Reggio Emilia on Nick Wang

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.

Diary - Fake Sleeping

Sat, 25 Aug 2012 06:21:00 +0000

Diary - Aug 25 - Fake Sleeping

My son L is only 24 months old and already today he gave me a fake sleeping response to my long winded explanation of why I wanted him to wash his hands. Great!

So the story was, L had just finished his snacks - a little bit of boiled egg and a piece of bread, and he wanted to go back to play with his trains. I told him he needed to wait for me at the table while I go grab his towel. He left, I took the towel to him at his train set, sat down and started telling him I could see food crumbs on the floor and that’s why we need to wipe our hands and mouth clean after eating. As I was saying that, I put him on my lap and started to wipe his hands. This was where the surprise act happened.

He closed his eyes, but not completely, tilted his head back, and then said: “Sleeping!”

Cheeky little 2 year old bastard! LOL! He is my son after all. :P

Holding a 5 months old and watch TV

Thu, 23 Aug 2012 07:19:00 +0000

I just saw our helper holding 5 months old baby girl S, sitting on her lap watching TV!

Here’s another example of different of opinions between my wife and I. While I think it is horrible holding a baby up, not to mention watching TV!! My wife thinks it’s OK, because “she’s not doing anything anyway.”

Yeah, when you hold a baby on your lap, she really isn’t doing anything! You’re robbing her of precious play time she could be having if she was laying flat on her back. I realize it’s a weird thing to say, but leave the baby alone! I’m definitely the weird minority here, not only because of RIE but also because I’m a guy! For us, reading other RIE parents’ struggle is a helpful reminder that we’re not alone! Just read this on Janet Lansbury’s blog yesterday – Parenting Against The Grain – One Family’s Personal Struggle and Triumph

Having said that however, I am encountering a contradicting problem. S has gotten so used to being held, being put into the stroller and rolled around, and soothed by the helper’s rocking and putting a pacifier in her mouth… she doesn’t seem to enjoy laying on the floor too much. Well, she enjoys it, but not for long. I’m afraid the same “lack of patience and perseverance” problem is already being manifested in her! What should I do?!

Diary - Sharing Toys with New Friends

Sat, 18 Aug 2012 15:46:00 +0000

Aug 18th

Today we have a new family joining our playgroup, mom Marta who’s another Reggio Emilia Approach inspired early childhood educator, sweet natured 2 year old boy T, and dad Andy who brought T to the playgroup. We had some good talks about parenting and lives in Hong Kong. T is really awesome for his age, I think it really shows what a big difference being a RIE / REA parent can make!

Today’s story is an embarrassing one for a lot of parents, a child who simply won’t share! L has a hard time sharing his toys, especially with new faces and when inside our own apartment. Today, he was being very firm on not wanting to share! Not only the toys that were already in his hands, but basically anything our new friend T touches. Whenever T got a hold of a train or a car, L would stare at it and say “No!”, then he would escalate to hitting the floor with his hand, then finally throwing things. One time he threw a little train at his mom’s direction and it hit mom on her chin. T was very sensitive to these aggressive emotion, he would drop whatever he was doing and go hug his dad.

When two toddlers want the same toy, I see a lot of parents telling their kids “Sharing! Sharing!” and forcibly take the toy from the child’s hand, giving it to the other kid. I’ve always thought that was a bit ridiculous! I can almost hear the child’s mind asking “What the hell is sharing?! All I see is you taking the thing out of my hand and keep saying this word! I lose whatever is in my hand to other kids when I hear that word!”

As a parent, when my child doesn’t want to share his things with others, I feel obligated to “teach” my child to share in front of the other parent! It’s like I have to at least say something to my child! Sometimes, I wish I could just shut up and let my son deal with it himself! Since starting the playgroup with Sarah, I’ve learned to model it after her, which is to simply state the situation and the feeling involved, “Hey, it looks like the other boy would like to have a go at this train you’re playing, would you like to take turns with him?” (I wonder if we should even leave out the suggestion!) For me, my son’s answer to that question is an absolute “No!”, which makes it even more embarrassing for me, but I think I’ve to just communicate with the other parents up front, that my son is still learning to share and I’m not forcing him either way. (For a really good guide on what to do to make kids learn to share, see the link to Magda Gerba’s post below.)

The funny thing was, when it was T’s lunch time and his daddy brought out some sandwiches, L decided to offer one of his trains to T… in return for a sandwich!

Fair enough.

May I interest you in this train?…

On and related to this topic, there are a couple of articles that can help ease your anxiety when dealing with your child’s anti-social behaviors:

How Can We Help Them Learn To Share?

Hi, Bye and Thank You – Babies and Manners

Diary - Train Tracks (and What We Parents Should Teach)

Sun, 12 Aug 2012 04:00:00 +0000

Aug 12th

About a month ago we bought a wooden train set from IKEA for L, his first train set. He loves it! At first I didn’t want to show him how the rails could connect, I sat beside him and watched him play with the trains on the floor as if they were just cars. After may be 10 minutes (probably less), I caved. I put 2 pieces together while he wasn’t looking, and then 2 more, and then connected the bridge… but even after seeing the pieces joined together, he still didn’t grasp the concept. By the next day, my wife or the helper had “helped him” put the whole track together!

July 19th, box of trains just opened but too busy playing with clay on a mirror

Daddy secretly pieces the rails together, L starts playing with trains on rails.

Not much “trajectory” schema the first day, still big on “transportation” schema, putting all his toys in one place.

From then on, he played with trains everyday, slowly trying to connect the tracks himself, at first he saw that the plastic knob needs to go into the “ditch” but he didn’t see that tracks need to go straight so he would sometimes be able to connect and sometimes not. Today, everything clicks finally! He built a whole track by himself!

Aug 3rd, played with rails for almost the entire hour at Playscope, this made me realize how much he’s into rails now!

Aug 4th, a friend helps build the tracks, but something’s not right

L, so far we’ve helped you build the tracks in numerous ways, but I think there was none better than this one which you did it by yourself! To me, I see unhindered, unplanned train tracks, much freer than those calculating ones built by me. Yours just seem more “artsy” some how :) I’m so proud of you! (Once again, you didn’t even stop to celebrate this victory in the adults’ eyes, to you, being able to play with your trains is the more important part!)

Aug 12th, completed whole track by himself!

Now, one thing that kept bothering me was, should I have waited and not put any tracks together for L? I try to imagine if I hasn’t put the tracks together for him, would his discovery be far more dramatic and memorable? I think it might, but I’m guessing the majority of us parents can’t help but at least do a little bit of something to get them going!

So, while leaving it 100% to the kids is ideal, when we must provide a bit of guidance, I think it’ll be good to show them the process rather than giving them the end results! For example, instead of piecing the rails together, pretend to test your hypothesis with what the pieces could do! Fail at it and try again with another hypothesis. Leave, come back at it again later. Repeat these processes for any new elements we would like to introduce to them! So not directly teaching “What”, but indirectly showing “How”! (Animals do that in nature a lot!)

instructions… WAIT, WAT?!…

In the Reggio Emilia Approach, we are suppose to do scaffolding which means when the children are stuck, we give them a little help to help them get pass the hurdle and climb to the next level. I think showing them the processes will be a great way to do scaffolding!

