Are you constantly telling your kids to sit still, sit down, stop squirming? I am. But I’m thinking maybe I should stop. According to a recent article in the New York Times, sitting still is pretty bad for your health. Even if you exercise regularly, sitting for long periods of time turns out to put you at risk for all kinds of nasty health problems. Standing, moving around, and fidgeting seem to be the way to go. In the picking-your-battles department, letting this stuff go is looking like a no-brainer.

Try this out on your resident perfectionist if they weren’t persuaded by the Michael Jordan video about failure.

In a post entitled, Genius is misunderstood as a bolt of lightning, Seth Godin argues that:

“Genius is actually the eventual public recognition of dozens (or hundreds) of failed attempts at solving a problem. Sometimes we fail in public, often we fail in private, but people who are doing creative work are constantly failing.”

This piece from the New York Times’ Motherlode is about the funniest thing I’ve read since becoming a parent. Noting a recent addition to the blogosphere that collects the crazy things you find yourself saying as a parent, Motherlode’s Lisa Belkin invited readers to add their own stories to the comments. He are some of my favorites:

“Your sister is not a chew toy.”

“You are so immature.” (to a 4-year-old)

“Do not use cheese to write on the walls.”

I recently found myself telling my daughter to “Please sit down and take off your snout.” (She was dressed up as a dog and it was dinner time.)

I highly recommend checking out both Mommylingo and Lisa’s post at Motherlode if you need a good laugh!

According to the Orchid Hypothesis, popularized by David Dobbs in The Atlantic last year, a genetic predisposition to anxiety, depression, hyperactivity and behavioral problems may be better understood as a heightened sensitivity to both positive and negative environmental influences. Dobbs dubbed these hyper-sensitive children, orchid children who “wilt if ignored or maltreated but bloom spectacularly with greenhouse care.”

Last week, I spoke with Jennifer Kolari, founder of Connected Parenting, to find out how parents can create a positive environment for their orchid children.

Q: Do you ever encounter “orchid children” in your practice?

A: I would say that most of the children we see at Connected Parenting are orchid children who are incredibly sensitive to their environments, both physical and emotional.

One thing I’ve really noticed is that a lot of families have a nurturing stable home life and their children are still having trouble emotionally. Some kids are so sensitive that other people’s moods and energy levels can affect them. They often have enough trouble regulating their own emotions and they overreact to issues, tone of voice, even tastes or fabrics.

Q: What do you see as creating problems for these kids?

A: Because incredibly sensitive children can be frustrating and because they have a tendency to overreact, the messages they often get back from their parents are things like “you’re OK,” “it’s fine,” “Why are you acting this way?” The message is off – it doesn’t match what they are experiencing which can increase their emotional confusion and ability to organize what’s happening to them internally.

Q: So what can parents do to give their orchid children the positive environment that can be so beneficial to them?

A: One thing that’s really important is neutrality. Hyper-sensitive kids have a hard time dealing with other people’s emotions so you have to stay neutral when you are trying to parent them. You also need to make sure that you are setting loving limits and giving them messages of competence that they can and will get through whatever they are experiencing.

But the most important thing parents can do is to build strong bonds with their child using the CALM method I describe in my book. Using this method, which is really a therapy technique, parents “mirror” their child, matching their child’s affect and sending back the same message their child is sending them. Mirroring bypasses language and goes right into the part of the brain that regulates emotion and mood control and that’s the same part of the brain that is in control of bonding. When you mirror properly, you release reward chemicals, including oxytocin, in your child’s brain. Consistent mirroring helps with resilience and emotional organization and brings out the best in your child.

You can find out more about the CALM method and mirroring by listening to my podcast (courtesy of Penguin Group USA), or you could read my book

Q: What advice would you give parents of older children or teenagers?

A: It’s never too late. These techniques work even for adults. The brain remains neuroplastic so it’s never too late.

