Quite a few of you know my story and journey with NACD, but for those of you who do not here it is in brief: We started our journey with NACD in December 2008. At the time my son Grant, who was five years old, was completely non-verbal, developmentally delayed, a flight risk, very stimmy, and had behaviors out of control. My husband and I were desperate for change and NACD gave us hope that one day our son might be able to first and foremost communicate with us and secondly live a happy and fulfilling life. I am very pleased to say that through our journey with NACD these hopes have become reality. He is fully conversational, a delightful young man, and living his best life. We continue to push forward and raise the bar on the expectations of him reaching his full potential.

In December of 2021 my dream job came to fruition, working for NACD as a coach, supporting families just like mine. As coach and now well into evaluator training, I have gained a different perspective through working with both evaluators and families. This has caused me to reflect on my personal journey with NACD and through reflection there are some things I wish I had understood more fully earlier on.

I wish I understood then just how important processing activities are as the critical foundation to global development. The background information I brought with me had me convinced I needed to prioritize other activities I felt were more important, like reading and math. These things are of absolute great value and importance, but the reality is the higher the processing is in a child, the easier these subjects will be to learn, and not only to learn, but to retain. Push to build the processing and the academics will fall into place much more easily.

I wish I realized that each activity on my child’s program is put on program with a specific intent and purpose. There are no “fluff” activities on program. Each activity is an important piece in building your child’s brain. Your evaluator has reason and intent behind each activity as to why it plays an important role. If you are unsure what an activity is accomplishing or why it is on your child’s program, ask us! The more you understand your program, the more successful you will be at implementation.

I wish I embraced the concept of pushing chores, responsibility, and self-help skills earlier on. I had my children learn chores, but I did not quite fully understand the bigger picture of what is accomplished through having a mindset of increasing the list of things my children can do. When it comes to chores it isn’t so much about what kids can do but more about what is happening through the act of doing chores. Chores build confidence and independence in kids. The more confident and independent kids are, the more intrinsic motivation they have to not only take on learning new things but are not intimidated doing hard things. Confident children have a “can do” mindset and this mindset overflows into academics as well. When this happens, they aren’t intimidated by working a tough math problem or learning something new, but instead they readily take on the challenge and with joy! There is another big piece of development that occurs through building the list of things a child can do, and this is maturity. Maturity comes with doing things for oneself and through doing things for others. We are raising highly capable adults. Highly capable adults are confident, independent, and mature. Keep raising the bar on the things your child can do!

Lastly, what I would tell my younger self when first starting our journey with NACD: Know your child’s program thoroughly. Watch the video tutorials and read the handouts from time to time, not just when you get a new program. You will learn something new every time you do. Ask questions if you are unsure about any activities or if something just doesn’t make sense to you. Take time to educate yourself by reading Bob’s articles in the newsletters and watching his YouTube videos. There is so much to be learned and the more you know, the better you will be at implementing program. Your time and efforts working with your child will be more efficient and your greatest work will be right before you, your amazing and unique child well on his way to reaching his full potential!

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I never tire of hearing stories like the one we are sharing with you today. This family worked together and totally transformed their daughter’s confidence through opening up all new abilities. When I first started with Stella, only a short while ago, it was apparent that we were working with an intelligent, hard working girl with minor issues in several areas. By addressing and accelerating her processing abilities relative to short term memory, working memory, and long term memory, she was able to make great strides in her abilities. In addition to focusing on these pieces, we freed her up from a package of academic busy work and taught her to love learning. Hearing how this has impacted her life and the lives of her family is what keeps the staff at NACD doing what we love to do. Read all about their journey:

From Marie, Stella’s mother

My name is Marie, and I am the mother of Stella. We have been receiving NACD services since September 2022. Over the last nine months our family has gone through multiple challenges and changes, including moving from Texas to Puerto Rico, becoming farmers, and starting homeschooling. NACD has been an important part of this change, as it has provided us with guidance and support. Stella started her education at home with me when she was very small. Before her 1^st year of age, I started reading to her, singing, showing her colors, and stimulating her physical, emotional, and cognitive development as much as I could until the age of 4, when she started going to preschool. She was a smart and eager-to-learn little girl, already bilingual (Spanish and English), even when our main language was Spanish. Later we moved to the States, where Stella started Kindergarten. This is when I started noticing problems with her learning process. The girl that was eager to learn was now crying about sight words, and was struggling switching letters and sounds when reading, and not wanting to go to school. I was heartbroken, but our financial situation would not allow me to stay with her at home, or so I thought. Around that time, we received recommendations to stop reading to her in Spanish, and by the age of 6 she was forgetting Spanish. By second grade we had noticed that the previous issues would not be resolved, and now she was also struggling with mathematical problems. The girl that loved numbers and was able to count and do simple math tasks now was struggling and hating math. Her teachers were instructing us to take her out of her extracurriculars (sports and music), the only areas she was feeling successful about. We refused. Right before we started NACD for her 8^th grade, Stella had good grades at the cost of her peace and rest. She was restless, agitated, and anxious most of the time. Her mood would swing, and she was frequently upset. She would listen to conversations differently than what we said and feel upset about it. She was putting more effort into her schoolwork than any of her peers just to catch up. It was so hard to see her at the dining table completing work from the classroom, and later her homework. When we asked the schools for evaluations or support, they would only notice her excellent grades, but not the extra effort and anxiety she was struggling with. When we started NACD Stella had started a bunch of books but had not finished any yet. She used to say she hated to read and hated math. Now the story is so different. After only nine months of NACD programming, we have seen such a change. Lyn has been an amazing source of wisdom and guidance, and Melody has been the strong and kind hand taking us from point A to point B. Here is a brief list of some of the changes we have noticed:

• More responsibility.
• Increased comprehension of verbal commands, social cues, and even reading.
• Increased attention span: Able to follow multi-step directions and recall appropriately when asked to complete tasks and chores.
• Better self-regulation in conversations, when upset, and when discussing different points of view.
• Is more self-regulated in terms of how to invest time in different activities (fun vs. responsibilities).
• Able to accept her mistakes and point at mistakes appropriately, not taking it personally, but explaining, or accepting whatever is appropriate in the situation.
• Identifies what is working for her and what is not; negotiates.
• Learning to manage money (math), as before she would avoid trying to pay for things and even look at what she was supposed to pay or receive as change (avoidance of the math process).
• She is interested in audiobooks and in reading paper books, when in the past she had no interest in books in general. Has completed about 5 books (paper books) over the course of the year, and multiple audiobooks, when previously it was impossible for her to complete 1 book per year.
• Overall, she seems more mature.

We are thrilled with her progress and the person she truly is. It is beautiful to see my wonderful teen being able to show her true colors, without the anxiety, without the moods and the exhaustion. We are excited about what is to come, and even though we are not done yet, the current progress is so wonderful, and our family is better because of it. We are living a much simpler life. Currently we are farming, and I am working from home, and even when it took a leap of faith to get here, I wouldn’t change it for the world. My daughter’s peace and healthy development is worth the change! Thanks, NACD, for your support throughout these 9 months! We are excited about the journey to come!

            • Reprinted by permission NACD Newsletter, July 2023 ©NACD

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The post Stella Alvarez-Ruiz appeared first on NACD International | The National Association for Child Development.

“All great change in America starts at the dinner table.” 

— Ronald Reagan

If your children are infants, toddlers, of school age, or adults, or somewhere in between, family meals can be incredibly important. Whether our motivation is teaching a skill (such as eating or participating in meal preparation) or fostering family dynamics (such as communicating about the day, participating in discussions, building independent thinking), family meals may not just be the most important meals of the day, but the most important times of the day, or even their lives.

