I love this this from Will Richardson. He is a blogger of note and authority on Web2.0 …
Last weekend, they got really bored. After two months of weekend basketball stuff (which we are re-evaluating), Wen and I just wanted a couple of days to veg. The kids couldn’t believe it. They kept begging us to do stuff. We kept saying no. Computer? No. TV? No. It went on like that for a good two hours. But finally, it got quiet. We heard them rummaging around in the kitchen and in their rooms, running in and out of the house, and then a measured commotion down by the basketball goal. “I think they’re doing suicides,” Wendy whispered when she looked out the window.
Yes, they were. And not only that, they had devised a daily practice schedule (click on the pic above), which they proceeded to work through for the next two hours, coaching each other, supporting and praising each other, until the very end when Tucker threw the ball at Tess, she hit him in the head with a stick, and they both came stomping up to the house locked in mortal sibling combat. Oy.
Anyway, on par, boredom is good. They’re 8 and 10. They’ll have plenty of time for the computer…
I am watching the “Child of our times” on TV as I write this and it is interesting to note:
*2/3 of the talk with children is transactional and organisational as parents get children to do what they want.
*most of the children in the programme rarely go more than 100m from their house unaccompanied.
*the paramount place of PLAY for children. Computers and screens are not play! - unless they involve interaction with others in a real sense. Some children in the programme were playing for less than an hour a day …
*children are MUCH better behaved at school …. ha - don’t we know this!
*children need time way from boundaries!
*children have to learn from MISTAKES.
The end of the programme was Great - “we need to stop protecting our children from making mistakes and allow them to be just that …. children!”
AMEN!
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