Whole Child Development
You’ve likely seen the video by now. (It’s inching toward one million views.) The toddler with those sweet cheeks lights up as the experimenter passes the toy across the table. The toddler plays with the parts as he’s seen the experimenter do. His eyes are wide, his smile even wider. Then the “emoter” comes in.
I grew up hearing the stories. How Grandma and Grandpa started out in a new state with a dog, a truck, a baby, and $10 in their pockets. The mischief and mayhem my dad and his brothers created, often at the expense of each other or their sisters, and much to the chagrin of their saintly mother. The life-threatening illness at my birth, and the miracle of my recovery. They were like colorful marbles in a kindergartner’s pocket. I loved them and treasured them, but hadn’t really given much thought to what research might say about their significance.
As I have examined both personally and professionally what makes for a strong family, I have been surprised several times to find research linking positive personal and family outcomes to families knowing the stories and histories of their families.
As an article in the New York Times stated in a review of some of the research, ” After a while, a surprising theme emerged. The single most important thing you can do for your family may be the simplest of all: develop a strong family narrative.”
Erica Layne of Let Why Lead expanded on this same topic recently, sharing the many benefits of family stories for kids.
The idea that something as simple as story-telling can build stronger kids seems hard to believe. As I said, it was something of a pleasant surprise when I stumbled on some of the research. But it shouldn’t have been surprising at all. My Master’s thesis was on the topic of ethnic identity. The review of the literature in that area is very clear: Knowing where you come from and what you’re about is correlated with almost every positive outcome you can measure. It makes sense that those benefits are not limited to knowing your ethnic story, but extend more personally, to knowing your family’s story and your own.
With this information on my mind, I was excited when Beryl Young offered to share a guest post with you about how to capture your family’s stories and preserve them in a variety of forms. It’s something feel I took for granted in my own childhood, and hope to become more intentional about with my own children.
It’s such an unassuming cover. White with black words. The Book with No Pictures
The kids didn’t look impressed.
“We’re going to trick Dad into reading that tonight,” I whispered to my oldest, as I bustled about the kitchen making dinner.
“What? Why do we need to trick him?”
“Just read a little, then you’ll see.” [Read more…]
In my last post, I wrote about the slippery slope between spanking and child abuse, the slippery slope which appears to have pulled Adrian Peterson and much of the public discussion about spanking over the edge of the precipice. Today, I want to address the reasons we use to rationalize spanking, and talk a little about setting broken tools aside. [Read more…]
There’s been a lot written about spanking recently, brought about by current events and prominent figures. I’ve been sitting back without writing anything about it, just observing and trying to process the kind of discussion it was bringing to the surface. It seems that as a society, we’re ready to have a conversation about spanking.
Learning to be a good listener is a critical skill. Kids need to learn to be active listeners (here’s how I teach it in the classroom) and adults need to remember to be good listeners too. But there are also things we do as we speak to children that may increase or lessen the likelihood that children will actually be listening.
A week ago I had the tremendous pleasure of being a keynote speaker at Arkansas State University’s ECE conference. I met some absolutely wonderful people there and had a fantastic experience getting to know many people and seeing childhood from their eyes.
Content Copyrighted (2008-2025), Amanda Morgan, All Rights Reserved
