Girls Just Wanna Have Fun (And So Do Boys)

Shopping for toys for our daughter is a bit of a Pepto Bismol pink nightmare. The packaging is pink. There are Disney princesses all over the place. All the housekeeping-themed toys are in attractive pink packaging. The last time I was at Toys R Us, I decided I had had it when I came across a girly pink maid's cart such as used by hotel housekeeping staff, only this one was plastered with Disney princesses. (I guess it was a "before" shot of Cinderella.) What is going on here?

Yes, boys and girls play differently. That much is obvious. In the 18-month to 3 years Sunday School class I taught yesterday, the girls used the blocks to build stables for the My Little Ponies while the boys made the blocks into guns. As expected, right? Except when the girls saw how much fun the boys were having, they built their own arsenals as well and joined in the fight.

I really liked what Professor Trawick-Smith said in the article "What the Research Says: Impact of Specific Toys on Play." He states, "We have found some surprising gender differences in our study. Many of the toys nominated by parents and teachers were used most often and in the most complex ways by boys. This included items that seemed gender-neutral from an adult perspective. What set the highest-scoring toys apart was that they prompted problem solving, social interaction, and creative expression in both boys and girls. Interestingly, toys that have traditionally been viewed as male oriented—construction toys and toy vehicles, for example—elicited the highest quality play among girls. So, try to set aside previous conceptions about what inspires male and female play and objectively observe toy effects to be sure boys and girls equally benefit from play materials."

So yes, there are differences, but there's also a need to let boys play with "girl" toys and girls play with "boy" toys. They might get different things out of them, but they all are benefitted by playing.

Play ON: The Dilemma of Self-Directed Play in a Single Child Household

I really enjoyed the readings and videos about the importance of play and good toys. It being the holidays, my husband and I have been wrestling back and forth about what to get our two year-old daughter. We have never been fans of electronic toys and so her toy cupboard is filled with blocks and babies and animal figurines. The debate has been whether to get her a train set or a toy kitchen. The goal is to come up with a toy that will engage her and allow her to play on her own for a while. Being an only child of parents who are both students, she doesn't usually have other people to play with and she's not good at playing on her own. The only time she does is at the Children's Museum where she can play next to, but not necessarily with, other children. An indefatigable extrovert, I think my daughter just doesn't like to be alone.

As much as I hate doing it, we have turned to media to keep her occupied while her daddy and I work on homework. (We are both studying child development right now and the horrible irony of this decision is not lost on us.) So my question is, how do you encourage a child to play on their own? I want to let her be self-directed and self-selecting in her play, but it doesn't work. Obviously, it's partly an issue of temperament, but might it also be the quality or location of toys? We keep our toys in a large bucket that she has a hard time getting in and out of. Perhaps if we followed the suggestions in "How to Raise a Low Media Child" and put the toys on shelves or in small baskets, the results would be better. There was definitely a lot to think about in the resources for me personally. As a professional, the organization and placement of toys is still probably something worth thinking about.

Learning Differences and Backlash

I really enjoyed the website Understood.org. One of the things that children's librarians will encounter are kids with differences. One in four children born in the US is at risk for developmental delay (speech pathology issues, Autism Spectrum Disorder, dyslexia, etc.). Early detection and diagnosis, while more frequent than it was, is still the exception rather than the rule. For that reason, we need to be careful with how we interact and what we say to parents of children who are, to borrow a term from my old teaching buddy, "strange rangers." 

It's particularly important to never attempt to label or diagnose a child. Even if the kid is so hyperactive he appears to be vibrating, do not ask the parent if he is ADHD. While it might be true, there is a stigma attached to kids who are seen as different. Sometimes, that stigma comes from the parents themselves, who see some kind of diagnosis as a sign that their child is somehow "broken." This leads to a lot of anger and denial aimed straight back at you, particularly if you are not the first person to mention it.

If there is clearly something different about a child and it affects the needs of the child as far as interaction and environment, the best thing you can possibly say to a parent is the open-ended, non-judgmental question, "What can you tell me about Johnny?" Parents aren't dumb. Most know their kid is different. Rather than engendering the wrath of the Apache Attack Helicopter Parent, Mom or Dad will usually smile knowingly and tell you everything you need to know about how to help the child without being on the defensive.

Burden of Responsibility

My background is in education. I spent six years as a classroom educator of both regular and special ed students. By law, I was required to provide appropriate curriculum and accommodations for all my students, regardless of what their learning difference was. Because of this, when people talk about providing library programming for people with special needs or language differences, my response is always, "Well, why wouldn't we? Aren't we supposed to?"

