virtually no kids playing at all. When kids do play in neighborhoods, they play in small numbers, usually two (i.e. one-on-one play). While play in America’s neighborhoods is scarce, large group play is scarcer. Thus, there is no built-in mechanism for passing down play culture from older kids to younger kids.

We adults who are actively guiding young kids’ play activities are taking on that older kid role. Like older kids, we decide what to play, where to play, and with whom, and we adjudicate disputes.

However, our power over young kids is naturally more absolute than that of older kids, so we need to consciously “back off” when we’re guiding their play. Our goal should be to grow our little kids into big kids, the leaders of play in their neighborhoods. We should let them go beyond their comfort zone at times to prepare them for leadership, and we should be prepared to get totally out of the picture when the older kids are ready to be leaders.

I think he’s right: this is a cultural battle – and like it or not, no program or initiative is going to effectively change culture. We can’t buy our way out of this play deficit.

Rather simply, we just have to hand the keys over to kids themselves – helping provide spaces and places, materials and other things when we can, but ultimately simply recognizing that we can’t and won’t ever be in control of children’s play. When we tell ourselves that, it frees the culture up to be led and forged by the children themselves.

I heard a story once where a man who grew up in the 1960s asked his mother what they did that was so successful in parenting him and his siblings; she simply replied, “We did everything we could to put ourselves out of a job in 18 years.”

I think that’s what our task is now.

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Hired by Apple at Age Fourteen

You gotta love stories like this: Tom Williams was a 14-year-old who teachers regarded as rebellious, stubborn, and non-conformist. But in a powerless situation, he found his own solution in self-initiated entrepreneurial enterprises, and ended up completely taking things into his own hands. He started with activities like being a wholesale chocolate retailer, selling lemonade, writing birdwatching newsletters to sell – but soon moved onto pestering a local sales office for Apple Computer Co. to give him a job as a software developer.

As he recounts:

This was the stepping stone. It was clear to me that I wanted to try and short circuit life’s path. I didn’t want to stay in school until the 12th grade or at home. I wanted to live on my own and be free.

Eventually Williams got his job – hired by Apple at age 14 – and became a renowned developer in his own right. It’s just proof positive that kids can do big things when they dream big.

Jul 06, 2009 :: Tagged under: , , , , :: #

Parents Cope with Schizophrenic Young Daughter

Scary stuff for a 6-year-old.

And… “400-the-Cat”? (Points for creative naming of the imaginary friend?)

Jun 29, 2009 :: Tagged under: , :: #

Walt Disney Gets His Own Museum

Reuters reports on the newly established museum chronicling Walt Disney’s life and art.

“Walt Disney reached people because he was a magical story teller,” Richard Benefield, executive director of the museum, said. “Now it’s our turn to tell his story, to narrate the life of someone whose name is often confused with a brand and to present him simply as a human being with an extraordinary vision.”

(Via Kidscreen.)

Jun 18, 2009 :: Tagged under: , , , , :: #

Kids Put On Wrong Airplanes, End Up Somewhere Else

An unusual (?) piece from the Associated Press:

The mother of an 8-year-old girl who was put on the wrong plane while traveling unaccompanied blames the mix-up on “total incompetence and a lack of caring” by Continental Airlines.

Wendy Babineaux said Wednesday she’s “getting the run-around” from the airline while trying to find out how her daughter, Taylor Williams, flew out of Houston on Saturday and ended up in Fayetteville, Ark. She was supposed to go to Charlotte, N.C., to visit her father.

The next day, 10-year-old Miriam Kamens wound up in Newark, N.J., while flying alone on the same Continental contractor, ExpressJet. She was supposed to travel from Boston to Cleveland to see her grandparents.

How is this not just like the plot of “Home Alone 2”? And why on earth didn’t the kids totally eat up their newfound freedom?

(Insensitive of me? Probably. But I would’ve loved to get stranded somewhere totally random as a 10-year-old – I mean, as long as I had my dad’s credit card and a Talkboy voice recorder.)

Jun 17, 2009 :: Tagged under: , , , :: #

Kid Goes Into a McDonald's and Orders... Yogurt?

The trend among America’s youth of consuming unhealthy fast food seems to be shifting slowly but dramatically, with the ship now headed toward happier (and healthier) waters.

