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Educating Problem Solvers

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Public education exists to fill the needs of the commonwealth.  In the 1800s it was citizenship and immigrant assimilation.  In the late 1800s and early 1900s it was the need for literate industrial employment.  In the mid-1900s it was national security.  In the late 1900s and early 2000s it has been national and international economics.  Along the way there has been a layering of social and humane purposing for educational programming, but they never were the fundamental drivers of educational policy.  Today our nation needs to educate children to be informed problem solvers.  We face cataclysmic issues of climate, economic, social, political, and ethical distresses.   It is not enough that educated graduates can read, write, compute, and have an abundance of knowledge.  These are nothing if they are not put to a purpose. We need our next generation to be educated in problem solving.

Problems du jour.

“Plastics”, Mr. Robinson told Dustin Hoffman’s character in The Graduate.  The future he said was in the plastics industry.    Today Mr. Robinson rightfully could say “Water”.  There are places on our planet where there is not enough or no water.  Drought!  Simultaneously, there are places where rainfall and flooding are deadly and ruinous and places where rising sea level erodes and overwhelms homes, towns, and cities.  Flooding!  As a natural resource, its scarcity and overabundance are causing humans to change how and where they can live.  In its extreme, drought and flooding are killing us.  We need a generation who are prepared to work the problem du jour – water – not just chase the hot trend du jour – plastics.  If today’s Benjamin Braddock, Hoffman’s character, needed advice on what to do with his college diploma, a good answer would be “problems with water”.

But water is not the only problem needing solving.  If not water, then childcare – the scarcity and cost of childcare devastates young families.  Or, elder care – the costs of Medicare and Social Security are multiplying the national debt.  Or, affordable housing.  Or, ethical government.  Or, aligning immigration to employment.  Or, and the list goes on.  We face a multitude of problems that live at the local, state, national, and global levels.  We have problems that divide us into those who are affected versus those not.  That is a problem unto itself – our problems divide us, they do not unite us.  We need problem solvers.

A new mandate – active problem solving.

Mandates are needed.  In the 1960s President Kennedy gave our nation a mandate to go to the moon.  We did.  In the later 60s President Johnson signed mandates to change the national view of civil rights.  For a while, they did until we let problems of special and personal interest get in the way.  In the early 2000s, President Bush mandated NCLB and reading and math became our national school focus. 

At the state level, the Wisconsin legislature recently passed Act 60 to mandate financial literacy and Act 20 to require phonics-based reading instruction.  Public education is a function of state government, and our educational mandates are embedded in the statutes.  Once law, mandates must be implemented.  Making mandates is not a state problem; making the right mandates is.

Locally, school boards mandate.  During the pandemic, school boards mandated masking, mitigation, and virtual learning.  Some mandates were popular and others were not.  School boards approve policy and policies are their mandates. 

Mandates make things happen.  

I challenge every school district administrator to use UbD (Understanding by Design) techniques to create a district-wide, 4K-12 problem solving curriculum.  This backward design process begins with a statement of the graduation outcome and then describes the programming to achieve the outcome.

Why start with local school districts?  Because they can act unilaterally and usually apolitically.  Partisan state government is either gridlocked or bent toward partisan issues. 

The local school outcome of interest is – all graduates are informed problem solvers.  Informed means three things.  Each graduate –

  • understands multiple problem-solving strategies and how they work,
  • has an informed “BS” detector and can filter out all the (B)bias and (S)special interests that surround our significant problems, and
  • is motivated to persevere until a problem solution is working.

Mandates are really easy.  It just takes courage to understand that what becomes law or policy gets done.  Therefore, if you want something done, mandate it.

If the current status quo is not working, change it.

A reader may say, “Our school curriculum is already overloaded.  We cannot add a new program to our overworked faculty and students”.   True.  And the answer to that statement is brutal.  The current school curriculum maintains the status quo.  It educates children to fit into and be part of the current state of the world.  Public education, as it exists now, is always behind the curve of our problems.  It extends the life of problems; it does not help in solving problems.  That is why courageous mandates are required at the school board level.  Legislative processes at the state and national levels take forever making most solutions so lost in the problem they have little chance of changing anything.

This is not a difficult proposition, if there is a will by educational leaders to act.  All they have to do is ask these simple questions. 

  • Are our current systems working positively and aggressively to fix or alleviate the crises we face today? 
  • Are today’s graduates skilled enough in problem solving to fix or alleviate these crises?
  • Are children in the elementary and middle school grades learning problem solving strategies?