We are all aware that times have changed and that all the changes have not been for the better. Some of the more significant changes involve family, perception of family, and perhaps even the definition of family. There are many family traditions that are being lost in our fast-paced consumption-driven society. One very important piece that has been lost in many families is simply family meals. As a society and for the sake of our children, we need to revisit what has been the norm virtually throughout human history and has been lost to a great extent over just the last 50 years.

In many homes today, family meals are becoming more and more something that is part of family history or perhaps something reserved for special Sundays and holidays. For most families, breakfast is something you grab on the way out the door or something that gets shoved into children before they start the day. Today, rather than someone taking time to prepare a healthy breakfast meal for the family, most people grab the home equivalent of fast food. How about lunch? Lunch is rarely something that is done as a family. Everyone is off doing school, work, or whatever. In most families the best shot at getting the family together for a real meal is dinner. Let’s look at some of the problems being caused by the loss of family meals, as well as the benefits that we can derive from this old foundational family institution.

Over the past number of decades, I have observed an increase in several issues negatively affecting virtually all children that can be associated with missing family meals.

Just last night I had a family dinner with my son, Laird, his lovely wife Sadie, and my grandchildren, 5-year-old Arielle and just-turned-two Lachlan. Lachlan sat across the table and as he typically does, he kept an eye on me throughout the meal. The degree to which he observed me became obvious when he carefully nudged a piece of carrot to the edge of his plate, then onto the table with his fork. I had not had a chance to comment before he looked up at me and did an amazing job of imitating my head tilt and disapproving expression, which resulted in my smiling at him in spite of the fact that I knew I shouldn’t do it. (Lachlan fits “too cute for his own good.”) This was followed by my tilting my head and making different expressions that Lachlan mimicked beautifully. This went on for about 90 seconds, following which he picked the piece of carrot up and put it back on his plate. The degree to which children observe us and learn from us when we are in close proximity is greatly underestimated. Rarely throughout a typical day do these opportunities present themselves as they do during a family meal.

Although at two Lachlan has yet to learn that experimentation has its limits at the dinner table, there are many things he has learned from eating meals with his family and observing, things that many children who are fed by themselves or eat by themselves often do not learn until much later, and some of which are sadly never learned.

Optimally a family meal entails having the whole family together—Mom, Dad and all the kids. The only thing that generally beats this is when the extended family is included, as this grandfather can attest. Although we realistically can’t always, or even often, create the ideal, the closer we can come to it, the better. A parent, or a parent and a sibling, having a meal with a child is preferable to the child just eating alone or being fed, while the parent or caregiver simply attends to getting the food into the child. Part of this equation is delineating between eating as in consuming food vs. sharing a meal together, a learning experience. Eating is a process by which you get food from your hand, a utensil, or some container to your stomach, generally as quickly and as unceremoniously as possible. Having a meal together, sharing a meal, is often the most educational part of the day for children and parents alike. I grew up in the ’50s outside of Philadelphia. In the ’50s most mothers’ job was the family—period. Moms had time to cook and to sit down and share good meals with their family. Sunday dinners and extended family dinners often meant coats and ties for the guys and dresses for the girls. These meals were treated as significant events, even if they were frequent. I recall as a child learning early on that at a meal you talked. There was no TV, you didn’t read at the table, and an effort was made to include everyone in some form or level of discussion. Everyone participated or received some attention. I was in a restaurant recently and was shocked by a large family that was seated near us. You might not define eating at home as “dining,” although one would hope to approximate that as often as possible; but if a family goes to a restaurant and makes that financial and time investment, you might hope that the experience would approximate “dining.” On this particular evening while I was dining with my family, I noticed the large family next to us that consisted of both parents and six children who ranged from about six to sixteen. All sat the entire time staring at their phones. It would have been bad enough if they had answered calls, but not a word was spoken. Throughout the entire time they were in the restaurant, the only words spoken were to the waitress who took their orders. This was not a family sharing a meal together; it was an opportunity missed and lost, and sadly a statement about this family and many others.

Let’s look at our children of various ages and families at different stages and explore the significance of the family meal.

• Part 1 Infants and Toddlers
• Part 2 Three to Five Years
• Part 3 Five to Eighteen +

Part 1

Infants and Toddlers

Learning to chew, self-feeding, eating a variety of nutritional foods, auditory processing and language development

Learning to chew

As part of our program at NACD, which entails working with the whole child, we have families post many videos of their children on our NACD Portal. These videos provide our staff with vital information and insights that help us educate the family and assist in the child’s development. Observing many parents spoon feeding their little ones is often a bit of a painful experience. In these instances, it is very apparent that the obvious goal is to get the food from the bowl to the child’s stomach as quickly as possible. To accomplish this goal, the parent is often using an amazingly large spoon. Not only do we observe food being shoveled into the child’s mouth, but the rate at which the food is shoved in is such that the child has no opportunity to learn how to use their tongue to manipulate the food in the mouth. Learning how to use the tongue is a significant component of a child learning to chew and to speak. In order for the child to progress from purees, to chewable foods, to self-feeding, they need to learn how to chew. Chewing is a very important part of digestion, and children who do not chew well often have digestive issues and constipation. In addition, chewing is the first big piece of oral motor development that establishes the foundation for good articulation. If Johnny was being fed while some of the family was eating, it would be a much slower process with a significantly different goal. The goal would be to assist the child in eating, teaching them how to eat, and interacting, not simply filling their stomach. The children who are fed as previously described often are very slow to learn how to chew because they are not only being deprived of the opportunity to learn how, but deprived of the opportunity to observe Mom, Dad, and big sister chew.

Expanding taste, accepting a variety of foods

A side effect of delayed chewing is the slow introduction of a variety of identifiable foods. Pureed foods all tend to look and feel the same in the mouth and are often all mixed so that the child cannot differentiate between specific flavors and odors. It’s experiencing a wide variety of food, textures, tastes, and smells that develops the acceptance of a wide range of food and teaches the child not only to eat, but enjoy a variety of nutritional foods. Guess what else the child who is fed alone misses? The opportunity to observe what other people eat and enjoy. The nature of the beast is to want what others have; and observing what other family members have and then being offered the same thing contributes to the child’s trying and enjoying different foods and textures. The child who is fed and eats alone is deprived of these very important opportunities that can lead to picky eaters and lifelong rejection of many nutritious foods. The first tastes that a child perceives are sweet and salty. Delaying the introduction of other tastes often leads to the child rejecting the more nutritious foods and craving sweet and salty food.

Self-feeding

As we move from baby to infant to toddler, we want to be teaching the child how to feed themselves, moving from finger foods to utensils. Self-feeding is a very important step toward independence. The more independent a child becomes, the more the child initiates doing more things on their own; and nothing is perhaps more significant to independence than feeding oneself. The longer a child (or adult for that matter) is dependent, the harder it is to foster independence, initiation, change, and progress. The more the child initiates, the faster their global development. There are many other pieces to this, including the child who eats alone and is trained to need a distraction for meals, such as a screen or toys.

Moving along in the child’s development, eating with the family teaches many important things, from how to eat appropriately with utensils, to table manners, to simply sitting at the table until the meal is finished. Children learn how to be civilized from adults who are and who model appropriate behaviors. Eating with your child is an important modeling and teaching opportunity.

Family meals often present one of the most important opportunities for the child to observe and learn. Young children learn visually, by observing. If a child is eating alone and not sitting next to family members who are feeding themselves, they do not even have a mental picture of someone feeding themselves. As a result, they are slow to initiate self-feeding and are content to continue being fed. Conversely, the child who closely observes people eating with utensils learns how to eat with utensils.

One disturbing thing that children who are learning to self-feed, but who are eating by themselves, commonly learn is to throw food or drinks and plates and whatever is within reach. Why not, if they do not have sufficient modeling to show them how to eat and act appropriately or do not have the opportunity to simply observe and interact with other members of the family during a meal? If they are eating with someone else and happen to throw something, someone is there to give them immediate feedback. 

