Teaching our Children to Use Time Constructively
Posted on Mon, Feb 06, 2012
For many of us, involving our children in appropriate activities seems like an easy thing to check off our list. But if we look carefully at the categories within this asset, you might be surprised that you're missing 1 or more of these. I love the way Search Institute defines these assets because they actually quantify many of them, particularly for older children.
When my children were little, I approached it like this: I wanted my children to do something creative, something active, and something useful every day. Engaging in creative activities is the first asset in this category. Anything that encourages self-expression counts here. So there are the obvious things like music and art, but also pretend play is a great way to encourage creativity. My boys loved playing Superheroes, so we turned it into a game of make-your-own-Superhero. What powers would you have? I even created my own Superhero in this game: her name was Insta-Chef and her power was to blink her eyes and say "Voila!" to make a gourmet dinner magically appear on the table. As your child gets older, the goal is to have them participating in creative activities once a week (and in high school, this is further defined as 3 or more hours a week). The something useful I wanted for my children harkens back to seeing children as resources (check out our Empowerment blog for more on this). But it also refers to how children use their time at home. And this is where limiting TV and video games comes in. Now even I don't advocate no TV--I'm a fan of TV when it's used as downtime or for educatonal purposes. And when you do allow your kids to watch TV or play a computer/video game, do it with them. When my kids were little, we had a couple of special shows we watched together on a regular basis. One was Mr. Roger's Neighborhood, another was Little Einsteins, and another was Rachael Ray's 30-minute meals (I honestly don't remember how that got started, but my oldest developed quite a liking for this show--maybe he's a future chef?).
Let's shift gears and talk about how children spend their time outside of the home. Even at the youngest ages, it's important for our children to be part of community programs that are led by another caring adult. This does a number of things for our children: first, it connects them to another adult (remember the adult role models we talked about before?), but it also teaches them how to interact in a group setting. Many communities have free programs like this at their public libraries. But there are also excellent programs that you can pay for. It's important to find the right fit for your child--and the right fit applies not only to the activity itself, but also to the environment and the teacher leading the activity. Is the environment set up to appeal to children? Is it stimulating, but not overwhelming? Does the teacher allow your child to engage at her own pace--not rushing or forcing her but always encouraging her?
The last asset in this category is participation in a religious community. This comes naturally for some people and not so naturally for others. My family is a great example of this: I grew up attending church regularly, my husband did not. So when we had kids, the religion piece was left entirely to me. And I admit, when my kids were young, getting them to church every week seemed more of a hassle than it was worth. But I did make a point to teach my children about our religion and its customs at home. We read stories and talked about why we celebrated various holidays. And now that they are older, we are working on getting more involved in a religious community so they are exposed to these ideas from people besides just me.
How are you structuring your child's time? Are you being deliberate and thoughtful about what you're doing? I know that's easier said than done, but every little bit counts.