Other posts about orchid children:

New Theory Suggests that Overly Sensitive Children Have Over-sized Potential,
More on Orchid and Dandelion Children,
Following the Orchid and Dandelion Discussion,
New Research Supports Orchid Hypothesis

I happened on a recent TED talk by Aimee Mullins this week. Aimee was a paralympic record-breaker at the 1996 games and she’s an amazing speaker. Her talk focussed on seeing adversity as opportunity. Since adversity of some kind or another is inevitable, it’s not whether you face adversity but how you face it:

“Perhaps if we see adversity as natural, consistent and useful, we are less burdened by the presence of it.”

Aimee’s talk also highlights the importance of giving children a message of competence, attributing her own remarkable achievements to a comment one of her doctors made to her when she was five years old. As Aimee struggled with physical therapy she hated, her doctor told her that she was such a strong little girl, he thought she might eventually break one of the bands she was using for the therapy.

Check out the video if you’re in need of a little inspiration:

Today’s Globe & Mail reports on a new study published in the journal Child Development that shows that children who are highly reactive to stress do worse than their peers at school if they come from a home where there’s lots of stress but do better than their peers at school, both academically and socially, when they have a stable and nurturing home.

This finding supports the Orchid Hypothesis (described at length by David Dobbs in The Atlantic late last year) which speculates that certain genes that have been tied to vulnerability to anxiety, depression, hyperactivity and behavioral problems may in fact simply make their carriers more sensitive to both positive and negative environmental influences. Under this hypothesis, people who are hyper-sensitive to their environment often respond so well to positive interventions that they surpass their less sensitive peers.

Click here to read the Child Development paper discussed in the Globe and check out our other posts about Orchid and Dandelion Children:

New Theory Suggests that Overly Sensitive Children Have Over-sized Potential,
More on Orchid and Dandelion Children,
Following the Orchid and Dandelion Discussion

If you missed it last night, be sure to check out the CBC documentary, Hyper Parents and Coddled Kids. It’s on again tonight at 10pm EST or you can watch it online.

Keep an eye on the Connected Parenting blog for Jennifer Kolari’s upcoming post on this very issue (hint: kids need to experience some bumps along the way in order to develop the neurological hardware to deal with adversity).

Great Teachers. A great teacher can make all the difference in your child’s life. I know. My kids have had the incredibly good fortune of having some really terrific teachers. According to an article in The Atlantic, Teach for America has been gathering data for more than 10 years and has started to pinpoint some of the key attributes of a great teacher and to use that information to improve the selection and training of its teachers.

Expertise and Perseverance. Penelope Trunk has a post up this week discussing the idea that expertise results from almost daily hard work over a period of at least ten years and not as a result of innate talent. These are the same ideas behind Malcom Gladwell’s theory of Outliers. To me, this discussion raises all kinds of questions about what might motivate someone to spend so much focussed time on a pursuit — and to persevere when they encounter failure. At least part of the answer was offered by Jennifer Kolari last week in her post about helping children succeed.

It Made My Day. I also spent way too much time this week reading this website, which collects little snapshots of things that made someone’s day (h/t to Gretchen Rubin of the Happiness Project). Love this one:

My 3 year old was playing with her LeapPad and in a cheerful voice it instructed, “Push the green GO circle and have fun.” She replied quite seriously, “Don’t tell me what to do.” IMMD

What have you been reading?

You may recall that back in October I recommended that anyone looking for a great nursery/kindergarten check out the e.p.i.c. School open house. As I said at the time, we’ve had an amazing experience at the school. This Thursday, January 28, from 1-3:30 p.m., prospective parents can see the school in action.

After you’ve tucked the kiddies into bed, head back to e.p.i.c. at 7:00 p.m. to see Jennifer Kolari speak at e.p.i.c.’s Parent Education Night, which is open to the public. Tickets can be purchased at the door for $10. Don’t miss out!

e.p.i.c. is at 111 Manor Rd. E. at the corner of Manor and Redpath. Contact the school at info@epicschool.com or call 416-489-0132.

Check out Thefuntheory.com, a site that aims to prove that “fun is the easiest way to change people’s behavior for the better.” Here’s my favorite one:

Obviously, this works well with kids too. According to a New York Times article about the Tools of the Mind program, which is meant to promote self-regulation:

“[C]hildren acting out a dramatic scene can control their impulses much better than they can in nonplay situations. In one experiment, 4-year-old children were first asked to stand still for as long as they could. They typically did not make it past a minute. But when the kids played a make-believe game in which they were guards at a factory, they were able to stand at attention for more than four minutes.”