Processing, receptive and expressive language

Young children learn by being in close approximation to other people and observing. They also tend to observe some more than others. The family meal affords them the opportunity to focus and learn from specific family members. The family meal is an ideal time for the child to observe, listen, and begin to understand and process language and produce sounds and language themselves. Auditory processing (the ability to process a word, then phrases, then sentences) is of paramount importance to the development of cognitive function. The child at a family meal is a relatively captive audience who can observe and listen to what is being said and learn.

One of the keys to development is neuroplasticity. The child’s brain develops from specific input being provided with sufficient frequency, intensity, and duration. Children need consistent opportunities to observe, interact, and learn.

Part 2

Three to Five Years

Table manners, expanding taste, attention, processing and language development, chores, responsibility and independence

We often think the goal of meals is simply to eat, to get nourishment; but as already discussed, there are many associated pieces that are extremely important. At each stage of the child’s development, there are important developmental pieces that relate to, and are aided by, family meals.

Table manners—taming the beast

It’s often easy to spot a child who typically eats alone: their table manners are horrific, and it takes longer to clean up the table and the floor after a meal than it was for the child to consume it. Teaching a child appropriate table manners requires first and foremost modeling appropriate table manners and then providing the child with appropriate instruction and feedback. The more often someone else is present and demonstrating appropriate table manners, the more quality input the child receives, and the faster they learn what they should do and how to do it.

Expanding taste—nutrition

Children who eat meals alone tend to learn to want the same things at every meal. Breakfast and even lunch is often the same every day. It is often easy for parents, once they discover what the child will eat for breakfast and lunch, to give the child the same thing every day; and unfortunately the child learns to want the same thing. So they both establish a pattern that neither is motivated to change. Eating the same thing daily is not nutritious, particularly if we look at what the children typically get for breakfast and lunch. Often the only opportunity the child has to learn about different foods is at dinner, assuming that the child is eating with the rest of the family. Healthy foods are rarely a child’s preferred foods, which again tend to be sweet and salty foods, which are often followed by grains. Gluten is becoming of greater concern in regard to allergies and intolerances. Children eating cereals, breads, and pastas often become addicted to these foods and reject what they should be eating. The taste for a variety of foods needs to be developed for the child to not only learn to eat, but enjoy the variety of meats, fruits, and vegetables that contribute to a healthy diet. The greater variety of foods we can introduce, and the earlier, often the better.

One good example of children learning to eat more sophisticated foods if exposed to them from an early age is what I observed in southern California in the ’80s. The first couple of times I saw this I was honestly a bit shocked; but it occurred so often that it became almost the norm in southern California. The snack food of choice of these families for their children under five and often as young as eighteen months was sushi. And the kids loved it! It was a great demonstration of how rapidly taste can be developed if given the opportunity.

Processing—cognition

Young children, when seated at a table with family members, attend to those family members. If they are not offered distractions like the TV, iPads, crayons and toys, they pay attention to what the other members of the family are doing and saying. Hopefully the family members try to engage these little ones during the meal. This process of attending without distractions helps build the child’s processing and attention span, which is a key to learning.

Perhaps the most important thing that drives the development of receptive and expressive language, cognition, and global development is the development of sequential processing. Building sequential processing develops short-term memory, then working memory and executive function, the pieces that determine our level of function even more so than innate intelligence. The primary thing that pushes processing is specific targeted auditory and visual input. One of the things that most children do well is let you know whether what you are saying to them, showing them, or doing with them is targeted to them or not. The test is their attention to it. If you are hitting the nail on the head, the child attends; if not, they don’t. Children sitting at a table with family members can be relied on to give the rest of the family feedback as to whether they are being included or not. The children tend to shape the family’s behavior. The more targeted the input, particularly from a family member, the faster the development of these vital processing abilities that will influence how the child ultimately learns, thinks, and functions.

Language development

Teaching a foreign language is not an easy task. It’s important for parents to understand that any language is a foreign language to a child learning their first language. The best way to teach any language is through immersion. Immersion simply means that you are living with the language and learning from your observations and involvement and out of need. Throughout the course of the day, the child has an opportunity to observe and interact and start to learn the language; but throughout most of the day there are many things going on, and it’s difficult to isolate words and their meanings. The family meal gives the child an excellent opportunity to isolate, observe, model, and learn to understand and then use language. It’s not a shock that one of the first words that a child learns is “more” and that one of their first word combinations is “Mom more,” followed by the phrase “Mom more please,” to using full sentences. The family meal should be a focal time in the day for relevant talk that contributes to the child learning the structure of the language and developing their own receptive language abilities. The language function of most children in this age group is a direct reflection of the targeted interaction between the child, parents, and siblings who naturally expand their use of language to fit the child they are speaking to. No one is better suited to this job than the people who know the child best; and no time may be better suited to this development than the family meal.

Chores, responsibility, and independence

I have written several articles talking about the importance of teaching a child to do, be responsible for, and to own chores. Most parents grossly underestimate their child’s capabilities and the global importance of their children learning to be capable, contributing, and independent and “owning” chores. The best initial chores to teach a child to own are those that are associated with specific events that occur daily. The first such event is simply getting up in the morning, but following that are meals, and again, particularly family meals. It is important to separate “helping” from “owning” a chore or job. Many children learn to follow specific helping directions and prompts even before the age of three and can be helpers. This period between three and five years, however, is an ideal time to teach your child not only how to do chores, but to own them. In response to the questions asking what chores children have, I often hear such things as “Johnny takes his dish to the sink.” My response to that is often, “If Johnny is capable of taking his dish to the sink, why not everyone else’s, and how about him completely cleaning the table?” Sadly, the parents’ response to that is often that Johnny eats alone, and if not, the parents do not even perceive that Johnny could do it if taught. They totally miss the understanding of the huge benefits Johnny would derive from doing it.

Unless children learn otherwise, they are egocentric, believing that the world revolves around them. Unfortunately, egocentric children can become narcissist adults. At three or even before, most children are ready to learn and own jobs and to learn that they can contribute; and they will learn to welcome and seek other ways to serve and contribute.

Ownership of a chore or job means that the child owns a particular task and preferably that they alone do it, so if they don’t do it, it doesn’t get done, which creates a problem. One of the first meal-associated jobs is teaching the child how to put silverware away from the dishwasher. Most children enjoy doing this job and can see that they are contributing and like it. Other meal—associated jobs that children in the 3-5 year range can do includes setting the table, cleaning the table, cleaning the floor under the table (even three year olds can learn to use a dust buster well), moving into washing dishes, loading, and unloading a dishwasher and even initial food preparation. Family meals can provide consistent opportunities for children to learn that they can be capable, contributing, members of the family. The earlier our children learn to happily and competently contribute, the sooner they start on the path of learning to be responsible, altruistic and selfless, self-reliant, contributing members of the family and society. Learning to be responsible with definitive chores helps children understand intention, which generalizes to other things including academics.

The more our children learn to do independently, particularly things that go beyond their own needs, the more they perceive what they could do, and the more things they initiate doing on their own, creating attributes that will serve them well in everything they do.

Part 3

Five Years to Eighteen Years +

Language development and social skills, processing (short-term memory, working memory and executive function), communication between parents and children, education, learning family values and history, learning critical thought and expression, becoming highly capable.

