The University of Minnesota released a study this week that found that for adolescent girls, sharing a family meal at least five times a week during the middle school years yielded benefits that lasted through their teen years.  These girls were less likely to drink, smoke or use marijuana.

A connection with caring adults is the most protective factor for kids.  It's more important than income, family status or religion. Family meals are a way to build that connection. It's the way that people have connected for thousands and thousands of years.  

What do we generally do around the dining room table?  We share the news of the day, we tell stories about our lives.  We connect.  It’s a chance for parents to let their kids know they care about their lives.  It’s a chance to listen.  Kids want to be connected – it’s one of the main driving forces in their lives.  If we can’t signal them that we want that connection, then they will seek it elsewhere.  When our kids were teens, we held that family meal time was important. Even when sports and activities made for crazy schedules we always made time for family meals during the week.  Now that our kids are adults, they still like to drop over for a family meal.  Besides a free meal, it’s our time to connect.

TVs that are on during the family meal will short circuit your connection to your kids.  All eyes will be on the screen.  Your chance for any meaningful exchange or your chance to listen to your kids’ talk about their day will be lost.  So keep family meal time, screen free time.

One interesting fact of this study was that this protective factor did not hold true for boys.  Family meal time did not predict their chemical use.  That doesn’t mean you should let go of your boys.  Boys have the same need as girls to connect, but, perhaps, in addition to family meals.

How do you maintain family meal time?

Dr. Dave

A child sees a puddle on the ground from a recent rain.  How many words that child can use to tell you about what she sees depends on how rich her language environment has been to that point.  Will she tell you about the bug she sees trying to swim across that puddle or the clouds she sees reflected in it?  Will she tell you about how the water feels or what it sounds like when she walks in it?  Will she make up a story?  If she is from a language rich environment, she may have thousands of words to choose from – words that help her be creative in her thoughts and speech.

Summertime is a perfect time to immerse your child in a language rich environment.  Children need to not only listen to, but to speak words to be able to add them to their own treasure trove of vocabulary.   Using lots of words with young children, reading to them, telling stories, and just explaining what’s happening in their world gives kids lots of exposure to words.   Give older kids lots of experiences and talk about them.  Encourage reading, putting on plays, storytelling.  Any activity they do is a potential vocabulary builder.  By age three you can ask your kids how they feel about something and they’ll have something to say!   Give kids the words to identify how they feel, “I know you feel angry.” will help them say it for themselves.

Children have creative, active minds – help them grow with a richness of words. 

 
How do you help your child learn new words?

Dr. Dave

We all know young kids like to move – all the time, anywhere.  Anybody who has tried to strap a toddler into their car seat knows the howl of rage and super-human muscle strength that toddler will expend to get out of that car seat.  They don’t want to sit still!  Pre-schoolers and early elementary kids are happiest when they are doing large muscle activities – running, climbing, jumping, spinning.  They love to play.

 A new study published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association, found that even nine and eleven year olds move for at least an hour a day (the starting recommended guideline), with the average kid moving around for three hours. 

So what happens when these kids (even the most active ones) reached the teen years?  Their activity level drops off tremendously, down to where only 31% of teens were moving at least one hour a day during the week and only 17% moved around that much on the weekend.

The body that was built and craved activity during toddlerhood is the same body that is glued to a chair in front of a screen in the teen years.  Opportunities for sports and gym time at school also contribute.  The problem is we know what awaits the non-exercising kids when they reach adulthood – a host of physical and even emotional problems – obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes, heart attacks.  We see it starting now where doctors are recommending starting kids as young as eight on drugs for high cholesterol.  This generation might be the first that has a lower life expectancy than their parents.  If you ever needed a reason to say No to inactivity and bring balance to your kids’ lives, this is it.  Give your kids a healthy future, get them active.  Any ideas?

Dr. Dave

We live such busy lives that time to connect with our kids are at a premium.  Summer days bring many fun opportunities for family time – vacations, reunions, days at the lake, park or beach, or maybe just a walk or bike or trip around the city.    These are great fun and we should get in as much as we can during our warm summer months.

But I was reminded this past weekend of another opportunity to share family time – job time.  We were clearing and washing the dishes from our first family gathering with our new daughter-in-law from Peru when I realized that even more sharing was going on than in the previous hour.   We were working together and I realized we were sharing the every day stuff of life.  

We can do this with our kids too.  Modern conveniences, as much as we all love them, can take away opportunities to just work together.   Washing dishes is such a one-person, one-machine job now.   I’m not advocating throwing out your dishwasher, but try to find jobs that you can do together.  Maybe it is washing and drying the dishes by hand, folding clothes, washing a few windows or the car, making a meal together, weeding, or dusting.  There are lots of tasks that need to be done to keep a home in shape.  Include your kids, do the work with them, slow down and chat.  You can make any job more fun.  Our More, Easy, Fast and Fun culture has done a great job of telling us that work is not enjoyable and should be minimized as much as possible. But we miss a great opportunity if the traditional fun time is the only time we connect with our kids.   What jobs can you do with your kids? 