The answer is not “yes”.

Start here.

Every child receives instruction in the social studies in our 4K-12 curriculum.  The traditional scaffolding of United States history in elementary, middle school, and high school with specific courses in US government or civics and economics only builds common background knowledge for all.  There is no purposeful application. 

The C3 Framework for Social Studies Standards is a game changer in terms of repurposing a social studies education.  The C3 Framework adds this singularly unique focus –“preparation for a civic life”.  The structure of this curriculum includes this mandate – how will students use their learning to purposefully engage in their community and state as informed and skilled problem solvers.  The purpose of social studies is engagement.

The College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework for Social Studies State Standards: Guidance for Enhancing the Rigor of K-12 Civics, Economics, Geography, and History

A proper school board mandate is to approve the C3 Framework as the basis for district social studies instruction.  Abandon curriculum that only prepares graduates for a game of Jeopardy.  At grade level, this means children in 4K-12 annually will learn developmentally appropriate inquiry skills to ask problem-based questions and learn about civics, economics, geography, history, and the behavioral sciences.  The focus is not knowledge for knowledge’s sake, but knowledge and tools for critically looking at community and state issues and developing age-appropriate conclusions.  “This is what we should do…”.

The commonwealth.

Our local communities and state are so intertwined that the old concept of commonwealth is more important now than ever before.  Our problems are large and forbidding so our approach to problem solving must be equally new and bold.  The commonwealth needs problem solvers not gawkers lamenting why problems never get fixed.  Public education can provide a next generation of informed and trained problem solvers.  Instead of Generation (whatever letter comes next), let’s create Generation PS (problem solvers).

School Faces Once Etched Are Forever Memories

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The academic year ended at our local school yesterday.  I watched the row of buses leave the parking lot for students’ final trip home.  Teachers lined the sidewalks and waved.  High school students honked their horns leaving the parking lot and the 23-24 school year behind.  Taken as a whole, it was a celebration of success.  Children were graduated and promoted.  Teachers taught and children learned a year’s curriculum.  Tests had been taken, teams had played, music and theater had been performed, and the community had smiled.  Gradually, the sound of cheering, the echo of horns, and the waving arms stopped and there was the quiet of a June afternoon.  Viewed from the perspective of time, it was the moment when memories begin to overtake the present.

The local Class of 24 numbered 40-plus graduates.  During the month of May their photos and post-graduation plans were displayed on the school’s Facebook page.  Smiling faces with pennants of colleges, universities, tech schools, and armed force insignia foretold the next stories in these young lives.  With 100% assurance, I know that each graduate can name the face of every grad in their Class.  They have known each other as classmates for thirteen or more years.  They learned and grew up together.  That was their story until graduation when the road they shared forked, and they all went their ways.

Frozen in time.

Once graduates wander down the post-school paths they choose, they move farther and farther away from the day when they and their classmates shared a common story.  Slowly, faces and names become images in yearbooks, online photo collections, and frames on bookshelves.  They get a glance now and again awaiting reunions and other gatherings.  And, awaiting a moment when memories flicker and old images become important once again.

Picture taking was and is a ritual of school life.  Every year schools take class pictures.  All students, grouped by graduating class cohort, school activity, and individually, have their photos taken.  Most students smile, even those who didn’t smile often in school approximate a grin for the yearbook.  Photos of an entire grade miniaturize faces making it difficult to discern individuals.  Individual portraits highlight the face and name. 

For me, it is in the class photo of Mrs. Meyer’s home room where all 33 children are shown together in rows. Some are sitting legs crossed on the floor, some on chairs, and the tallest are standing.  This is where I see the classmates I knew well.  Combined with two other sixth grade home rooms, we were the Grant Wood Elementary Class of 1960.  On the date of that class photo, we became locked in time, locked in the image of our smile, the way we combed our hair, and how we cocked our heads trying to look good.  I look at the picture of Mrs. Meyer’s home room and 64 years later I know the name of each boy and girl, and I remember who they were in 1960 as clearly as I know anything today.

The same is true of class pictures from the McKinley Junior High Class of 1963 and the Washington High School Class of 1966.  Each school we attended was larger in enrollment and scope of program, but the significance of faces and names and stories remained constant.  Until June 1966.  That was when our roads forked, and we truly became memories and pictures frozen in time.

So, what happened? 

People and friends, they and me, suddenly disappeared from each other’s lives.

