adventures in childcare ADVENTURES IN CHILDCARE adventures in childcare

Going back to go forward

For generations, the elders of a community, wise and adept at communicating important life-lessons, were the ideal teachers for the members of a clan or family. Combining knowledge and first-hand experience with myth and philosophy, they then devised profound ways to impart this invaluable information upon the youth. These methods of instructing and strengthening the minds of young people has worked extremely well. But these invaluable stories, lessons and anecdotes are quickly being lost and distorted amidst the fast-paced, self-important lifestyle that people on every continent now subscribe to.
I am not an elder. I have been actively involved in many children's lives and I am acutely aware of the need to bring new methods of teaching into our children's lives. Our children need to be given a maleable template of how to cultivate a positive relationship with themselves. That template requires the active involvement of inspired and unrelenting parents, foster-parents and grandparents. I am a person with faults and short-comings just like everyone else. I am also an inspired parent who wants to see the children we bring into this world be given the tools to make this world a better place to live for ALL the inhabitants of this jewel we call the Earth.

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Further Reading

We all aspire to help our children learn to read. And in case you're not aware, the surest way to accelerate their abilities is to flex your own ability. Reading is one of the most powerful tools we have to strengthen our brain "muscle". And with the various and impending crises unfolding on the horizon of this dear (and life-giving) planet, we're all gonna have to flex our muscles pretty hard if we want to extract some viable and life-saving solutions.
As some books will state: If you want your child to read on his own; read on your own. Your child needs the ability to teach herself what her school barely alludes to. The ability should reside in the behaviour of you, her parent. So go find some books that reveal unanswered questions you've had in your own head.
The problems that we all face are ours, our children's, our children's children's, and even their children will be affected by our problems. However, the sooner we realise that there's already some scaffolding in place, the more timely and progressed will be the solutions. The scaffolding refers to individuals who are actively sharing their compounded knowledge through books, media, business, and activism itself. The idea is that all of their information will be further refined and expounded upon by us - the readers. It's been happening for millennia, so why stop now? :)

The point of all this: I'm creating a side-bar of some of my favorite books called Further Reading. The list is not in any certain order, but they are all either pertinent, scientific, hopeful, funny, helpful, inspiring, revealing, well-written, and even all of these things together. In verse and in trust, for the benefit of all humankind. Please check some of them out and, belive me, the first one you should buy is The Post-petroleum Survival Guide & Cookbook. It could end up being a textbook by the time your son or daughter is in secondary school ;)