This brings up an interesting question: what is the library's burden of responsibility in terms of serving the needs of minority populations in their community? By minority populations, I am not limiting the conversation to mere race or ethnicity. My question includes the visually impaired, deaf and hard of hearing, or (and this is a big one in public libraries) the mentally ill. Ethically and morally speaking, I doubt many disagree that we have an obligation to serve these patrons to the best our ability. After all, we all espouse the maxim "Every reader his book." But legally speaking, how far do we need to go? Obviously, libraries have to comply with ADA legislation, but are we required to shelve braille books and closed-caption versions of DVDs? What about materials in other languages?

My group mates and I are tackling this issue in our presentation and we all wonder if it would be possible to do some sort of class about interacting with diversity as part of the SLIS curriculum. One of our group members recently finished her portfolio and expressed concern that she had such a hard time meeting the indicator about diversity. Just a thought to pass on to the power that be.

Dialogic Reading - A Practice Session

I have recently been assigned the task of watching the toddler class at my church. Twelve kids from 18 months to almost four are in my charge for two hours every Sunday - eating snacks, playing with toys, singing songs, hearing a lesson, and occasionally trying to kill each other. Most people run from the job like a wildebeest running from a cheetah. I, on the other hand, was excited to do it because it gave me a chance to test out some of the skills I'm learning from this class. Also, it would be a good thing to put on my resume when applying for jobs as a children's librarian.

This last week, I thought I'd try something different and do some dialogic reading with my charges. I thought carefully about my choice of book and settled on Llama Llama Time to Share by Anna Dewdney. The rhyme was bouncy, the illustrations engaging, and the topic completely relevant to a group of kids who got into routine biting matches over the tea set. That's where my planning stopped. I hadn't thought about where I'd sit, so when I sat on the floor, there was a violent scrum in front of me, each of the kids elbowing the others to be able to see. My daughter, a member of class, was not helpful because she naturally assumed that if I was seated on the floor with a book in my hands, her rightful place was on my lap. Other than seating issues, I was unused to trying to read a book while holding it up for a group. I kept tilting it at an angle, obscuring the kids' view in order for me to see the text.

Still, we muddled through. I was impressed with how engaged and focused the kids were. I couldn't get them to sit still long enough to eat, but they were riveted to the book. They were able to answer Wh- prompts and Distancing prompts. I took it a step further and asked them to predict what would happen to the toy Llama Llama and Nelly Gnu were fighting over and all the kids had good suggestions.

A week later, the kids still remembered the story and I was able to use it as a reminder of the importance of sharing. However, I didn't bring a book the next week and nearly had a riot on my hands. Dialogic reading, although it requires some practice in advance, really engages kids without being too didactic. I really enjoyed it.

Life Without Brazelton - A Trip to the Pediatrician

As part of the research paper we did for class, I learned about the Brazelton method. One of the main beliefs that Brazelton has is that parents are the experts when it comes to their children. Professionals who work with parents and children should never dismiss that knowledge. A few weeks ago, my husband took our daughter to the pediatrician. She's prone to croup and had spent the night before wheezing, so we wanted to make sure it didn't get worse. Working at our pediatrician's office was a medical student from a local university. He was doing his pediatrics rotation and did the preliminary exam before our normal doctor came in.

"What makes you think she has croup?" the student asked, his tone derisive. My husband explained the symptoms again and my daughter's history, but he immediately shut down to any efforts the student made to help our daughter. Later, my husband told me that he felt like the student thought he was stupid and didn't know what he was talking about. Even though the student might have been right, his manner made it impossible for my husband to listen.

Dealing with parents is tricky. It doesn't matter how much expertise we have if we don't treat parents with respect and honor them for what they know. And they know a lot. Most are willing to share if we give them a chance.

Digital Media as a Means for Enhancing Relationships

Cen Campbell's presentation about young children and the use of technology sparked a thought for me. She mentioned the importance of technology fostering and enhancing relationships between the child and the caregiver. It reminded me of my own daughter.

The first time my daughter met her grandparents was on a computer screen. At the time, I hadn't read the American Pediatric Association's edict forbidding screen time for children under two. All I knew was that I was 8 time zones away from my parents and I wanted them to be able to see their first grandchild. Since then, technology has been an integral part of my daughter's relationship with her grandparents. Her favorite activity to do with her grandpa is to sit on his lap and scroll through family pictures and videos on his phone. Now she knows about her cousins who all live out of state, as well as relatives that have passed away. Technology has really helped my daughter bond, not only with her grandpa, but with her extended family as well.

I can see how this sort of thing can be used on a family level, but I'm still trying to puzzle out what it would look like in a library setting. Some apps, like a finger paint program that was recommended by a contributor to the little e-lit discussion group, could be used in a story time to practice drawing letter shapes with the help of a parent. However, when I tried it out with my own kid, she was not interested. Like books, not every app is going to work with every kid, but there will be some that are better than others. I've really come to appreciate the little e-lit forum for their input and suggestions on that front.