Supporting Kids
Childhood independence, education that engages, the Books in Every Home project, and a delicious new Substack
Welcome to PeaceLinks, an archive of links about peace, cooperation, and the middle ground. Each month I choose a theme and gather a few hopeful and practical recommendations surrounding it. This month’s theme is Supporting Kids.
If you don’t have children or teach them, you may not see the notices that teens and tweens today are suffering from extraordinary rates of depression, anxiety, and even suicide. Smartphones and social media are the chief culprits, researchers say, but other factors are also in the mix. Today’s post offers hope and one practical suggestion for parents and teachers trying to engage kids at school and bend the curve back down on the mental health charts.
For those who do not have youngsters in their care, the links here are designed to give hope by checking in with people who make a difference.
Let’s start with the actionable suggestion.
The
newsletter has posted a flurry of well-researched articles on the youth mental health crisis. Among them, ’s recent “Good News for Anxious Kids (And Parents)” offers a practical strategy for families with anxious kids, from the author of the book Free-Range Kids. The post contains a link to the “Let’s Grow” project, assigning kids one task a week to do at home with parents’ permission but without parents’ help.The article also helps Gen X parents understand why we may be unwittingly contributing to our kids’ anxiety. Remember the milk cartons? Shudder.
With today’s high rates of youth anxiety, depression, and suicidal thoughts, it’s hard for kids to stay engaged in school.
I crossed virtual paths with 5th grade teacher
just before finalizing this month’s newsletter, and I’m glad to know of his work for this issue. His vision for “Awakening the moonshot potential of every student” is just the sort of extravagant but necessary vision that kids need in their teachers.I use the word extravagant with a particular sense. It’s one of my favorite words, a meld of Latin vagari (to wander) + extra (outside, beyond). Extravagant teachers go beyond large-scale standardized curricula to craft personal lessons that keep their kids awake and engaged. They believe in moonshots. Here’s Adrian explaining why he thinks expensive school reform efforts miss the mark, and what he tries to do instead:
FYI: Adrian is about to start a free reading group for anyone who’d like to discuss Adam Grant’s Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things. The emphasis of chats may be on teaching strategies, but who am I to say? Subscribe to
to learn more.Speaking of education that wanders off campus and out of bounds, if you’ve been following PeaceLinks the last few months, you may remember that a group of my university students will soon be visiting an elementary school in our area to read aloud with schoolchildren and give them hand-selected new books to take home. After an October fundraising campaign, our team chose the books below for every first, second, and third grade student on our list. You may consider this a recommendation if you have children to shop for:
These are the books we will read aloud in small groups when we meet the kids in two weeks. In addition, from donated books on our shelves, we added two more books for every child, chosen with care to ensure every book is worthy of a child’s love.
Today’s PeaceLinks post comes a day later than usual, following yesterday’s book bag packing extravaganza. We have an amazing team of motivated, caring book-lovers! And now our bags are packed for our elementary school visit after our Thanksgiving holiday.
In keeping with this month’s theme of supporting kids (by supporting parents!!),
and just launched a new Substack this week called . With one-year-olds to feed, they offer recipes and tips for navigating the ocean of nutritional advice for parents. Their first post includes a simple recipe for broccoli pesto that I am salivating to try! Welcome to Substack, Fanny and Greta!
We’ll close by checking in on a PeaceLink alumna.
PeaceLink Alumni Corner
was one of the first Substackers featured on PeaceLinks when this project began last spring. (Here’s that post.) Her newsletter always brings me a sense of peace and refreshment. Here’s a link to her October post about a late-summer trip to California to meet a friend. My question is whether any of her five original haikus over her photographs stand out as favorites for you? Feel free to mention it in the comments.
Thank you for reading and sharing.
I wish you a peaceful month. 🙏
See you back here on the 3rd Friday in December!
Táh-ra
Thank you Tara! I love all your resources. I’m anxious to read the links you’ve shared about anxiety etc for adolescents…it’s been a rough month for kids in our community and schools, we must all give our attention to this matter! 💟
I love all of these collected resources.