Remember how much more willing you were to eat your veggies when they were laid out in the shape of a funny face? Dropping your sister off at school is so much more exciting when you pretend you are going on a road trip. And, of course, clean-up time always goes more smoothly when you turn it into a race to see who can do their assigned task fastest.

Got any suggestions to make routine or unpleasant tasks go more smoothly by adding a bit of fun?

As we rush around in our busy lives, it’s important to remember to play. If you need inspiration, check out this TED Talk about the importance of play by Stuart Brown of the National Institute for Play (NIFP):

According to Brown, “nothing lights up the brain like play,” and “play has a biological place just like sleep and dream do.”

According to the NIFP, there are 7 patterns of play:

• Attunement Play
• Body Play and Movement
• Object Play
• Social Play
• Imaginative and Pretend Play
• Storytelling-Narrative Play
• Transformative-Integrative and Creative Play

Each type of play has an important function, but most relevant to the Connected Parenting model is attunement play, which seems to roughly correlate to the “baby play” or “connected play” discussed in the Connected Parenting book. This is what the NIFP has to say about attunement play:

“When an infant makes eye contact with her mother, each experiences a spontaneous surge of emotion (joy). The baby responds with a radiant smile, the mother with her own smile and rhythmic vocalizations (baby talk).  This is the grounding base of the state-of-play. It is known, through EEG and other imaging technologies, that the right cerebral cortex, which organizes emotional control is “attuned” in both infant and mother.”

As Jennifer Kolari explains in Connected Parenting, attunement/connected play continues to be important even when your child is no longer a baby. Parents can engage in connected play with older children by cuddling, looking at old baby pictures together and looking into eachother’s eyes. Check out this post to learn more about connected play.

Do you engage in attunement/connected play with your child? What is your favourite connected play activity?

Happy New Year everyone! To start things off on the right foot as we get back to work and school, here are the winners of the 2009 International Pun Contest: (more…)

Have a perfectionist (or several) living in your home? Maybe they’ll get the message about the importance of mistakes and failure if they hear it from Michael Jordan:

H/T to Jonathan Fields.

David Dobbs’ article in the Atlantic about orchid children and dandelion children has sparked a huge amount of interest. We summarized the article and later followed up with a link to an interview with Dobbs on WNYC radio. We also mentioned that the story was picked up by Lisa Belkin at Motherlode.

But there’s been lots more coverage (see, for example, this or this) and lots of discussion of the Orchid Hypothesis. You can read a terrific debate between Dobbs and David Shenk (also of the Atlantic) about the suitability of the orchid/dandelion analogy. The debate focusses on the dichotomy created by the orchid/dandelion imagery, which Dobbs explains is really more of a continuum, as are most such descriptors. In fact, it’s more like there are orchid genes and dandelion genes and each person will generally have some amount of orchid in them but also some amount of dandelion:

“Every metaphor has its limits, and one of the limits of the orchid versus dandelions metaphor is that it implies a binary, A or B. division of personality types determined by behavioral gene variants: you’re either orchid or dandelion. That’s not quite accurate, for there are several genes in question here, and because we each get a mix of variants among them, it would be a rare person that was all orchid, so to speak, or all dandelion…

For argument’s sake, let’s say there are 10. In all ten, the ‘dandelion’ form is the most common, with the orchid forms accounting for about 20 to 35 percent. So for any given one of these genes, you’re more likely to have the dandelion variant than the orchid. However, odds being what they are, you are also likely to have the orchid form in at least some of these genes. And since the overall effects on temperamental plasticity are presumed to be multigenic, more orchid genes you have, the more temperamentally malleable and mercurial you will be. In addition, the particular combination of genes in which you have the orchid form will color the nature of your malleability…

So it’s not that a person is either plastic or not. The malleability runs along a spectrum, and is a matter of hue as well as intensity. And the consequences of that malleability, of course, depend heavily on experience, context, etc. But the more malleable folks are shaped more dramatically by their experience and react more dramatically, in temperament and behavior, than the less malleable.”

