Snowflakes for Sandy Hook is December 29th!

Sorry about that.  My brain is already in 2013.  Details below.

Snowflakes for Sandy Hook - December 29, 11 a.m. - Noon

So: a small but great project.  the Connecticut state PTA organization is organizing a 'winter wonderland' for students at Sandy Hook Elementary School, and have asked for donations of homemade paper snowflakes.  Raising the Village is partnering with Bija Kids (900 Fulton Street between Washington and Waverly) to host a snowflake making party!  The event will be on Saturday, December 29th from 11 a.m. to 12 p.m.  We'll supply origami paper and scissors (although feel free to bring some of your own) and some festive snacks.

While we will all be making snowflakes for the Sandy Hook students, we will not be discussing what took place there in any detail at the event.  We will say simply that some kids in their school died and they are all very sad so we are making the snowflakes to cheer them up and to show them that other kids around the country are wishing the well.  Because families have made different choices about whether to tell their kids about the event and how to do so, we ask that you keep discussion about it at a minimum on Saturday.  If you have any concerns about this part of it but want to come, let me know.

Please sent me an email if you are planning on coming  it will help with the planning.  Suggested age is 5+.

On what I'm not telling my child about the Newtown massacre, and what I might

So last week I had been planning a post for Sunday about our experience volunteering at the Masbia Soup Kitchen on Coney Island Ave., and then Friday came and with it the unbearable news that a disturbed young man armed with a semi-automatic assault rifle and two other guns had entered an elementary school in Newtown Connecticut and killed 26 people, including 20 children, six- and seven-year olds (the same age as my own child).  Like everyone else, I've spent the days since trying not exactly to make sense of this horrific event, because there is no sense, but simply to process it, to adjust to a reality where this has happened.  I've wanted to say something in the context of this blog, because it is about parenting with the purpose of engaging children in the world, and helping them understand their responsibility to others and their power to play a role in creating a better world, a stronger community.  It is also about finding ways for them to practice that role, in partnership with adults.  And here is an event that directly affects children, that cries out for all of our empathy, and our anger, and, beyond this sole instance, has brought suddenly into relief the danger that so many children face on a day to day basis from guns and violence.

But here's the challenge.  I have chosen not to tell my daughter (yet, still) anything about what happened at Newtown.  I've shielded her from the news, I've crossed my fingers that no other child at school will raise it to her, and am thankful that she has no regular exposure to the media.  If she has questions, I'll find a way to answer them, but so far she remains unaware, and for that I am thankful.  When I found myself sobbing intermittently over the weekend, I hid it from her.  I have no idea if this is the right thing to do, but it was the only thing that seemed possible to me, because I had no interest in increasing by one more the number of people traumatized by this young man's acts, because once you know this can happen, you cannot unlearn it.

A few years ago, on Martin Luther King's birthday, we went to do a service project at high school, where we got to paint a mural of Ruby Bridges.  In order to explain the significance of all of this to my daughter, why Martin Luther King was hero, and little Ruby Bridges, too, I had to introduce my then kindergartener to the concepts of racism, hatred and prejudice.  And even though it was towards a higher purpose, it felt horrible.  It was not the lesson I wanted to teach.  This is what faces us if we want to foster that broader empathy, and to engage our kids along side us in addressing injustice, hardship, need, in taking advantage of those opportunities to do good.  Knowing how to do that, and when, seems immensely difficult.  I would love to hear from those of you who have experience doing this, and what you've learned.

There are a lot of good links going around with advice on what to tell your child about what happened, and how to explain traumatic events like this one to children in ways that respond to their fears and their curiosity.  I defer to the experts on that.  But I've been thinking about what I might communicate to a seven-year old if I were going to talk to her about more than just her own safety, and her fears and her sadness.  Here are some things I might say.  The teachers and staff at Sandy Hook Elementary School were incredibly brave.  Bravery is everywhere and the capacity for bravery is in everyone, even though you may never notice it.  Sometimes, ordinary people do extraordinary things as if they were ordinary tasks, and we honor that.  We don't yet know everything about why this man committed this horrible act, but we know he must have been very disturbed in his thinking and feeling.  Most people who are sick in this way are not violent and do not harm people, and it is important that we as a community make sure that help and support is available for people who are sick and for their families.