Theoretically a child moving from five years through adolescence to eighteen year of age is taking a young child and creating an adult. Unfortunately, there are not many eighteen-year-olds who we can confidently consider adults today; and that number appears to be shrinking every year. If you have a child five years of age, it’s not too early to remind you that your job is to put together the pieces to turn that child into a functional adult, who is equipped to go off to college or trade school by themselves, seek full time employment, start a business, join the military, or explore other adult options. These years pass at an amazing speed, and the target needs to be kept within the sights. This job requires putting together a lot of pieces. At NACD we know the need to work with the whole individual and the need to have someone at the helm steering the ship. No one knows a child as well as the parent. Teachers, relatives, coaches, clergy, and friends do not know as many pieces of the child as do actively involved parents. I have built several houses which have all come out well. Each one required my vision and design, the help of an architect, an engineer, a head contractor, and sub-contractors. The vision for the houses were mine, and I needed and used the various folks to help put the projects/visions together; but the houses were my babies and from concept to completion they were my responsibility. If they had not turned out as I envisioned, it was my fault and no one else’s. Building a house, even a large, complex house, is nothing compared to helping to assist a child in becoming a happy, successful, capable adult. And the need for attention to detail and ongoing participation cannot be overstated. One needs not to look too hard at society in general to see and hopefully understand the need to have actively involved parents steering the ship.

Language development and social skills

One of the most important jobs as parents is simply to talk to our children. In our busy lives meals are often the best, if not the only, regular opportunities parents have to get and hold the attention of their five-to eighteen-year-old and speak with them. A parent innately knows how to speak to a specific child. You innately use sentences of a length they can process and language they can understand. You have a pretty good idea as to what your child knows and doesn’t know, so you know if they have a frame of reference for a topic or not. A parent with the knowledge of their whole child is better suited to provide this invaluable input than anyone else. We call this targeted input. This targeted input and verbal interaction creates the building blocks of language and much more. If we are verbally interacting with our children throughout the day, it is often language that is directing them to do something or stop doing something; and although there may be opportunities throughout the day, particularly for families who are home educating their children, to really talk and communicate, the family meal can and should be perceived as a daily unique opportunity to have Dad, siblings, and even extended family participate. Language development occurs most rapidly when verbal interaction is of interest to the child, meaning you are talking about things your child has a frame of reference for, knowledge and interest in, and when the actual language being used is targeted to them. Parents almost universally use language that their children can understand and process, and constantly, even though they are rarely aware of it, they use language that is always just a notch above their child’s, which helps develop their language skills. This targeted interaction can be tremendously more efficient in building the child’s language structure and vocabulary than most group classroom instruction or interaction between children. Such group or child-to-child interaction is either not targeted to an individual or, as in the case of verbal interaction between children, they are modeling sentence structure and language that is not developmentally advantageous and perhaps not even acceptable. Children often speak to each other in abbreviated code, economizing on words and using vocabulary that Webster would scratch his head over. That’s not exactly conducive to proper language development.

Verbal interaction during a family meal is also an opportunity for parents to model and guide their children in proper table manners and acceptable ways to have a discussion, to agree or disagree appropriately. We all have many patterns of behavior that affect virtually all aspects of our lives. Children interacting with other children without the benefit of quality targeted parental modeling and feedback can lead to negative patterns of behavior, which can be difficult to modify or develop.

Processing (short-term memory, working memory, and executive function)

A major key to global development and function is processing power. Most children today have better visual than auditory processing power as a reflection of opportunity or lack of such. Children generally develop visual processing before auditory simply because until they can understand language, they learn and understand their world based on what they see.

As children develop, we need to provide as much targeted auditory language input as possible to balance these critical pieces. Ultimately, auditory processing is the more significant piece relative to cognitive development. Auditory processing facilitates thinking in words, and as it develops, so does the complexity of thought, language, maturity, behavior, attention span, and so on. The importance of auditory processing cannot be overstated. And what builds auditory processing? Targeted language input. Targeted language input is that which builds auditory processing. I believe that over the past decades as we have seen the increase in mothers working outside of the home, we have seen a corresponding increase in attention disorders, which are largely a reflection of auditory processing issues. You attend to what you can process, and the more and better you can process, the longer you attend. Parents talking to children is hugely important to the development of processing and its associated pieces. To learn more about processing, please read the associated article.

Communication between parents and children

If you are aware of a problem, have a misunderstanding or a question or just feel out of touch with someone you work with or a friend, your first thought should be to talk about it.

As important as it is to establish this relationship and open and maintain the avenues of communication, this often does not exist between many parents and their children. Ongoing, regular family meals do, again, provide rather special opportunities to establish this open communication. Parents can throughout the course of busy daily interaction with their children throw out questions in an attempt to find out what is happening with their children, but often this is not sufficient to facilitate good responses and open good lines of communication. As a case in point, ask the majority of kids upon their return from school about what they did at school and most parents get the same response—“nothing.”

Family meals can be used to open these critical lines of communication. If families simply talk during meals, the meal becomes this regular time to talk and communicate, and a question like “What did you do at school today?” is much more likely to produce a very different answer and open the door to further exploration, teaching the child how to express feelings and problems and to share their lives with their siblings and parents.

Education 

Most parents miss the boat when it comes to taking advantage of their unique position in helping, if not taking the lead, in their child’s education.

To understand how significant the parent’s role can be in education, let’s start by separating “what was taught” from “what was learned.” Schools and most curriculums are packed full of tons of “stuff,” and we tend to confuse all of this “stuff” that was “taught” with what was learned. If you learned something, you know it. If you don’t know it, you didn’t learn it. Pick a subject, any subject, from the explorers, to anatomy and physiology, trigonometry, astronomy, chemistry, or whatever you were “taught” and today write down everything you remember about that subject. This might not take long. Some of these things you might have been “taught” for years, and what do you remember? Perhaps not much, and certainly the more years that have passed since you were “taught” these things, the less you remember. But what you remember is very important and significant.

We tend to remember the more important pieces, the pieces that were reviewed over time, that were practical, interesting, or relevant to you—knowledge and information that helps you make connections between what you learned and understanding your life and the world today. These gems should be shared with your children, before, during and after they have been “taught” these things as part of their curriculum. “Did you know that…”. “Would you believe…” “That reminds me of…” are all phrases you can use at these family meals to introduce subjects; and over the course of a few meals, you can plant seeds, create interest and relevance, or even provide an entire foundation so that when these gems are part of your child’s curriculum they have more relevance and significance; and perhaps because of your meal discussions, your children will learn more of what is “taught.”

Talking at meals is different for your child than when you are sitting down to “teach.” Topics at dinner are presented in a more relaxed manner and are felt to be more like sharing than “teaching.” For this reason they are generally more welcome and have a greater impact. Another great benefit of sharing your knowledge at meals is that you get to pick and choose the topics. There is nothing wrong and everything right about first teaching your children about your interests, interests that you hope would be shared by your children and lead to lifelong shared interests and sources for ongoing interaction between you and your children. It’s often more important for your child to learn about your family business, your favorite sport, or any other of your interests and things that bring you joy and that you can possibly share with them for the rest of your lives than many of the subjects taught in school.

Family values and history

I recently had two visits from family members who I haven’t seen for many years. I live in Utah and most of my family still lives in the greater Philadelphia area where I’m from. It was great seeing them and reconnecting. A lot of our time together was spent sharing memories and getting confirmation of our joint recollections. The foundation of many of our memories came from recollections of extended family meals that generally occurred around holidays. These events were always opportunities to explore family history and values and to connect as a family. Family history offers perspective, perspective that is often missing from our lives. One of my visitors was a cousin whom I was very close to as a child and who I haven’t seen for about forty years. His short visit offered an opportunity to get him and his wife together with my extended Utah family and explore family history together over dinner. As it happened, my cousin, a recently retired judge, had done some searching and discovered that both our fathers had lived as children with their parents and grandfather in a very modest 700 square foot row home in Philadelphia. His father became a physical therapist and mine a physician. Both were innovators, and their service made great contributions to the treatment of brain injured children and others, and all from their very humble beginnings. Our families’ histories are rarely documented, and if not for the verbal communication of our families’ legacies that often only gets communicated at family meals, most of it gets lost; and our children and grandchildren are deprived of the history and perspective that helps give meaning to their lives and has the power to influence their futures.

