Bringing up a delightful child

Posted on January 5, 2017 by Robyn Collins

Happy 2017 to everyone! May your lives be rich and rewarding this year and may all your resolutions be fulfilled. I want to share with you the wonderful experience I had recently when a friend visited with his gorgeous 3 year old son (let’s call him Simon). What a pleasure it was to spend time with my friend but also with Simon, who was so delightful the experience has stayed with me weeks later. The reason for the delight? My pleasure was in being with such a happy, secure, well-mannered child who was part of the morning and the conversation without intruding on it. I’m sure we’ve all had the experience of finding ourselves exhausted by a friend’s visit because his/her child was so difficult. Not this one! Later I tried to analyse the reasons and here’s what I found:

There was no sign of any technology or TV Simon’s father talked to him and ‘taught’ him all the time. On the one hour drive to my home they had counted trams, how many cranes they saw, the number of red cars they passed, on so on

When they arrived the father gave Simon many simple decisions to make. He never said the blanket, ‘what would you like to do?’. Instead he asked, ‘to you want to have coffee at Robyn’s or at a coffeeshop?’ (he opted for Robyn’s); ‘Do you want milk or water?’ ‘Would you like to sit on the ottoman and watch the trams and at the table with us?’

When Simon wanted to be part of the conversation he always began with ‘excuse me’ before interrupting and then when he spoke his father gave him total attention. And in between time my friend and I spoke without interruption.

All of the above are simply ‘good parenting 101’. Children love to learn and they especially love to learn from their parents. Simon was learning all the time in the conversations with his dad. He was learning how to count, how to distinguish colours, how to use words correctly, and what constituted good manners.

Simon was learning about decision making and thinking through alternatives. One problem I see as an educator is we tend to overload children with decisions. I remember one memorable day as a principal when a 5 year old was asked whether or not he wanted to enrol in my school!! This is a hard enough decision for an adult to make, let alone putting the onus on a 5 year old. It is great to teach decision making but we should always start with simple alternatives – ‘Do you want to wear your red dress or your blue dress?’ not ‘What do you want to wear today?’

I have no problem with parents giving children technology in moderation and when they are older but I must say I cringe to see 2 year olds playing with one iPhone while the parent plays with another. And I’m ready for the criticism I might get for this opinion! Of course, our children have to be familiar with technology. Their future depends upon it, but we need also to give them time when they learn to amuse themselves, use their imagination and, dare I say it, be bored. Most of all, we need to put both phones down and talk to each other.

Finally, perhaps the most important parenting skill was in full view throughout the visit. When Simon asked to be part of the conversation he received the complete attention of his listeners. I know I’ve definitely been guilty with my children of not listening carefully – regularly! It is amazing the see the difference and the reduction in attention-seeking when good manners are rewarded with total attention.

When children are asked what they want from their parents, the overwhelming response in hundreds of studies is they want their parents’ time. It is interesting how hard we work to make money to give our children everything they want, when all they want is our time.

Worth pondering for 2017?

Six Months of Adventure

Posted on July 8, 2016 by Robyn Collins

Many months ago I wrote about following your passion and for the last 6 months that is just what I have done. Since December 2015 I moved states and cities, bought a new home, spent six weeks overseas in some of the most wonderful places in the world, wrote and am about to publish The Entwhistle Experiment Book 3: Stuck, and wrote The Giverny Chronicles (for publishing in 2017.

What have I learned? I’ve learned that most people in the world are good and kind, like the dozens of people who helped me in my move and travels. Like the wonderful Helen, a volunteer for 36 years at Monet’s Garden who opened the gates for me when all other tourists had left and allowed me to soak the atmosphere I wanted to try to capture in my book. Like my friends, Jane and Andy, who took me to Hampton Court, Chawton to see The Jane Austen House Museum, and to the Roald Dahl Museum. Like my family, children and brothers, in-laws and nieces and nephews, whose privacy I guard, but whose support and love is unwavering. Like the wonderful friends I left behind in Brisbane but who never lose touch.

I’ve learned you never know what you can do until you try and that resilience is something you can learn. I’ve learned it’s not what happens that matters so much, as your attitude to what happens that makes the difference. As Stephen Covey puts it in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, It’s not what happens to us, but our response to what happens to us that hurts us. Of course, things hurt us physically or economically or at the deepest emotional level but how we choose to deal with that sorrow determines whether we face each day with strength and happiness or choose to be miserable.

I learned when it all boils down if you have love and family, then you’re the richest person in the world.

And so, when I wrote The Giverny Chronicles while I was staying at John Steinbeck’s Cottage in Monterey (truly!), with family in Connecticut, at Hideaway Cottage in Hay-on-Wye and at Giverny’s Garden I wanted to capture the idea that good overcomes evil, that miracles happen and that love never dies. I can’t wait to share it with you next year.