I might also tell her that an event like this might have been prevented if it wasn't so easy to buy guns for which there is no alternative purpose but to commit acts like the one this man committed. And we need to hold our leaders accountable for what they've done and failed to do to make this impossible, and we need to raise our voices to make sure that they are brave enough to do the right thing.   I might want to move on to talk about what it means to see guns everywhere in our weaponized culture and what that does to our ideas of bravery and power, and I would want to situate this issue in a larger discussion about other ways we fail all of our children, but I might just stop there, for now.  Because a seven-year old needs to discover the world and its vast imperfections (as well as its glories) by degrees.

What are you telling your kids, and how are you engaging them in your own responses? 

Things to do this weekend and beyond 12/14....

Well, with Hanukkah in full swing and Christmas around the corner, it can feel like there's not much time on hand to squeeze in community activities, but it seems important to me to keep the needs of others and the challenges in the world all around us present in the midst of our celebrations (without being the dour doomsayer in a room full of carolers).  Going to set an example by not prattling on about that but providing (I hope) some opportunities for this coming week.

• Sunday, we're going to volunteer to help with food preparation at the Masbia Soup Kitchen on Coney Island Ave., in an event organized by the social action committee at the Hannah Senesh Community Day School.  There is still room for more volunteers - if you're interested, send an email here.  I will post about the experience afterwards and get a sense of how well this works with kids.
• As I mentioned last week, Occupy Sandy is organizing a day of action on Saturday, with community rallies in the Rockaways and Staten Island at noon, and a citywide convergence on the Mayor's house on the Upper East Side at 5 (bring flashlights!).  You can get details here.  As with many Occupy events, you have to be a bit tolerant of some vagueness around the edges of the message, but the events themselves seem clearly defined.
• Last week I posted about an effort by queensmamas.com, called Family-to-Family which is looking to connect volunteer families with individual families in need, to provide support, help connect them with resources in the community and generally make the holidays a little easier, with the larger aim of bringing families from different parts of the city closer together.  If this is something you think your family might like to do, check out the information on the website - you can do as much as you're able, and it's a way of volunteering as a family that's very personal (which also may be why it scares some folks off, but different approaches appeal to different folks so....).
• If your time is limited and can't get somewhere to volunteer right now, New York Cares has started a Winter Wishes project which allows you to purchase items from Amazon in answer to wish registries for lots of different social service agencies serving kids, seniors and others.  What I like about this is that the range of options is large and for those of us with kids who still believe in Santa and don't understand why we need to buy gifts for other children ("Doesn't Santa bring them?"), buying lamps and canes and gift cards are easier to explain.  While it's not as active as going and doing something, having the kids help pick out gifts is a nice indoor, cold weather activity.
• On Saturday, there appears to be a work project at Added Value farm in Red Hook from 1 to 4pm.  It's not up on their calendar but there is sign up for it through New York Cares here.

Not a volunteer activity but a different kind of opportunity: Disney Friends for Change Grants are $1000 grants to kids ages 5 to 18 to support youth projects to help meet the needs of others.  Proposals are due February 10th.  If the child applying is under 13, an adult has to submit the application.

 Got any other ideas?  Share 'em!

"Opportunities to Do Good"

A friend called my attention today to an article by Dr. Perri Klass, a pediatrician, in the New York Times' Well column, called Understanding How Children Develop Empathy.  You can find it here.  The column looks at what we know about "how and why we become our better selves," noting that "the capacity to notice the distress of others, and to be moved by it, can be a critical component of what is caused prosocial behavior, actions that benefit others: individuals, groups, or society as a whole."   Empathy, in other words, can be that first step in developing a greater sense of responsibility for the world around you, and, we can hope, the habit of acting on that responsibility - volunteering, sharing what you have with those who have less, voting, signing petitions, starting social movements, etc. etc. etc.

So how do you foster empathy and prosocial behavior?  There are, according to the article, a couple of different theories (and some underlying science) about why people develop the capacity to feel for others, and the desire to help them.  The first is that it feels good to help others, and that we develop habits of charity for the same reasons we may develop other habits, that there is some "neurological reward" triggered that serves as motivation.  The second is that we develop social cognition, a recognition that other people have needs and goals.  The two theories are not mutually exclusive.  Taking this into consideration, the article suggests that we can foster this behavior in children in a few ways.  Parental modeling is important, always.  So is taking the time to explain how other people may feel as the result of another's behavior (e.g. "How do you think he felt when you took the toy?).  The author, and the experts she cites, also suggest that you don't provide actual, material rewards for prosocial behavior, but provide "opportunities to do good - opportunities that the child will see as voluntary."

