A wonderful meal deserves conversation to match.

Thanksgiving finds me pondering, what am I really grateful for? In addition to good health and meaningful work and relationships, I find that I am more and more aware of how important it is to recognize, with appreciation, the challenges that come my way.

In my work with children I am fortunate to have the opportunity to talk with them about what matters— their hurts, successes, disappointments, challenges, sadness, happiness, and more. We hear so much today about how innovation is by necessity, inextricably linked with failure. Innovation is terrifying and we must teach children how to bounce back from failure. That is a challenge for every parent.

We give children the tailwinds they need to grow and develop to their full capacity when we help children take on challenges and help them learn how to bounce back from failure. Tailwinds are the ideas and ideals we impart to children and this is the lens they will look out from into the world. Headwinds will come for sure, but what is important is how they will respond.

Their response will be learned from role models, first and foremost their parents and then through the stories they meet, with characters meeting challenges in ways we can learn from. We could give children a laundry list of how to deal with challenge, but a story, with characters a child cares about, will enter through the doorway of their heart and give them new awareness.

Stories that offer characters struggling to overcome a challenge, where their response marks them as special, are my favorite kinds of stories. Children become involved in the stories they read by caring about a character and caring what happens to them. Their empathy is the most important ingredient in finding their “home run” books.

Children love holidays and a family celebration is the perfect moment to imbue a holiday with significance and meaning. Speaking of the blessings of challenges and our responses will certainly yield much to think and talk about. A wonderful meal deserves conversation to match.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address The most important three-minute speech ever delivered.

President Lincoln delivered the 272 word Gettysburg Address on November 19, 1863 on the battlefield near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. "Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

It might sound irreverent to refer to the Gettysburg Address as a blurb or a clip but they all have something in common; they use a minimum of words to express an idea.  Expose your children to this extraordinary piece of writing, which captures important ideas in the fewest and clearest words possible.  Ask them, "Which sound bites, blurbs or clips from today will be read 150 years from now?”  "Will any of them even be remembered?"

A sound bite can be deep and reflective, although that is not always the case. Too many sound bites of today say little and offer less to think about.

Lincoln dismissed his speech as something “The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.” What Lincoln said was noted and remembered. Some say, the battle itself was less important than the speech.

E-Reading- Story Time or Simply Screen Time?

Is E-reading story time or simply screen time is an important question for parents because the ramifications are important. A recent article in the NYT suggested there is ample evidence that suggests that parents who E-Read to their child undercuts the dynamic that drives language development.

Parents emotionally engage differently with their children when they read conventional books and engagement is the operative word. Studies show that the essence of acquiring language is reading and talking about what is read. And lets not overlook the importance of the love and affection that is communicated when parents engage, when they read and talk with children.

Bonding with our children gives them the stability and assurance they need to go out into the world and thrive. This is how parents develop the strong relationships their children need that will anchor them for the rest of their lives. So yes, language acquisition is all important, but so is the love that is communicated when parents engage with children by reading and talking about what matters. The bonding that springs from that activity is priceless.

“The most precious gift we can offer anyone is our attention. When mindfulness embraces those we love, they will bloom like flowers.” Thích Nhất Hạnh

Lets here it for the Dads!

All too often I hear the lament that Dad’s don’t read to their children and this is my opportunity to applaud the Dad in this poem. If children are to become life long readers, they need both moms and dads and everyone else to read to them when they are young.

A love of story and the closeness that is communicated when a child is read to is very likely the single most important reason why children become adults who love to read and know how to find pleasure in reading. Readers are born on the laps of their parents.

“The Story of Ferdinand the Bull" by Matt Mason

Dad would come home after too long at work and I'd sit on his lap to hear the story of Ferdinand the Bull; every night, me handing him the red book until I knew every word, couldn't read, just recite along with drawings of a gentle bull, frustrated matadors, the all-important bee, and flowers— flowers in meadows and flowers thrown by the Spanish ladies. Its lesson, really, about not being what you're born into but what you're born to be, even if that means not caring about the capes they wave in your face or the spears they cut into your shoulders. And Dad, wonderful Dad, came home after too long at work and read to me the same story every night until I knew every word, couldn't read, just recite.

A challenge to parents: How much technology is good for their children?

The start of the school year brings many challenges to parents. A key concern is how much technology is effective and appropriate for young children, pre-school  through the early years of school?  There can be no conversation about how children learn the skills they need to become ready to learn to read without addressing the implications of the early use of technology.

No doubt, technology does enhance children’s education. The internet’s value as a research tool is unquestionably valuable but the concern becomes the over use of technology and how compatible child-friendly digital technologies are with the nature of childhood and the flowering of their intellect.

Parents want their children to achieve academic success and they often think technology is the way to success, when much of it is mindless entertainment. When technology is over used, unmanaged and unregulated, the results are serious.  Parents and children plugged into devices does NOT foster the type of interaction and stimulation children need in their early years to foster their communication skills. Children need plentiful opportunities to use and respond to the words they learn through play, informal talk, reading and responding to what is read.

Let me share a valuable piece of information that comes from the VP of the Kaiser Family Foundation “My impression is that parents really believe these videos and other gadgets are good for their children, or at the very least, not really bad for them,” “To me, the most important thing is reminding parents that getting down on the floor to play with children is the most educational thing they can do.”