From the New York Times:

Chicken nuggets, burgers, fries and colas remain popular with the under-13 set, of course. But new market research shows that consumption of these foods at restaurants is declining, while soup, yogurt, fruit, grilled chicken and chocolate milk are on the rise.

This follows a recent report from the American Medical Association that childhood obesity appears to “have hit a plateau, after rising for more than two decades.” The NDP Group, which conducted this latest consumer research, says this shift toward healthier eating is likely due to a few things: Economics for one, at least partially. It’s simply a lot easier on the wallet to order and eat healthier foods on the go than it once was. (The increased popularity of Value Menu items and Subway’s “Five Dollar Footlong” deal are cited as reasons.)

But there is a second, fairly big reason for the shift: and it is that, quite simply, kids’ tastes and preferences are also changing. Kids as a national group are less interested in eating bad foods today; when given the choice, they’ll typically prefer foods that are healthier. But it wasn’t until only recently that healthy options have even been on the kids’ menu at most fast food places – and let’s keep in mind, it’s not often truly the kids’ choice to stop at a fast food restaurant in the first place. (Often the only options a parent might have to feed their family while juggling busy lives, sports practices, and piano recitals are to pack lunches for everybody beforehand, or succumb to the quick-and-easy Golden Arches amid scheduled stops; so it’s the Golden Arches.)

Kids largely then haven’t even had a choice about what to eat, up until very recently. Now, because fast food restaurants like McDonald’s and Burger King are starting to offer kids options beyond burgers and fries – with items like apple slices, salads, and yogurt – we see that kids are clearly making that choice for more healthy foods.

“We don’t know how many choices kids really make,” Dr. Birch said. “But my sense is that parents are much more likely to be hands-off in a restaurant situation and allow kids the freedom to make more choices.

“You go to these places where they offer healthy options for adults. But until recently, kids haven’t had the opportunity to choose the right thing.”

Score one for kids everywhere. And a big kudos to the adults who are finally realizing that, no, kids don’t naturally demand hamburgers and fries to eat, as they roll around in their own gluttony– instead, it’s the range of what adults and restaurants typically offer kids to eat that’s always been the problem.

Jun 16, 2009 :: Tagged under: , , :: #

Habbo Releases Study on Youth Brand Interests

Emily Claire Afan, writing for Kidscreen, on the importance of brands to teenagers:

Teen virtual world and community Habbo has unveiled the results of its Global Habbo Youth Survey Brand Update for 2009, which takes a look at the connection kids 11 to 19 have with brands and their media consumption habits … In the US, 62% of survey respondents most agreed with the statement “I nearly always buy my favorite brands,” compared to 63% from all countries. A full 51% of US teens most agreed that “I prefer brands that are targeted to teenagers,” compared to 61% of respondents from all countries, while 43% of US respondents said they preferred the most popular brands versus 52% of global respondents.

As for the social function of brands, half of the US teens surveyed agreed with the statement “I want to stand out from the crowd with my brands,” while only 38% of respondents in all countries agreed.

Well, we Americans do like to stand out from the crowd. (And I’m not an advertising executive, but I’d say these figures from America’s teens are likely on par with the rest of the American adult population.)

Jun 09, 2009 :: Tagged under: , , :: #

Creating a 21st Century Youth Conservation Corps

Barack Obama’s 2010 federal budget includes an additional fifty million dollars – seventy million in total – for strengthening and creating ways to engage youth in nature.

The future success of resource conservation efforts and effective stewardship of public lands and resources is reliant on an engaged public that values nature. Informed citizens and stewards are developed and nurtured over time. According to Richard Louv, author of Last Child in the Woods, “Studies have shown that most conservation leaders credit their commitment to the environment to two sources: many hours spent outdoors, when they were children… and an adult who taught respect for nature.” The initial childhood wonder about the natural world can be sustained through hands-on experiences during the school-age years and enriched through long-term engagement and involvement in natural resource programs.

Stuff like this makes me so happy to pay taxes. There’s some great programs in there.

May 28, 2009 :: Tagged under: , , :: #

Darn Kids and Their Monster Movies

What sounds like a magnificent homage to three decades of creative, ingenuous filmmaking from 12-year-olds: a DVD of 30 kid-made monster movies created between the 1950s-1980s.

