February 6, 2009
The keynote speaker at last Saturday’s Parent University, Stanford professor and author Dr. Denise Pope, was a breath of fresh air for all in attendance. Her information was clear, informative, research-based, and above all else, useful.
She covered a range of topics in her keynote and her follow-up workshop, but I want to focus on just one of her main ideas: PDF. (And no, I don’t mean Portable Document Format.) This acronym is meant to help parents and guardians create a healthy environment for their children, and it stands for adequate Play time, Down time, and Family time. To put this in perspective, research shows that the average child has lost 10-12 hours of free, unstructured playtime since 1981.
Play time means unstructured play. This is when children shoot baskets, build forts, make a drawing, play tag or hide and go seek with friends. The key is that it is not structured, which means it’s not practice for soccer team or piano lessons. It’s time when children create their own play.
Dr. Pope gave as an example Steve Jobs, who was a tinkerer as a child. According to a former neighbor, he was always building things and experimenting in his garage, and not often with successful results. This same neighbor, when recently recounting this story, wondered what would have happened to Steve Jobs had his parents not allowed him all this playtime and instead had insisted on lots of extracurricular scheduling: flute lessons, test prep courses, travel teams.
Down time is the time kids need to wind down from an earlier activity—during the week this is often what they need when they get home from school. Every child is different in how they unwind: for some it’s a favorite television show, for others listening to music while laying down, and for others a favorite computer game. The key is that these are transition activities. For instance, playing on the computer when a child gets home from school is the transition between the structured time of school and either unstructured playtime, family time, or homework.
Family time is just that, time with the family. This means time engaged with family, not just passively watching the same television show together. Research has shown that the ideal (and what makes the biggest positive differences in the lives of individual family members and the family itself) is 20 minutes of check-in time with the whole family at least five times per week. Often this happens at dinner, but it is by no means limited to family meals. That is, you can be creative: in the car together or on a family walk. Already I can hear a few readers of older children lamenting, “I’ve tried this but he doesn’t want to check in with me. All his responses are one word no matter how good my open-ended questions!” Have no fear, he’s listening and he knows you are interested, which, when it’s all said and done, is probably just as important, if not more, than the content of what he says. Your actions are saying you care and you are there for him. This counts!
For more information on Dr. Pope and her research, visit her website: http://www.challengesuccess.org/Home/tabid/688/Default.aspx
Finally, huge kudos to Helena Weiss-Duman and her team of RDS parent volunteers for hosting yet another terrific Parent University. And as in the past, the non-RDS parents/guardians who attended went out of their way to compliment the School on the quality of the event and to give deep thanks for being included.
Have a great weekend.
Mike