Author: Heather Shumaker
Publisher: Jeremy P. Tarcher (Penguin), 2016 (Paperback) (Review copy is an ARC from the publisher)
Length: 363 pages
Genre: Adult; Parenting
Started: March 10, 2016
Finished: March 14, 2016
Summary:
From the back cover:
With her first book, It's OK Not to Share, Heather Shumaker overturned all the controversial rules of parenting with her "Renegade Rules" for raising competent and compassionate kids. In It's OK to Go Up the Slide, Shumaker takes on new hot-button issues with Renegade Rules such as:
- Recess is a Right
- It's OK Not to Kiss Grandma
- Don't Force Participation
- Safety Second
- Ban Homework in Elementary School
Shumaker also offers broader guidance on how parents can control their own fears and move from an overscheduled life to one of more free play. Parenting can too often be reduced to shuttling kids between enrichment classes, but Shumaker challenges parents to reevaluate how they're spending their precious family time. This book helps parents help their kids develop important life skills in an age-appropriate way. Most important, parents must model these skills, whether it's ;imitating technology use, confronting conflict, or coping emotionally with setbacks. Sometimes being a good parent means breaking all the rules.
Review:
I believe this author's books came into my life at just the right time. When I read her first book, It's OK Not to Share, which focuses on toddlers and pre-schoolers, I was a brand new mom with an infant, but had my fair share of experiences with kids as a teacher. Now, reading the follow-up book, which is geared to issues of school-aged children, my daughter is four and in school herself (for non-Canadian readers, in Ontario we begin junior kindergarten at age 4), and my teaching experience has increased. Similar to my thoughts after reading her first book, this new instalment puts forth many parenting ideas, some are revolutionary and some are ones you and other parents might already be using.
This book follows a similar format to the previous one: each chapter introduces a concept such as "It's OK to Talk to Strangers" and "Banish Calendars at Circle Time", shows the typical way most parents approach the issue versus the unconventional "Renegade" way, how children interpret the messages given to them when each way is used, and phrases to use and avoid when experiencing these concepts in your everyday life.
Some of these ideas are ones that you may already be familiar with depending on your circle of friends. The first section on Risk and Independence with notions about letting kids assess risk, be the boss of their bodies, and not touting the typical "stranger danger" speech from the 80s is one that most parents I know tend to adhere to already. Granted, most parents I interact with are fairly well-educated, liberal, and don't helicopter, so these ideas might be a novelty in your area.
Of particular interest to me as a teacher were the chapters on Children's Rights at School and More Rights at School. The author is pretty spot-on here, and her insights only reinforced that my gut feelings on these topics have been correct for years. For example, Recess Is a Right is a chapter that focuses on the benefits of recess in elementary school and how research shows that scores plummet when schools remove recess. I know there are schools in the US that have removed recess in exchange for more instruction time to prepare for standardized tests, so this just reminded me how privileged my family is to live where recess is protected. Like the author, I don't believe in taking recess away as punishment, kids need their breaks just like adults do, probably even more than we do. It's counterproductive in my experience as a teacher, so I simply don't do it.
The chapter on banning homework in elementary school is also something we already have semi-adopted here. Nightly homework, particularly for math, is more common in grades 7-8+ (our elementary schools are mostly K-8 where I live and work), but students do receive ample time in class to complete what would normally be assigned as homework otherwise.
Some of the ideas presented are a bit more uncommon, even in my experience. The section on More Rights at School discusses the ideas of not forcing kids to participate, changing kindergarten expectations, and getting rid of activities at circle time when they aren't developmentally appropriate. The chapter on kindergarten I agree is very relevant (except for the suggestion to delay kindergarten entrance since many families cannot afford that), especially in the US where redshirting is a huge issue in some communities and the programs are very academic. My daughter is lucky to be in a full-day, play-based kindergarten program in an area with a December 31st cut-off date where redshirting is practically nonexistent. Even as one of the youngest in her class, she is thriving, and our experience has been positive, but I agree it isn't like that everywhere. The "don't force kids to participate" and "no calendars at circle time" concepts are ones I agree with, but aren't used by most teachers I know. It made me wonder why circle time always focuses on dates and times that most kids don't developmentally understand (my daughter is only just starting to grasp time as a concept at not quite 4.5), and why we force kids to do the same activities as everyone else (assuming safety doesn't factor in).
The chapters in the Sorrow, Empathy, and Disaster section are ones I am sure will be of interest, particularly because we don't encounter them frequently. Don't Remove Ogres from Books is an idea I am passionate about as a reader, I don't believe in censoring "bad" things from children's literature, since I would rather have kids learn about heavy issues from books where they can safely process them and ask questions than learn incorrect information from a friend or see triggering images in the media. Deal with News Disasters and Share Unfair History are really important chapters in my opinion, since they deal with bad experiences and uncomfortable parts of our history that kids need to know about, but that we as adults sometimes struggle with how to convey in an age-appropriate way.
Recommendation:
Like the first book, this one is a must-read if you're a parent, teacher, or are otherwise around children often. These methods do work (sometimes with needed tweaking) and they result in happier kids and families.
Thoughts on the cover:
Keeping the continuity from the first book of a single image against a white cover is simple, yet effective.
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