Opportunities to do good are everywhere, and one of the things I found helpful about this piece is that it reminded me that the smaller, individual opportunities can be as important as the grand ones in terms of the development of a child's sense of connection to the world and her role in it.  If compassion and caring may be habit-forming, then there are many ways to develop that habit.  One of the reasons for starting Raising the Village was the conversations I had with other parents about how difficult it was to engage in volunteering and other community work with kids, because of time constraints, planning challenges, and lack of easy access to activities that permit and welcome children.  I'm hoping we can continue to create and share those larger opportunities to involve kids in the work of our communities. 

But even when those larger opportunities aren't around, or life gets in the way, we do well not to forget or forego the little habits of compassion.  In my house, we've had a lot of commitments lately, and seasonal viruses and, well, the recurring elementary school plague of head lice, so finding the time to practice a bit of meaningful civic engagement has been challenging.  But this evening, we spent the time before dinner writing thank you notes for gifts my daughter received for her birthday.  A slow process with a seven-year old, but it proved to be surprisingly enjoyable for both of us, as we thought about what she could say (and spell) that would communicate to others how much she appreciated each particular gift.  It's a bit ironic, I realize, to bring this up, since my very first post for this blog was entitled "Beyond Please and Thank You."  Still, it helps to remember that a please or thank you, or a chance to set the table or write up the grocery list can be an opportunity to do good.  

So, what opportunities have you've found?  What's worked well, and what hasn't?

Things to do, Weekend 12/7 and beyond

Oy, how quickly the weekend roles around again. There are some good opportunities coming up - as always, if you've got something to share, let me know.

For the upcoming holidays:

• Queensmamas.com is organizing a Family-to-Family program, matching a family in need (with a focus on those affected by the Hurricane) with a volunteer family that can help make this holiday season a better one, with the idea, too, that this will forge a more lasting bond between the families.  Queensmamas.com will provide support for the volunteer families in terms of identifying services and resources.  I love this idea, because it's a way to get to volunteer as a family without just sending money or wrapping a present anonymously.  Still, it may feel like a big lift for some.  The registration form, though, allows you indicate what days and how many days you're able to help.

• On Saturday and Sunday (Dec. 8 -9), the New York Food Bank will be in Bushwick (address available when you register) wrapping gifts to be donated.  You do have to register as a volunteer to sign up (but what a good idea), and they indicate that the minimum age is 14, but I expect there is wiggle room there, since kids can be great at helping to wrap gifts.  Check in advance. 

• Where to Turn is organizing a toy 'store' for Sandy victims in Staten Island, and is looking for volunteers to staff the store (and also looking for toys, btw), which will be at 3948 Amboy Rd. in Great Kills.  Where to Turn is an organization formed after the 9/11 attacks to help affected families on Staten Island, and have become a general crisis relief organization.

In addition, Occupy Sandy still needs volunteers for cooking and food distribution.  The kitchen is at 461 99th St. in Bay Ridge, at St. John's Episcopal Church.  They need volunteers from 9 to 5, generally.  The main volunteer clearinghouse and launch site is at 520 Clinton Ave.  There is a great list of locations for donation drop off and volunteering here.

By the way, I'm interested in this organization, Kids Helping Kids, and it's approach to kids and social action.  If anyone has any direct experience with them, can you let me know?  Thanks.

And please, please, please, take a minute to fill out the activity survey here.  You don't have to put your name down, it does not obligate you in any way.  Just trying to find out how this site can be most useful.

How do we Raise the Village - Take the Survey!!

This site has been up for about three weeks, and has mostly served as a bulletin board for ideas and for news of upcoming volunteering or social action activities.  It's been great to see all of the traffic here and on the RtV Facebook page ("like" us if you haven't yet!).  I've had a lot of ideas and some suggestions about where to take this project, and I'm thinking about what to do next.  So, it seemed to make sense to poll folks and see what they'd most appreciate.

Please help us all out by taking the survey here.  It won't take you long, I promise.  If there are others you know who haven't seen the site or the Facebook page but might be interested in this project, please asked them to fill it out as well.

Thanks!

Nancy

P.S.  Did I say you should take the survey?  You should, really.

Can Kids Speak Truth to Power?

On October 15, Occupy Sandy is planning a day of action to highlight continuing pressing needs more than a month post-hurricane and the need to pay attention to who is directing, benefiting from, and participating in the rebuilding and recovery process.  This has gotten me thinking about kids and political action, particularly activities like demonstrations, rallies and direct action protests.  Anyone who has ever parented or spent oh, say, an hour with a toddler knows that children have a remarkably instinctual understanding of civil disobedience and direct action.  Indeed, I once comforted myself as I struggled with a child gone totally limp on the floor of a place she did not want to leave with the thought that somewhere in her brain she was actually singing "We shall not, we shall not be moved, we shall not, we shall not be moved, like a tree standing by the water, we shall not be moved."   As someone who has been hauled off by the cops on a few occasions for these types of activities back in the day, I was impressed.