From Cory Doctorow’s review:

I sent away for a review copy of the disc and it’s been my captivating evening viewing for two nights now. Monster Kid Home Movies is an utterly exuberant celebration of monster-obsessed amateur creativity, and the films are filled with raw enthusiasm for the genre. These are Forry Ackerman’s spiritual progeny at their most ingenious, contriving incredible costumes, ill-advised stunts, clever camera work, and often hilarious hamming to recreate the famous monsters of filmland.

Sometimes I feel like I totally would’ve fit in growing up in the 1950s.

May 27, 2009 :: Tagged under: , , , , :: #

Steven Spielberg, Gamer Dad

From WhatTheyPlay.com, a look at another side of filmmaker Steven Spielberg:

“I’m old enough to be able to say that I was the first person to ever play Pong in my generation back in 1976 back when I was making Jaws. I was shooting Jaws on Martha’s Vineyard and somebody wheeled a Pong to the carousel ride in Oak Bluffs. And Richard Dreyfuss and I would unwind after those torturous days of shooting that movie almost five nights a week playing Pong with each other in the carousel. My interest in video games is really from the outset of the industry before it was a revolution.” – Steven Spielberg

The rest of the article is about Steven’s love of video games, his involvement in game development, and playing video games as a family. His latest game, Boom Blox Bash Party, is a sequel to the successful Boom Blox – an interactive, multi-person experience that he says was based on the idea of “knocking things down” the way “we play with our kids.” Ultimately, he views both games as a way of bringing families together, as a family activity.

[In] our family, we have older kids and younger kids – I have seven kids – the older kids play the M-rated games the younger kids are playing the E-rated games and therefore they don’t ever play in the same space. I wanted to get a game that would bring the entire family participating together, and that’s where the idea for Boom Box came from. It was that need to bring the gaming family into the same space.

He also talks about user-generated content in games (where kids construct, rather than destruct), the economics of video games as entertainment, and the intersection of the movies and gaming industries. It’s a great read.

May 19, 2009 :: Tagged under: , , , :: #

Researchers Find Early Signs of Autism in Infants

Good or bad news from TIME.com, depending on how you look at it:

Show the average 18-month-old a video of toddlers at play, and you can bet that the tot will be mesmerized by scenes with strong emotion: a fight or kiss. But some babies have other interests. At the Yale Child Study Center, psychologists Warren Jones, Ami Klin and Sarah Shultz measure when toddlers stop blinking — a reliable indicator of rapt attention. The typical child will stare at the scene of a kiss, but a child with autism will be transfixed by the opening and closing of a door.

Experiments like these, presented at a recent conference at Columbia University’s Teachers College, are helping researchers identify the signs of autism at ever earlier ages. For parents, says Wendy Stone, director of Vanderbilt’s Treatment and Research Institute for Autism Spectrum Disorders, “the average age of first concern is 17 months, though a diagnosis isn’t typically made until age 3. That’s a long time to be concerned and not know what to do.”

Generally, signs of Autism Spectrum Disorders in babies is a scary thing for parents. But tools for screening for these signs are becoming increasingly refined, as the article states.

The good part of this lies in that early recognition can lead to early intervention efforts, with the potential to prevent reduce the symptoms of ASD that are secondary, or not hardwired, like those affecting social interaction skills. Perhaps more importantly early recognition leads to preparation, allowing parents the time to realize that Autism is not the plague of humanity and that living with a child on the spectrum may not be preferred or easy, but can be a very gratifying thing.

One other good part about this news: Throw this into the mammoth pile of evidence that will hopefully, finally, lay to rest that ridiculous notion that childhood vaccination causes Autism.

Since Autism is now becoming recognized at earlier ages, prior to the period most children get vaccinated for measles, mumps, and rubella around age two, it’s increasingly implausible to peg a child’s onset of Autism onto these vaccines. Coincidence ≠ causality, so it’s odd to see how this concern has been brought up, but whatever the case, scientific research continues to disprove again and again that such a link between Autism and childhood vaccinations exists.

If you don’t want your kid to get vaccinated, that’s up to you – but don’t keep your from getting the shot because you’re afraid of Autism.