Am I still teaching too much? Should I really just leave my son alone? What do you consider good / bad teaching or is all teaching bad? I’m interested to know.

My 2 year old said Sawwy…

Wed, 08 Aug 2012 15:30:00 +0000

Aug 8th

A couple of weeks ago, Janet Lansbury reposted a story from a RIE parent, the gist of it was, the mom calmly sets boundaries and consequences, when her 2 year old son threw sand at her face, she acted, allowed him to cry and released his emotions, and then took him home. 5 hours later, after he had slept and was all rested up, he came to apologize to her out of the blue.

It was unbelievable! My son is also 2 years old and he definitely isn’t as eloquent in his speech. Now I had only started this RIE thing with him a couple of months ago, but still I can already see that his whole personality is different when he’s around me Vs. when he’s around his mom or the helper. Through learning the RIE’s way, I’ve definitely learned to read him a lot better now. For example, yesterday, we were riding in the car when he wouldn’t stop moving around, hitting the windows, throwing things from the backseat pockets, etc… His mom tried to offer him food, drinks and other things to calm him down, but I could see that he was tired and needed an adult’s help, so I set the boundaries and when he broke it, I calmly told him: “I can see that you’re tired and you can’t control yourself anymore, so I’m going to hold you in your seat by my side.” He stopped acting up immediately and sat there in my arms, leaning against my body. Within 2 minutes, he was asleep. I told my wife that I’ve learned this from Janet Lansbury’s blog. At times like these, they’re telling us to please help stop them, and we need to change from offering them more choices to removing them.

Similarly today, when he began to get tired before noon, he started acting up again, his mom was losing patience with him and I knew I had to set the “go to bed” consequence. So I calmly told him that if he threw the hard toys again, I’ll have to take him inside the room. (Actually not a good, related consequence. I need to find a more natural step in here.) Sure enough, he threw one on purpose, and I told him “OK, I have to take you in”. He started crying and throwing a tantrum as I tried to pick him up. I let him lay on the floor and said “You can cry, I know you’re upset I need to take you away, but I already said I didn’t want you to throw the hard toys, it may hurt your sister if you threw it at her. How about this? Would you like to bring a book to bed with you?” Once again, he responded calmly, picked his favorite book and walked into the room with me. Within a few minutes, he was asleep!

The big incident was he threw and broke his glass bottle while mom & the helper were busy attending to his sister. We were all startled by the sound of broken glass, I was pretty calm but I think my tone of voice still had a little bit of “annoyance” in it. I told him I didn’t want him to throw glass and food, this broken glass is dangerous… bla bla bla.“ Unfortunately, I think I broke his concentration on the situation at hand. He started wandering off while I was “nagging” him. Still, I put on a sad face and when he talked to me, I told him I’m not happy because he broke the glass bottle. And then we parted ways, he left with his mom and I went out to work.

When I see him at home after dinner, we played with his trains for a little bit and then went to bed together. While in the room, he needed help opening the water bottle, I asked if he needed help and then helped him. He then took the bottle, drank some water, and then said to me: “Daddy… Sawwy” (Sorry).

I said “Thank you” and give him a hug and a kiss. I actually have no idea what he was apologizing about, but just the fact that he knows, and didn’t needed one of us adults to force him to “Say sorry!”, made me so happy :)

Diary - Domestic Helper induced Angry Kids

Sun, 05 Aug 2012 11:00:00 +0000

Aug 5th

Today, we went to a birthday party at ART JAM, a kinda snobbish painting studio in an expensive mall! Like, why let your kids paint at home when you can pay 10 times at much to come paint at ART JAM and feel like an artist? Anyways, it was actually a great event! L was asleep when we arrived so we let him sleep, when he woke up, we let him wander around before he finally showed interests in what everybody else was doing – painting! We helped him get some paint (he chose the colors) and then just let him do whatever with the brushes, sponges and paint. (Except we had to stop him from painting on the window! Not too much anyway :)

Do I really have to paint here?

The colors do look so much prettier on the window…

While we were walking around with L, I saw other parents helping their young children paint and it reminded me of a blog post I read about “Why Not Draw For A Child?”, it gave an example about a family who went camping and while all the other parents help their children paint and in the process made the children lose interests in painting, they just let their child do it by herself. She spent hours painting and afterwards was extremely fond of her own creation.

L happily exploring the spaces

But that’s not the main story today. The main story is about a young boy whom I recognized to be a cute, sweet natured baby before. I haven’t seen him for a long time and now, he has turned into a mad kid! His facial expression is almost always mad, and he runs around like a mad man! I don’t know how other parents think of this kid but when I see how his family’s helper constantly stop him from doing anything, I picture him as a bird in a cage, trying hard to break out.

Here’s an example of one of the things the boy was stopped from doing. The shop uses metal bars with painting hung on them to act as dividers between outside and inside. The space between the bars are large enough for little children to slip through. Naturally, kids see that they can pass through it rather than using the door to enter into the other space! They love that stuff and instinctively will try going through these “gateways” to different spaces. There’s no harm in letting them climb through the bars but his helper tried to stop him from doing so! Immediately the boy growls back, dashed for the opening and jumped through like mad!

Climbing through the bars, jump into another space!

It’s so painful for me to see all these domestic helpers, working for what’s basically slave wages, while both parents have to work to sustain the family in this crazy economy and are forced to forego the most important time in their kids’ lives and leave them in the hands on the helpers! The helpers’ priority is to keep the children from harm, so they constantly stop the kids from doing anything! I honestly don’t blame the helper, but I do feel sorry for everyone involved! What has our world turned into? Aren’t family the most important thing in our lives? This is something that needs to be changed! It’s part of the reason why I’m doing this, I imagine a future where parents can band together to raise their kids, and we only have to work 4 days a week so then we can take turns at being the caretaker. I think our lives will be so much better that way!

This I told L I didn’t want him to do. The wooden board might break and then the sign will collapse. L never climbed onto it again!

One other story happened to L. While he was happily climbing and jumping through the bars repeatedly, mom kept telling him to be careful, and then one time, she hold L’s arm while he was about to jump. This caused L to lose his timing and balance and his leg bumped into a metal stand when he landed! He cried.

I could easily see that other parents might say “See, I told you to be careful” to the kid at this point, but I told my wife it was because of her interference that caused L to get hurt! I’ve always trusted L to sense his own ability and dangers, I’ve witnessed him consistently making careful evaluations before he tries something new! So I know that he’s capable of climbing and jumping through those bars no problem! My wife and I don’t agree on these safety issues… and actually some other RIE ways of parenting. It has caused some arguments between us, and I think addressing these differences is an important topic for many of us! May be that’s a post when I successfully deal with the problems.

