In the front hall my school from Pre-Kindergarten though 12th Grade, there was a bronze plaque in the front hall that we saw every day. It included a famous bit of poetry by Gartland Rice: “For when the One Great Scorer comes / To write against your name. He marks—not that you won or lost— / But how you played the game.”

We saw this every day (It was unavoidable.), and while we didn’t stop and ponder the message with great regularity, its message certainly seeped into us—as was intended. Effort, integrity and sportsmanship were drilled into us not just by a passive message on a wall but by a faculty who knew that while winning in whatever we did was sometimes out of our control no matter how hard we tried; how we engaged with the process of everything we did (playing the game) is what makes all the difference.

All this month at Time to Play, we’re celebrating Family Game Night, and we have great suggestions for games you and your family will love playing. As Jim Silver notes, games provide a great family bonding experience, and he notes people play to win. Of course they do. No one likes to lose, but you can’t have a winner without a loser. And this is where it becomes important to acknowledge the importance of how you play the game.

There are thousands of games out there, but at the end of the day, they really break down into two categories: games of chance and games of skill. Both present amazing learning opportunities for kids.

Games of chance—Candy Land, Chutes and Ladders, Uno and so forth—depend solely on the luck of the draw or the roll of the dice. Because these are random, the game is different every time it’s played. The fascination and the fun comes from the twists and turns over which a player has very little control. What children learn in these games is that sometimes outcomes in life are unpredictable and certainly uncontrollable. Today’s loss will probably be tomorrow’s win. The fun is in playing and interacting with others. Teaching kids to be a good loser is as important as being a good winner. No one really wants to play with a sore loser or an obnoxious winner. (When they get into higher mathematics, they can learn that what we like to call “luck” is merely statistical probability in action. If the same two people play the same game over enough time, they are likely to win 50 percent of the time. But that’s a conversation for another day.)

Games of skill—Blokus, Othello, Chess, Scrabble, etc.—combines elements of chance with strategy. A player can get better at these over time. My personal favorite game is the card game Bridge. There is always the element of luck in how the cards are dealt, but learning the ins and outs of the games, bidding strategies and so forth can be the play of a lifetime. Games of skill teach kids to keep trying and to know that it takes time and perseverance to develop the skills that can lead to winning.

On everything from testing to performance, there is such an emphasis on winning that it can be demoralizing to kids and prevent them from trying. The cliché, “keep your eyes on the prize,” can be inspiring, but it’s also important to accept that kids are going to stink at things when they first start out. You don’t become a Chess master overnight, or a star athlete or musician. There are also elements of chance in life. For instance, I was never a gifted athlete. I did my best, but I never came up to the level of my classmates who were naturally talented. In fact, kids and coaches consistently ridiculed me for my total lack of athletic skill. Not easy. However, I was a talented musician and outshone my peers who seemed to work harder without getting the same results.

That brings up one of the most important lessons we get from games: Play the hand you’re dealt. By working within the framework of “what is,” we can learn to be the best we can be. Some things may come easily and some not so much. But if we can set goals and work steadily towards them, that is what makes a rich life. Teaching our kids that winning is a bonus but never guaranteed is as essential as teaching them that if they don’t fully engage in the game, the chances of winning are non-existent.

I ran my first marathon when I was in my 30s. I did not win, of course, but I had a respectable time in the middle of the pack. It took over a year to train, and sometimes I wanted to give up, but I wanted to prove something to myself. I learned that I could do something I believed I couldn’t, and that made all the difference.

Play Categories: Advice, Experiences

My friend and fellow blogger Lenore Skeanzy, whose wonderful blog is Free Range Kids, has been quoting Mark Twain on the risks of riding trains in 1871. It’s fascinating and entertaining reading.

Twain was talking about the low statistical probability of being killed in a train wreck, though at the time conventional wisdom within the country was that train travel should be avoided as unsafe. Twain’s point was that despite the risk, the literal chances of being hurt or killed in a train wreck were very low.

Today, we know that your chances of being killed in an airline crash are statistically less than a car crash. Still more people fear flying than driving. This is in part because when we drive we are in more control and feel that that shields us. As much as we might understand physics and engineering, part of our brains has not evolved enough to accept that hurtling through the sky, six miles above the ground in a metal tube is even possible—let alone safe. Of course, there’s risk, but for most people who fly, it is acceptable risk. If planes fell out of the sky every day, it would be a different story. I once sat next to a mechanical engineer on a flight out of Denver who was absolutely panicked about flying. Even he knew his fear didn’t make sense, but it was just that: an irrational fear.

