Setting Goals And Building Confidence
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November 3rd, 2006
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I sometimes find it tough keeping up with my son's developments since I'm at work during the day and he makes tremendous progress at day care. When I do take my occasional three month periods of parental leave I find it much easier to keep up. 
Our son goes to a private school, which here costs close to nothing just like a regular school, and they do a phenomenal job with the children. Their philosophy is working with the children and parents, looking at their development, and creating individual plans for each family. It's kind of a Montessori inspired approach where one of the main goals is to early on give children confidence by doing everyday things. The school is quite large with students in ages up to six years old and built with the pedagogical approach in mind. The layout is airy and open, no closed rooms or dividing walls, and the kids can easily go to different areas that interest them. We talk to the teachers every day about what's going on at school, how the day was, and if anything special happened. Sometimes fairly quickly and other times longer talks. This is combined with regular meetings where we chat more in detail about what's going on and develop baby-step plans over current areas to focus on. This is where the school shines and assists us parents with small bay-step goals. With small reachable goals everything becomes so much easier and I tend not to get lost in the the millions of other thoughts that bounces around the head of a father with two small children. Many parents probably do this but I think it could be used even more, small short term plans with important focus points. It keeps necessary focus on our children in a sometimes chaotic life.
Our son goes to a private school, which here costs close to nothing just like a regular school, and they do a phenomenal job with the children. Their philosophy is working with the children and parents, looking at their development, and creating individual plans for each family. It's kind of a Montessori inspired approach where one of the main goals is to early on give children confidence by doing everyday things. The school is quite large with students in ages up to six years old and built with the pedagogical approach in mind. The layout is airy and open, no closed rooms or dividing walls, and the kids can easily go to different areas that interest them. We talk to the teachers every day about what's going on at school, how the day was, and if anything special happened. Sometimes fairly quickly and other times longer talks. This is combined with regular meetings where we chat more in detail about what's going on and develop baby-step plans over current areas to focus on. This is where the school shines and assists us parents with small bay-step goals. With small reachable goals everything becomes so much easier and I tend not to get lost in the the millions of other thoughts that bounces around the head of a father with two small children. Many parents probably do this but I think it could be used even more, small short term plans with important focus points. It keeps necessary focus on our children in a sometimes chaotic life. Me and the boss of the household, my wife, do think of goals for our children. But having the school focus on this every single day is very helpful and I can't tell how much we appreciate it. 
I'm involved in the parent council and our meetings with new parents are funny. I usually talk a bit about what to expect and my own experiences. Since I'm so happy with the school they must think that I'm getting paid big bucks to say all these great things about the teachers. The goals revolve a lot around the kids IUP book, a book where teachers put weekly thoughts and photos about your child and parents write back with their own observations. Daily talks, the IUP book, phone calls, and longer personal meetings leads parents to be very involved in their children's life. I love this approach. If you're a parent who look at school as place to dump your child during the day, pick him up at night, not interested in what happened during the day, and don't want to work pro-actively with the school, this approach is not for you. But who doesn't like to assist their child in being happy and building good confidence?
I'm involved in the parent council and our meetings with new parents are funny. I usually talk a bit about what to expect and my own experiences. Since I'm so happy with the school they must think that I'm getting paid big bucks to say all these great things about the teachers. The goals revolve a lot around the kids IUP book, a book where teachers put weekly thoughts and photos about your child and parents write back with their own observations. Daily talks, the IUP book, phone calls, and longer personal meetings leads parents to be very involved in their children's life. I love this approach. If you're a parent who look at school as place to dump your child during the day, pick him up at night, not interested in what happened during the day, and don't want to work pro-actively with the school, this approach is not for you. But who doesn't like to assist their child in being happy and building good confidence?Our son is now two years and 8 months old and one main focus lately have of course been potty training. The school has been really great and followed our requests in taking it easy and not put any stress on our son. With their help he's now been 
in underwear for the past few months with few accidents. Perfect timing since we don't have to do the training during the winter and wrestle with thick winter clothing. Other smaller issues we currently focus on is teaching Daniel to put on his shirt by himself, saying no to things/people who are not nice, work more on artistic stuff like drawing and painting, and continue to work on being social and outgoing. Most kids start the school at around 18 months age and from the very start children serve their own food, eat by themselves, dress themselves, put on their own diapers, and help out with simple cleaning. Not done to help out the teachers, this takes way longer time, but to give the kids confidence early on. The teachers naturally help out whenever needed but do give the kids lots of room to makes mistakes and find their own path to success. It's an approach that we liked from the very beginning and I believe it has helped Daniel to be such a happy and healthy kid. Confidence with everyday situations makes a big difference, not only at school, and we waste less time at home arguing with our son about getting dressed, washing his hands, and defusing potential anger fits.
in underwear for the past few months with few accidents. Perfect timing since we don't have to do the training during the winter and wrestle with thick winter clothing. Other smaller issues we currently focus on is teaching Daniel to put on his shirt by himself, saying no to things/people who are not nice, work more on artistic stuff like drawing and painting, and continue to work on being social and outgoing. Most kids start the school at around 18 months age and from the very start children serve their own food, eat by themselves, dress themselves, put on their own diapers, and help out with simple cleaning. Not done to help out the teachers, this takes way longer time, but to give the kids confidence early on. The teachers naturally help out whenever needed but do give the kids lots of room to makes mistakes and find their own path to success. It's an approach that we liked from the very beginning and I believe it has helped Daniel to be such a happy and healthy kid. Confidence with everyday situations makes a big difference, not only at school, and we waste less time at home arguing with our son about getting dressed, washing his hands, and defusing potential anger fits. Some parents get scared when they hear about the approach of the school. No need for that. I find the goals of the school to go hand in hand with my own and it doesn't require any extra work on my side. I would act the same even if they didn't focus so much on building confidence and independence. Although I believe my focus wouldn't be as good
If you're bored of reading this toddler crap I can suggest a couple of good articles for the weekend. If you like drinking you might be encouraged by the findings that red wine can limit the side effects of a high calorie diet. Getting drunk and not getting fat sounds good to me:-)) If you're a workout person you will appreciate the NYT story about cramping, marathons, and dehydration. Turns out everything we have been taught is completely wrong. If you're like me, a workout freak who loves good wine, you might enjoy them both. It's half day here in Sweden today so I'm leaving early to play a couple of hours of tennis and hit the gym
Keep this in mind. "Work to live, not live to work". Have a nice weekend!
Great Blog!! This is my first time to your site and I really enjoyed it. So many parents depend on daycare and school to teach their children, good for you for being a example to the rest.