Diary - Uninterrupted Play and Empathy

Fri, 03 Aug 2012 04:00:00 +0000

Aug 3rd

At the farm expo, we found out about this organization that does a lot of events to let kids reconnect with nature. Unfortunately, they don’t have an outdoor space that we can visit, what they have is a well designed indoor playroom with 4 main spaces, an open space with lots of train tracks, a mock supermarket, a huge web that spans an entire room and finally an arts & crafts room. Each room has a towering structure for kids to climb almost to the ceiling!

Sounds exciting right? Well, L didn’t even bother with the 2 rooms in the back! He was completely absorbed in the trains, playing with them on the tracks, taking them up the tower and back down, walked to the other tower in the mock supermarket and took the trains up there. Back and forth, again and again for the entire hour!

While I was sitting there watching L play, I saw other parents talked to their kids while they were playing, trying to get them to drop whatever they were playing and be interested in what the parents wanted to show them! I thought to myself, if it wasn’t for my knowledge in the Reggio Emilia Approach and reading up on the importance of uninterrupted playtime from RIE, I probably would’ve tried to talk to L to get him to check out the whole venue too! That’s my personal style of doing things, I like to explore the whole place first before deciding what to spend more time on.

While L was playing with the trains, a little baby was upset and started crying. Something amazing happened! Sarah’s younger daughter, Chi, was playing with balloons. She stopped and watched the baby cry, then she walked over and gave the baby her balloon! People around me often says “you gotta keep an eye on your babies, they have no sense of anything yet!” If that’s true , how could a 1 year old baby shows empathy?! Chi gave something she liked and was playing with to another baby! I’ve seen way too many parents forced their children to share or apologize, and these are the same people who think babies have no sense of anything. Perhaps if they would open their eyes and pay a bit more attention, they would see that babies are so much more capable!

Finally, when it was time to go, L found a doll on his way out. He picked it up and poked it in its eyes and touch its mouth. I smiled. Back at home, we were having a hard time telling L to stop poking his baby sister in her eyes! Suddenly I realized, he was just learning about eyes… by sticking his finger into one! This is a good example of why we adults always need to take a step back, don’t make any assumptions, and replicate the things they want to do so they can learn what they want to learn.

Montessori Vs. Reggio Emilia Approach in Hong Kong

Wed, 01 Aug 2012 16:46:00 +0000

Montessori is a popular education system developed by Maria Montessori in 1897. It seems to be gaining popularity here in Hong Kong, many parents know about it but very few know about the Reggio Emilia approach. Recently, the Montessori playgroup L goes to started to have troubles with him, and it made me think more about the difference between Montessori and Reggio. I thought I’d share a bit of my own experience in the two in this post.

My son has been going to a small Montessori playgroup since he was 1 and ½. I used to like it there with their specially designed toys that train toddlers’ motor skills. Now that he is 2 however, I begin to think that some of the materials and their ways of teaching are not so appropriate.

First of all, because L is old enough and “ready”, we agreed to move him up to the big kids group, (L was really starting to get bored with the little kids group anyway,) but problem with the big kids one is that parents are supposed to leave the kids by themselves. L isn’t ready for this and he cries. The teachers would hug him and tell him to stop crying because “he’s a big boy and everything is OK”. Well, obviously everything is not OK. What’s even worse is that when they see that my boy won’t stop crying, they’ll use me as a condition / threat, “if you stop crying, I’ll ask Daddy to come in, but if you cry again, I’ll have to send Daddy away!” Through RIE, I’ve learned that we shouldn’t stop toddlers from crying. Crying is how they express their feelings, and we shouldn’t prevent them from doing that! And from Reggio Emilia’s Diary of Laura, I’ve learned that separation is an extremely sensitive matter for toddlers that must not be taken lightly! We adults don’t think twice about it, but for a 2 year old, separating from his parents to stay at a relatively unfamiliar environment, e.g. school, is a big fucking deal!! (Sorry!) It’s not something to be forced onto them!!

Next, they’re teaching the Toddlers to eat and drink by themselves by providing food and water with small size plates and utensils. This part I like, but I just heard about an ever better example from Sarah, which is to provide a day’s worth of snacks in a place accessible to them, not only can we provide good, healthy fruits and snacks, but it can also teach them to save their food for later. I feel this is a good way to introduce deferred gratifications.

Finally, my biggest gripe is about the structure of putting kids into age groups and designing tasks for each group. For example, the toys at my son’s Montessori place are designed in Korea and are meant to teach math & logic through games. I guess they’re good but I don’t really like them. They also have a set time to different activities, like at the end of each class, they’ll have singing time. It disturbed L’s concentration as he was testing his hypothesis on some new discoveries!

If you look at the key points of Montessori education, you see that last point – Specialized educational materials developed by Montessori and her collaborators… back in 1897!! Once again, I’m sure she did a marvelous job studying the children, but at the end of the day, it’s still giving kids a “choice of activity from within a prescribed range of options”, based on an adult structured curriculum, which means it’s still getting kids ready for the adults’ view of the world.

In contrast, Reggio Emilia Approach allows children to construct their own understanding of the world. Their own hypothesis. Their own interpretation. There’s no “One Right Answer” at the end of an activity. The children speak and see a hundred, and in Reggio Emilia, we adults do not take away ninety-nine! We learn to observe, appreciate and make apparent each child’s unique learning stories to their parents (and other adults)! The more Reggio “documentations” or “learning stories” you read, the more you’ll see how much your childhood sucked! :P You’ll realize children are far more capable than we give them credits for, and if you provide them with a good, open environment and respectful guidance, they’ll amaze you with things you didn’t think were possible! Honestly, once you learn to see your child in Reggio’s eyes, you cannot turn back to any other way, stuffing knowledge into their minds.

In short, Montessori’s categorized and prescribed approach is pretty good, definitely much better than the regular, traditional education system out there. Toddlers can learn from older kids and everyone “live” in a highly disciplined classroom, doing semi-free activities that have hidden agendas to teach them things we adults prescribed. Meanwhile, Reggio Emilia’s completely child initiated approach, where adults care deeply about the children’s relationships with their peers, their parents, teachers, and their environments, we may provide “seeds of knowledge” based on our limited knowledge, but what the kids make of them, how their path of learning goes, we do not limit at all! It’s a subtle difference but it means the world!

Or, to use The Matrix as an example again, you will raise a Morpheus with Montessori, but you may raise a Neo with Reggio Emilia! ;–)

Zen like Calm

Wed, 01 Aug 2012 04:00:00 +0000

Aug 1st, today’s playgroup can be summarized by one word. Calmness. Both L and C played very well together at my apartment. They shared snacks together and L, who was having problems turning over plates and throwing foods, even helped cleanup the table for both of them!

The incident that took the day’s calmness to the top was once again Sarah’s reaction to a toddler’s “wrong doing”. While Sarah was reading from a story book to her son, L went over and took Sarah’s water bottle, which she put on top of the bookshelf, opened its cap, drank a sip of it, and then pour the rest onto the floor!!