Still, thinking about engaging kids in demonstrations and rallies about larger issues than whether the hat stays on the head or not raises a lot of questions.  It's one thing to cart the stroller with you to a demonstration or march when your child is too small to understand, as I did a bunch of times when my daughter was little.  It's like bring the baby into the voting booth, it matters a tiny bit to them, a lot more to us.  There's also using the little one in a state of nature as part of the protest, like the Great Nurse-In, or in a favorite story of mine, retold in one of Studs Terkel's oral histories, about how a group of mothers in Chicago got a meeting with a high official who was ignoring them by bringing their children into his outer office, giving them candy apples, and letting them loose.  I guess one might have ethical issues with this tactic, but I think it's genius.

 Once they're older and ask questions, though, how do you engage them authentically around issues that may be fairly complex, as most are?  (If you think this isn't controversial, by the way, check out the vitriol in the Amazon comments section around this book, That's Not Fair! A Teacher's Guide to Activism with Young Children, and see what flips your stomach does when you look at this coloring book).   Last year, we went to an Occupy Wall Street event, and then went to a protest about the millionaire's tax and public education funding in front of Governor Cuomo's Manhattan office.  On the one hand, this was an issue, funding for public education, that is directly relevant to younger, school-aged kids and that they at various levels, can get.  Still, try explaining graduated taxation to a six-year old.  Also, what a governor is.  And a millionaire.  I did try, and she carried a sign and chanted and made me proud, and perhaps a little uneasy.

In this spirit, I've been doing some digging on resources for parents who are thinking about this - if you've got 'em, share 'em.  I like this article, from the website Compassionate Kids, which provides some practical nuts and bolts advice on activism with kids, starting with "Park legally" (there's also a good piece on volunteering with kids here).  Also found this list of issue-oriented activities for kids on a home-schooling site - there are a number of resources for this broader category of social action, particularly for middle school to high school age youth, fewer on the demonstrative side and fewer for younger kids.  Here and here are a few stories about other parents and activism.  Looking for more.....

In the mean time, what do you think?

Some ideas for volunteering THIS weekend

The weekend is almost here (yahoo!) and since we are all sort of vamping here until the next holiday rolls around, below are a few things to do or consider for this weekend.  Hurricane relief still dominates, but I'm looking for other things as well - give a shout out if you've got ideas, we'll post 'em.

Hurricane Relief

Yes, there's still much to do for a while, and though much of the work now involves mucking out basements (not a great activity for kids), Occupy Sandy still needs volunteers for cooking and food distribution,  The site at 520 Clinton Ave. is still open, and will be receiving and dispatching volunteers but the Sunset Park location is closing.  Saturday and Sunday, volunteers are needed at St. John's Episcopal Church in Bay Ridge - more information here.  Also, New York Cares is still coordinating volunteer activities, but you do have to fill out an application and then can search the site for activities.   They list a number of activities involving sorting and distributing resources in the Rockaways this weekend that are kid appropriate.

World AIDS Day - December 1st

Saturday is World AIDS Day, and while there doesn't seem to be much happening in NY that says 'bring the kids', all Housing Works Thrift Shops will be accepting donations of clothing, accessories and home goods for people living with HIV/AIDS.  You can find a list of Thrift Shop locations here.  Nice idea to take the family and bring some things to donate.

The MillionTreesNYC Project

Did you know that there are 60,000 new street trees in New York City?  MillionTreesNYC is holding a workshop for its Stewardship Corps on Sunday, from 2pm to 4pm in Brooklyn, at 232 Varet Street.  It's free, and open to kids with a grownup along.  You'll learn how to care for trees, how to plant bulbs in tree pits.  If you pledge to take care of one street tree, you'll get a gardening kit and an official volunteer card.  All information and registration information here.


We Belong Together Campaign

I posted about this last week, but there's still a wee bit of time to join this project.  The We Belong Together Campaign is trying to gather 20,000 letters and pictures by the end of November from children asking legislators to stop deportations and detentions that tear families apart.  The campaign focuses in particular on immigrant families of mixed status, with some members having green cards and others living with documents, at risk of deportation.  The website, which also lists its sponsors here, has an activity guide for working with kids on the project.

Helping the libraries?