Dobbs also has a post on his blog (Neuron Culture) about whether orchid children are the same as gifted children. He explains that the theory makes no comment on intellect but instead focusses on temperament. The More Child’s @switchedonmom (who first drew my attention to the orchid article), posted a comment asking how the orchid hypothesis relates to Dabrowski’s Theory of Overexcitabilities. According to @switchedonmom, Dobbs wrote her back,  saying:

“[T]hanks for drawing this to my attn. I want to return to the temperament/intelligence/giftedness issue, and this will help. I hope to get to it in the next week or two and post on it.”

So stay tuned for more on how orchid characteristics correlate with giftedness.

Finally, if you find this as interesting as I do, you might be happy to learn that Dobbs has a deal to write a book on the subject.

* You may also be interested in this post: New Research Supports Orchid Hypothesis.

As we noted earlier this year, the U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled that parents who haven’t been able to get special education services through their public school may be able to get reimbursement from the school district for private school tuition. This was a landmark decision because in the past, parents could only get reimbursement for private special education if they first tried public services and found them to be inadequate.

Here comes the lawyer-y part: even though the Supreme Court’s decision said that they were eligible to apply for reimbursement, the parents who brought the Supreme Court case still had to return to the trial court to argue that their particular circumstances warranted reimbursement. Recently, the trial court ruled that the school district was not required to reimburse the costs of the student’s private education because it found that he had been put into the private institution to address drug and behavioural issues, and not because of learning problems caused by his disability (ADHD). If you’re even more lawyer-y than that, read the court’s full opinion here.

Amid a flurry of holiday preparations, many parents are searching for the perfect gift for their child’s teacher. It can be a daunting task to figure out what your child’s teacher would like.

If you’re at a loss, check out Christmas Gifts for Teachers (h/t to Motherlode), a website with plenty of advice and ideas for teacher gifts. The best part, as far as I’m concerned, is their poll of teachers and parents, which reveals which gifts teachers would most like to receive (gift cards, books/music, classroom supplies) and which ones they really hope they don’t get (mugs, ornaments/decorative items, candles/lotion).

For another approach, check out The Skinny Scoop to find out what other people are saying about teacher gifts or to ask other moms for advice specific to your situation or locale.

Whatever the gift, don’t forget to write a note thanking your child’s teacher, including specifics about the things you’ve really appreciated.

The Canadian Association of Social Workers (CASW) chose to commemorate Human Rights Day 2009 last Thursday (Dec. 10) by celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

To mark the occasion, CASW and the Canadian Coalition for the Rights of Children urged the Canadian government to:

1. establish a national Children’s Commissioner to provide a voice for children in the Canadian government,
2. repeal Section 43 of the Criminal Code (which allows parents and teachers to use force to correct a child as long as the force is “reasonable under the circumstances,” the “spanking law”), and
3. implement a National Poverty Reduction strategy with specific annual targets to reduce child poverty.

A couple of weeks ago, we noted an article in The Atlantic that reported on a new theory of behavioral genetics. According to the theory, some children are like dandelions, able to thrive anywhere. Others are like orchids, hypersensitive to the environments in which they are raised – both good and bad.

I found a great interview with David Dobbs, the author of the Atlantic article, thanks to a comment on Motherlode (where Lisa Belkin wrote about the dandelion/orchid theory earlier this week).  Listen to the whole interview to hear about the up side of sensitive kids straight from the horse’s mouth.

Other posts about the Orchid Hypothesis:

Following the Orchid and Dandelion Discussion,
New Theory Suggests that Overly Sensitive Children Have Over-sized Potential
New Research Supports Orchid Hypothesis

A friend of mine turned me on to a terrific new site for moms called The Skinny Scoop which allows you to ask questions (get the “skinny”) or answer questions (give the “scoop”) on any subject. Lots of fun and super helpful when you want to poll other moms about things like the going rate for the tooth fairy, whether you really need a diaper bag, or how much you should tip when you order takeout from a restaurant. It’s also fun to be able to share your hard-earned wisdom – what else can you do with all your toddler birthday party ideas once your kids are in elementary school?

