Save a book (and your sanity)

Happy May Day, and congrats to everyone who completed the A to Z Challenge!

Have you seen this lovely image? I love it. Simply brilliant.

source*

*Okay, I can't provide the source for that, because someone emailed it to me. I think it's going around Facebook, and if you happen to know who created it, please let me know, so I can give them credit for it.

On a separate (yet very much related) note, did you know this week is Screen-Free Week? Yesterday marked the first day of an entire week in which kids (in particular, but everyone, really) unplug. No TV, no video games, no DVDs/NetFlix/[insert entertainment media of choice here]. It's intended primarily for children, many of whom watch over 30 hours of TV a week (an average of 32 hours per week for preschool children, and it goes up from there--that's more than four hours a day for 3 and 4-year-olds!) source.

That's a whole lot of screen time, which has been shown to increase obesity and other health problems, not to mention stifle creativity (source). So this week is all about unplugging.

What to do instead?

Get outside! It's spring, go enjoy it. Not only will it allow your brain to process something ... you know ... real, it will also reduce stress, improve your attention span (really!), and help you find a solution to that problem you've been wrestling. Check out more on the benefits of nature in this post.

Go read a book! Recent studies have shown that fiction can have extensive benefits, in particular by stimulating empathy and thereby reducing social friction. If you haven't seen this article in the Boston Globe, go check it out--it's fascinating.

Do both at the same time! You can't lose, it's like earning bonus points for your life: improved social functioning, less stress, and improved cognitive functioning all wrapped into one delicious, engaging novel read in the out-of-doors.

So, in honor of all those fallen books, let's go screenless (not completely--I know we all have work to do). Maybe our collective outpouring of empathy can ease the social friction cause by *ahem* certain television shows.

What will you read this week?

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Where the wild things aren't

Where are the wild things? Not in children's books (or, to be accurate, less so with every decade that passes). So says a team of researchers who studied Caldecott winners and honor books from the past 70 years. The recent study determined that scenes depicting nature have declined steadily over time.

That's not really all that surprising, is it? It mirrors what's happening in our lives. Most children spend the vast majority of their time indoors or in built environments (e.g., cities), so why would we expect characters in books to do otherwise?

And does it really matter, anyway? As one discussant in a recent LinkedIn discussion asked, should we be disturbed by this trend?

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I'll let you come to your own conclusions on this, but first, a few items of interest.

• Children who live near natural settings experience less stress. (source)
• Kids who move to greener locations demonstrate improved cognitive abilities. (source)
• Kids with ADHD have milder symptoms when they have regular "green time"--time spent in nature. (source)
• Symptoms of ADHD decrease immediately following a 20-minute walk through a park. (source)
• Inner-city girls with a view of nature (e.g., trees outside their windows) have greater self-discipline and are better able to concentrate. (source)
• Areas with trees provide better opportunities for play, and play is an important part of childhood development. (source)
• Young children who spend time in "outdoor classrooms" have longer attention spans and better motor coordination than children who spend only short periods of time outdoors. (source) 

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What if you're all grown up, or don't suffer from ADHD? Not to worry, nature affects adults, too.

• People living in green areas are less likely to procrastinate, find their problems less overwhelming, and are better able to overcome them. (source)
• People living in housing near green areas (trees and grass) are less likely to be involved in domestic violence. (source)
• People living in areas with more natural settings are healthier. (source)
• Patients with a view of natural scenery recover faster from surgery and request less pain medication. (source)
• College students with natural views outside their dorm windows are better able to concentrate. (source)

So what do you think? Do you think there's reason for concern?

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K is for Key

If you had the key to this door, what do you think you would find on the other side?

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Piecing it all together

I'm single-parenting this week while Beloved Husband attends a conference.

First and foremost, I have to say that I have the utmost respect for single parents. Honestly, I don't know how they do it every day. I love spending time with my kids, but it's hard to give them the attention they want (and need) when I need to feed them, keep them in clean clothes, bathe them, and teach (my day job).

And then there's what I want... to spend quality time with my kids and quality time writing. Trifocal is nearing the end, and I want to get 'er done before I start traveling next month week. Gah!

So how is it possible to do anything writing-related? Well, Trifocal might be on hold for a bit, but... I started doing a bit of research for NaNoWriMo by collecting inspirational photos from magazines.

Jennifer Daiker at unedited does character collages, and Tera Lynn Childs did a vlog about character collages at WriteOnCon last month. And they got me thinking (yep, it happens sometimes)... not only can I do character collages to better understand who my characters are, I can also find great images of locations or events that I might incorporate into a story.