Learning critical thought and expression

We want to create a safe welcoming environment around our family meals that produces a safe place for the exchange of ideas and views. Today more than ever, our children are exposed and often bombarded with a plethora of opinions and views that they have difficulty sifting through. Without a safe place to communicate what they have heard and a forum to openly discuss these views, they are often left with simply accepting what they hear at face value and following the latest and loudest voice.

Family meals can provide our children with the forum they need to safely talk about what they have seen and heard and learn how to speak of it and, with help, to critically evaluate it, form their own opinions, and learn how to appropriately express those opinions. Through healthy discourse with people they love and trust, they can also learn how to respect and value other opinions and learn not to be threatened by differing opinions. As parents, at family meals we need to understand that we are models, and how we react and what we say, and how we say it will teach our children how to think critically and express their views and listen to others. Often our softly spoken, non-confrontive words provide the food for thought that our children can later digest.

Becoming highly capable

Several years ago, I was a keynote speaker at the Washington State Conference on the Gifted and Talented and had the opportunity to help the educators see the correlation between cognitive processing and creating higher functioning students. At that conference they were using a new term, replacing “gifted and talented” with the term “highly capable.” I liked the term and have since redefined it and now use it more globally to mean essentially an individual who knows how to function in their world independently and competently. As I see it, helping our children become highly capable adults means that we are teaching them from an early age how to be independent in all aspects of their daily lives, understand responsibility, and develop qualities that will permit them to be confident, capable, and successful adults.

Relative to the discussion at hand of family meals, we can start the process of creating highly capable adults when our children are 5 years old. Hopefully by 18 we have succeeded in helping our child well down the road of becoming highly capable. As mentioned in the previous 3–5-year section, we can start teaching chores that the children own associated with meals. As we proceed in the development of our children, we want to continue to build on this by progressively adding to these pieces. By the time our children are 18, they should know how to plan meals, shop intelligently, understand budgets, prepare meals from A-Z, and clean-up and much more; but we can use the family meals as the foundation.

I had one of our NACD graduates who chose to go off to start her college career in England from her home in the U.S. An 18-year-old with the guts to go off to college in another country says something about confidence and capability. Shortly after beginning life in her new dorm, she made a discovery that most of the other students were lost. They had kitchens in the dorms, but the other students didn’t know how to cook or even buy food for that matter and couldn’t budget. The result was that they ate out and burned through their monthly allowance halfway through the month and had to beg Mom and Dad to send more money. As our highly capable young lady discovered, these other students also didn’t know how to clean or take care of their rooms or wash and iron their clothes. They also didn’t know how to be responsible for organizing their time, getting up in the morning on time, studying, and doing class assignments. She ended up holding classes for her dorm-mates to teach them how to take care of themselves and how to become more capable. Learning the pieces involved, learning to be responsible for all these pieces surrounding planning and seeing a meal accomplished from concept to fruition can be a significant piece that fosters the confidence and independence that can help turn a helpless child into a highly capable adult. Independence produces initiation, which in turn creates the impetus to learn more and assume more and more responsibilities.

Use family meals as the foundation to start building an adult. Do not underestimate what your children are capable of doing if given the opportunity and the responsibility. They will rise to your level of expectation.

Adults

The fabric that largely defines and holds our society together is the family. The fabric that is the family is woven together, built, and reinforced by the threads of our ongoing connection and interactions as a family. This connection needs to be reinforced and built upon on a regular basis. Sadly, for many, the connection between family members often only consists of short calls or text messages. The need for real connection is perhaps greater today than ever before, as we all shift though the bombardment of media that on a daily basis questions and even attacks many of the basic tenets that have formed the foundations of our beliefs.

Speak with most any adult about their close family times and recollections growing up and they will often speak of family meals, particularly meals with the extended family.

Speak with seniors and you will discover that past family meals are memories that last when others have long faded away. You will also discover that if such family meals are now available with children, grandchildren, and extended family that these events don’t just keep them connected to family, but to themselves.

Our sense of self, our identity, who we are and continue to be is woven into the fabric of the family.

The family meal is the foundation upon which our family is built and upon which we learn to know and maintain ourselves.

What’s for dinner?

Family Conversations App

If you’re looking for questions to get the conversation started, we built something for that: Family Conversations

Reprinted by permission of The NACD Foundation, Volume 35 No. 3 , 2022 ©NACD

The post The Most Important Meal of the Day is Not Breakfast, It’s the Meal(s) the Family Has Together appeared first on NACD International | The National Association for Child Development.

Isaac is a young man who we are very proud of, as we are of his mom and dad who have done such a great job with him. Isaac started with us ten years ago when he was seven. In the past ten years we have had the privilege of working with Isaac’s parents to help him along the way toward becoming an adult, a contributing, happy, functioning adult.

Born with Down syndrome, Isaac had more challenges than most children with his diagnosis. Of particular concern was the difficult combination of significant hearing issues, coupled with severe oral motor issues. Everything associated with language has been extremely difficult for Isaac, but because of his perseverance and that of his parents, he has come a long way and is now intelligible and using full sentences to communicate.

Over the past years Isaac’s parents understood the whole picture and have been focused on helping Isaac become a very functional, highly capable individual/adult. Chores have been part of Isaac’s life and as such he has learned to be responsible and independent. At seventeen he is not only significantly more highly capable than most of his “typical” peers, but he understands work, service, and contribution much more than most and, frankly, more than many ever will.

On a daily basis Isaac is a happy, active, motivated participant in his NACD program and in addition assumes many responsibilities for his family. Isaac not only completes his chores, he assumes responsibility for them and carries them out without the need for any prompting. In addition, as he has become more capable and independent in his work, he initiates adding new things to his list. If he sees something needs doing, he does it.

Isaac has an impressive list of responsibilities, which includes making the family’s beds and turning them down at night. (I don’t know if he leaves mints on the pillows.) He takes care of all aspects of the family laundry, from sorting to washing, drying, folding, hanging, and putting it away, to organizing his closet and drawers. He does the dusting of the house and cleaning and vacuuming of the floors, sets and clears the dinner table, and is taking part in more of the food preparation. He takes care of loading and running the dishwasher and putting everything away, and takes care of the trash, which involves him loading it into his truck and driving up the road for pickup. He also cleans the dog kennels and feeds and waters the barn cats.

Isaac is like the energizer bunny and keeps on going. Outside duties include pool cleaning, splitting wood with a wood splitter (trust me this isn’t something most teens would be doing), loading it into a tractor bucket or his truck bed, and then driving it to the house. From there he loads it into a wheelbarrow and stacks it in the house. He washes and details the cars, cleans and organizes the barn, cleans the tractor after use, and more. Most anything that needs to be done, Isaac is doing it and doing it willingly and with a smile.

Isaac defines “Highly Capable” for me, and as I tell folks, there is always a place for highly capable people. Who wouldn’t want an Isaac around?

I think Isaac has a bright future. He is a delightful young man who approaches life with a smile and who is always looking for a way to contribute and serve. He now has his sight on a working at a local cheese business.

I’m proud and thankful for having the privilege of knowing and in some way contributing to Isaac’s life and future.

Congratulations, Team Beichel!

Reprinted by permission of The NACD Foundation, Volume 33 No. 10, 2020 ©NACD

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Nicolas Cooke is Physically and Mentally Tough

Independence, Initiation, Responsibility, Self-Respect, Self-Awareness, Empowerment, Service: Chores

Teaching Chores Better Than Teaching Algebra?