Sarah was sitting right beside it but she didn’t even flinched! She didn’t even raise her voice, but just calmly said “Oh, you’ve poured my water onto the floor. I don’t have anymore water to drink, and there’s also a puddle of water on the floor now, what are we gonna do?” Then she continued reading the book to C.

I thought that was very impressive. Calmly stating what had happened and your feelings about it, how it affected you, with not even a hint of angry or annoyance, so the kid won’t feel bad but still knows he had done something that the other person don’t like.

I think Sarah’s not giving a reaction also seemed to surprised L, so perhaps he was looking for a reaction!

This is something that I need to learn to do a lot better! State your stance calmly but firmly. Remove all traces of “angriness” or “annoyance” in your tone, because when a child hears that, he knows his action had triggered some emotional response in you, and he’ll want to see and explore that response again! (Hence people think kids are pushing their buttons.)

Diary - July 30th - Discovered a female classmate

Mon, 30 Jul 2012 15:41:00 +0000

This morning we went to play at the park again. It seems like it was only a few weeks ago that L wasn’t able to reach these steering wheels machines, or at least wasn’t able to turn them, thus losing interests in them fast. Today, not only was he able to turn them, he discovered a new way to play with it, by hanging off of them like they’re monkey bars. With his feet clear off the ground, he looked at me triumphantly! As if telling me: “Look! I conquered gravity!”

Later on, L spotted the boot washing water tap and wanted to play . I told him I need to take off his socks and shoes first and then he’s off! I think because I had learned to be more hands off and just let him play by himself, he’s a little calmer and doesn’t rush through things as much as before. This time, he slowly observed the water, I only butt in to tell him to turn off one tap before turning on another. When he tried to tell me something, I walked over and he pointed to the stone surface where the water was flowing and said to me “Water! Fall down!” I was expecting him to be inspecting the hose or how the brush and the water interact, this once again reminded me that we never really know what toddlers are observing and thinking! If I had talked to him about the hose or the brush, I would’ve just disturbed him observing nature – water, flows, down!

In the middle of this, we got another old lady coming over to offer her advice, saying how he got everything wet and this is how you wash your hands! (by turning the water down.)

L only goes to 1 playgroup a week and it’s a Montessori one. Today, toward the end of the class, L took 2 bamboo oval balls over to play on his favorite wooden train rack. He had started doing that a long time ago but didn’t have much success due to the fact that they’re not round. Today, the balls stopped midway on the tracks as usual but then he put the train through and it pushed the balls along! It was a breakthrough! He immediately saw the connection and repeated the process many times, and then he tested something new – putting the balls at the tail end of the train! It didn’t work. Hypothesis broken, back to balls at the front.

One bad thing about the Montessori playgroup is that there’s still a little bit of singing and “learning” at the end of each class. The singing broke L’s concentration on the new train / balls discovery. But a funny first time happened here when he moved toward the singing group. He suddenly realized there exists a classmate! He stood behind a little girl and started touching her hair with both hands. Didn’t pay any attention to the other 2 classmates still. The girl wasn’t visibly annoyed but moved away after a little while nevertheless, turning around to look at L. L was really amazed at this point and moved in to touch her mouth and cheek at this point! The girl was really annoyed now and looked a little taken aback by little baby L’s actions. Unfortunately, I was laughing too hard and missed how the incident ended. :P

Did your Parents Belittled you as a Kid

Wed, 25 Jul 2012 16:14:00 +0000

Last week we went to a farm expo where there were many hands-on crafts making workshops, bigger kids can try their hands on wood cutting, drilling, painting, planting, milking (a mechanical cow), feeding goats… etc. At one of the woodwork area, I worked on making a charm, beside me was another family, the boy was about 10 years old, and while he was trying to saw a tree branch, his grandma stood in front of him and mocked him loudly in front of everyone.

“It’s ugly what you made, it’s too thick, so not pretty. You see others saw thinner pieces, those are prettier. Wow, you haven’t made any progress at all, you’ve been sawing that branch forever! You’re so useless! Why are you so weak?! Bla bla bla…”

This is another behavior that I could never understand. As a kid, I was beaten by my mom with bamboo sticks and clothes hangers a lot, but the physical pain was nothing compared to the emotional pain resulted from verbal abuse.

“You are worthless. You’re an embarrassment. I’m so disappointed in you, I’ve given up on you. I have no expectations of you anymore. I’ll just let you ‘live & die by yourself’ (自生自滅), you’ll become a beggar in the future and I won’t care.”

Why do they do that? Don’t they know how much it hurts? I knew the term “heartbreak” a little too well as a little 5 ~ 8 year old kid! I don’t know how little I was when I first heard those vile words, but I vividly remember how much my heart ached! I hid in my room, crying quietly into the pillow. And it wasn’t like I did something really horrible, it was always just because I didn’t do so well in school! Was grades really that important that they need to trample their little kids’ feelings?

Obviously, this post is to tell you NOT to belittle your children. Your children deserves your unconditional love, it doesn’t mean that you’ll just let them become criminals and murderers, on the contrary, it means you should never retract or even hint at abandoning your love for your children because of something they did. A simple, straight forward “I don’t like it when you do that” or “I don’t want you to do that” can tell your child clearly how you feel! While remaining in a positive attitude will teach them that even when they’ve done something you don’t approve, they can still come to you for your advice and help. This habit will become very helpful when they get older (and get into bigger troubles :)

As for the times when your child didn’t “meet your expectations” and disappointed you, well, think about what you were measuring him against! Was it some standardized tests from some schools or education system? Do they really mean anything? May be you, the one who is blind to your child’s awesome ability to discover and construct knowledge on her own, is the one who is disappointing and letting your child down!

(Note: I still don’t understand the parents who constantly belittle everything their kids does. If you’re one of those people, I’d love to hear your reasons for doing that!)

I’m interested to hear about your experience! One of my friends, a cute girl I met in Japan, sent my posts to her sister and her sister wrote to me to tell me that when she was growing up, her parents used to mock her on all of her interests! So it seems to be a common theme and struck a chord with many Asians. I’d love to hear about how you feel these actions had shaped you!

Diary - July 23 - Smelling Through a Tube and Pretend Play

Mon, 23 Jul 2012 15:00:00 +0000

L has been doing very well at our new apartment, having a child safe, “Yes” environment (a place that you don’t need to constantly say “No” to your children) is one of the best things you can do to help your child (and you)! I used to get upset when L was in my mom’s place, where he was bored with the plastic “one-way” toys. He would dump and throw things everywhere, so we had to constantly follow him around and snatched things out of his hands. This in turn created his habit of throwing things away quickly as we reach our hands out, because he had learned that we were always taking his things away! So then we adults had to move even faster! It was a downward spiral to madness!!