So earlier this week a wise person pointed me to this story in the Times about the role libraries are playing in the Rockaways and elsewhere (Red Hook, too) to anchor folks in storm ravaged areas, and the fact that a number of branches were badly hurt by the storm.  So I'm looking for ways to get folks and their kids involved, but it has gelled yet.  The challenge here is that you can collect and donate books, but the reality is they probably need money more, to replace what they've lost.  Anyway, watch this space, or send me your ideas, suggestions, or 'you idiot this is already happenings'.

And a reminder...

There are a couple of family volunteering activities coming up being organized by Hannah Senesh Country Day School.  On December 16th and February 3rd, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m, folks will be preparing and serving food at the Masbia Soup Kitchen at 4114 14th Ave. in Brooklyn.  Anyone interested should RSVP here.

#Giving Tuesday, or Making the Most of a Hashtag Holiday

So last week's roundup of activities included mention of #Giving Tuesday, an attempt to at least parallel (if not shift) Black Friday's launch of the spending season leading up to the December holidays with the start of a giving season.  Idealistically, the campaign hopes not only to encourage people to give to charities but also to have them crow about it in social media, spreading the word and momentum about the need to give to organizations, causes, people that we care about and which enrich our community and depend on our support.  It's a fine idea, even if one may question (see, e.g. this critique) whether this will ultimately increase giving over all, or change our national pattern of giving to charity (in which giving clumps up in the month before the end of the tax year anyway), or whether it will be heard above the ca-ching ca-ching of spending at the mall.

It is also an opportunity to begin or continue a conversation with your kids about why you give to charitable organizations, and which ones you care about, or even why you think giving to charity is the wrong thing to do to improve your community and what you advocate instead.  I mentioned last week that this page includes some activities for families to do, and I think there are some good ideas there whether or not you link them to this event.  A number of them involve ways of creating a regular habit of giving small amounts -- seasonally, monthly, marking holidays -- throughout the year, and using that plan to foster a family discussion about how and where to give.  I haven't tried this yet, but it seems to make sense as an approach (and is echoed by other sites discussing how to introduce kids to charitable giving).  Kids tend to like rituals and routines and they may become bigger sticklers for keeping with it than you are, if you're lucky.  It also makes sense to really think through what you are likely to maintain, because, as with a lot of things involving children, consistency matters.  So, if you are unlikely to convince your kids without a struggle to skip meals or forego small treats periodically and give the money you'd spend on the meal to a charity of their choosing then pick something else.

Obviously, you can participate in the day (or not) by writing a check to an organization or in support of a cause important to you, but it's harder to involve children in that.  If you want to do something tomorrow and haven't planned ahead, here are a few ideas that you can accomplish on a work day that can involve kids - these are ideas, not endorsements:

• Ask your kids to help you pick out items from the Occupy Sandy Registry on Amazon.  Send blankets or diapers or hand warmers.
• Contribute to the "Virtual Food Drive" organized by the Food Bank for New York City and DoSomething.org; you can browse the food categories and put items in your shopping cart and then charge them.  This allows the food bank to buy the food wholesale rather than collecting cans from individual donors.
• Give a cow, a plant, or some honeybees at Heifer International.
• Go buy some warm breakfast treats and bring them to the crossing guard near your school - not a charity exactly, but a reminder to thank people who help you in small ways every day.

Your ideas?  Are you buying into this hashtag holiday?  Why or why not?

Things you can do THIS weekend and beyond

So tomorrow is Thanksgiving, the kids are out of school Friday, the traditional holiday tsunami of consumerist frenzy is about to overtake the country, what can you do to staunch the flow just a bit? Funny you should ask.  Here are some opportunities in the coming week and beyond:

Hurricane Relief

 Although most power is now restored for those who have houses to return to, many people in the Rockaways, Coney Island, Staten Island and New Jersey are still homeless or trying to rebuild or salvage damaged homes.  There will be a lot of work to do in the near future, and kids can continue to help collect and sort donations of food and other items, food preparation, etc.

• Occupy is organizing Thanksgiving meals tomorrow, if you're looking to do some volunteering.  Go to 9818 Fort Hamilton Parkway, where they will be cooking in the morning.  520 Clinton Ave. will be closed on Thanksgiving.  The St. Jacobi Church (4th Ave. between 54th and 55th) will be taking in and dispatching volunteers until 2pm on Thanksgiving (no donations on that day).
• Coney Recovers no longer needs Thanksgiving volunteers, but still need donations of canned goods, diapers, paper goods, toilet paper, baby food and blankets.  You can take a trip out there with the kids and some stuff between 9:30 and 2:00.  Check the link for locations.