The post Isaac Beichel – Highly Capable appeared first on NACD International | The National Association for Child Development.

Why might teaching your child to clean toilets be more helpful than teaching them algebra?

I love this video. All schools and parents should learn from this school. I have been extolling the importance of teaching chores and giving children responsibilities for decades. Sadly, parents and schools seem to do a poorer job of this every year. Many parents and most schools don’t understand the importance of teaching their children to work and contribute and how to become what I like to call “highly capable.” If I could I would raise every child on a farm or a ranch or around a family business so that there were always plenty of chores and jobs to do–lots of opportunities for growth.

Most of today’s kids don’t have a clue about chores or real “work.” I can ask a parent about what chores their kids do and get blank stares as though the concept is completely foreign, or a reply like he helps clear the table sometimes and will take out the garbage if I ask him. It is extremely rare that I have a parent reel off a list of real chores and responsibilities that their child assumes responsibility for. The norm is more like Mom having to get her children out of bed and on the bus in the morning, and perhaps when pushed they sort of clean up their room or help with dishes. And, sadly, the list tends to get shorter as the kids get older.

Many parents appear to feel that the more they do for their children, the more they are demonstrating their love and support; with the net result that they are teaching their children that they are both dependent and entitled. The outcome is often conflict and negativity and children growing up with the belief that what you give them and what you do for them is the true measure of your love for them. The more they are given, the more they demand. Along with the entitlement comes more and more pushback so it becomes easier and easier to do everything for them and hope that some day they will learn to be responsible and not so self-centered.

I see high school students who can’t be responsible for even getting themselves up in the morning, let alone taking care of their personal space, fixing themselves a meal, assuming responsibility for and contributing to the family and the home—their home—and often even their school assignments. Parents who remind their children that they have assignments that need to be completed, that they have upcoming tests that they need to study for, are assuming the responsibility for their children and are shocked when their children do poorly and that their children don’t feel responsible for their failure. But why should they? They’re not responsible, you are.

Many parents think that what their children need to learn is centered on academics and skills taught in classes and on teams. The children need to learn to read, to do math, science, perhaps play the piano or kick a soccer ball, etc. Are there benefits to these things? Certainly. They’re critical; but it’s not enough—not close to enough. Could learning to clean a toilet and having the responsibility to keep that toilet clean lead to better outcomes than getting artificially good grades in algebra because your mother got you up every morning and helped you with your assignments and hounded you to study for tomorrow’s test and having a teacher who let you take the test over again because you blew it the first time? In the big picture, in the long term, could learning to be responsible for cleaning the toilet produce better outcomes?

Children need to learn how to be independent, to take care of themselves, to be responsible for themselves, to learn that the universe doesn’t revolve around them, and that they need to learn to serve and do things for the family and others.

Children who are given jobs and chores and are held responsible gain tremendous self-respect and self confidence, demonstrate maturity beyond their peers, learn to be independent not dependent, learn to look for what needs to be done, do it, and learn to be responsible.

Irresponsible children tend to become irresponsible adults.

Entitled children tend to become entitled adults.

I love watching children grow and develop into adulthood with a strong sense of who they are, independent, confident, and having the courage to push themselves, think for themselves and to have respect and compassion for others. These things don’t happen by accident. They happen when parents understand that they are raising their children to be adults, not self-centered, dependent, irresponsible, entitled, very large children.

Teaching your child how to do chores correctly and teaching them to assume the responsibility for doing those jobs and chores needs to be seen as a fundamental part of their education.

Many parents and schools have lost the vision. Perhaps this is why we are becoming more and more of an entitled society.

Reprinted by permission of The NACD Foundation, Volume 32 No. 8, 2019 ©NACD

The post Teaching Chores Better Than Teaching Algebra? appeared first on NACD International | The National Association for Child Development.

Toddler Issues a Chore Challenge

August 2017
Ogden, Utah

Twelve-month-old Arielle is challenging other children to raise the bar and get to work.

Today’s children are doing fewer chores than ever before, and as a result we should not be shocked to realize that many teens and young adults have missed some very important lessons.

Responsibility

Having specific jobs that the child owns is a fundamental building block to learning how to be responsible.

Service

Learning to do things that don’t appear to directly help you is vitally important. Those children who learn to contribute and help others or the family are generally not going to be those who grow up feeling entitled. Doing things for the family helps connect the child to the family and helps provide some needed perspective. Self-centered children can lead to self-absorbed teens and adults.

Independence

The more children learn how to take care of themselves, their homes, and their families, the more independent they feel and become. Children who learn independence develop confidence and initiate doing more and more themselves, while those who are dependent fear and often fail to move themselves forward.

Highly Capable

Learning how to take care of your living space, your room, and your home not only teaches independence, but also teaches an appreciation for clean, organized, and pleasant surroundings. Learning how to do your laundry, prepare your own nutritious food, take care of the yard, and even learning how to fix and repair things around the house all lead to confident, highly capable adults. These apparently simple skills help develop the perception and the capability that permits you to take on challenges, confront problems, and address them.

Work Ethic

Many teens and adults sadly never develop a strong work ethic. A good work ethic is exemplified by the basics, including reliability, dedication, productivity, cooperation, and strength of character.

I hear many parents today say that their children do not have time for chores, their day is full of schoolwork, sports, music, dance lessons, etc. If your children don’t have time for chores and all of the vital lessons that come with it, I suggest you reevaluate what they are gaining from the sports and the “lessons” and think about the real basic lessons they are missing

A few years back I had the opportunity to participate in a meeting with five couples. These five couples were part of an organization of young presidents of companies. They invited me to the meeting because they were having a discussion about how they were “screwing up their children.” The couples had children ranging in age from about 10 into their 20s. As I began the discussion, we started talking about the lives of these company presidents. We all quickly learned that four of the five men had grown up in pretty typical middle class families and had chores from early ages and had jobs through high school and college. In addition, the four went to state colleges and excelled in life because of hard work, a good understanding of who they were, and a strong work ethic. All of the couples realized that their present standard of living had not helped, but had hindered their children’s development. The families were able to afford to hire help to clean their houses, take care of the lawn, and even help with food preparation. The couples had mistakenly thought that freeing their children from chores and giving them more time for sports and various lessons was providing them with an advantage. What was learned through the discussion was that the families were universally disappointed in their children’s basic characters, sense of responsibility, and their lack of a strong work ethic. They had been at a loss to understand how their children, having been given “every advantage,” were not developing into the adults they had hoped and worked for.

The meeting with these couples was very enlightening. You don’t need to be the president of a company and wealthy to make the same mistakes as these couples. As I was leaving the meeting that night, I made a discovery. Four of the five men were presidents of companies and one was not. In fact, despite having graduated from Harvard, the fifth was unemployed. His wife was the president of a company.

Building the Foundation

Here are a few helpful guidelines to help you get your children heading down the road to more chores and a better character.