Now, fear is not always bad. It’s our built-in early warning system. The problem is that it gets ugly and unmanageable where fear meets ego. In other words, parents who read about terrible tragedies about children instantly project themselves into it. As a result, kids are being raised to be afraid of their environments, cautious about anything they don’t know and, in too many cases, risk averse. We have gone from a country that relied on its communities and the people within them to provide support, context and stability to isolated pockets of individuals fearful of anyone and anything we don’t know.

I was recently at an event with many people I didn’t know personally, but who were all there for the same reason and under the same organization. One would think that the presumption of safety within this group would apply. Instead, when a 5-year-old girl walked over to me to proudly show me the art project she’d made, her mother, having looked away for a moment, raced over, grabbed her daughter and told her she was “very bad” for talking to people she didn’t know, and instructed me not to talk to her child. Not surprisingly, her daughter looked like she was on the brink of tears. This drama played out over about 90 seconds, and I wasn’t even an active participant. In fact, I was irrelevant, and I never said a word. It was the mother’s fear that drove the drama, and it overwhelmed her judgment and the facts.

Sadly, “drama” is the operative word here, and I sat there wondering what this lovely little girl’s experience was going to be as she grew up if this was her daily experience. If every unknown situation is catastrophic and dangerous, how will this little girl learn to make distinctions between situations for herself when mom isn’t on the scene?

Children need age-appropriate risk at all stages of their lives. How else do they know what they’re capable of? It’s a huge risk to pull oneself up and start walking. It’s a risk to go to nursery school and suddenly be with other kids. It’s a risk to ride a bike, or a skateboard. It’s a risk to take the SATs. Any activity, any choice where the outcome is unknown is a risk. And risks are life threatening to a greater or lesser degree. Teaching children to take appropriate risks is how we help them to grow. And, most importantly they need to fail. I love watching kids skateboard because, with no parental authority around, they know they won’t hit each trick, but I love the process as failure ultimately leads to success, and success can become mastery. Children need this process.

Of course common sense applies. But shutting ourselves into egocentric cocoons of fear without acknowledging reality is not the answer. Every success has its genesis in one thing: a calculated risk. Striking the balance between rationality and risk is one of the most valuable gifts we can give our kids.

Play Categories: Advice, Experiences, Opinions

It’s getting harder and harder for facts to be heard in the high-wattage emotional arguments that accompany every issue and pervade the media. From tea parties to taxes to Tebow’s ads, there isn’t an issue that isn’t met with a storm of opinion and outrage from all quarters.

Mostly that’s the noise of the zeitgeist, and there’s nothing one can do about it but roll one’s eyes. The problem is, science is boring. Doctors and scientists rarely scream or rant or have a picturesque history as Playboy models and comediennes of questionable taste. That’s what makes “good TV,” as they say in the business.

But there is one current issue where paying attention to science must trump the entertainment value of “controversy.” No, I’m not talking about lead paint, though that’s had its clowns of emotionalism too. I’m talking about immunizations.

The British publication The Lancet last week retracted its report on immunizations that showed a link between immunizations and autism. This follows years of scientific data that showed this link didn’t exist.

However, a celebrity culture grew up around this issue, led by Jenny McCarthy who postulated that her own son was a case study that validated the issue. McCarthy has now received scathing rebukes from a variety of sources, one linked here.

Autism is a heart-wrenching and frustrating disease. There is autism in my family. We will never know for sure the cause of it. And therein lies the frustration. There is nothing and no one to blame. One has to soldier on, dealing with the reality and fighting for the best care possible for those affected.

The recent rise in the diagnosis of autism is upsetting. Could there be environmental factors that influence it? We don’t know. But what was once at best a questionable study has now been refuted. That hasn’t stopped the emotion mongers. The internet is awash with saying that the retraction was motivated by the large pharmaceutical companies, and organizations that have built businesses on this, notably McCarthy’s, which is advertising supported, are backpedaling and offering no scientific substantiation for their positions. Instead, the general consensus of the opposition is that this is a “conspiracy.” These organizations are driven to maintain. McCarthy’s site is covered with advertising; this is no public service. After you read about autism, you can go shopping. That’s truly unnerving.