Life overwhelms our attention when we are younger adults.  Work, recreation, and a love life are center stage.  We focus on what is directly in front of us each day with little time or option to look backward or too far forward.  Often, we work for pay checks that last only until the next, scrimp to afford vacation and recreation, and if we have children, our life requires 25 hours each day.  We stay in touch with school friends if we live in proximity, work in similar jobs, and our children attend the same school.  But the roads most of my school friends and I took were none of these.  In our 20s and 30s and 40s we chased our individual American dreams of family and/or career into communities far and wide.  Joe was a physician in Atlanta, Bev was a teacher in Ohio, Marianne was a flight attendant, Jack was an institutional exec in New York, Bill was lawyer in San Francisco, and John, we weren’t sure where John was.  Yet, whenever I thought of the Class of 60 or 63 or 66, it was the pictured face and story of a younger life that attached to that picture.  John was still the epitome of a younger Mickey Mantle – blond and rugged, athletic, and confident.  Bev was still the girl in a knee-length dress, Bobby socks, and her hair tied with a ribbon that I thought of as my girlfriend at Grant Wood.  Marianne, aka Mert, was and always will be an Annette Funicello look alike. 

Facebook and the Internet update stories but not memories.

Facebook and its ilk brought us both the wonder of connection and the depravity of bad actors.  I like the wonder.  By “friending” old friends we now share images and stories of who we are today.  My white hair, wrinkles, and jowls do not resemble the face behind the boy in dark glasses in Mrs. Meyer’s home room picture.  However, as much as I do not recognize myself, I immediately recognize John, Jack and Bev and many of the old classmates that use Facebook.  If we saw each other on the street or in a market today, I am confident I would know their 70+ year old faces.  But I could not know the story of their lives in between, and that is okay with me.

Today I appreciate giving and receiving Facebook posts with my old friends on our birthdays.   We recognize that we are still alive, we celebrate another year of living, and, in a small way, we acknowledge that we have a history.  Our history is bifurcated – who we were in the 50s and 60s and who we are today.  We do not have enough years or energy to catch up on the details in between and those details don’t matter much anyway.

This morning another Joe from the Class of 66 posted about his golf game.  Several times each summer we each post about the courses we have played, that rare day when our score and age match, and the joy we have in just being able to play.  But when his face appears I immediately replace it with his yearbook photo or images of him playing basketball or baseball – he is forever young.

Old friends’ faces do not die, they just fade away.

As I paraphrase Douglas MacArthur’s statement about old generals.  In both cases, I think we got it right.  As long as I live, memories of my school friends will be alive.  They are indelibly etched in time.  I suppose my aging frailties may fray my mental capacity.  I do find it comforting that as the aged lose contact with the present, their memories of years ago remain.  Thanks, old friends, for being my old friends.

Gifted Teachers Cause Indelible Effects

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Every adult who attended public school knows the truth of this statement:  there are teachers and there are gifted teachers.  We are taught by the former, but we are inspired and grow at the feet of the latter.  Gifted teachers are extraordinary human beings.  It is the nature of their extraordinary being that makes them gifted teachers.

What do we know?

A school faculty is much like a professional baseball team.  While all pro ballplayers met a high standard of screening to make the team, there still are significant differences between players who hit .250 year after year, the league average, and those who hit .300, a threshold for Hall of Fame candidates.  An MLB roster has 28 players.  A successful team lists an all-star or three, several players with all-star like statistics, and twenty or so who are steady and dependable players.  The combination of steady and dependable players and a few all-stars content for league pennants.

Most teachers in a school faculty are .250 players.  Day in and day out they are present and prepared to teach their assigned curriculum to children in their classrooms.  Day in and day out they don’t make significant teaching errors.  In the same days, they also don’t teach many supernal lessons that light up student learners or cause children to have “Aha” moments.

Some may read this a putdown of many teachers, but it is not.  The strength of public education is the steady and solid work of regular classroom teachers.  They are how we know and understand reading and writing, history and geography, math, art, music, PE, and speak at little Spanish.

Most teachers on a school faculty may be good at several skills sets for quality teaching; a gifted teacher elevates the performance of skills sets because of innate qualities of insight, perseverance, effectiveness of intellectual inquiry, empathy, and friendship.  These qualities certainly lie within regular teachers, but they remain fallow compared to the same qualities that burn brightly in a gifted teacher.

Game changers.