Dr. Dave

There’s a generational divide and we all know it.  80% of adults in a recent poll reported that they believed that kids need different skills to achieve success today than just twenty years ago.  Times are a’ changing and they are changing fast.  I’ve taken to reading the Business section first because that’s where I get the latest technology news – the news that changes how we live our lives.

And it is media technology that is at the core of this change.  How we communicate, when, where, how fast, and content.  We can send pictures to a loved one over the phone every day when they are away from home.  We text, blog, twitter, wiki, email…connect…connect…connect…it’s a new generation. 

If kids need 21st century skills, then parents need 21st century parenting knowledge and techniques.  Kids are not born knowing how to handle all this media technology.  They quickly learn how to use it and use it almost to the point of addiction.  But, parents have the responsibility to teach, guide, and instill the values, skills, and character traits their children will need to traverse the 21st century divide and find success and happiness.  The character traits kids need, thank goodness, are the same as they’ve always been: self-discipline, ability to delay gratification, ability to help another person, inter-personal skills, manners, etc.  Kids need the language and communication skills to interact with another person.    They need to learn how to learn, and thus feel good about the skills they are gaining.   Say Yes to No helps parents gain the strategies they need to parent in the 21st century.   What are the 21st century skills you think kids need?

Dr. Dave

Fort Wayne Indiana Community Schools and the Michigan school principals are getting ready to launch Say Yes to No.  People are fired up about bringing the No message to their communities and schools.  The Michigan principals said loud and clear that what they like the most about Say Yes to No is that it’s not about blaming parents or teachers.  They know that parents are committed to their kids’ welfare.

What Say Yes to No does is help parents and teachers understand more clearly that it’s the culture of More, Easy, Fast and Fun that’s behind the growing epidemic of Discipline Deficit Disorder.  They too recognize that the only way to counter-act such a powerful force is for parents and teachers to join together in conversations, to support each other to use the parenting strategies of No.  That’s why the school principals of Michigan and the community leaders and PTAs of Fort Wayne Indiana are excited to ignite Say Yes to No conversations across their state and schools.

Do you have a Say Yes to No story?  Share it.

Dr. Dave

Parents are worried about advertising aimed at their children and they should be.  From toy giants Disney and Fisher Price marketing digital cameras for toddlers to teens receiving ad messages on their cell phones.   Marketing opportunities are everywhere kids are – at home, in the community, or at school - in video games, social networking sites, the on-line virtual worlds of Neopets and Webkinz, etc., music, and the old stand-by – television.  It’s a multi billion dollar industry and here’s the reason why: money.

There’s money to be made from kids, and companies are paying attention.  The buying power of just the ‘tween age group is estimated at $260 billion a year.  Yes, that’s billion.  This group of kids is twenty million strong in the U.S. and spends about $28.4 billion of their own cash.  Add in what their parents spend on them and it reaches the $260 billion mark.

So it seems that parents are also dancing to the tune that the marketers play to kids.  This is why Say Yes to No has hit such a cord among parents.  Parents know that something is out of balance.  What’s missing in these marketing messages of More, Easy, Fast and Fun are the core character traits that they know kids need to be successful.  How are you using the No strategies with your child?

Dr. Dave

Picnics, cookouts, fireworks… July 4^th is a traditional time for outdoor events and family gatherings.  Summertime just doesn’t get any better.  July 4 is also almost mid-summer and a good time to re-assess how your MediaWise® summer is going.  Think about how much time your kids are spending in front of screens versus time spent outdoors, or non-screen indoor activities.

It’s time to pry your kid away from their video games, TVs, and hand-held screens.  Ask your kids if they’d rather play outside or play a video game.  If they choose video games, then it’s time to re-introduce them to the great outdoors.  Check your paper for local park and nature activities.  Or let your kids plan their own nature hunt in your own backyard…or build a mini-golf course…or stage their own Olympic events.  Getting kids active often just means letting them activate their own creativity.  Check our MediaWise Network resources if you are looking for more ideas.

One way to combine screens and outdoors is to let your kids film their own short movie (if you have or can borrow a camera) - only it has to be done outdoors. 

In short, have a great July 4^th holiday.  Enjoy these summer days, they will slip by ever so fast.  There’s never a better time for kids to be outside and families to enjoy summer activities together.  What are your kids doing for outdoor fun this summer?

Dr. Dave