There is nothing you can do about what’s out there. Anyone with a keyboard and a Web browser can publish online—including me. Still, I called pediatricians and other doctors in the past week to find out what their position was on this issue. Several expressed frustration at dealing with parents who, armed only with an opinion, fought them on vaccinations for their children. To a person their position on vaccinations has remained unchanged: Vaccinations are necessary for kids and good for the population as a whole. There are no proven links between vaccination and autism. There is, however, too much data on the negative impact of skipping vaccinations.

The purpose here is not to give medical advice. If you have children who are due for vaccinations, speak with your doctor. Educate yourself about the situation, separate from all the posturing and emotional noise. I get a kick out of watching Entertainment Tonight, but I don’t plan my health strategy based on what I see there. Your parents may remember when Robert Young famously promoted products saying, “I’m not a doctor, but I play one on TV.” Yes, a credulous public was actually more likely to take medical advice from an actor and a fictional doctor than their own MDs. But that’s the job of advertising: to manipulate you to an emotional reaction that will prompt you to buy, completely bypassing the part of your brain that can make informed decisions. It works again and again, or advertisers wouldn’t spend billions of dollars every year to do it.

When you’re choosing a car, a lip gloss or a snack food, a little emotional manipulation is more or less harmless. When what you’re playing with is your children’s health—and a public health issue—emotion has no place.

If you’re dealing with autism in your family or your circle of acquaintance, this is very difficult. It changes families, crushes expectations and reshapes your life in ways you haven’t imagined. Having a focus for that, a definable enemy, can make it appear as if you have a little more control or understanding of the situation. Yes, the search will continue for both a cause and a prevention of autism. Families will still be challenged by it, and while emotion may be cathartic of comforting, in the long run it’s science that will provide the answers.

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Boys are freaking out about their bodies. As a parent or caregiver, you may be aware of how conscious girls are about their weight and appearance, but how about the boys? A recent article in the New York Times about boys and grooming describes the increasing number of products sold to boys. What’s remarkable is how many of these boys cite “confidence” as a reason to douse themselves in cheap cologne. The wonderfully quirky ABC show “Modern Family” has an 11-year-old character who frequently bolsters his ego through liberal application of aftershave.

I’m not so worried about this, and I’d rather that the junior high school halls smell like the fragrance aisle at CVS than a locker room. This is a current fad, driven, as usual, by aggressive marketing that plays on the insecurities of this target audience.

What I am concerned about are the drugs, supplements and drastic diets that many of these boys are putting themselves through to achieve results that may not be possible. I have spoken with a 7-year-old who was distraught because he didn’t have a 6-pack. He doesn’t know that he hasn’t matured enough to have one yet. All he sees are images and feels the frustration that he can’t be like the images he’s bombarded with on TV.

Over the past several years as I’ve interviewed kids and coaches, I’ve also found that boys are much more likely to be secretive about what they’re doing. Girls are, too, particularly in the early stages of anorexia when they are starting to binge and purge. Boys, however, are very likely to hide things like steroid use, which has grown every year among high school students according to The Association Against Steroid Abuse.

The risks are huge in any of these extreme measures. Perhaps, though, the most important one for parents to understand is that their sons and the boys in their lives feel pressured to achieve results that are not physically possible at their ages. You can’t look like a 25-year-old bodybuilder at 15, no matter how many drugs or supplements you take.

Parents and caregivers can’t do anything about the societal pressure facing boys. In a world where a good physique seems a ticket to fame as with “The Situation” on “Jersey Shore,” it’s natural that insecure kids will want to achieve that—and that they won’t tell you.