Like I said before, I am inspired by the ideology behind the Reggio Emilia Approach of early childhood education. I knew I wanted to use it but I didn’t think I needed to start until L reaches 2 ~ 3. Because of that, I wasn’t involved with L early on and he was given dumb “one-way” toys, stopped with too many “No’s” during his play, interrupted from his explorations by the helper’s narrations and nagging, trying to “teach him things”. All these poor parenting actions had caused L to lose out on chances to learn and sharpen his concentration through uninterrupted play time.

It’s not too late though, now that we have a good environment, we are playing catch up. Today, he was playing with a used paper towel tube, he knew how too look through it but after he did, he put it on his nose and tried to sniff through it! He quickly found out smelling through it gives no new experience and dropped the tube.

Later, before nap time, he was playing with the pillows and the big new beach ball Sarah had given him, the ball fell to the side of the bed and he put pillows on it and pretended the ball had disappeared! We had done pretend play like this with him before but this was the first time I had seen him do that by himself.

I think because of L’s earlier experience, he has less patience and give up on figuring things out easily. What I’m trying to do now is to give him space for un-disturbed, uninterrupted play. Shut up and observe, don’t narrate to him or try to help him (that’ll just break his concentration), and only engage him when he indicates he wants my attention. I’m not too worried, I already know he can concentrate when he plays with things that interest him, but I would like to get L to learn to listen again!

2 more joined our playgroup - July 21st

Sat, 21 Jul 2012 15:05:00 +0000

My wife posted our playgroup info on one of the local Chinese baby forums and got like 5 moms interested in joining us! So we’re happy to report that today we welcomed 2 new families joining the fun!

Sarah brought many different kinds of balls for L to explore

First came YY with his mom Alice a bit earlier than 10 am, YY was immediately friendly and sat right in front of me, looking at the toy trains and cars. I asked him if he liked cars and trains but he didn’t respond. L quietly observed YY and then both of then went on to play with the trains and cars separately. I think this is probably very normal, toddlers at this age recognize people and places, this is the first time YY has been here so both the place and the people were strange to him. I’m glad we provided some good toys that he could feel safe and happy with.

Playing with balls, trains, cars, crayons and containers

When the doorbell rang the next time, it was C and Sarah. L was simply ecstatic to see his good friend and jumped in joy. Reminds me the (only) best thing about school for me was being with my friends :) C was also happy to find the new toy trains on the floor. Sarah then opened her “magic backpack” and pulled out many different kinds of balls, fabric and cars! L just stood there and watched Sarah blew up the big beach ball! His looks of anticipation was intense!

Checking himself out in front of 2 mirrors

The other mom and child arrived late because my wife gave them the wrong address :P (Sorry!) Overall, the play date went very well, the kids all played naturally together, the parents had time to share their habits at home and we shared the philosophies of the Reggio Emilia and RIE’s way of early childhood education. As “incidents” occurred, for example when YY wanted C’s car and Alice tried to ask him to share, or when YY fell and started crying and Alice asked him to stop, we were able to show Alice how to let the child deal with his own emotions.

The newcomers are learning about uninterrupted play

Watching Alice and YY, I could see myself and L in them. I had the right ideas but had questions about how to deal with certain behaviors. It’s reassuring to see that my relationship with L has improved, and I’m looking forward to seeing other parents experience the same changes as they learn more about Reggio Emilia. I’m still new to this but I really need to get better at observing and capturing the children’s learning moments and put them into these diaries. I hope that by showing stories like that of “Diary of Laura”, I can persuade help more parents to connect with their children and help them break out of the legacy educational system!

Drive the cars through the “tunnel”

How trusting your baby early can save you from behavioral issues later on

Fri, 20 Jul 2012 15:14:00 +0000

Does your 2 ~ 3 year old toddler give you any of these troubles?

Says NO automatically when you ask him anything
Doesn’t listen to or ignore what you are saying or asking (multiple inconsistent messages)
Throw things, tip over things, hit things… hard!
Flip over her bowl of food or throw it away completely
When he’s tired / hungry, doing all the “forbidden” things no matter how stern you tell him you don’t want him to do that

These are some of the troubles we’re facing currently. In this post, I’ll specifically talk about 4 – “Flip over bowl of food or throw it away” first, as it’s one of the main behavior I need to correct right now.

When I first started writing this post, the title was actually “RIE is really making a difference in my child”! After we started doing our “parents organized playgroups” and learning about RIE, I had seen such a big improvement in my relationship with my son! It was like we had become soul mates! Oh how naive I was to think that I had figured things out! I guess as a first time dad, your relationship with your toddler is like when you dated your first girlfriend when you were 15 years old. :) Anyway, here’s the story.

Up until a few months ago, I had relied on my wife and domestic helper to take care of L. Although I knew I wanted to use the Reggio Emilia Approach to raise my child, I didn’t think we need to start until L reaches 2 or 3. I thought that as he gets older and starts to understand more, I’ll let him have lots of freedom to explore and construct his own knowledge. Now I know that this thinking was wrong!

What happened with L was, all this time, everyone has been denying him of a few basic rights because “he’s a baby” and that has caused some behavioral issues now that he’s 2 years old. Let me use meal time and his current “throwing bowls and plates away” problem as an example. How did things escalate and reach this stage? Here it is, a step-by-step montage:

Since baby, we locked him into a high chair and force fed him until he finished the whole bowl of baby food
He began to realize he was full or didn’t want to eat anymore, complained with sad face but was ignored
Discovered “self” and really began to dislike being force fed. Began to struggle to get out of the high chair
Used hands to stop the spoons and the bowls from coming near his mouth. Found out that if he caused the bowl to turn over, the adult will finally stop!
Throwing food away to indicate “I don’t want to eat anymore” became a habit
Dad came in and try to solve the “problem” by offering him choices. Asked him to bring his own table and chair and we’ll leave him to eat by himself
Helper afraid he would make a mess, tries to help him, but he now has a short fuse and if he is even slightly displeased with something the helper did “for” him, he would swipe at the bowl, sending it to the floor!

Now at this point, our moms would say he’s a bad boy, and that we should spank him! But has anyone actually trace back and find out why the boy is acting this way? Do you still think we should spank him after reading the above story of how things developed?

The truth is if we had respected L’s will early on and let him control how much he wants to eat, then he wouldn’t have developed the throwing problem at all! Throwing the food away to indicate end of meal is so ingrained in him that now even when I let him eat by himself while he’s calm and content, he would still turn over his plate when he finishes!

By not trusting our baby and forcing something on him, we have created behavioral problems that are exponentially harder to correct! So much so that even my wife considered if she had to resort to spanking (On a different behavior.)

Don’t just take my word for it, watch this amazing video of babies behaving gently and maturely! It can be done! (Janet Lansbury – Gentle Discipline in Action, Seeing is Believing[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0IK2SlHn7o?wmode=transparent]

With our 3 month old daughter now, we know better and we can see that even at 3 months old, she already has the will to “construct her world view”, and deserves our respect rather than treating her as a baby doll! The interesting question is with our boy, what should we do to correct these problems? Especially when he has another issue with listening because he grew up with our helper’s constant nagging so he has learned to tune out his ears already!