May 04, 2009 :: Tagged under: , , , :: #

Kids Who Smoke

By Daniel Bigler :: Saturday April 25, 2009

Kids Who Smoke

The Holy Taco gives a tip-of-the-cap to the “good old days”:

Remember when kids used to be cool? My grandfather started smoking when he was nine years old. Sure, he died of lung cancer 65 years later, but he would not have changed a thing. These days kids aren’t allowed to be irresponsible because their parents and the Nanny State are too busy cramming tofu and wheatgrass down their throat and throwing bullies in jail. Well, we here at HolyTaco miss the days of kids doing things they’re not supposed to do.

Cue up the pictures of kids smoking – kids of all ages, at different times through the past few decades, smoking. Because smoking makes you cool, didn’t you know?

But maybe there’s something here. Not with the smoking – not that particularly… but the “kids doing things they’re not supposed to do.” I’d suggest clicking through and seeing the photos for yourself, and then analyzing what thoughts come up.

I’ve shown the photos to a handful of people and typically get a wide range of interesting responses. Some see the image of kids smoking as funny – and others, revolting. Several people saw it as exploitation by predatory tobacco corporations, expressing concern for the kids’ health and a sense of indignation at corporate America.

Others just saw these kids as “bad kids” – examples of a corrupt society that has lost its moral compass. The kids here, these are just the first victims of such a society; they’re the early casualties, who’ve decided to rebel against the old in favor of this new morally-depraved, anarchist society. (And, depending on your own tendencies toward anarchy, that in itself is either awfully cool or deeply upsetting.)

But let’s dig deeper.

One of the common cognitive images of children in society (how we mentally view and frame our perception of them as a social group) is the image of Child as Deviant. While we don’t typically throw all children into one so-called “deviant” lump, we might find ourselves guilty of picking out select groups of kids with similar traits – teenagers, perhaps, or Emo kids – and labeling them as the “social rebels”: the misfits who haven’t learned their place in the system yet or otherwise just choose not to stay there. It’s these groups of kids who often serve as our society’s scapegoats: they’re the obese, stupid, ill-mannered, foul-mouthed, disruptive, video game-playing, couch-surfing, lunch money-extorting flunkies who pick on old ladies – and they’re ruining all of our otherwise perfectly good lives. (And even worse, they’re noisy – “noisy” being one of the cardinal sins according for most old people.)

And yeah, looking at these photos you might begin to think these kids deserve the rebel label. They’re practically giving the middle finger to The Man (or their parents – it’s sometimes hard to tell who’s who). Some of these kids should know better.

But what’s really the case? Are these kids really the rebels of their age, like ‘em or hate ‘em?

What might be more interesting is not that these kids smoke, but why they smoke. Let’s get this out of the way first: In many of the photos presented, you can certainly immediately notice a clear spread toward lower-income and impoverished communities, as well as predominantly a “third world” geography. It’s hard to guess just how socially acceptable smoking is in general for many of these represented cultures. At least for a few of these places, it might seem that smoking is seen as a way for individuals – regardless of age – to cope… to deal with the hardships of an impoverished life. Suddenly smoking becomes a little less dangerous to us, since it’s placed in the context of a much more dangerous world all around these kids.

But then moving on, it definitely looks like some of the kids photographed don’t seem to have that excuse. At least given what we can imagine as their outlying culture and community, these kids are clearly going against the norm, breaking the rules. So what motivates them to smoke?

This might be the sociologist in me coming out, but what if a lot of this motivation came down to society’s distribution of Power?

Kids throughout history have been one of society’s most marginalized groups, alongside (oftentimes) the elderly. Having no inherent power, kids rely on the adults around them to appropriate power to them. With no opportunity for meaningful employment, kids rely on their parents for providing them social currency – often in the form of that most sacred of all thing, the hallowed “allowance,” whose economic roots makes society work and allows for participation in social life. Children’s cultural experiences as well are often determined by adults or regulated by adult-run institutions: parents arrange their kids’ play dates, choose the organized sport they’ll participate in, determine where they can spend a Saturday afternoon. Exact numbers are sketchy, but the percentage of American kids participating, and the amount of time they spend, in programmed after-school environments is clearly at an all-time high – further constraining the time American children are allowed to freely play, explore and navigate their neighborhood, and generally be themselves, while developing autonomy and self-competency.