So, what to do? Here are several tips from doctors, trainers and coaches:

• Diet. Every doctor I’ve spoken to says that at the end of the day, the way to achieve an athletic, healthy body, is to have the calories expended be equal or greater to calories taken in. Educate yourself and your kids about diet and how it affects the body. Number one doctor recommendation: eliminate all soda.
• Learn. One thing common to personal trainers and athletes is an intimate knowledge of how the body works and what’s best for it. This will help avoid injuries and build a lifetime base of health.
• Emphasize Process. Even “The Situation” didn’t build his abs/identity in 20 minutes three times a week. Fitness is a lifelong, daily commitment, but doctors and trainers consistently say “health first.”
• Get Real. Some male cover models will go without water for two days before a photo shoot to look more sculpted. Not a good idea, say coaches. Plus, it sets up an unrealistic expectation. No two bodies will ever react the same way to an exercise of diet regimen. We’re all prisoners of our genetics, but that doesn’t mean you can’t strive to be your personal best.
• Wait. Girls are getting cosmetic surgery for their “Sweet 16” presents. Not a lot as a percentage of the population but enough to trigger the “eeewwwwww” response. Teen boys are also asking for liposuction. “Don’t,” say doctors. No one should undergo procedures until their bodies are mature. Tell your kids that Heidi Montag is creepy. Discuss.
• Indulge. If you’re following these tips and, most importantly, are watching and talking with your kids, there’s no harm done in the liberal application of body spray. It will wear off by the time they get home from school. Try to remember whatever it was that was fashionable for us when we were in school that made our own parents shudder.

Health and well-being come first; that’s your job. You can marvel at the marketing savvy of the people at Old Spice who made your grandfather’s boring aftershave hip for today’s kids later.

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If you’ve got teens, or even pre-teens in the house, it’s hard not to ignore the reality show “Jersey Shore” now on MTV. Kathy Griffin mentioned it on CNN New Year’s Eve with Anderson Cooper, who claimed to know nothing about the show. Though typically late to the party, the New York Times has become aware of the show’s popularity and its potential impact on the culture.

I became aware of the show when a group of 12-year-old girls were talking about it at an extended family gathering in early December. I was a little taken aback about the language and lifestyle they were discussing, so of course I tuned in.

Yes, these characters are laughable, cartoons of reality. Like so much of the TV of this genre, we know that it is provoked and edited to be as sensational as possible. We’re supposed to loathe these people and look down on them, and the producers have no qualms about showing these young people in the worst possible light—trumpeting ignorance, narcissism and sexuality in about as degrading a way as possible. And it sells, or it wouldn’t be on.

Now I’m no prude, and I believe in freedom of the media. If MTV wants to put that on the air, then by all means they have a right to do so. We can’t stop them, and I wouldn’t want to.

However, it does point out one of the relatively recent challenges of parenting and raising kids in the rapidly evolving media marketplace—playing gatekeeper on a daily or even hourly basis. Because kids have so many different channels to watch, online destinations to surf and access 24/7, it can be a full time job just to monitor what kids are watching. Yet it’s an important one. As parents and caregivers, we can’t control what’s on TV, but we can control the context in which the kids in our lives perceive the material.

Limiting screen time is good. Parental controls on computers are good. Keeping TVs and computers in public areas of the home is good. But at the end of the day, simply banning or preventing potentially objectionable material will only work for so long. Shows and web sites you might ban will inevitably be part of the conversation in your kids’ peer groups. And don’t make the mistake one parent did, thinking that in forbidding her 12-year-old to watch “Gossip Girl,” she was being protected. This young lady knew every plot and designer name. She got if from her friends and saw it at their houses. She simply didn’t tell her mom.

While a steady diet of “Jersey Shore” or most reality shows could make you worry for the future of the human race if it doesn’t bore you to death with its sameness and predictability first, the best idea is not to ban it but discuss it. Watch it with your kids, if they’ll let you, or record it and watch it later. It can be a great teaching tool. It’s not just that you can let your kids know how ridiculous it is for someone to give themselves a nickname like “The Situation” or talk about themselves in the third person; it’s that you can listen to your kids and get their responses to this. In fact, listening, particularly with Tweens and young teens is a good habit to get into. This is one time when teaching can go both ways.

You may discover, as I did with my 12-year-old friends, that they think the kids of “Jersey Shore” are worse than I did. While adults look back and are saying, “How could anyone be like that?” Young people tend to look forward, and say, “I would never want to be like that.” It actually kind of scared them.

Good.