Black Friday

Across the country Walmart workers and supporters are demonstrating in front of Walmart stores on the Friday after Thanksgiving to call attention to efforts by Walmart to retaliate against employees who speak out on workers' rights.  For more info, look here.  There aren't any events in New York City proper, but if you're visiting family somewhere else, you can spend some time (and take a break from leftovers) out there lending your support.  Kids can talk to folks on the picket lines about why they're protesting and what it means for their families and their kids.  You can find an event near you here.

#Giving Tuesday

The basic idea behind #Giving Tuesday is to create a national day of charitable giving in the midst of the holidays, following on the heels of Black Friday and Cyber Monday, two days devoted to shopping and spending on STUFF.  Okay, so maybe it's a bit hokey, but it could be a great opportunity to engage your kids in a discussion of why we think about giving to others and not just about getting the things we want, and to plot out ways to give back in the coming year.  There's a nice list of ideas for families here, developed by staff at the 92nd St. Y, which is the big nonprofit leading the effort.  I like this list because it includes ongoing activities that can be incorporated into your family rituals going forward, encouraging regular mindfulness without overtaxing busy lives.

We Belong Together Campaign

The We Belong Together Campaign is trying to gather 20,000 letters and pictures by the end of November from children asking legislators to stop deportations and detentions that tear families apart.  The campaign focuses in particular on immigrant families of mixed status, with some members having green cards and others living with documents, at risk of deportation.  The website, which also lists its sponsors here, has an activity guide for working with kids on the project.

Coming up in a few weeks.....

There are a couple of family volunteering activities coming up being organized by Hannah Senesh Country Day School.  On December 16th and February 3rd, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m, folks will be preparing and serving food at the Masbia Soup Kitchen at 4114 14th Ave. in Brooklyn.  Anyone interested should RSVP here.

Thanksgiving Chicken

This evening I asked my 7-year old what she had learned about Thanksgiving in school.  "Nothing really," she said, uninterested, "just that we have the day off."  So there I was, with an opportunity: what to teach the kid about Thanksgiving, when, surprisingly, I was faced with a blank slate.

Frankly, the blank slate piece really did throw me.  When I went to public elementary school on the upper west side of Manhattan in the 1970s (the old, oddball, somewhat grungy, pre-"You've Got Mail" Upper West Side), Thanksgiving meant cutting tall feathers out of construction paper and stapling them to oaktag strips to make head dresses, and fashioning pilgrim hats out of black cardboard.  We got a bit about Squanto, we got the pictures of long wooden tables laden with food, surrounded by happy diners seated Indian-Pilgrim-Indian-Pilgrim as if they had consulted some early American Emily Post.  The story was a happy one, a celebration of collaboration across cultures, of everyone bringing something to the table, of that potent American myth of simultaneous diversity of origin and unity of purpose, and, ultimately, abundance for all.  I'm not sure I understood all of that in the second grade, but that story was foundational to my education about American history.

That I cringe at this right now is an understatement.   Still, as myths go, it's easy to see the attraction of this one.  Particularly now as a parent interested in how we teach kids kids about the value of community and collaboration, I like the idea of finding examples from history, simple and close by, which make that point.  Even better if they involve building relationships by cooking and sharing food.  But the story as it was told to me (and generations of school children) is wrong on so many levels (historical accuracy being foremost) that it doesn't surprise me that four years into public education my daughter has no associations with this holiday except no school and turkey.

Every year, though, we celebrate this national holiday and have an opportunity to explain, invent, or re-invent what it means.  So my question is this: what are you telling your children about Thanksgiving?  Do you give up the early European settlers and native tribes altogether and start with Lincoln, who, in the midst of the Civil War, proclaimed the modern holiday as a national day of giving thanks to god?  Do you try a more updated version of the story of the holiday's early origins as a harvest festival, and enrich the myth with more accurate details, including more of the perspective of the native peoples, and the violence perpetrated on them by the settlers and those that followed?  Or highlight aspects of the story that seem relevant or valuable and simply stay silent on the rest?   Or, do you bring out your copy of Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States and debunk the myth from the beginning?  And then sit down to your big family meal (pass the stuffing, please).

Holidays tend to bring out the worst of my ambivalence about fully opting into or out of the larger narratives of a particular cultural or religious tradition, and I worry about how this translates to a child.  My inclination is to duck the question, but I'm fighting it.  What about you?

Meanwhile we are going to go do some volunteering on Weds. night, helping to cook Thanksgiving Dinner at the Ascension Church (see the info on the Bulletin Board).  Maybe I will have figured something out by then.

