Multiple Intelligences and Scheduling Activities--thoughts from Linda
I love this response I got to my blog from my friend Linda! It speaks to the multiple intelligences and spending times doing activities with your child. It is really worthy of a careful read.
I'm writing not as a
parent but as a youth advocate and M.A. Ed. with 15 years working with
home-schooled, alternatively-schooled and traditionally-schooled kids. And as
someone who tends to think and write a lot about how we can provide sanity in
the midst of the over-stimulation of this contemporary world, with my three
wonderful nieces, ages 8, 10, and 13, in mind.
Great post, Peggy. I especially like your confessional, because in
taking control of one's schedule, whether just for oneself or for the kids, we
have to be willing to be real about our own proclivities as we figure out kids'
temperaments. I like the important lesson that there's no one way to do it
"right."
I am the same as you--I love myriad activities. As a kid I couldn't
get enough of trying new things. I am happy my mom had me in ballet, art,
roller skating, ice skating, gymnastics, swimming, tennis, piano, skiing
lessons, pretty much anything I asked to do.... And I only wish we'd known
about rock climbing and wilderness school!
The thing I didn't do much of, that I look back and realize I
truly wanted, is SHARED activities--I always wished my mom would do art or get
in the pool or on the ski slope WITH me so we could--and this is perhaps the
crux of it -- craft some narratives together. "Remember that time, when I
fell on the bunny slope, and you had to help me up, and then you fell
too..."
I had those narratives, but only with other kids, not with adults.
Of course I am sure my mom cherished the break time from her energetic kid. And
she did sign us up once for a mother-daughter cooking class. THAT, of all the
activities, really felt special, because she wanted to spend time with
me.
This is one reason I SO love and support the work you do, Peggy,
to bring parents and kids together for shared self-exploration and getting to
know our deep selves. It's so brilliant that you work with both at
once, that your programs actually nurture the needs of both the child and the
parent. I realize now that that was at the heart of what I wanted from my mom--
time for authentic exploration of "who are you? who am I??"
I'm aware that this is sounds at worst not helpful, or at best
off-topic, in that it throws in yet another thing for parents to balance: kids
and adults need their own activity time, their alone time, and, I'm saying
here, it's the shared activity time that should not be overlooked.
Because the operative question, if you're a busy parent, is HOW to
figure out the right balance, I'd like to suggest one heuristic: that we try
configuring schedules of activities around something like the 'Multiple
Intelligences' (Howard Gardner's theory)-- so that means you strive to allot
time for the intelligences that are NOT covered by the school's curriculum and
the soccer team etc. That would be the interpersonal, intrapersonal,
existential/spiritual, and naturalistic ones.
NATURALISTIC: Unless you go to a nature school or live on a
working farm, engaging the natural world is not usually covered in the
curriculum or in your home life. It would be nifty if something so elemental as
learning to attune to our natural surroundings were not relegated to one week
of camp in the summer, no?
INTERPERSONAL: Schools certainly provide important interpersonal
learning time, or I should say "experimenting time", and they're
slowly realizing the importance of offering actual social skills
training--things like how to be a good friend, how to advocate for your needs,
managing angry moments, etc. But because schools are mainly about kid-to-kid
engagement, kids still need contexts for meaningfully engaging with other
age-groups, including adults. (However, in my observation, this is sort of
flipped for home-schooled kids, who often get a lot more practice with
negotiating adult-kid engagement, but they may be more challenged to
get interpersonal learning time with people their own age.)
EXISTENTIAL/SPIRITUAL: Unless your child goes to a Waldorf school
or you have a spiritual activity in your weekly life, this part of a child's
being doesn't get much exercise without overt planning and effort.
INTRAPERSONAL: schools and extracurricular activities
generally provide little or no self-reflective, self-actualizing type of
inner-work opportunities; and parents are often bereft of ideas in this arena
because they probably had little intrapersonal time with their own parents.
This is why we're so blessed to have someone like you, Peggy, in our community,
who creates programs just for this need to be met!
So I'm aware that bringing up the arguably neglected intelligences
is not necessarily helping lessen the stress of the parent who is already
worried they are over-scheduling! But maybe if the paradigm, the criteria is
adjusted to be about balancing TYPES of engagement, it will help both parents
and kids feel more whole, more fulfilled by their activities, regardless of
whether they are many or few.
Labels: Multiple intelligences, overscheduling
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