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By Jim Silver (Follow me on Twitter)

So, you’ve purchased the perfect toys and presents for your family; It’s now time to open them up and have some fun. Here are a few tips for making the whole process easier and more enjoyable:

1. Buy all batteries in advance. I can’t tell you the number of parents who still forget the batteries and deal with the frenzy of finding a store to buy them once they realize their error.
2. If it takes batteries, then you need a small screwdriver to open the battery casing. Have the proper screwdriver ready! Have a scissor ready to help get the toys out of a package. Most people think companies are trying to torture the public with the secure toy packaging, however, the truth is they are making sure the product doesn’t get damaged during its long trip before it makes it to your home.
3. If you have a younger child who lacks patience, it’s often better to put a toy together, put it back in the box, and then wrap the present. This is all dependent on your children, how long assembly will be, and if your child likes to be part of the “assembly line”.

Just these few simple steps can make the holidays with kids much smoother and more enjoyable.

Play Categories: Advice, holidays

By Jim Silver (Follow me on twitter)

You’re looking for a Zhu Zhu pet or a Mindflex and you can’t find one anywhere. It’s at the top of your child’s wish list, and you need to come up with this toy(this is where we need to define “need vs. want”). What should you do?

1. Bounce from store to store until you find it. This usually ends up in failure. If you’re going to try this method, go to the stores that carry the most toys. You can try calling ahead, but that doesn’t usually work, especially for large stores. Then try some smaller local toy stores, as sometimes you get lucky.
2. Get to know the sales help. They often know when the next shipments are arriving. And be nice! Acting crazy, rude or demanding won’t get you any good tips or information. The next NICE customer will get the tip – Always be nice!
3. Buy a different toy and a small gift card. Gift cards extend the holiday season, and allow a child to spend fun time walking through a toy store. For a child, visiting a toy store with a small gift card is an outing; they can spend hours there.
4. Go online. You’re already online reading this, start hitting the web sites that sell toys. A search for a specific toy will usually bring up several different sites. You could always go to eBay and see if you want to buy and pay now at a premium, or wait till later.

Play Categories: Advice, Experiences, products

By Chris Byrne (Follow me on twitter)

Now you may wonder what in heaven’s name Kate Moss and her comments on eating have to do with toys and play, but stay with me on this one.

Moss is being pilloried for saying, “nothing tastes as good as skinny feels” in an interview. The outrage patrol, which jumps on everything to leverage publicity, has taken her comments out of context and attacked her for promoting anorexia. Of course, they did. As I repeatedly say, we’re outraged all the time over everything. Is anyone else getting exhausted by all this vitriol?

Moss was commenting on how she personally stays thin. Her publicists say the comments were taken out of context, and for once they’re right. The papers say that Moss is idolized by teens. Really, every teen and tween I’ve talked to lately is swooning over “New Moon.” A waspish model barely registers on their radar.

However, let’s take Moss’s comment apart. Moss is dependent on keeping her figure for her work, and one of the ways she does that is to remind herself of the consequences of eating certain foods. She didn’t say, “Starve yourselves into a fashionable shape.”

Yet when I look at obese and inactive families and young people lined up at McDonald’s in airports (where I am a lot lately) and carrying away trays loaded with shakes, burgers, fries and more, I’m concerned. When I read that costs of obesity are going to skyrocket, I can’t help but think that Moss, who is advocating conscious eating, may have a point.

Let’s face it, being overweight has serious health consequences, particularly for kids, which I don’t need to go into here. The way to control weight is reduced intake of calories balanced by increased expenditure of calories. Eat less. Move more. It’s not brain surgery.

For kids that means absolutely reducing what is eaten and be more active. Watch diet. Eliminate soda. Limit sugar and processed foods. And get out and play. I have yet to meet or interview any kid who has gotten their weight under control who doesn’t feel better about themselves or life. Kate Moss may have said things to make news, that’s what celebrities do, but it does feel better to be healthy.

That’s the goal of a new program from the NFL. NFL Play 60 program is designed to get kids, up, active and healthier. It’s an inspiring initiative, and full details on the Play 60 Challenge are here.

Many of us remember the President’s Council on Physical Fitness and attempts later by Arnold Schwarzenegger to get kids up and playing and to make physical fitness a cultural value. It’s sad that we’ve lost that. Hopefully, an entity as big and admired as the NFL can make some progress restoring physical fitness as something that’s part of our lives. The impact on the culture would be profound.

We all know that riding bikes, playing pick up ball, just plain running around all count. We have to make that happen, or we will inevitably pay the price in the end.