Check out this interview with Gabor Maté in the Toronto Star. Maté explains how parental connection produces physical changes in a child’s brain:

“The physiology of the child is shaped by the emotional condition of parents, by the environment in which the child grows up. The brain is hungry for dopamine and endorphins to feel good… Love makes us high. A child looks into the eyes of a nurturing parent and experiences a surge of endorphins.” (Emphasis added.)

Maté will be speaking on Navigating Stress: Caring for Oneself While Serving Others at a sold-out workshop at the Trauma and Resiliency Centre in Toronto this Monday, Nov. 30.

An article in the December issue of the Atlantic reports on a new theory that genes that predispose people to anxiety, depression, and behavioural problems, also seem to endow people with enormous potential. According to this “orchid hypothesis”:

“[B]ad genes can create dysfunction in unfavorable contexts—but they can also enhance function in favorable contexts. The genetic sensitivities to negative experience … are just the downside of a bigger phenomenon: a heightened genetic sensitivity to all experience.”

According to the theory, most children are “dandelions” who will thrive just about anywhere; but some children are “orchids” who will ”wilt if ignored or maltreated but bloom spectacularly with greenhouse care.”

A growing body of research supports this proposition, showing that “orchid” children actually surpass their “dandelion” counterparts when exposed to positive interventions.  For example, one study showed that children with a genetic predisposition to ADHD improved their behaviour significantly more in response to positive intervention than did their peers without the predisposition.

The orchid hypothesis provides a powerful explanation for an evolutionary puzzle:

“If variants of certain genes create mainly dysfunction and trouble, how have they survived natural selection? … [A]bout a quarter of all human beings carry the best-documented gene variant for depression, while more than a fifth carry the variant that … is associated with externalizing, antisocial, and violent behaviors, as well as ADHD, anxiety, and depression.”

According to the orchid hypothesis, “orchid” children perform an invaluable evolutionary function:

“The many dandelions in a population provide an underlying stability. The less-numerous orchids, meanwhile, may falter in some environments but can excel in those that suit them. … Together, the steady dandelions and the mercurial orchids offer an adaptive flexibility that neither can provide alone. Together, they open a path to otherwise unreachable individual and collective achievements.”

Orchids raised in the right environment accelerate evolutionary progress and adaptation.

The takeaway? Parenting is crucial.

“With a bad environment and poor parenting, orchid children can end up depressed, drug-addicted, or in jail — but with the right environment and good parenting, they can grow up to be society’s most creative, successful, and happy people.”

H/T to @switchedonmom.

Other posts about the Orchid Hypothesis:

Following the Orchid and Dandelion Discussion,
More on Orchid and Dandelion Children,
New Research Supports Orchid Hypothesis

Check out Marc Kielburger, co-founder of Free the Children, discussing child labor on the Colbert Report a couple of days ago. Scroll forward to 5:20 to see his segment.

H/T to @ourkidsnet.

For related posts, check out We Day Toronto is Coming! and Programs Empower Kids to Help.

A new iPhone app, designed by Harvard grad student Matt Killingsworth, is designed to help you find out what makes you happy. Track Your Happiness uses e-mail or text message notifications to ask you how you are feeling and what you are doing several times a day. You decide how often you want to be cued (between 3 and 5 times a day).

After enough data is collected (50 surveys), you receive a Happiness Report that tells you “how your happiness varies depending on what you are doing, who you are with, where you are, what time of day it is, and a variety of other factors.” Killingsworth, who works with Daniel Gilbert of the Hedonic Psychology Lab, designed the app as part of a doctoral research project to collect real-time data on what factors makes people happy.

Want to try it out? Click here. Could also be used by your favourite teenager . . .

Remember the classic Tom Lehrer song about the elements?

Well, there’s a new game in town:

The budding scientists at my house are big fans.

P.S. They also like the other songs on the album, Here Comes Science, by They Might be Giants.

Here’s the second instalment in an unintentional series on Grey’s Anatomy

Click here and scroll about six minutes in to see Isaac, a lab tech-turned-patient at Seattle Grace, as he assures McDreamy that he has survived war, the loss of his family, and the loss of his country, and that he will survive the loss of his legs if Derek is forced to cut his spinal cord to remove a tumour.

