Diary on Nick Wang

Diary - Roll back, rest, roll forward… and get picked up from behind

Fri, 07 Sep 2012 03:16:00 +0000

Sept. 7th

Just now, I was playing with my son Luc and my daughter Sel on the bed. Luc was doing his usual jumping around, I have to keep reminding him that I don’t want him to jump on the bed when his sister is lying here.

Sel actually really enjoys watching her brother jumps! Recently she had started turning onto her tummy, at first she would cry as the new position was unfamiliar to her. Later on, she could stay on her tummy with her head up for a while, until she got tired and couldn’t hold her head up any longer, that’s when her face will plant straight onto the bed / carpet and she would cry for help! I would gentle touch her and tell her that I’m by her side ready to give her a hand, it doesn’t seem like I’m getting through to her as she just continue to cry hysterically, but I believe she’ll understand me eventually.

The 2nd time she cried in this position today, our helper came over and said 1 of the 2 things she always say: “Your diaper wet mui?” (“Mui” means little sister in Cantonese.) She stuck her hand inside Sel’s diaper and then picked her up from the back. Sitting in front of Sel, I could see her facial expressions as she was being lifted up. Even though she was in the middle of crying for help due to her facing down, she still had a look of confusion rather than relieve from being “saved” from the face down position.

In RIE, it’s suggested that you talk to your babies and do things with them rather than to them. Personally, I haven’t seen concrete evidence of 6 months old Sel understanding what I am saying to her, but I have no doubt that this kind of in context communications is not only one of the best ways of training your baby’s ear for verbal communications, but also great for teaching them from day one that their body belongs to them and others need to have their permission to do anything to it!

Diary - Turned over on her belly and cry

Sun, 02 Sep 2012 15:23:00 +0000

Sept. 2nd

Today, for the first time, I saw Sel turned over on her tummy by herself, the whole way! She was able to get her hands out from under her chest once too! But this new position is still too new & unfamiliar to her so she cried out loud when she successfully turned onto her tummy! (Which was kinda cute :P I’m sure she’ll learn to enjoy the new position and perspective very soon.

Diary - Diaper Change, Taking Medicine and Giving me a Kiss

Mon, 27 Aug 2012 15:50:00 +0000

August 27th, 2012

Somedays, when you are all charged up, you have so much patience you’re like Buddha! It is at these times that you’ll see the miracles of RIE!

Today, the kids left with mom early in the morning so I had a bit of time for myself, then I went to a meeting with an angel investor friend of mine. It just so happens that he has a 10 months old daughter so he’s new to this baby thing as well, so we had a long, interesting talk about parenting! As you may know, I’m very passionate about raising creative thinkers who can think on their feet, and that if I can help other parents learn about RIE and the Reggio Emilia Approach, it has the potential to create such a big social change that will really disrupt the broken system that enslaves us today. However, I’m not very good at monetizing the work that I do! This is where my friend really helped out today, he gave me a few great ideas that kinda clicked in my head, so hopefully, I’ll be able to implement something that will enable me to sustain myself while continuing to create social change via 100village.co

Anyway, the main story starts at 5 pm when my son L came back home. I was invigorated by the talks with my friend earlier so I was in a good place mentally. Meanwhile L didn’t get enough of his afternoon nap so he was a little cranky. He played with the trains, I sat by him and watched him play, then I smelled something funky so I asked if I could check his diaper, sure enough, he pooped, so I said “Oh, you pooped, can I change your diaper? (No) Do you want to change it now? Or do you want to wait and change 3 minutes later?” He said “3 miniits”. So I went and set my timer and showed him “OK, we’ll go change in 3 minutes.” When the alarm went off, of course, he still wouldn’t go. He was tired and laying there on his side, pushing the train back and forth. I calmly lay in front of him and just said “You said we can go change you diaper after 3 minutes. It’s ok, I can wait here with you, but you know you have a full diaper, and you’ll feel much better if we change it.” After may be another 3 minutes of my nagging, finally when I ask if he was ready, he said “Ready”, and we walked to the bathroom together. He was most cooperative throughout the whole thing! This was soooo much better than forcing him to “hurry up and go the the bathroom”, picking him up and forcefully bring him there, and then fight with him to clean his behind… (not gonna describe what could happen next, I’m sure you can guess! :)

A slight scare took place when I played “Pom Pom” with him. Pom Pom was this panda character that got sent flying from a see-saw in one of those Disney World Family videos. Basically, I repeat the lines from that scene and throw L onto the bed. It’s a little rough play that he likes. This time, I threw him face down and he landed with his hand a little bit twisted. He laughed as usual, but he just stayed there in that position, and slowly, he turned around and said “Hurt”. I already knew something went bad, I said “Oh no, where does it hurt?” and he pointed to his arm. I hold his arm and carefully pressed and checked for anything broken. Luckily, he didn’t seem to be in pain anymore. I kept him immobiled in my arms for a bit longer just to make sure, and I said “I’m sorry I hurt you.” while hugging him. All was well 2 minutes later.