What’s ironic in the Kate Moss flap is that the outrage that makes headlines is always ginned up to allow people to reinforce their positions and avoid making any kind of change. The number of kids who will become fashion models is statistically non-existent. The number of kids who should be taught that being healthy feels better than subsisting on inactivity and a terrible diet is, well, all of them.

Let’s teach kids responsible eating, being active—and let them see for themselves how good that feels.

As for me personally, knowing I’ve avoided the 730 calories and 9 grams of fat in a 16-ounce fast food shake (more than 1/3 of the calories I should have in a day) feels a lot better than the soon-forgotten shake and the few minutes it took to consume it. Now, I’m not advocating an ascetic lifestyle. Occasional treats are fine. Occasional treats, however, don’t make kids fat.

So, let’s rephrase for Kate because she’s not getting a chance to: Nothing tastes as good as being healthy feels.

Play Categories: Advice, Opinions

By Christopher Byrne (Follow me on Twitter)

I have been haunted, delighted, mesmerized and just plain thinking about Where The Wild Things Are since I saw this amazing movie a couple of weeks ago. However, I’m not going to review it here. Our own Cynthia Fuchs did a great job with that.

It needs to be seen because in our culture right now, there is so much pressure on kids to perform, to meet standards set by adults and to behave in specific ways. In everything kids do, the results are the key and very little attention is paid either to process or how children perceive the world. We have so hemmed kids in by structures (school and activities primarily) where there is an adult expert guiding the experiences, that many times a child who does not adapt to these and is behaving in a way that is natural to him or her is either seen as difficult, ill or worse. There is little room for kids to experience, fail, hurt, learn, grow, just be and find their own ways.

That’s why Max’s odyssey is so important for adults to see. It captures the chaotic and confusing world that children perceive and chronicles Max’s attempts to identify experience, understand his impact on the world, be able to perceive all of this and integrate it into his personality. Max is at turns, violent, compassionate, angry, sad and clueless about what is happening to him and what he is experiencing emotionally. And it is a magnificent rendering of how a child’s mind works in trying to make sense of what he perceives as chaos and locate himself as a separate individual within it all.

Moreover, since the movie works from Max’s point of view, we experience what he does in the way he does. This is foreign to most adults who may have forgotten what that experience was like. They may recall events and may have integrated the pains and joys of growing into a structure that is consistent with maturity, but to go into the mind of a child who is overwhelmed and confused and who as yet lacks the language or context to describe his experience is something we forget—as we should. Still, the movie captures the nonlinear perception of a child and the fluidity of an unformed, or still forming, personality in a way that is profoundly moving.

When he meets his Wild Things, Jungian archetypes that populate his world, Max naturally sets himself up as king because at that age, children are remarkably self-centered, and he has learned from his mother that power comes from being in charge, something he chafes at. However, over the course of his adventures, Max learns that absolute power is not something for which he is prepared, or that he even wants. He ultimately learns that as a human, he must exist within the context of a culture and a family and having faced down his fears and come to see the consequences of his actions, he ultimately learns that “it’s time to go home.”

As he leaves the land of the Wild Things, Max is suffused with a kind of joy and a kind of eagerness that comes from surviving trial and succeeding and having a new and more mature understanding of himself.

This is also classic children’s literature—a child separated from authority and protection (parents) must find his or her way, through testing and loss and failure and danger and find that he or she can survive. It is at that point that the child becomes an individual and can participate in his or her culture.

We have seen this a million times. It’s the center of Harry Potter, The Wizard of Oz, Peter Pan, The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, Star Wars and any of thousands of stories you can think of.

It concerns me, however, that so much of children’s entertainment seems fearful of the darker sides of children’s experiences. They won’t go away, no matter how many clear happy endings are pumped out. The notion that “nothing bad can happen” only makes for tepid stories that bore children. Now, I’m not suggesting that we scare kids, nor am I suggesting that everyone will be as likely to read Dickens as a bedtime story for 7-year-olds as my mother did, but what fiction can do is provide vicarious experience, form new archetypes for kids and empower them to face and overcome their demons. They’ll be better adults because of it, and Where the Wild Things Are is a wonderful reminder that this process is a natural and necessary part of growing up.

Play Categories: Advice, Movies, Opinions