Living Arrows - April 2020



Another month in lockdown but we are quickly getting used to this new normal.  Noah doesn't mind being home from school but it's been a bit of a struggle with Ava as she doesn't really know whats going on - she's only three after all. You may or may not notice that I've been taking a bit of a backseat when it comes to the blog and social media while this is all going on. That said, I'm only an email, tweet, or DM away if anyone ever wants to talk. 

April was spent a lot like March - indoors, homeschooling, baking, playing, painting, crafting, watching movies, taking the dog for one walk a day, laughing, and making memories. Easter was quite a sad state of affairs as we usually do so much with our family, especially the kids great grandparents who like to make a fuss with lots of chocolate surprises. We did a little egg hunt in our house, which revolved around lots of different questions and clues - they loved it and that's all that matters.


Living Arrows

The Power of Boredom - Why Letting Your Kids Get Bored Is Sometimes A Great Idea

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I used to never allow myself to get bored. Whether I was exercising, folding laundry, emptying the dishwasher, or even answering nature’s call, I was entertained. This would normally involve playing with my phone, putting on a TV show in the background, or listening to music, a podcast or an audiobook. There was a time when one’s mind was allowed to wander, but now, with a world of entertainment available to us at all times as easily as pulling out a phone, boredom is now exceptional, abnormal. 


How Jogging Taught me the Power of Boredom
I thought this was a good thing—that time spent bored was time wasted. But then I started jogging. I found the act of jogging to be, well, boring and so I would pass the time by listening to music or podcasts or even dictating rough drafts of articles like this one into Voice Memo. Then a friend who is a running coach told me to try jogging without any additional entertainment. Ugh, I thought, that makes the prospect of my 30-minute jog sound like work. She explained to me how beneficial mental downtime is to stimulate the mind. When your mind wanders, she said, it looks for ways to be engaged. The mind doesn’t like to be bored, which is why we’re always turning on external entertainments. But when it is bored, it clicks into a more active mode. You’ll see, she said. 

And so I tried it. And it was just as she said. I’d begin jogging and, for the first ten minutes or so, I would space out, my eyes rolling, thinking about all the other things I’d rather be doing. Then I’d suddenly notice that I had new ideas popping into my mind: a new article, a book concept. I’d up my pace to get home in time to write down all these new ideas that had come to me, magically, while jogging. And then I realized, doing this day after day, that it was the positive effect of allowing my mind to wander, undistracted. I was empowered through boredom.

Why a Bored Child is an Inspired Child
Which brings me to my children, 5- and 7-year-old girls. My liberal parenting conscience does not want to allow them to get bored. I feel, subconsciously, like I’m somehow failing them if I’m not either proactively engaged with them myself or setting them up in some way to be otherwise engaged, teeing up their drive, as it were. Just leaving them to their own devices feels unacceptable. You know what? Doing just that can be a great benefit, and a decent measure of allowing our own kids to get bored does them a favor. There’s a danger to remaining too passive, in childhood and later in life, if everything is handed to you, even entertainment. My instinct tells me to either play with my kids whenever I can, or to suggest what they should play when I cannot. But this requires no imagination on their part. It is boredom that triggers the imagination. We idealize the imagination in children, but how can we stimulate it? One of the ways we can do so, and truly help our children, is by being occasionally more passive than our conscience might first deem acceptable. Perhaps you’ve seen the scene repeated as I have? It goes like this: “Dad, I don’t know what to do.” My daughter means this literally, not existentially. I can immediately think of a dozen things. I could imagine just reminding her that there are dozens of toys and puzzles and books in the playroom. I could set her up with a game or a movie. I could stop what I’m doing to play or to read to her. My liberal parenting instinct, like a legless creature within me, squirms around urging me to do something proactive. But I restrain myself and say, “I hear you, but it’s good to sometimes have to figure out for yourself what you should do or play next. If someone else were to always give you suggestions, you would never try to invent games on your own.” And then I exit the room and go back to whatever I was doing before.


The inevitable result is that my daughter whines for a minute, lies on the couch looking up at the ceiling, moans slightly, exhales deeply…and a minute later she’s come up with her own solution and is off playing. What she and her sister play in these moments is often more engrossing, for longer periods of time, than whatever I might’ve suggested. It’s because they kids figured it out themselves. They dipped into their imaginations and solved a problem (“I’m bored”) and are embracing their solution. They embrace it more energetically because it is theirs. They have ownership of it, it is their solution. This is a professor’s trick—it’s better to lead students to come to a conclusion themselves rather than tell them the conclusion and say, “memorize it.” The act of concluding, of inventing reinforces the solution and empowers. My kids are also more likely to commit to the new game they invented out of boredom, because they took the effort to come up with it, and therefore value it more than something handed to them. It’s the old “Give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day, teach a man to fish and he’ll eat for a lifetime.” It’s the same with a hunger to be entertained. Tell your kids what to play, and they’ll play for an hour. Help your kids invent what to play themselves and they’ll be entertained for a lifetime.