So this weekend, we pulled out the last two years' worth of National Geographics and went to town. I cut out anything that I thought might come in handy at some point in the future: scenery and people for my novels and cool animals that might make good subjects for a non-fiction PB. The kids got to tear out anything I didn't want that interested them (which, for the oldest, was just about everything... I listened to a constant stream of "Oh, wow, look at this!" for over an hour).

The result? I have a little box filled with inspirational bits and pieces to post on my magnetic board, so when I get back from my travels, I'll be ready to jump into NaNoWriMo. And I got to spend quality time with my kids. Win-win situations don't get much better than that.

If you have a family, how do you carve out time for family and writing?

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Stolen Moments

You know those moments when you get unexpected free time? When you thought you had one thing to do, and suddenly, you don't? The stolen moments that feel so much more valuable than scheduled free time? Yeah, those.

I have one right now.

I got home with the kids, and they immediately skipped next door to play. And here I am with what will probably turn out to be an hour and a half to myself. It feels different from my alone time during the day, when I've planned out what I will work on, and actually stick to the plan (for the most part).

Because right now, I can do anything.

I know what I should do: research magazines looking for nonfiction science/nature/environment articles, revise my MS, work up quiz questions for my students, write a query letter, work on a new PB idea.

But this is my stolen time. The afternoon sunlight filters through the leaves of the trees outside and my plants have long gone untended, due to the excessive rain we received these past few weeks. This afternoon is the perfect stolen moment, so I'm going to enjoy it outside.

What do you do with your stolen moments?

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The need to play

Setting up play dates with other kids is getting to be a real challenge. Scheduling around tennis, swimming, art, music, and other activities makes it difficult to get two children together for an afternoon.  I'm referring to the activities of my child's friends.  Their parents ask when we're free, and I always have the same response: we're always free.

What? No tightly scheduled series of character-building activities designed to make my child the perfect candidate for Harvard when he's older? Well... no. So what on earth do we do every day, anyway? Most of the time we play. Legos, Play-doh, drawing, story-telling, pirates, train-set... you name it, we play it.  My oldest is allowed one structured activity through the kindergarten (we are in the process of switching from music to art), but beyond that, we don't "do" those kinds of things. Not yet.

I was feeling a bit guilty about not providing the opportunity to do more structured things until I came across an article in Scientific American Mind recently: The Serious Need for Play.  Okay, it's actually from Feb/March of last year, but I just read it.  Have I mentioned that we have a major time delay in getting our magazine subscriptions to Germany? We do.  So here's my new, old news: people need to play.

According to the article, unstructured play has been shown in a variety of studies to be extremely important in social and mental development. Playing a game that has set rules doesn't count. Neither does playing a musical instrument. We are talking about free play, about giving children time to let their imaginations take over, to explore unseen (previously unimagined) universes and to create worlds with rules of their own. Even better if they can do that with other children, as this helps them hone their social and communication skills.

Free play allows children to become more creative, to be better problem-solvers, and to reduce stress. It allows us greater flexibility, which can help us to feel comfortable when we encounter new situations.  Play is not just part of being a child, but an essential part of learning how to be an adult. Animals of all kinds play when they are young... there must be a reason for it.

That's all well and good, but does the lack of free play have detrimental effects on development?  It appears that the answer is yes. One study cited in the SciAm Mind article found that

...kids who enrolled in play-oriented preschools are more socially adjusted later in life than are kids who attended play-free preschools where they were constantly instructed by teachers. By age 23, more than one third of kids who had attended instruction-oriented preschools had been arrested for a felony as compared with fewer than one tenth of the kids who had been in play-oriented preschools.  And as adults, fewer than 7 percent of the play-oriented preschool attendees had ever been suspended from work, but more than a quarter of the directly instructed kids had. [emphasis added]

Powerful findings, to my mind.  And a good reason to continue limiting the amount of time our children spend in structured activities. Parents need to put aside their concerns regarding free play and, like a writer does with his/her writing time, schedule it into the week.  Doing so allows children to grow up into adults who can not only manage, but also thrive, in an unpredictable, complex world. And finding time for free play as adults is equally important, to reduce stress and enhance creativity.

As David Elkind (child development expert at Tufts University) says,

Play has to be reframed and seen not as an opposite to work but rather as a complement.  Curiosity, imagination and creativity are like muscles; if you don't use them, you lose them.

As someone trying to recover my creativity, this sounds like a wake-up call. Let's not allow our children to lose their imaginations as they grow up. Here's to finding a little time for free play each week....