What would you do?

Diary - July babies birthday party

Sun, 15 Jul 2012 14:32:00 +0000

Today, there was a “July babies 2 yr old birthday party”, about 40 ~ 50 families cramped into this little Chuck E. Cheese minus the food & giant mechanical rodents store in the mall to have a great party! L had a lot of fun because he loves those ball pits and they had 3!!

It was interesting to see that there wasn’t 1 family who would trust their children and let them explore and figure out how to play. What I witnessed most were parents holding their kids, helping them slide down slides or ride on carts, and taking pictures of their kids w/ their huge DSLR cameras, sometimes asking them to redo something because “Daddy didn’t get the picture!”

Anyways, back to today’s main story. L saw these ramps when we asked him to come with us as the organizers were calling everyone to gather up. There was nothing going on at the gathering, just a cluster of chaos trying to sit their kids down. Naturally, L chose to check out the ramps! There were a bunch of carts in that area and at first he grabbed one that he liked (I think?) but it wasn’t designed for the ramp, the wheelbase fits but the seats were a bit too high. L could ride past the first bump but got stuck in the middle ditch. After trying to ride up to the top and failed a few times, he gave up and tried the other ramp with a different cart. This yellow cart was a little lower, but the result was the same he couldn’t ride up to the top.

Then, he saw an older boy playing with a much nicer looking car (it has a steering wheel!) and he abandoned his yellow cart in the ditch, walked over to the bigger boy and tried to take that nice car! The older boy is, well, older! So he has learned how to deal with other kids fighting for toys. (“I can’t fight back, and I don’t want to bother negotiating! The car seemed to big for the ramp anyway, alright I’ll just move on to play the next thing!”)

L got control of the nice car, he tried to sat on it but it was too unstable up there and it finally fell off. L got on it and rode it to the end of the ramp. He tried to ride it up but this car couldn’t even get past the first bump! He was a little tired and so he just sat there, watching the gathering on the other side of the room, (but didn’t look like he was really paying attention, he looked like he was daydreaming :) An old Chinese lady had been looking at him and at this point she came over smiling, wanting to pick up the yellow cart L left in the middle ditch and help him put it on the top of the ramp. Both my wife and I yelled: “don’t help him… Don’t Help Him!… DON’T HELP HIM!!!” (Together, 6 times!) until we startled the little old lady, stopping her in her tracks! (Sorry old lady! I know you thought you were doing something endearing, but it’s bad for the children!)

It was also interesting that L had seen the other boy push the car up to the top, but he didn’t imitate the boy right away. After sitting there daydreaming for a while, he finally got up, and with a fresh mind he stood beside the yellow cart and pushed it to the top of the ramp! SUCCESS! He didn’t celebrate though, instead he hurried to sit on it! And even though he had his back facing the slope, he pushed off and weeeeee… backwards roller coaster ride!! (I was worried and stood beside him, just in case he fell off.)

He repeated this again and again! Then I think he went away for a while. Next time he came back, he figured out to push the cart up backwards so that he could roll down facing the front.

By the way, while this whole learning story took place, the majority of families were sitting at the gathering watching a clown magician hybrid thing perform. This means the parents had successfully taught their 2 year old children to sit docilely watching their teachers! Sad. Now I’m not saying teaching 2 year olds to sit quietly is bad, there are situations where it’s good, even necessary, to set that boundary! (Like during car rides and meal time).) But I personally don’t think forcing them to sit still to listen & learn from a “teacher” is one of those good situations.

July 7th & 14th Playgroup Updates

Sat, 14 Jul 2012 15:44:00 +0000

Last weekend, we went to the Kadoorie farm for our playgroup, the place takes up an entire hill side, with lots of trees and homegrown vegetables, animals and even a river to supply its drinking water! It was awesome! But since it was the first time L has been there, he was keen on running around exploring the whole place, so that didn’t leave him and C much “uninterrupted play time”. As a result, I couldn’t observe any breakthrough in his learning, hence no diary was written. (Diary entries are only written when “events are considered to have new significance, when it arouses surprise in its characters and is likely to increase knowledge.”)

Today, we had another excellent playgroup at my apartment. I didn’t see a lot of new learning, but there were a lot social, interpersonal dynamics between C and L that were interesting. Since they were still very much into the books, I brought out some extra books I had bought from the Montessori playgroup L has been going to. It’s from a Korean company, and we discussed about how the Koreans love the structured, categorized methods, that’s why they love the Montessori method. And how Montessori is different from Reggio Emilia. (Good topic for another blog post.)

After snack time, we went to the park and the kids had fun re-exploring the exercise machines. We talked about how some Reggio are chaos - no scaffolding, no boundaries! Most parents nowadays want to provide the opposite for their children - controlled, structured teaching. Both are extremes. Meanwhile, the two of us are doing Reggio inspired learning but often worried about if we are still directing too much of the play. I think it’s good we have that in back of our minds.

Not a moment later, we went to wash L’s feet and C happily played with the water, drenching himself from head to toe and spraying water everywhere! If it was my son doing this and I’m alone with him, I would be quite conscious about how other people would say my son is naughty or even tell me that I should stop him! (I’ve had these unrequested advices from random old ladies before, may be they see a guy and think I must have no clue how to take care of my child?!) I ignore all those people, but it goes to show again the kinds of pressure you’ll get from people around you simply by giving your child the freedom to pursue learning on their own!

Sense of guilt, misbehavior and punishment

Sat, 07 Jul 2012 15:59:00 +0000

In the morning, I sometimes let our helper look after L while I catch a few more minutes of sleep. Today, L came back inside the room, I sort of remembered him playing with my glasses and when I woke up, my glasses was gone! I asked L where my glasses were and to my surprise, he was hesitant to answer with his baby talk! He had that guilty look in his eyes and avoided my question! When I pressed on, he then tried to show me what he was playing and gave some baby talk about balls. I asked one more time and he finally walked to the end of the bed and pointed toward a plastic bag there, then he went to climb up the crib, trying to get into it. I checked the bag but didn’t see my glasses (I couldnt see very well), I looked around the room and then finally, I went back and picked up the bag and lo and behold, my glasses, with one arm broken off. I was a little mad, I showed it to L and asked him why he did that, and that I was not happy about what he had done. (I got a feeling that I shouldn’t be asking “why did u do that”, coz I myself didn’t answer this question truthfully as a kid! Why did I do it? ‘Coz I wanted to explore! So I think I should just stick with telling L my own feelings – sadness, frustrations, etc.)

Anyways, the fact that L showed a sense of guilt means that he already knows when he had done something that he thinks I will not be pleased about! I thought that was pretty amazing and was secretly pleased about it at the time. However, thinking back now as I’m writing this, I wonder if this is actually a bad thing. I’m worried that this will grow into hiding, lying or reluctance to share troubles with us, his parents. Perhaps what I should’ve done is to remain positive and calmly let him know that it isn’t nice to break other people’s things, but then show him that I can fix it!