Children know.  They know their teachers who light them up on a frequent or daily basis versus their teachers who turn on the classroom lights and say, “Take out your books”.   A teacher who lights up children is a pathfinder to deeper learning.  Their insights into curriculum and pedagogy are 3D.  They know the sequence of facts and ideas and skills children need to learn to climb Bloom’s Taxonomy of Learning Objectives, but they don’t stop at Remembering and Understanding.  They push harder with “Tell me more, explain that in your own words, how is it similar to and different than”.  Their students are used to the “so what and now what can you do with this” questions.

I marvel at the fact that gifted teachers, real game changers, don’t know who they are.  They just are.  They are unconscious of the ways they teach and relate to children. 

I am told that mathematics is the creation and use of elegant solutions to explain our world.  Simplicity and insightful are words that few strugglers with trigonometry, like me, understand.  Yet, I watch gifted math teachers help children to patiently unravel a math problem into understandable questions in their native language.  Gifted math teachers teach students to see the math question within the forest of words and digits on the page.  Insight is understanding what one is being asked to learn and the ability to state it in simple terms.  These teachers see problems, not just mathematical problems, differently and they teach children to see and think differently.  It is a gift.

My favorite band teacher is just a boy in man’s clothing playing his horn.  When he wears a tuxedo and waves his baton, his bands make wonderful music.  He is best, however, when he sits beside a child and together, they model and practice, model and practice, model and practice.  He slowly builds musical skills and the ability to read and interpret musical scores until children fit into an ensemble of players and then he gives them more difficult pieces to play.  He personalizes and perseveres and never quits on the individuals who are his band.  He grows musicians through patient and skillful instruction.  It is a gift.

“So what?” and “what do you mean by that” are the kinds of questions that cause many children to hunker down behind the child sitting in front of them hoping not to be called on.  Lots of hands go up when a teacher asks questions about facts; not so many when the questions require deeper inquiry.  A love of intellectual inquiry tolerates children who are reluctant to share and whose sharing contains inaccuracies.  Gifted inquirers know that these can be teased out and corrected.  It is the chase for understanding and reasoning they pursue.  Gifted teachers also know that children can learn in the periphery and listening to how one child sews together a reasoned response helps others with their own.  A gifted inquirer will smile and applaud louder for the unexpected yet slowly developed thinking of a reluctant sharer more than for the quick and always on point response of another child.  Chasing a well-reasoned and thoughtful response is a gift.

Some children come to school to learn to read, others to play an instrument, and others for the joys of recess and athletics.  Every child should have their own “go to” place in school.  I smile now thinking of an art teacher whose empathy for children caused him to seek out all children who had not found their school place.  He caused them to be artists and then to be proud of their artistry.  I remember him in his layers of baggy clothing and Birkenstocks helping a student with charcoal find depth through shading and a student at a potter’s wheel find the feel for drawing a vase out of a lump of clay.  It is easier to teach children who have a sense of who they are; it is more difficult to teach children who are lost in themselves.  His gift was in turning on the lights within wandering children.

Every child is different with a combination of admirable qualities and some things that cause us to shake our heads.  I watched a gifted science teacher who never shook his head because he focused on admirable qualities.  His teacher’s affect was as inviting as new snow and his expectations for student learning were as elevated as snow capped mountains.  It did not take students long into a new school year to know that his reputation was real.  He accepted who they were, found their strengths, and every day helped each child to build their understanding of Biology and AP Biology and computer science.  He was never in a hurry but, with his patience, caused all students to engage and learn.  Like Mr. Rogers of TV fame, he built students up and, in that building, taught them.  It is a gift.

Indelible effects that last a lifetime.

At their 50th reunions, alums invariably share stories about their school experiences and the teachers who taught them.  The passage of time has a way of rounding corners and evening out the particulars alums remember.  It is difficult to assign causation between a student’s schooling and their life at the age of 70.  However, the language and the tones change when alums talk of an exceptional teacher whose insight, perseverance, effectiveness of intellectual inquiry, empathy, or friendship made such an indelible imprint that it lasted 50 or more years.  The ability to cause such lifelong effects is a gift.

Loose the grads!

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There is so much crappiness in the news today that it is easy to let the cynical mind control the keyboard.  Instead, I shut down my media and look down the road in the direction of our local school.  It is mid-May, seniors are finishing finals, all other students are wrapping up their academic year, and the sun is shining.  Loose the graduates, promote undergraduates to their new grade level, and celebrate another year of educating children, I say.