10 Ways to Smell the Roses

Posted on April 27, 2015 by Robyn Collins

The world is too much with us: late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers.
William Wordsworth

How busy are your children? How much time do they have to just be children?

You know the scenario: weekend sport, after school practice, ballet, music lessons, martial arts, and various other organised activities. And there’s schoolwork, homework, and the iPhone, iPad, computer games, apps, MP3 players, Facebook, Twitter and other social networking platforms. It is no wonder children are experiencing more stress than ever before. And even reporting that sometimes, they’d just like to do ‘nothing’.

When was the last time your child sat down and ‘stopped to smell the roses’?

Jody Forbes (2010), describes the ability to be still in a busy world as being ‘present focused’ or mindful and ‘savouring’ the moment. She says, “Savouring requires one to become fully aware of positive feelings, appreciate them and make deliberate attempts to prolong the enjoyment”. Adults need to do this also, of course, but maybe it is time to check that our children have time simply to savour?

Mindful savouring connects us with countless positive experiences and studies have shown that the greater a person’s skill in savouring an event or activity the greater the joy he or she feels in response to positive events. The positive emotions generated not only make a person feel happy at the time, research has shown they also over time improve short-term physical health and lessen the risk of illness.

As parents we can teach children to gain all the benefits of savouring by modeling what this means. Here are some ways:

1. Share your good feelings with others

Studies of how people react to positive events show those who share with friends have a higher level of overall happiness than people who do not share their feelings; even if they are alone at the time of the event, simply thinking about sharing the memory with a friend adds to overall happiness. Encourage your children to share their memories with you, their friends and family members. Listen mindfully.

2. Take a mental photograph

When building memories, people need to search for, notice, and highlight the things they find most enjoyable. In the process, they not only pinpoint pleasurable aspects of the situation and enhance the intensity of joy in the present, they also form clearer and more vivid memories they can more easily recall and share with others in the future. Simply consciously looking for the good things in activities leads to higher levels of happiness. Practice this skill with your children by asking them on a regular basis to notice in detail the things that make them feel happy.

3. Congratulate yourself

Savouring the things you do well by ‘patting yourself on the back’ mentally is associated with improved wellbeing. Research shows that the more people mentally affirm themselves when they do well, the more they report enjoying the particular outcome and the more they are able to savour their success. This is much harder to teach children because of the worry of ‘showing off’. Saying out loud ‘I’m really happy about how I did that’ will give your children permission to say the same. Once they understand it’s okay to be proud of their achievements, teach them to give themselves a mental pat on the back, rather than saying it aloud.

4. Sharpen your sensory perceptions

Blocking out distractions by closing your eyes to stop competing sights, sounds or smells distracting you sharpens attention on the pleasure itself. In research this has been found to make the experience more mindful and pleasurable. Tell your children to close their eyes and give them a square of chocolate to eat, a rose to smell or a song to listen to. Ask them to describe their feelings.

5. Shout it from the rooftops

Outwardly expressing positive feelings can intensify them by providing our minds with physical evidence that we are, in fact, joyful. When we receive unexpected good news we should laugh out loud, jump up and down, and shout for joy. By ‘putting on a happy face’, the evidence suggests, we may actually feel more positive.

6. Compare the outcome to something worse

If we compare good experiences with less pleasant ones, we have a frame of reference by which to judge the merit of the experience. When children receive a poor mark in a test or their team doesn’t win, ask them to think about either how their scores could have been worse or how they could have been better. Imagining a worse outcome increases appreciation of success, while imagining a better one lowers appreciation.

7. Get absorbed in the moment

Total immersion or absorption in an experience is known to enhance enjoyment of that experience. Most people are able to recall a time when they were so engrossed in what they were doing they lost all sense of time and place. Find pleasurable experiences that engross your children (perhaps not computer games; perhaps reading a children’s adventure book like The Entwhistle Experience: Glued!!). When people are absorbed and mindful, they report increased pleasure and reduced stress.

8. Count your blessings and give thanks

Showing gratitude for what you have is important in savouring life. In a week long experiment, students who counted blessings at the end of each day reported higher levels of happiness than students who counted hassles or neutral events. Research indicates that saying “thank you” to a friend, saying grace before a meal or expressing gratitude in prayer, song or a speech can actually increase joy by providing conscious awareness of positive feelings. With effort over time, people can cultivate an “attitude of gratitude” that becomes a habit. Think about placing a ‘gratitude stone’ beside your children’s beds to remind them to identify ten things they are grateful for each day. The stone could be one they find themselves or they buy at a market.

9. Remind yourself of how quickly time flies

Savouring past good times by reminiscing and rekindling the joy from these memories; and looking forward by anticipating and imagining the joy you’ll feel in a positive experience or outcome is known to enhance happiness. Studies show that people who regularly reminisce about past positive experiences or eagerly anticipate future pleasure, such as a holiday, enhance their pleasure and therefore their mental health and wellbeing. Children love to hear about what Mum and Dad did when ‘they were little’.