Another big incident this morning happen during breakfast. Perhaps because L played with toy eggs yesterday, he said eggs when we asked him about breakfast. I asked our helper to boil an egg. When it’s done, she cracked the shell, wanting to peel it for L. (Very typical, I wish she would understand my way of teaching!) I quickly stopped her and brought the egg out in a plastic bowl, with a ceramic plate for holding the shells. L was immediately interested but he reached out cautiously, so he already expected the egg to be hot. He touched it, quickly removed his hand from it and said “Hot!”. Next I peeled the shells off and put them in the ceramic plate, L started playing with them, touching them, feeling them, trying to put them back on the egg! (That was cute.) But soon he had run out of things to do with the shells, in a blink of the eye, he tossed the plate off the table! It made a loud noise and shattered spectacularly on the floor! I could see that he was stunned! I was pretty damn frustrated and I asked him that stupid question again, “Why did you do that?!” I realized what a stupid question it was and went back to feelings & reasons mode again, telling him I wasn’t happy about the throwing and breaking of the plate, explained to him how the sharp pieces will cut his feet if he walks on the floor now, and “this is why we don’t throw glass!” I’m not sure if he really got it, but I could see that he was completely absorbed in watching the helper clean up. Afterwards, I took him to the garbage bin to show him the pieces, I took out a particularly large and sharp looking piece and showed it to him, he seemed quite scared of it.

To me, the toughest part of the whole incident is when my mom yelled at me for “not teaching my child!” (slap / punish him) I got beaten by my mom quite severely as a child, and I could never (still can’t) see the benefits of it. In this incident, I could see that he was stunned and was still observing the resulting consequences. I think if you hit a child at this point, they’ll go from the “Oh shit! That was scary! Those pieces of glass look dangerous, and the plate is gone! I can’t use it again!…” thinking, discovery mode to the “Oh fuck! I’m getting beaten again! WTF? That hurts! What can I do to make mom/dad stop hitting me?!” mode. :P

Asian parents are very afraid of “losing face” when their child misbehave, worried that others will call their children 冇家教 (no home discipline) behind their backs! But I think expecting a 2 year old boy to “behave” is more unreasonable! Still, dealing with this social pressure is one of the challenges a Reggio parent will need to face here in Asia.

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.

What is the Reggio Emilia Approach?

Thu, 17 May 2012 04:16:00 +0000

Hailed as the best pre-schools in the world by Newsweek magazine in 1991, the Reggio Emilia approach to early childhood education has attracted the worldwide attention of educators, researchers and just about anyone interested in early childhood education best practices.

Loris Malaguzzi (1920-1994) founded the ‘Reggio Emilia’ approach at a city in northern Italy called Reggio Emilia. The ‘Reggio’ approach was developed for municipal child-care and education programs serving children below six. The approach requires children to be seen as competent, resourceful, curious, imaginative, inventive and possess a desire to interact and communicate with others.

The Reggio Emilia philosophy is based upon the following set of principles:

Children must have some control over the direction of their learning;
Children must be able to learn through experiences of touching, moving, listening, seeing, and hearing;
Children have a relationship with other children and with material items in the world that children must be allowed to explore and
Children must have endless ways and opportunities to express themselves.

But enough official mumble jumble, what does Reggio Emilia mean to me?

To me, first and foremost, Reggio Emilia is a culture that values children, and that culture is created by parents. The parents of Reggio Emilia (the city) built the first school themselves after the war! It’s a community effort! At the time, a lot of the families had both parents working, but because they truly value their children, they created this system to raise their children together, literally “takes a whole village to raise a child”! Nowadays, most parents are too busy with work and with their own lives, they simply send their kids to school and expect the school make them learn. I think that’s the wrong way to do it. I actually imagine a new way of work / life adjustment for the whole society, scaling back work to 4 days a week, then 5 ~ 6 families together can take turns taking care of each others’ kids!

Secondly, REA means we as teachers don’t directly “teach” the kids. Loris Malaguzzi wrote “The Hundred Languages of Childhood” (http://www.reggiokids.com/about/hundred_languages.php)), a beautiful poem that reminds me everyday not to take 99 away from my kids, because as adults, we’re used to giving that “one definite answer”. In REA, we don’t teach kids “there’s only one correct answer”! Instead, we simply provide “seeds of ideas” for the children to construct their own knowledge with! We setup the environment, put them in conditions for discovery and learning, give them a hand or “scaffold” them when they are stuck and are about to get frustrated. Finally, we document! Documentation is one of the key things teachers do in REA.

So… “The Reggio Emilia approach to education is committed to the creation of conditions for learning that will enhance and facilitate children’s construction of ‘his or her own powers of thinking through the synthesis of all the expressive, communicative and cognitive language’” - Edwards and Forman, 1993.

Finally, REA is about culture and nature to me. It’s important to pass on your own cultural identity, your family’s culture, but also to be cross cultural, allowing the kids to grow up in a “world’s environment”, because we are all shackled by our language, a broader cultural upbringing means a broader mind. REA also emphasize outdoor play, which is something that is sorely missed in Hong Kong. I think it’s obvious that human’s removal from nature in the industrialized age is creating what may become the biggest disaster in human history! Our ways of life simply isn’t sustainable and we’re beginning to see the nature’s food chains collapsing in the eco-system. Our children are going face this unprecedented crisis, and I believe we need to put them back in nature’s environment and let their intuition teach them how to rise up to it when they grow up.

I first learned of the Reggio Emilia Approach from Sir Ken Robinson’s RSA talk on education reform, I highly encourage you to watch it as well: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U

100 Village?

Thu, 17 May 2012 00:18:00 +0000

The name is a combination of two ideas - “The Hundred Languages of Children”, a poem written by Loris Malaguzzi, the creator founder of the Reggio Emilia Approach, and the expression “It takes a village to raise a child”. My hope is to help enable parents from all over the world to form “villages” and raise their children to be creative and able to think for themselves!

The Hundred Languages of Childhood

The child is made of one hundred. The child has A hundred languages A hundred hands A hundred thoughts A hundred ways of thinking Of playing, of speaking. A hundred always a hundred Ways of listening of marveling of loving A hundred joys For singing and understanding A hundred worlds To discover A hundred worlds To invent A hundred worlds To dream The child has A hundred languages (and a hundred hundred hundred more) But they steal ninety-nine. The school and the culture Separate the head from the body. They tell the child; To think without hands To do without head To listen and not to speak To understand without joy To love and to marvel Only at Easter and Christmas They tell the child: To discover the world already there And of the hundred They steal ninety-nine. They tell the child: That work and play Reality and fantasy Science and imagination Sky and earth Reason and dream Are things That do not belong together And thus they tell the child That the hundred is not there The child says: NO WAY the hundred is there–

Loris Malaguzzi Founder of the Reggio Emilia Approach

Why I think the education system is harmful for our children

Fri, 11 May 2012 10:03:00 +0000

I cannot say it any better than Sir Ken Robinson, if you haven’t watched his TED talks, please watch them here:

The current system of education was conceived during the intellectual culture of the enlightenment, and in economic circumstances, the Industrial Revolution. It’s modeled on the interests of Industrialization, based on a social structure of “a few elites at the top of the pyramid and a majority of low class laborers at the bottom”. Hence schools are all about conformity and standardization, getting children ready to be a slave in the system.

