Learning to Learn, Work, and Play


Because the practical demands of parenting often dwarf the bigger picture, it can be useful to keep a parenting journal that ties practice to goal, stimulating an awareness of how your parenting style and behavior impact your child's long-term development. As you record your own personal responses to the questions raised in this article and others, you'll eventually find that you've written your own book on parenting.

Question:
What kinds of learning, work, or play habits is your child picking up from you? What does this look like at home?

Context:
My just about three-year-old daughter and I were driving home one day last week, when I heard her high-pitched voice emerging from the back seat. I initially thought she was role-playing with one of her stuffed animals, but what I heard coming out of her mouth took me completely by surprise. "The poor donkey," she said, "is so old and tired, he can no longer carry heavy loads to the mill."

"What are you talking about?" I asked at length, and she replied, "The Musicians of Bremen." As it turns out, my mother has been reading the story a lot this past month in response to Solveig's repeated requests.

By mere coincidence, I have been doing a lot of research on the milling industry in Minneapolis lately for a series of monologues that I am writing for an upcoming history festival. This seemed like the perfect time to tie our interests together into a field trip out to the site of the St. Anthony Falls Dam, the old site of the lumber, flour, and textile mills that were booming at the turn of the century. My blog entry for the day reads:

Last night I stayed up until about 4:30 A.M., reading about the history of lumbermills in Minneapolis. I couldn't sleep. I tried searching for interviews or memoirs from lumberjacks and their nears in the late 1800s, and though I found some stuff, a lot of it was very cutesy and more of a pancake-house genre than I had hoped for. I went back to the study of Hennepin county and started really looking hard at some of the dates contained therein, inadvertently memorizing random details along the way. When I woke up this morning (rather late), I was able to give an impromptu breakfast lecture on the history of the sawmill in the northern half of the city.

The copyright of the article Learning to Learn, Work, and Play in Parenting Practice is owned by Valerie Borey. Permission to republish Learning to Learn, Work, and Play in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

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