8:30 pm, L was so tired he didn’t protest when I said let’s pick our books and go to bed. We were laying on the bed, exploring Thomas the train engine and Danny & the dinosaur when I suddenly remembered he hadn’t taken his medicines yet. I opened the door to ask my wife and we decided that since he was so tired, he would probably be extra difficult if we tried to feed him his medicine now! And since his cough was almost all gone, we agreed to just skip it. Well, L decided he wants to go out! So, I told him “If you go out, you’ll have to take the medicine! Are you sure?!” He nodded. I made it extra clear by repeating the medicine consequence again, then I said OK and opened the door. He went to play with his train while I prepared the medicines. When it’s ready, I set them on his table and called him over. To my surprise, he came over by himself, and once again, extremely cooperative! I couldn’t believe what a difference my being patient and setting expectations up front had made! The last few days, my wife had to basically force the medicine down his throat, with L spitting half of it back out! At that point, even if I butt in it was too late.

Surprise #2, after the calmest medicine taking experience ever, we got back to bed and I picked up the dinosaur book again. L slowly made his way up, then he came over to me and gave me a cheek-to-cheek, which is his version of a kiss. Aww… it was so sweet! I said “Thank You” and gave him a big hug.

I think as we grow older, it gets harder to express our affections to our parents / children. This is especially true for Asians. I would love to be this affectionate with my own parents but I’ve yet to be able to give them a big hug like this! Here’s where Reggio Emilia Approach’s documentation really shines! I hope that in 20, 30, 40 years, my son will be able to pick up this diary and see how much we love him! (L, please feel free to come give your daddy and mommy a hug whenever you read this!) This is also why I want to build and share this tool with other parents, because I want everyone to be able to treasure their love between parents and children.

The Diary of Laura

Fri, 06 Jul 2012 17:43:00 +0000

The Diary of Laura is a small book published by the municipality of Reggio Emilia in 1983 that represents a milestone in the experiences of Reggio Emilia educators and stated many principles of their educational philosophy. I’ve just finished reading “The Diary of Laura – Perspectives on a Reggio Emilia Diary” and I would like to share some of the key points (to me) of the significance of a Diary or Documentation in Reggio Emilia. Almost everything below is excerpt from the first 2 chapters of the book, the actual diary is for you to discover yourself if you find the excerpts intriguing.

Educators connect with Laura’s diary in a powerful way, no matter what age group they teach, and it suggests new ways to use pedagogical documentation in early childhood programs, teacher education and to promote a family-centered, relationship-based approach to services for very young children and their families.

The diaries were used by the teachers to plan and motivate activities, to make explicit the “whys,” the reasons behind choices, the real or presumed motivations, and particularly the precise description of events.

The diary is a documentation that can offer detailed descriptions, rich with diversity of visual and photographic images, as a testimony of the epistemological event pertaining to the child as well as the teacher.

Highlights of description and commentary of microepisodes, or microstories, that give continuity to individual experiences. Laura’s diary used microstories to connect the relationships between the individual story of each child, and the story of the peer group. The peer group gives context to the individual stories, and vice versa.

Children are rarely captured isolated, the teachers’ efforts to not document the child in isolation but to consider the context surrounding the child gives rise to a contextual documentation, describing the “where” and the “how”, and also hypothesizing the “why”.

Documentation is useful to educators as practice in observation. The diaries are “ecological”, open to the constant change of conditions and to capturing situations in their richness and complexity. A precious element is the teachers’ subjective reactions to the events and lived experiences, they are passionate and engaged participants of the context, rich in emotions. The reflectiveness necessary when writing and reading (individually or in groups) is what transforms the stories into knowledge.

The diary becomes the key to a progressive curriculum development and to better planning of new spaces and activities. The environments change on the basis of those annotations, and the stories become evidence of the child and the group’s learning process.

The writing strives to capture not so much the child but the event that takes place between the child and the educator, the child and the children, the objects and spaces. Those notes are not all on the child, nor the adult, but on the dynamics that arise in their relationships. The appropriately timed use of photos and sketches with the notes are together aimed to record the significance in the captured situation. The diary is only compiled when events are considered to have new significance, when it arouses surprise in its characters and is likely to increase knowledge.