My discovery of boredom while jogging, and how it unlocked my own imagination and creativity, has led me to encourage my kids to do the same when it comes to playing. Boredom can lead to the superpower of self-sufficiency and a strengthened imagination in children, too.

Noah Charney is a professor and best-selling, Pulitzer-nominated author of more than a dozen books. This article is an excerpt from his first parenting book, Superpower Your Kids: A Professor’s Guide to Teaching Your Children Everything in Just 15 Minutes a Day, which is available as a limited edition on Kickstarter. Don't forget to check out his Kickstarter here.

How to Raise an Optimistic Child

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Optimism – the ability to look at things from a positive point of view. When we consider raising a child, optimism isn’t always first priority – or even considered. Yet in reality, optimism is one of the most valuable attributes a person can possess so it makes sense to ensure that your child learns the habit of optimism early on. As this pre-prep school in London teaches, a can-do attitude is vital if you want your child to succeed socially and academically.

How to foster optimism from an early age
Small children are adept at learning. They learn an enormous amount in the first three years of their life. You, as their primary caregiver, are their chief example of how to speak, listen, play and learn. The language you use and how you react to small setbacks in life
 will teach them how to respond in similar situations. If you’re generally a positive person, then they will naturally pick up on this.

Watch your language
Listen to yourself – how do you respond when things go wrong? Do you immediately become morose or lose your temper? Or do you try to look on the bright side of things? Count your blessings? Even those tiny comments we’re all guilty of can slip out without much thought. Sentences like “Oh I’m always late!” or “Why can’t people be on time?” will all affect the way in which your child sees the world. Take care of the image you’re presenting to your child. Try your best to be positive and optimistic yourself and your child will be too.

Optimists are more successful
Optimism can carry people through really tough times. To keep on trying even when things look bleak is the best way to succeed. If a child learns to give up too soon, they won’t learn that failure is just another learning opportunity. And it really is. When we fail, we’re one step closer to success. We’ve learned what not to do. Help your child to succeed by remaining as positive as possible in your own endeavours. It’s not something that happens overnight – you might find yourself slipping a lot at first but the good news is that the more you practice, the better you’ll become at being optimistic yourself!


Peppa's Day at the Zoo & Peppa Pig Classic Car - Review


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Ava is one of Peppa Pig's biggest fans - I think she'd spend all day watching the show on TV if I let her. Her love of the show has well and truly made her obsessed with all things Peppa - she has Peppa bedding, clothing, books, pens, and of course toys! With this in mind, I was more than happy to accept two new Peppa Pig toys to review.


Character Toys recently released a dozen new playsets to their already extensive range of Peppa Pig toys - all the new products have a vehicle and storybook theme which adds a whole new element to play. We received the Classic Car with Peppa Pig and Peppa's Day at the Zoo playsets - both looked fantastic and Ava couldn't wait to play with them.


The Peppa Pig Classic Car set consists of yes, you guessed it, Peppa Pig and her family's famous little red car. It's suitable for children from 3 years of age and retails at £11.00. There's a large space in the driver's seat, ready and waiting for Mummy or Daddy Pig to buckle up and drive away - though they aren't included with the set. The passenger seats are just the right size for Peppa as they are to scale to the figures. Mummy Pig, Daddy Pig, George, and friends can be purchased with other playsets.


Peppa's Day at the Zoo set is so much fun and the one that Ava wanted to open first. The set includes x3 character; Peppa Pig, Gerald Giraffe, and Mr. Lion, a zoo sign, zoo cart, tortoise, and butterfly cage. Again, this toy is suitable for children from 3 years of age and retails at £13.00. Mr. Lion looks amazing and is a real showstopper - Ava hasn't put him down since she opened the pack this morning. How cool is he?


Ava has had so much fun playing with these sets this afternoon - it's been a joy watching her create different role-play scenarios with the different characters and accessories. It's also great how these playsets can be interchanged and the more sets you have, the more fun you'll have! You can purchase Peppa's Day at the Zoo Book & Peppa Pig Classic Car online at Argos.