1. Little children like 12-month-old Arielle can be helpers; and the sooner they learn, the better. For young children helping is fun, as is learning. Little children almost universally love learning most anything if it is done in a positive manner. Look for opportunities to let them help. View each of these circumstances as an opportunity for your child.
2. Helping is great, but it is only the very first step; and by two or three years of age, you want to have taught your child how to do tasks all by themselves. There are many things these little people can do if you teach them how and if you provide the right tools and use the right methods.
3. Reverse chaining: Reverse chaining is a great way to teach new skills. A close cousin to chores is self-help skills. Self-help skills include all of those things that permit you to take care of your basic needs, including things like dressing, undressing, toileting, bathing, self-feeding, brushing teeth, etc. As important as these self-help skills are, they should not be confused with chores, but in many way these first steps help start the foundation of independence and self-reliance. Reverse chaining is a great way to teach many multiple step tasks. Typically, if you are trying to teach a multiple step task, you start by teaching the first step and progress from there. There are a number of disadvantages to this approach. With first step forward instruction, the child just starts a task; they don’t finish it. Often after they have completed their piece, they tune out the rest of the steps. With first step forward instruction, the child tends to become prompt-dependent, meaning that they do a step and wait for a verbal or physical prompt to do the next step. And finally, the reward of doing a task is in the completion of the task, not doing the first steps of a task. First step forward teaching lacks the foundation of motivation that moves progress forward. With reverse chaining you start by completing a task up to the very last piece, and then you teach the child how to do just this last piece that completes the task. Then you complete all of the steps up to the next to last and teach that; and then the child is able to do the last two steps and again complete the task. As a simple example, let’s look at teaching a child to take off a sock. With the first step forward approach, you would start by teaching the child how to put their fingers between the sock and their leg, followed by step two, which is trying to them pull the sock down. The child would then typically mentally disengage while you completed the task. With reverse changing you would start by pulling the sock down so it is hanging off their toe, and their job is simply to pull it off their toe—it’s easy and the task is complete. Step two is to go through all of the steps until the sock is half-way or more down their foot. The child can easily accomplish this step and complete the task. Completing the task is much more rewarding than starting the task. It also teaches the child that they can, in fact, take their sock off. Proceed with pulling the sock down so it is just off the heel, then just over the heel, then a bit above the heel, and then up the leg. Reverse chaining can be used with virtually any task that requires learning a number of steps.
4. If you are sharing a job, you are still just helping. The goal is for the child to own the chore. A common mistake in homes where parents are consciously trying to teach their children to be responsible for chores is to share or rotate chores. Parents generally do this in an attempt to be fair and avoid arguments between children as to who has the toughest job. Probably the most common situation involves mealtime. The sharing of the task goes from one child washing, the other dries, one sets the table, another clears the table, one does the dishes this week, the other next week. The problem with this approach is that no one owns the job. The more you can delineate responsibilities and provide ownership, the better. Owning a job means that you are responsible for that job. If you own it then you can take satisfaction in that job being done well, consistently, and in a timely fashion.
5. Do not underestimate what you children can do. Most children, by the time they have reached the developmental level of a ten-year-old, can do most any cleaning or organizing task within the home, as well as most cooking and outside tasks, with the possible exception of using some power tools. If the mother of two or more children over ten is still doing a lot of the housework and cooking, they are probably depriving their children of important opportunities.
6. The proper tools can make a big difference. Most fairly young children could vacuum a house or mop or clean a floor if they had the proper tools. Your six-year-old might not be able to lug around a big vacuum cleaner, but they probably could use a lightweight battery operated vacuum. Brooms and dustpans aren’t really terribly efficient for anyone, let alone a child; but there are little electric dust busters, Swiffers, etc. that work reasonably well. One way to compensate for a child’s inability to do an expert job that satisfies mom’s critical eye is to compensate with time and frequency. You might vacuum your house once or twice a week; a child could do it many times a week. You can also have them learn to use a timer so that they are spending sufficient time to get the task accomplished well. And remember to use reverse chaining to help teach them how to do the job properly in the first place.
7. One of the most common errors in getting children to do chores is setting them up to fail. The more ambiguous the time requirement for the completion of a chore, the more likely it will not be accomplished without intervention. The best/easiest chores are daily chores that occur at a very specific time. If a chore is a weekly chore, it needs to be attached to a very specific time or as part of a chain of events. Scheduling chores around specific time-related events should help tremendously. Look at the child’s day and identify the events that occur at fairly exact times, such as meals, going to school, or soccer practice. Use these events as the foundation for scheduling chores. Think about a list of chores before or immediately after breakfast or dinner as places to start. Speaking of places to start, one of the very basic things that teaches responsibility, self-reliance, and maturity is getting oneself up in the morning. Try to have a specific time your child needs to get up, and once that time is established, your child should have an alarm clock that starts their day. If your child doesn’t get up when the alarm goes off, be creative and come up with some responses that will teach them to do it—quickly.
8. There is a question as to whether to directly reward/pay children for doing their chores. Some families choose to use a token economy system in which the child receives a token, check, or star for every chore that is completed, and then the tokens are exchanged for money or special privileges. Many families find that this approach works. I honestly do not prefer the token system because it basically implies that the child is doing something extra or special that should be rewarded beyond just a verbal acknowledgment. I would generally prefer to see the child receive a set allowance that is essentially an acknowledgment that they are a contributing member of the family, and then some form of natural consequence for not completing their chores. It may be necessary to start with a reward system to get things started, but if you do, try to phase out the system as soon as possible. I do think that providing a list of things that children can do above and beyond their chores, such as washing and waxing dad’s car, is appropriate, along with a specific dollar amount to be earned.
9. One of the realities of developing, orchestrating, and teaching your child how to do chores properly involves looking for and providing the opportunities and scheduling. We could lump these pieces under the general term of management. Management is a reality of running a home or raising children. A vital role of management is oversight. I have spent the majority of my adult life traveling around the country and the world meeting with families. All of this travel involves more hotels and restaurants than I would care to recall. Staying in all of these hotels and eating at all of these restaurants makes the role of management incredibly relevant and obvious. When you observe people at the hotel desk who don’t know what they are doing or who get your reservations confused, or poorly prepared food that is late and cold at a restaurant, it is an issue with training, oversight, and management. Do not expect your children to function in their jobs without oversight and management; it isn’t going to happen. If most adults can’t function without it, don’t expect your children to. Ultimately, with proper oversight and management, your children will learn how to be responsible, how to pay attention to detail, and how to complete tasks well without supervision. But until they have been taught, don’t expect a miracle.
10. If you have a child who is mentally and physically capable of doing chores and you cannot find time in their day for these tasks, you should re-evaluate priorities. The lessons learned from doing chores, such as becoming responsible, learning to serve, being unselfish, independent, highly capably, and developing all of the aspects of a good work ethic, are vital to building a personal foundation for your child that will serve them well throughout their lives. The role of chores in the development of typical children is vital, however all of the benefits of chores are magnified for those with special needs. One of the greatest issues for those with developmental issues is dependency. The greater the issues the more dependent the individual. It is important to try to find appropriate chores commensurate with the abilities of the individual and taking the time to find the proper tools and offer the proper training is so that they can contribute and learn all of the associated lessons.

Many parents neglect to realize that one of our jobs as parents is to raise our children to be functional adults, responsible, competent members of society, and perhaps parents themselves, who will need all the tools they can get to help the next generation succeed. There are far too many big children out there who believe they are adults.

Potential is a refection of opportunity. Let’s provide our children with all of the opportunities we can to build their personal foundations.

 —Bob Doman

P.S. In the spirit of full disclosure, Arielle, the Big Helper, is my granddaughter, daughter of my son, Laird, and his lovely wife, Sadie. I have issued the challenge in her name. The videos were shot the week of her first birthday. She is a beautiful and, of course, smart little girl whose proud grandfather is going to have to exercise a great deal of self-restraint not to spoil.

Reprinted by permission of The NACD Foundation, Volume 32 No. 8, 2019 ©NACD

The post Chores: An Integral Part of Your Child’s Development & Education appeared first on NACD International | The National Association for Child Development.

From our tiniest children, who lack the awareness that they can initiate movement, language, or even play, to our teens and young adults who have not established an identity, a sense of worth, or self-respect and who feel entitled, often one of the most significant missing ingredients is ownership of chores.