Image of a child – a child who knows and is able to do, who knows and is able to discover, suggest, involve, whenever the adult is also able to listen, see, suggest, relaunch, provoke, wonder, make hypothesis, and relate, and whenever an adult is able to document and fix in time the child’s own curiosity, hypothesis and questions, creating projects and contextualizing hypothesis and possible answers.

The current focus of the diary at Reggio Emilia’s infant-toddler center is both a child with whom it is possible to dare, because he wants to dare, as well as a child we can read in his relationships with materials, the environment, with us, with peers, a child who daily constructs his knowledge through the many languages that we are learning to value.

Laura gave us testimony of how each child possesses relational associations, knowledge, and research strategies of his or her own, strategies that are supported and valued by the environment, environment as network of relationships as well as structural environment.

If you like what you’ve seen here so far, do check out “The Diary of Laura – Perspectives on a Reggio Emilia Diary”. As a practitioner of the Reggio Emilia Approach, you’ll get a lot of push back from traditional academia. I think rereading this book and your own diaries of your children will help renew your spirit, knowing that you are on a totally different level of relationship with your children! (I certainly needed it today as I butted head with my mom about Lucien’s education!) :(

Nick

Diary - The First Reggio Parents Playgroup

Thu, 05 Jul 2012 02:38:00 +0000

Sorry about this late blog post, I just came back from Cambodia for the first Startup Weekend SE Asia Organizer Summit.

Before I left for Cambodia, we had our first parent organized Reggio playgroup in my apartment in Prince Edward on the 23rd of June. I was lucky enough to have found a Reggio Emilia educator, Sarah, who is also a mother and has been teaching with the Reggio Emilia Approach for over 6 years. Like me, Sarah worries about her own 2.5 yr old boy C’s education, so we both have good reasons to do the “parent organized playgroups”. This post is my first “diary” post for documenting the “relationships” in the playgroup.

We didn’t have anything planned out. Sarah said she could bring some watercolor and clay. The plan was to just let them play, go to the park and have lunch together.

We started off with painting on wet paper, L had never tried painting with watercolor before, we could see he was completely absorbed in it, following what C and Sarah demonstrate! We also had the clay out, which C tore into pieces and L tried painting on. This was a behavior Sarah had never seen before, perhaps because L has never had hands on play with clay or soil before, he is afraid to touch it with his bare hands, hence he used the paint brush to interact with it.

C went around to explore our apartment and found some books he’s like to see, he signaled his mom to see if it was ok to take a book out. I gave him the permission and he took one out and started to read. L is normally not too interested in the books but he followed C’s lead and picked out a few books himself.

After clean up, we went to a nearby restaurant to have lunch, one incident taught me the biggest lesson of the day. C tipped over a flower arrangement and caused the waitresses to come over and tell him “No!”, while Sarah expressed her frustrations at what happened. C felt sad and went underneath the table to cry. Rather than “fixing the problem” to get the child to stop crying, Sarah acknowledged C’s feelings, that he was sad he couldn’t play with the flowers, and asked if he needed to cuddle. C came back up to hug his mom and then he was all fine again!

After lunch, we walked to a soccer field. L ran to show C the flags, they collaborated to play with the exercise machines in the playground designed for seniors. They also got a soccer ball which L threw into the bush and couldn’t get it back, he tried to get C to help him pick up the ball but C was busy playing with the exercise machines. It was interesting to see that L got distracted and played with C on the machines, but the ball remained on the back of his mind and he tried several times to get C to follow him to where the ball was. Finally, C noticed L was signaling to him about “Ball!” (L’s favorite word) C was tall enough to see the ball, he was hesitant for a second there but decided to plunge into the bush! After he got one foot in and knew it was safe, he took another step and retrieved the ball.

When the owner of the ball took it back and left, both C and L chased after it. While I explained to L that the ball belonged to the other girl and tried to “fix the problem” by telling L that we’ll bring our own ball next time, Sarah once again just acknowledged C’s feelings, “yes, I like that ball too…” This was the biggest lesson for me – don’t solve their problems! Just acknowledge their feelings and let them deal with the problems themselves. I’ve heard and read about this before, but this was the first time I saw someone put it into action. As a Dad / guy, we tend to want to just “solve the problems” and move on! Seeing Sarah acknowledges C’s feelings taught me to allow L to deal with and internalize his problems himself.