10. Avoid killjoy thinking

When it comes to savouring life it’s just as important to avoid thinking negatively as it is to think positively. Unfortunately, “all too often savouring gets lost in the stress of everyday living. And thus beautiful views pass unnoticed, scrumptious desserts are swallowed untasted, and relationships with friends and family go underappreciated. Although we may have no shortage of positive experiences, appreciating and enhancing them requires savouring. With this skill, we can enjoy life more fully, find greater happiness, and experience greater physical health” (Bryant).

By simply teaching children to savour we can improve resilience, joy, and the fun, mystery and adventure of life. I encourage you to give it a try.

Is the paperback book dead?

Posted on February 19, 2015 by Robyn Collins

The death of the printed book in favour of ebooks has long been predicted. For, at least, ten years I have read and heard that soon libraries will be book-free and we will do all of our reading on electronic devices. What a terrible thought! So it was with a sigh of relief I have read a number of articles recently that suggest reports of the death of books is premature.

In fact, the sale of paperbacks is up, and ebooks down, although both forms are selling well. Various figures around the world show that print book sales increased by 3-5 percent in 2014 while sales of ebook devices remained stagnant; and that approximately 80 percent of books sold are paperback or hard cover. In Australia last year, 55.4 million print books were sold. That’s almost 2.5 books for every man, woman and child.

This is not to say that ebooks will disappear. Even a book lover like me uses kindle on my iPad to store my travel library or to preview a book at a cheaper price to see if I want to buy the more expensive paperback.

Ebooks are particularly useful when travelling. Instead of paying excess luggage costs for all my books I can store as many as I want in one small device. And if I run out of reading material in the middle of the night when all the bookstores are closed, a new book is just a click away. How amazing is that?

My preference, however, is always to hold a book in my hand and it seems I’m not alone. Particularly heart-warming is the fact that children are reading more books and parents and schools are doing a wonderful job in promoting the joy of reading. The three best-selling books in Australia in 2014 were children’s books and they also took out 5 out of the top 10 titles.

Speaking to a teacher who recently bought my latest book The Entwhistle Experiment Book 1: Glued for her primary school class she told me how excited her students become when they receive a new, paperback book. I asked her why she thought this was so and she responded she had asked this question too. The student responses included:

I love the smell of books
It feels good when you rub your hand over the cover of a book
I love the bright covers
Books are much easier to read in bed
I like to turn the pages and see how many there are to the end of the chapter
They’re more fun
They’re easy to carry
I love to go into a book store and choose

What do you think? When you examine your own book buying habits, do you buy paperback books or are you an ebook convert, or both? And why do you choose one option over another?

Top adventure books for 9-12 year olds

Posted on February 2, 2015 by Robyn Collins

As a writer of children’s books, I’m regularly asked to name my favourite children’s writers and what are the best young adult books?

The 9-12 year old age group is often the hardest to buy for because children in this group are in between. They’re too old for picture books and not yet old enough for some of the graphic, issues-based young adult novels currently on the market. Children in this age bracket are children who want the comfort of home on the one hand; and independence from parents on the other. They want to show their individuality but are desperate to be part of the group at school; and they long to be older, while having moments of fear about leaving the security of childhood.

Children of these ages love humour; boys, in particular, love toilet humour and fart jokes. They like to read books that are scary but not cruel or with graphic violence; and they like to identify with a hero who wins in the end.

Thinking about which books, or writers to recommend for 9-12 year olds and young adults is like being asked to name your favourite child. The Internet has dozen of sites containing lists of the most popular children’s authors for this age group but they can be overwhelming. That’s why I wanted to share my list with you…so here they are:

JK Rowling – who can go past the famous creator of Harry Potter, not least because he single-handedly brought young readers who had not read for years, back to books? Rowling’s series meets all of the requirements to engage readers in this age group, and those a little older. They are funny, scary and full of suspense. The main character is brave and daring, but not without faults, and he is forced to play for very high stakes. He has to save his world and keep his friends safe.

Roald Dahl – many parents worry about Roald Dahl’s books because they can be dark and include children being treated quite badly by adults – e.g. Matilda. What saves them, besides the dark humour, which children love, is that the children always win against the adults. Young readers, who often feel powerless in the adult world, delight in seeing the nasty adults getting their comeuppance.

C.S. Lewis – the Chronicles of Narnia are a favourite with many children, although I recommend it for more advanced readers in the 9-12 age group. The fact it is a 7 book series is reason alone to think of it for more accomplished readers. Put simply, it is a series about four children who travel through a wardrobe to the land of Narnia and learn of their destiny to save it from those who would destroy it. Some children will enjoy it for the simple adventure and the bravery of the heroes, and the animals which help them. Others will see the complexity of themes and ideas that make this a series for adults as well as children.