If you’re a New York parent enduring the gruelling independent school admissions process, check out the Parents League. My inside source says they are on the ball and even have information about available spaces (from pre-k through grade 12) after the regular admissions process is over. Not surprising since, according to their website:

“[A] team of 10 School Advisors . . . [whose] backgrounds range from former admissions officers to board members and former teachers . . . make regular visits and have regular contact with [their] affiliated schools, which enables them to stay informed and up to date.”

In addition to frequent workshops, League advisors are available for individual consultations and will answer questions by phone as well.

The League is a not-for-profit association of parents and independent schools. To become a member, click here.

Check this out for some Halloween fun

Here’s mine:

H/T to Carolyne Cybulski at the e.p.i.c. School.

A recent essay by “Neanderdad” on Lisa Belkin’s Motherlode explores what happens when a child favours one parent over the other. In Neanderdad’s case, his daughter suddenly insisted that Mommy do bedtime duty, even though it was the household practice to alternate nights and it wasn’t Mommy’s turn. Neanderdad describes his hurt feelings at this inexplicable turn of events and his uncertainty about what to do. While most parents have faced this problem at one time or another, it can be tricky to deal with.

Jennifer Kolari directly addresses the problem in Chapter 13 of the Connected Parenting book. She recommends that parents use her mirroring technique to avoid being defensive and escalating the situation. Kolari advises parents in Neanderdad’s position to say:

“I know you love your mommy. I understand why you want your mommy. Of course you want her: she’s wonderful.”

Kolari explains that this kind of statement “makes you an ally rather than an opponent, and more often than not, at that point the child will simply stop asking for Mommy.”

In Neanderdad’s case, he and his wife decide not to make a big deal about their daughter’s strongly stated preference and to switch nights. When Neanderdad gets ready to leave his daughter’s bedroom, she resists, begging him to stay after all. Because he doesn’t become defensive, the situation doesn’t escalate. In his Neanderdad-ish way, he shows his daughter that he understands that she loves her mommy and lets her know that he won’t get between them.

Gretchen Rubin at the Happiness Project blog has a great post about fun that has interesting implications for planning your family’s leisure time.

Gretchen divides fun into three types: challenging, accommodating, and relaxing.  Challenging fun requires you to put in a fair amount of effort to learn something new or work towards a long-term goal, such as learning to play golf. Accommodating fun, involves doing an activity with other people that takes account of what the others will enjoy, such as taking your kids to the zoo. Finally, relaxing fun involves little effort or planning, such as watching TV.

Gretchen explains that challenging and accommodating fun provide the most benefits but also require the most effort:

“Challenging fun and accommodating fun, over the long term, bring more happiness, because they’re sources of those elements that make people happiest: strong personal bonds, mastery, an atmosphere of growth. Relaxing fun tends to be passive—by design.”

But (and there is a but) there’s a kicker: ”while we get more out of challenging fun and accommodating fun, we also must put more into it.”

Being cognizant of these differences can help you be more mindful of the activities you and your kids choose to do, both individually, and as a family. To sneak in more challenging and accommodating fun, Gretchen recommends keeping an eye open for activities that involve:

 learning to do something new
 visiting new places (even if it’s just a new store)
 getting together with other people, whether with friends or strangers

Hopefully, you’ll be getting a nice balance of different kinds of fun.  If you find that all or most of the fun in your house is of the relaxing variety, you may want to try to mix it up a bit – even if it’s just in small ways.

With the crowded open house season upon us, I wanted to suggest that you take the opportunity to visit the e.p.i.c. School if you have a child going into Pre-K, JK or SK next year. My son has attended e.p.i.c. for the past two years and I can’t say enough great things about the school. The teachers and principal are warm and nurturing, as well as incredibly knowledgeable professionals. The academics are superb but the kids have so much fun. We’ll be sorry to say goodbye when my son graduates from SK in June.

Here are the deets:

Where:     e.p.i.c. School, 111 Manor Road East
When:      Thursday, October 15, 2009 from 7:00-9:00 pm
RSVP:     info@epicschool.com or call 416-489-0132