Things to do THIS weekend

So, my goal is to make this a regular mid-week post, a list of things you might do on the weekend if you wanted to squeeze in a bit of community work with child in tow.  I am gradually building my list of  contacts, and hope that soon this list will be longer and more various, but as tell my daughter, more times than she would probably like, you have to start somewhere.  If you have ideas, either for this weekend, or for on-going or future activities post in the comments or shoot me an email.

The big thing we're looking at this weekend is....

Hurricane Relief

• When I last touched base with the Occupy Sandy folks, they (to the extent there is a 'they' there) confirmed that the two main distribution hubs, at 520 Clinton Ave. and 5406 4th Ave., will still be fully operational.  Kids are definitely welcome, they help sorting stuff, making sandwiches, moving stuff around, and even making art to be sent off with bag lunches.   It was suggested that if you haven't volunteered yet, you go to 520 Clinton Ave.  They are open from 9 a.m. on, every day.  
• On Saturday, you can help the Red Hook Community Farm, which has volunteer hours starting at 10 (and if you can get there then, that's helpful, I think for orientation).  Check their website or facebook page for any last minute updates.  I did this last Saturday (see Nov. 13 post) and thought it was a great, hands on activity to do with kids.
• You can sign up to volunteer through the Public Advocate's office.  It's not clear from their site what the activities are, and whether kids are welcome (you can't get the list of activities without filling out the form, still in process as I write this).  Will investigate some more and post more info when I get it.
• If you can get out to Coney Island, you can join Coney Recovers at 1904 Surf Ave, which is their "relief village".  Activities involve giving out food, clothes and supplies, generally kid-friendly activities.
• In New Jersey, Occupy has a list of relief sites taking donations and doing distribution here.  Check that page for regular updates.  The site is good about identifying which sites don't want children because they're doing demolition.

Currently, I'm also looking into opportunities, immediate and on-going with parks, and will post shortly about Thanksgiving.  It looks like there will be a big drive to prepare Thanksgiving meals to get out to people in the Rockaways, etc.  Would be a great activity to share with kids (assuming you like to have them in the kitchen with you) because you can do the work at home and bring it in.  More updates on this soon.

Please let me know if I've missed something, or if there something you want me to look into.  

Anatomy of a Good Day

On Saturday, I went with my friend Rebecca (see her comment, below) and our seven-year olds, Esme and Rafael, to the Red Hook Community Farm, a project in Red Hook, Brooklyn run by the great organization Added Value, that had been totally inundated by the rising sea water in the wake of Hurricane Sandy.  We spent about three hours at the farm, breaking apart heads of garlic for planting and turning over the soil to see what could be recovered.  It was a good day.  The kids -- surrounded by other kids as well as grown-ups of all ages -- worked hard and remarkably consistently, with a bit of time off for dancing, running, pitching clods of earth, talking.  The adults were fully engaged as well (as my back reminded me Sunday morning).  The alarm bells on the kids went off at about 1:30 and we handed over our shovels to the next crew, had a bit of lunch in the mellow autumn air, and moved on.

I don't write about this here in the spirit of self-congratulation, but for the sake of analysis: what made this experience of volunteering with children work?  How can that help us figure out how to find or create more of these kinds of activities.  Here are my conclusions:

• The right fit between the host and volunteering children:  In addition to running a working farm, providing youth leadership opportunities in Red Hook (and producing great vegetables!), Added Value works with New York City schools, including the Brooklyn New School, the public school Esme and Rafael attend, to provide farm-based learning.   So, they knew what kids could do, welcomed them, gave them tasks that were age-appropriate but still -- very important -- useful and valuable to the farm.  In this instance, the kids were not doing anything different from what the adults were doing, and everyone was contributing, and that made it feel like community.  
• Well-organized (by somebody else):  This volunteering event was organized by the wonderful PTA at the Brooklyn New School.  On Friday, we received an email from the school and made a plan to show up.  Easy.  As I said in an earlier post, one of the challenges to fitting volunteering with our kids into our hectic lives is that it usually takes work and time just to find a place to go that allows (and values the contributions of) kids.  All of us doing this individually is incredibly inefficient and usually means that it doesn't happen.  I know, why doesn't somebody start a project to help take on that coordinating role, to make it easier? Funny, you should ask....
• The kids understood what they were doing: There are a lot of levels on which we could have explained the significance of our work that day, but the simplest one worked fine for seven-year olds: the farm was flooded, we needed to help them repair the damage.  That's even easier to explain than hunger, somehow, and still entirely accurate.  In some cases, kids may not completely understand exactly the whys and wherefores of what they're doing and that may not matter that much, in terms of what they get out of it: kids practice a lot of things before they really understand what they're doing, and the practice is key to future understanding.  Still, I think this project worked well for us because the tasks and the goals were clear.  In a future post, I want to take on the challenge of conducting political advocacy with younger kids, which is trickier (and I would love some guidance there).