Many social scientists and others are recognizing a startling trend toward an even further narrowing of the range of what conceptually is acceptable childhood. Children’s roles and opportunities to meaningfully participate in society are becoming increasingly constrained. The power gap between “Adult” and “Child” is widening, and “growing up” to attain that adult status is harder than ever before. It’s hard to miss the gigantic “kid world” that has been constructed around our kids – an artificial “culture” of Nickelodeon and the Disney Channel, Happy Meals and Spongebob boxer shorts, intended by adults to fill this adult/kid gap. And certainly, to some degree this separate kid culture could rationally be seen as supportive of kids, outlets for offering them more power. But in many other ways, this separation (and ensuing capitalization and commodification) of childhood further distances kids from adults.

It’s somehow implicit in this adult construction of a “kid world” that yes, kids have their own world – but we know it’s not the “real world.” It’s an artificial one. Kids can have more so-called power, but it’s not real power – you can’t pay the rent with Chuck E. Cheese bucks. This “kid world” is in reality just another way to control kids and engineer the perfect childhood.

This might start to get at why we find it so jarring to see kids smoking cigarettes: Adults smoke. Kids do not. Smoking is one of those things that falls into the category of the “adult world,” and it is not a part of our conceptual range of childhood. Getting back to the misfits, this might also be why we pick on some kids and label them as miscreants. Is it because they’re truly doing something wrong, or is it simply that they’re attempting to cross the line from our conceptual range of childhood into the adult world, without permission? (This, by the way, pretty much explains 90% of the problems you’ve ever had with your teenager.) In narrowing the social boundaries of the conceptual space children have to be children, we’ve inadvertently created the rebellious kid. We’ve created the irresponsible misfits, and those that don’t act “normal”. And worse, we typically punish them for it.

That’s why a certain small part of me finds glee in these photos of children partaking in the (admittedly very unhealthy) adult activity of smoking. Maybe they’re not doing it in defiance of adults, but rather because they want to be more like them. These kids are taking the ultimate step into the adult world – they smoke, because you can’t mistake smoking as anything other than one of those “adult” things to do. They sneak cups of coffee (and later, alcohol), because that’s a decidedly “adult” thing to do. They play Grand Theft Auto, because how much more (simulated) power can you get in a video game than being a big, bad adult who beats up old ladies?

Children crave participation in the “adult” world. They want to meaningfully take part in real life and engage in the broader discourse. They covet acknowledgement as full citizens of society. It’s only when they’re denied that right that they try to take it anyway – forcefully. By “rebellion.”

By behaving as much like “adults” in the most apparent, and often destructive, ways as they can. By pushing the boundaries and testing the limits. By smoking.

That’s a different way of looking at these kids, isn’t it?

Instead of shaking our heads in sadness and giving these kids up as lost causes, instead of chalking their behavior up to them just being the rebellious misfits – what if we tried helping them negotiate a shared participation in the world? What if we honored their lives and recognized their contributions to society? What if we listened to them?

Would these kids still smoke then?

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Addicted to Video Games?

The Washington Post reports on a study out of Iowa State:

In what is described as the first nationally representative study in the United States on the subject, researcher Douglas Gentile of Iowa State University found that 8.5 percent of American youths ages 8 to 18 who play video games show multiple signs of behavioral addiction.

Gentile’s study purports that their “game addiction” negatively impacts other areas of kids’ lives – such as their performance in school, willingness to do chores, and so on. Other bits: boys are four times more likely than girls to be pathologically addicted to video games. Kids with addiction lie about the time spent playing, and sometimes steal games or money to play more. And the study couldn’t say whether kids play video games because they perform poorly in school (seeking a feeling of mastery), or whether kids perform poorly in school because of video games.

But here’s my question: 8.5% of American youth are addicted to video games. But what about the percentage of adults? I’d wager the number is just as high, if not higher. Why divorce kids from the broader problem? And given the ample research speaking to the strong benefits of video game play for children, are major news outlets such as The Washington Post just fueling more fear and skepticism toward video games – instead of acknowledging their value (for all ages, kids and adults alike) when treated in a balanced way?

There was at least clear voice in the Post’s article speaking on the study:

“I think kids use this just the way kids watch television, the way kids now use their cellphones,” said Michael Brody, chairman of the media committee of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. “They do it to relieve their anxiety and depression. It’s all a matter of balance.”

Apr 19, 2009 :: Tagged under: , , :: #