What do I know?

I drive a small, red, two-seat sports car every afternoon to the post office for my daily mail.  Yesterday a herd of first graders was trekking uphill on the sidewalk returning to school from a mid-day, local field trip.  As I drove past, several dozen arms and voices rose to wave and yell, “Nice car!”.  I stuck my arm out the window to return their wave with a wide smile.  In seconds I was past them.  But our town is small and in minutes I was returning home, this time on the other side of the road.  As I re-approached these small fry, I heard, “There he is again!”  Even more shouts and waves ensued and all I could think was “what a great day to be six and seven years old”.    And all thoughts of a crappy world were dissolved.

In my comings and goings, I see these children and their schoolmates dropped off by parents or school buses to engage in their daily education.  I see them at recess and in their on-campus activities.  Our community is proud of our schools and teachers and school leaders whose work annually merits recognition as one of the highest achieving schools in Wisconsin.  And there are schools like ours throughout our state and nation. Thankfully, they are the antidote we sorely need.

At this time of the year our high school celebrates its graduates by posting their post-graduation plans on FaceBook.  Bright faces appear above their declared plans.  Some wear a sweatshirt or hold a pennant from the college or university or tech school they will attend.  Several proudly display their enlistment in the military; others declare their post-high school vocational plans.  A couple of students are yet undecided in what the next year will be for them.  No matter their post-high school plans, these grads are well-educated and ready for what comes next in their young adult lives.  They are ready to be part of the adult world.

Our future lives in the small fry.

No matter a person’s political persuasion, there is reason to be skeptical that today’s leaders will find their way out of the chaos and disrepute they have created.  We are in a train wreck and there are more burdened trains coming down the track.

We have 70- and 80-year olds in positions of power who have difficulty marshaling the smarts of a 5th grader. They talk like they are constantly arguing turf on a child’s playground where the blame game is all that matters. And we have 40- and 50-year old leaders who would rather be sycophants than free thinking adults.

Looking for analogous models I like what happens in a face off in a hockey game.  One player from each team faces the other waiting for the ref to drop the puck.  They snarl and paw the ice with their sticks.  However, if the ref does not like the attitude of these two to battle for the puck, the ref tells them to go away and calls for two other players to do the face off.  What a great model!  When a player is out of line, get another player.  The Class of 24 now is in the line of next players.  And behind them in our 4K-12 schools are the Classes of 25 through 39. 

In the last century, critics of public education referred to the march of children through the grades as a school factory.  Perhaps they were right when most children, graduated or not, were funneled into the industrial complex.  Today that reference is balderdash.  Our graduates are very aware of the chaos and confusion their elders have created.  They are informed and they are spreading out into a myriad of potential careers.  This is not to say the Class of 24 and beyond will not create new problems.   They will, but today I trust them and their potential to do better far more than I trust my age peers. 

Perhaps it is time for term limits and age limits and dope slap limits.  For the sake of our next generations, we need to say to out-of-control and out-of-touch leaders “go away” and call for new faces and newer minds to battle with the issues of our day.

I believe that the Class of 24 and those six- and seven-year-olds with their exuberance and bright minds are our best and perhaps last chances for better tomorrows.  Loose the grads or forever hold your breath.

Adult Hypocrisy About Children and Technology Knows No Bounds

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“My hypocrisy knows no bounds.”  This is a memorable line by Doc Holliday in the movie, “Tombstone”.  In another context Doc’s line is an accurate portrayal of adult perception of children, their cell phones, screen time, and social media use and generational distress. 

This morning, I listened to a podcast conversation.  Three participants, nationally recognizable people, mulled how cell phones and screen time cause depression, anxiety, and other mental health issues for children.  They each told personal and professional stories to support the contention that cellphones, screen time, and social media are root causes of why so many children are distressed.  I heard teeth gnashing and “isn’t it awful” sermonizing about the ill effects of technology, as if only children use technology.

“Balderdash”, I said aloud.  “Just one more case of adults telling children to ‘do as I say, not as I do’”.  If too much time on cellphones, screen time, and social media is bad for children, it is just as bad for adults.  “Adults, your hypocrisy once again knows no bounds!”.

Why do I claim adults are hypocrites?

Adults spend as much time using cell phones, screen time, and online social media as children.

 Consider the following.