Another reason why I like all of the above books is that they lend themselves well to parents reading a chapter a night to their children. Children in the 9-10 group usually still like to be read to, although they may not admit it.

Anthony Horowitz – regularly named as a favourite children’s author, particularly for boys, in the pre-teen age group, Horowitz’s mystery thrillers are hard to put down. The New York Times names him as ‘the most original and best spy-kids authors of the century’ and I have to agree. His books are full of action and suspense and see the hero fighting his way out of seemingly impossible situations – and winning.

Enid Blyton – somewhat dated now, and sometimes sexist and racist but still Blyton’s books seem to capture the attention of reluctant readers. Well worth a look, and can be valuable history lessons in talking to children about social change, or just to be enjoyed as great adventure stories.

Isobel Carmody – Carmody is a ‘literary’ writer with popular appeal. Her Little Fur series carries an environmental message and a half-elf, half-troll protagonist who is helped by a series of animal friends. She is distressed by parks being destroyed and in fear of her home and that of her friends being destroyed and must undertake a perilous journey to try to save it. Girls, in particular, will love these books.

Robyn Collins – I couldn’t complete this list without putting myself on it! I mentioned ‘favourite child’ earlier and it’s true that while no character is my ‘favourite’ each one seems real to me. In my latest book, “The Entwhistle Experiment Book 1: Glued”, for example, I have lived with Horatio Entwhistle, the main character for over 12 months so I feel that I know him and that his adventures and fears are real. Horatio’s book, and all my books, are suitable for boys and girls and my aim is to make the stories exciting and fast moving adventures while teaching about resilience, friendship and courage.

Please share with me below, the children’s books you have read and loved.

6 Painless Tips to Encourage your Child to Read

Posted on January 21, 2015 by Robyn Collins

[su_quote]‘Sometimes,’ said Pooh, ‘the smallest things take up the most room in your heart’.
Winnie the Pooh[/su_quote]

I was talking to a friend recently who bemoaned the fact her grandchildren did not read. She wanted to know if there was anything parents and grandparents should do to encourage their 9-12 year olds to read.

My first thought was that at nine it might already be too late to interest a child in books, but writers have to be optimists. So my first tip for parents, grandparents and teachers who want young people to read is to start early:

1. Read to children from the moment they’re born. Children love the sound of their parents’ voices so picking up a picture book, or a book of nursery rhymes or fairy tales is an excellent place to start. Not only does reading bring you closer to your child and increase their security, it helps them with the basic skills for their own reading. They learn, for example, that books have a beginning and an end, that you read from left to right, that there is a right way up to hold a book and so on. These are such simple things but give children an advantage when they start formal reading instruction at school. Anything that rhymes for young children is excellent because rhyme begins to develop the basic skills for later reading fluency.

2. Be a reader. If parents never pick up a book, children are unlikely to do so. This is particularly true with regard to fathers and sons. If a boy never sees his father (or grandfather) read he does not see books as important in his life. It doesn’t matter if they are reading comics or sports’ magazines to begin with, although the aim is to move on to ‘real’ books as soon as possible, as long as they see adults reading often. This is a great way to get your kids to read.

3. Talk about books with love. There is so much to love in and about children’s books. Tell children about what you read as a child. Go to the bookshop together and find your favourite childhood books, get your child to ask the assistant to help find a book he or she will love. Find books with beautiful covers and run your hand across them. Smell the pages. Compare the feel of a book with the feel of a kindle. If your child prefers the feel of a kindle, that’s fine – as long as they are reading.

4. Make books special treats. Go to the bookshop once a month and allow your child to buy a book they choose (give them a cost limit first and they learn about budgeting, making choices, being independent).

5. Make books an every day part of your life. Join your local library and choose three or four books a week. My son at 3 years old had ‘The Five Pennies’ out on permanent loan. I can still chant some of the pages by heart.

6. Ask each child in the family to look for a favourite quote from a book and talk about the quote over the dinner table. Here are three of my favourites:

If you have good thoughts they will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely (Dr Suess: The Twits)
Promise me you’ll remember, you are BRAVER than you believe, STRONGER than you seem, SMARTER than you think (A.A. Milne: Winnie the Pooh)
It’s never an insult to be called what somebody thinks is a bad name. It just shows you how poor that person is, it doesn’t hurt you (Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird).

And as for Winnie-the-Pooh? Every child I know who is a reader has books they cherish and talk about and remember. As they grow into adulthood they take with them what they’ve read and remembered from books, and can tell you how sometimes the smallest things they have read lodge in their heart and even change their lives.

I would love to know how books have influenced your life. Please comment below or view my latest children’s book “Glued”.