This used to work, in my father’s generation, it used to be that if you did well in school, you would have a job, and if you went to college, you would become management! This model is now broken. Now, civil engineers are waiting tables, masters of psychology are also waiting tables! People who have jobs are disgruntled about their dead end jobs, and young people are completely disenfranchised! As a parent, we need to open our eyes and see that schools are doing our children a disservice by herding them into this linear, overloaded system.

Here’s one frightening example on “Divergent Thinking”.

“Divergent Thinking” is an essential capacity for creativity. It’s the ability to see lots of possible answers to a question, lots of ways to interpret a question, to think laterally and not just in linear or convergent ways.

In the book “Break Point & Beyond”, scientists did a longitudinal studies of divergent thinking. A test was given to 1500 kindergartners 3 - 5 years, 98% scored above “genius” level. They retested the same children 5 years later, at the age of 8 - 10, now it’s down to 32% at or above genius level. And again, 5 years later at the age of 13 - 15, only 10% scored above genius level. Finally they did a control test to 200,000 adults, 25 years or older, only 2% scored at genius level.

We all had this capacity to think divergently, but the education system systematically educates children out of their capacity of creativity and imagination. What I hope to accomplish is to build tools that will allow us parents to more easily take charge of our children’s education, so that we can ensure their young minds can remain inquisitive and they themselves filled with confidence to explore and solve the world’s problems!

Who am I?

Fri, 11 May 2012 09:45:00 +0000

My name is Nicholas Wang. I was born in Hong Kong and went through its dreadful education system until I was 15, when I moved to Washington State in the US of A. I attended high school in a small town called Issaquah, and then went on to study at the University of Washington. For 8 years, I worked at 2 of the largest internet companies in the world, MSN.com and Yahoo.com, until 2007 when I successfully outsourced my own position to India and I was laid off. This marked the end of my corporate life, working as a “gear” in the grinding machine.

While living and working in New York, I grew more and more discontent with the inequality placed upon us “commoners” by the super rich, top 1% of our society. I wanted to challenge the incumbents and help shift the power back into the hands of the people. When I was laid off in 2007, I decided I will no longer work for corporate America and began to create a web community that will allow people to collaboratively share information about evil businesses. By chance, I met the founder of CUUSOO, Mr. Kohei Nishiyama. He started CUUSOO.com back in 1997 to let people collaborate and submit their own product designs, and if enough people want to buy that product, then factories can make it for the people! It was a revolutionary idea! And I thought if I could help bring this system out of Japan, it has the potential to change the world! Flipping the “mass-manufactured in China” business model around and giving the power back to the independent designers and makers! I moved to Japan to led the creation of the awesome “LEGO models by everyone” site, so now if 10,000 people like your model, LEGO will make it into a real, official product!

While working at CUUSOO in Japan, I created an open source project called “Open Hippel”. My idea was that if we could provide the CUUSOO system free of charge for anyone to use, then people can use it for their own communities. Users can submit issues and ideas, the top ones will get voted up so that resources can be distributed more intelligently. Then, if one of those ideas is a product, it can be sourced back to CUUSOO to be manufactured. I contacted one of my friends in Hong Kong who is a products engineer, we started Makible.com with the idea that it’ll receive product designs sourced from CUUSOO. In 2011, Makible was launched as a startup business and I moved (back) to Hong Kong to join full time as co-founder.

Here’s a talk a gave at Pecha Kucha Tokyo about “Changing the World with User Innovations”:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTqlA3I86lQ?wmode=transparent]

We also used our own system to crowdfund the “MakiBox” 3D printer project (which gathered USD $150,000+ in funds!). Our idea with the 3D printer is that currently, all the 3D printers out there are hobbyists projects that are too expensive and too intimidating for the average consumer. There hasn’t been any groundbreaking objected made with a 3D printer because only hardcore engineers are using it. What we need is to make a 3D printer for the masses. Something that is cheap like a Nintendo or Playstation, and well designed so it doesn’t look like a scary pile of metal bars bolted together! By doing these, I believe we can get our 3D printer into the hands of the gamers, the kids, the dads, the average Joe who has lots of ideas! I believe we can jump start innovations once I put this tool in their hands!

I’ve also been helping my friends at Peer-2-Peer University early on, participating and leading courses, improving its overal community’s user experience.

As you can see, I’m passionate about the “collaborative economy”, enabling users to innovate and solve problems together. I’m now starting this weekend playgroup that emphasize on “child initiated, parents framed” learning, because I think this is one of the most important thing (if not THE most important thing) we can do to change the future! You can read more about my ways of learning in the Reggio Emilia Approach page.

A Child Initiated, Parents Organized Playgroup in Hong Kong

Wed, 09 May 2012 09:05:00 +0000

The world’s population surpassed 7 billion last year, with 50% of that living in cities. Across the world, people are losing their jobs and college graduates can’t even find jobs. The system we live in is breaking at its seams, it can no longer employ and sustain the rapid expansion of human population.

So, are you satisfied with just sending your children to school to get “educated”, and hope that they’ll do OK when they grow up?

How do we educate our children to take their place in the economies and ecologies of the 21st century, when millions of people have already been marginalized by the system right now?!

I share these same concerns with you because I’m a new dad of a 21 months old boy and a 2 months old girl. Even though I’m not an educator by profession, I’ve been learning a lot about Early Childhood Education methodologies like Montessori and the Reggio Emilia Approach, and using it in my own home! So much so that my wife and I have earned a Reggio Emilia educator certificate. (My wife and I are the only 2 in Hong Kong as far as we know!)

As a concerned parent who have been working at the forefront of online collaboration, creating systems that enable user innovations like the official LEGO crowdsource model creation site, and my own internet startup Makible that sells the most user friendly 3D printer in the world, (You can find out more about me and my experience in “User Collaborative Innovations” here.) I’m now starting a parents organized playgroup on the weekends. Besides wanting to provide the best for my own children, my goal is to create a simple system for parents around the world to collaborate and form their own parents led playgroups for children from 1 to 6.

This is an effort that requires parents to be highly involved, if you share the same values as I do, and have a child of similar age as my son (~2 yrs old, “trouble 2” beginning to emerge), then let’s do this together! We can meet at my apartment in Prince Edward, where I’ll provide an environment with “seeds” for exploration. Throughout the sessions, I’ll be taking pictures and documenting the children’s every discovery, trouble and growth. Parents will receive their kids’ documentations after each session.

If you’re interested in it please tell me a little bit about yourself on this form.

Looking forward to meeting other amazing parents and kids in Hong Kong!