Contributing, having chores, jobs, and responsibilities structured into the day is perhaps more vital to our creating a successful adult than is most everything else we try to cram into our children’s lives. School, homework, the teams, the music lessons, swim lessons, skiing lessons, art lessons, Scouts, etc.—all the things that so many parents hold in such high esteem and sacrifice funds, time, and energy to provide for their children often pale in importance to making time for simple chores. Parents often feel they are depriving their children of “opportunities” if they don’t provide a plethora of “stuff.” But does Johnny get up and make his bed? Does he assume responsibility for doing the dishes, cleaning, doing laundry, and taking care of siblings? Are your children doing the fundamental things that teach the lessons that produce successful children and adults?

Helping many thousands of children and following them often for decades, from those with severe disabilities to those who seem to have it all, the outcomes more often than not have to do with putting the entire package together. Our job as parents is to turn these gifts, our children, into happy, successful adults, not big children.

Two years olds can own chores, and teens should be assuming and owning significant responsibilities for the family. These things are not extras to fit in if there is time; these are some of the most foundational pieces that impact your children’s lives and futures.

Please take the time to read the articles and watch the videos. It is that important!

Reprinted by permission NACD Newsletter, August 2019 ©NACD

Chores and Responsibilities Articles and Videos

Articles

• Increase Chores and Responsibilities, Increase Expectations, Increase Independence, Raise the Bar- Improve Function! By Vidya Guhan
  https://www.nacd.org/increase-chores-and-responsibilities-increase-expectations-increase-independence-raise-the-bar-improve-function/

• Confidence Through Chores by Lyn Waldeck
  https://www.nacd.org/confidence-through-chores/

• NACD Instilling Independence An Introduction to Aidia Brennan by Bob Doman
  https://www.nacd.org/nacd-instilling-independence/

• Start Your Day By Making Your Bed by Bob Doman
  https://www.nacd.org/start-your-day-by-making-your-bed/

• Increase Chores and Responsibilities with Reverse Chaining (PDF)
  

• Chores: An Integral Part of Your Child’s Development & Education Bob’s Blog
  http://blog.nacd.org/2017/09/chores-integral-part-childs-development-education/

• Teaching Chores Better Than Teaching Algebra? Bob’s Blog
  http://blog.nacd.org/2015/11/teaching-chores-better-than-teaching-algebra/

Videos

Highly Capable/Chores Bob Doman

Should My Child Do Chores? Bob Doman

Toddlers Doing Chores Bob Doman

When Should My Child Start Doing Chores? Staci Sargent

What is a Reasonable Amount of Chores for My Child? Staci Sargent

Reprinted by permission NACD Newsletter, August 2019 ©NACD

The post Independence, Initiation, Responsibility, Self-Respect, Self-Awareness, Empowerment, Service: Chores appeared first on NACD International | The National Association for Child Development.

Meet Leia Pope, daughter of Senghor and Claribel Pope and sister to Elaina and Camila.

This past Saturday eleven-year-old Leia, one of our NACD homeschool kids from Georgia, probably did something none of your kids did—she flew. While most of her peers around the country had their noses stuck in their phones and iPads, playing video games, Leia did something much better. She flew. Flew, not as in took a trip on Delta; not as in went on a ride at an amusement part; but flew, as in piloted a plane. Leia took off by herself, flew around Atlanta for an hour, and then landed all by herself! How very cool is that? We are all super proud of her and inspired as well.

I asked her father why he decided to let Leia take flying lessons and he said, “We wanted our daughter to have opportunities to spread her wings and fulfill her high potential. Because of her high processing ability, we knew that she could reach any goal she set for herself. It just so happened that the goal was flying at 11 years old. I guess you could say that she took us literally. We couldn’t be more proud of her.”

So why would an eleven year old want to learn how to fly? Leia’s answer: “I like flying because it makes me feel free. I’ve always been interested in flying and how planes glide through the sky so gracefully. I was also inspired by the bravery of Amelia Earhart. She stayed strong despite all the challenges she faced.”

Lest one were to think that Leia is a one trick pony, this lovely brilliant young lady is academically about two grade levels above her peers, plays the violin beautifully, is a competitive swimmer, horseback rides, and is her mom’s right-hand-man. Leia assumes responsibility for hours of chores per day, and if she keeps it up, her mom is going to need a new hobby.

Leia has been on program and NACD homeschool since she was four. Leia can provide a bit of a vision as to what could be, what can be, and what should be for more and more children. Leia is a reflection of her great will and personality and the vision and dedication of her parents. She is also a reflection of what I mean by the need to work with the “whole” child and the need to rethink and redefine the definition of education. We need to assist in the development of the whole person, not just teach “stuff.”

Leia is the middle sister. Her big sister, Elaina, was the first on an NACD program, and we are all super proud of how hard she has worked and how well she has done. Elaina is a lovely, happy teenager who, in spite of having had a rough start in school, is now doing great with program and homeschool and has a bright future.

Third but not least is five-year-old Camila. The world had better watch out for this charming cutie. At five she is solidifying her digit spans of 8 and doing well with multiplication and division, a real rising star.

All three girls own and assume the responsibility for their chores, and because they cooperate and are responsible, and because their education is targeted, they all have time in their day to explore and develop their interests and passions.

Helping our children develop and grow into happy, successful, and fulfilled adults is a wonderful and exciting challenge for every parent. It can be done.

I suspect Leia is going to have her pilot’s license before her peers are getting their driver’s licenses. You’ve got to love it!

Congratulations Team Pope!

NACD Newsletter, September 2018 ©NACD

The post What Were Your Kids Doing Last Saturday? appeared first on NACD International | The National Association for Child Development.

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The commencement speech by Admiral William H. McRaven is outstanding, and I believe it has very special significant for parents who are really trying to take charge of their own lives and assume the responsibility for their children’s lives and futures as well.

For all of our NACD families, I would request that you watch this video every month and get a new dose of the vision.

I would hope that for our NACD families the message, “If you want to change the world, start each day with a task completed and find someone to help you through life,” has some special meaning. As all of our families know, there are many specific tasks to be completed each day, and establishing the habit of starting your day with simply making your bed starts a pattern that you will hopefully then continue throughout your day. We call this a habit, a good habit of accomplishment, as opposed to the habit of ignoring things that you really know you should do. This really can establish a pattern for our days and our lives. But Admiral McRaven’s message is more than what you can do for you or even your children; it’s about changing the world.

If anyone had asked me what my goal was over the past 50 years, it was to change the world. The Admiral commented that the average person meets 10,000 people in their lives. Well, I’ve worked with way more than 30,000 families and helped them to various degrees help their children. My hope has been that every family who succeeds with their child is going to influence many other families through their example. We can’t change lives without changing the perspective of what can be. You have to start with the vision. I have hope that our families see NACD as the entity to help them with their children’s lives, helping to build the foundation that will change and improve their lives. My faith in changing the world lies in the lives of the children who we have helped, who in turn have helped open the eyes of other parents as to what can be. The vision of what can be is the power of hope.

Families assuming the responsibility for their children’s futures are fighting the tide of traditional perceptions, expectations, and procedures. It’s not easy maintaining the focus, bucking the system, and doing the day-to-day work to achieve the outcomes that we want. But each family assuming this responsibility and changing their child and helping them realize a better outcome and life is causing a little tremor. If we produce enough tremors, we can produce an earthquake of optimism, create a tsunami, and turn the tide. We can change the world. I have seen it; bit-by-bit we are changing perceptions of what can be and are seeing expectations rise and parents assuming more control, and even professionals changing their perceptions of what can be.

As you parents dedicate yourselves to helping your children, understand that you are not just doing what you can to help your child, you are producing tremors that are ultimately going to change many lives.

I would encourage you to listen to the Admiral’s ten lessons and change your lives, your children’s lives and help change the world.

“If you want to change the world, start off by making your bed.”

Reprinted by permission of The NACD Foundation, Volume 31 No. 6, 2018 ©NACD

The post Start Your Day By Making Your Bed appeared first on NACD International | The National Association for Child Development.