Have you had particularly good experiences volunteering with your (or someone else's) kids?  What made it work?  Also interested in the epic failures - any light to shed on those?  Last week I dragged my kid back and forth through Red Hook carrying cleaning supplies and following up on leads from folks who had called in requesting help.  She's a sturdy kid and didn't melt down, but let it be known that this was not working for her.  I think it's like what they say about a lot of things "garbage in, garbage out" (no Sandy-related pun intended): I didn't know exactly what we were doing and how we were going to help and, as a result not sure how much we did, or what I communicated to her about the value of our morning.

Beyond please and thank you.....

This project emerged out of a growing unease I've felt about the ways in which I've been failing my kid.  Now, I should say, the fear that I'm failing my kid is itself not new, as I think that's been around since she first emerged, squalling, from the womb (well, admittedly, way before that).  But the particular problem is this: like many parents, I fret over her education, I sign her up for dance, for swimming, for art classes, I drag her to 'enrichment' activities, and sign her up for camps, but all of these, as lovely as they are, and as great for her development as they are, focus for the most part on supporting her individual growth and achievement. I do this in the context of a larger culture that prioritizes individual achievement and personal success and justifies vast systemic inequalities through the language of equal opportunity self-bootstrapping (yes, I know, radically simplistic summary, but this is a blog, not a thesis).

What's missing in all of these nice activities is the opportunity to teach her what her role is in building the community, shaping the world in which we live,  and the humility necessary to face our responsibilities to others and our fundamental interdependency with them.  As much as I want her to be independent and strong and capable of achieving her dreams, it matters to me that she understand and accept that she has to do her best to bring others along with her, to give back as well as take, to contribute what she can to the ever-present need to make the world more just, more equitable, more sustainable, more beautiful, for everyone.

Like most parents, I have worked hard to teach my daughter to say "please" and "thank you" and "excuse me", the basic building blocks of respect for others, enacted usually before they are completely understood.  This has been moderately successful.  The same with the lessons on sharing, picking up after yourself, treating your friends well.  These are excellent tools for responsible and caring citizens of the world.  But my efforts to build on this, and connect her to larger social responsibilities, have been far less consistent.

There are a lot of good reasons for this.  It's easier to sign a kid up for dance class than to find a place to volunteer with a kid in tow.  Explaining the need to address injustice, poverty, violence and the bad behavior of adults to children requires explaining that those things exist (if you're lucky enough to not experience them yourself).  We know that children learn best not through lectures but through modeling and practice through play.  It's hard for all of us with our busy, oversubscribed lives to make room for this.  Some faith communities provide these kinds of opportunities, through youth groups and social justice work, but options for the secular (among whom I count myself, proudly) are less evident.  Some people turn to the Girl Scouts, or Boy Scouts, but these are not the right fit for every family.

So what do we do (because if you've read this far, well, then, I'm assuming you're flailing around like me)?  Well, I'm doing this - starting a place to share ideas, pool information about opportunities, organize.  Specifically, I'm starting out with two main goals here:

• Crowd-sourcing the challenge of raising socially responsible, engaged kids: I'm going to collect from wherever I can--depending on the readers of this blog, friends, the twitterverse, etc., to help--resources, links, volunteering opportunities, advice, etc.  I absolutely can't do this on my own, and I'm no kind of expert, so I want YOU to help out here. 
• Organizing group activities: Once this is underway for a bit, I am going to use this as a hub for organizing projects and activities that folks can join.  It might involve a one-time group volunteering project like cleaning up a park, or helping kids develop and implement their own project around something they care about.  There will be a facebook page, there will probably be a twitter account, but, for the start, I'm going to use this site to post activities.  I'm relatively new to the blogging and posting world, so expect a bit of technological incompetence.

For the most part, this site will focus on younger children, elementary school age into middle school.  There are some great sites and great opportunities out there for teenagers (and in my work life, I know a lot about those), and I will include links to those as they come in.

But enough about me.  Tell me what you think.  Are you interested?  What should I include here?  Send me ideas, criticisms, events, websites to post, books to read.  This only works as a joint endeavor, so I look forward to hearing from you.

Nancy