  • On average, American adults spend more than 11 hours per day watching, reading, listening to, or interacting with screens.
  • Children aged 8-12 spend an average of 4 hours and 44 minutes per day on screens.
  • Teens spend an average of 7 hours and 22 minutes per day on screens, not including time spent on screens for schoolwork.
  • 69% of American adults use social media sites, spending an average of 2 hours and 3 minutes per day.
  • The average person checks their cell phone about 63 times per day.
  • 29% of US adults say they spend more time on screens than they intend to.
  • 97% of children report using a smartphone daily.
  • 51% of seniors aged 60 or older spend more than half of their daily leisure time on screens.
  • On average, adults consume 15.5 hours of media per day through various devices.

https://gitnux.org/screen-time-statistics

  • “Adults between the ages of 18 and 29 spend the most time on their smartphones, spending an average of 3 hours and 53 minutes per day.”

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/science/parents-spend-three-times-more-time-on-phone-than-what-they-spend-with-children-study/articleshow/106125378.cms#

  • “Three out of five American parents admit they spend more time on their electronic devices than their kids do.”

https://www.movieguide.org/news-articles/parents-spend-more-time-on-phones-than-withkids.html#:~:text=%E2%80%9CThree%20out%20of%20five%20American,a%20minimum%20of%20two%20devices

  • “While their timecards might say they are putting in a full day, many employees are devoting all of their time in the office to their work.  Many are distracted by their mobile devices, spending hours each day texting, shopping or scrolling on social media.”

https://www.businessnewsdaily.com/10102-mobile-device-employee-distraction.html

No high ground for adults.

Any person can Google information regarding cell phones, on screen time, and the use of social media and arrive at data that may be similar or different.  The numbers may vary but the trending statements do not.  We, adults, and children alike, spend large amounts of time every day using our cell phones and screen devices.  As adults, we chastise children for being on screen too much of their day and night, but we are no more than the pot calling the kettle black.

Of interest, children do not come from the womb with a digital device.  I frequently ask kids in school “Who purchased your phone?”, and “Who pays the monthly bills for your cell phone, Internet, and social media?”.  99.9% say, “My parents”.  Adults pay for their children’s dependence upon digital devices and then adults proclaim online time to be a child’s problem! 

Pogo always is right.

We learned from the “Pogo” comic strip long ago (1948-75), “We have met the enemy, and he is us!”.  We, people of all ages, are heavy users of technologies – cell phone, screen devices, and social media.  Even my Luddite friends who refuse to buy a cellphone spend hours each day in their workplace on screen, Googling for information, and e-mailing.  The only true Luddite today lives in a cave and is invisible to the world.  If too much use causes distress and ill-health, then we all are the enemy and we all are victims of self-inflicted distress.  Is childhood depression different than adult depression?  Do we have entire generations now under a cloud of malaise?  Or shall we honestly admit that life in the epoch of technology is distressing.

What now?

Augustus McCrae taught us in Lonesome Dove, “Yesterday is gone and there is no getting it back”.  However, if we could make some of tomorrow look like yesterday, consider these.

  • Insist children go outside and play.  But is it safe?  Thou shall not fear the neighborhood.  Children are 100 times more likely to be hit by lightning than to be kidnapped.  Yet we do not panic when children play in the rain or get caught outdoors in a thunderstorm.  Encourage them to explore the areas where they live and to enjoy their adventures. 
  • Stop demanding children have cellphones because you worry about school shootings.  “I need immediate contact all the time!”  Since 2012 only .009% of schools in the US experienced a school shooting.  This does not dismiss the serious of school shootings, but most child deaths due to gun violence occur in the home not at school.  Strapping children of all ages with a cellphone in case of a violent event at school gives children license to use their cellphone for all reasons but a violent event.
  • Ask as many children as you are able “What do you think about…?”, and “How do you feel about …?”, and listen.  We need to speak person-to-person not through our screens.  We want to hear and see them speak, note their body language, and accept their emotions.  And we want them to see us doing these things.  Then we can tell them what we think and feel with more credibility.
  • Invite children to “Come with us” and spend more time together.  Proximity breeds personal engagement.  “Let’s do … together” crosses the boundaries of age and differences and every time we do things together makes the next time more likely to happen.
  • Shut down our devices, sit beside a child, and just be.  Let the children fill in the gaps if they choose to.  Stop being the parent all the time; it’s okay to be yourself. 

Another good quote about hypocrisy is “My hypocrisy only goes so far”.  It is time for us to rein in our hypocrisy instead of reining in the lives of our children.