I love my white shoes

Developing resilience is such an important part of education and parenting. And when a little ditty that gets stuck in people's heads comes along to cement that idea, it's serendipity!.

Earlier in the year Prep A delighted Assembly with their little song and play from Pete the Cat. Ever since whenever any of us looks tempted to sweat the small stuff someone sings 'I love my white shoes...'

Not sure what I'm talking about? Take a look at this

Me - I actually like red shoes!

Because it's all good...

Kids who love to learn

Last week I circulated a parenting tip sheet from Michael Grose's parenting website called The Pitfall of Using Other Children as Benchmarks.  If you didn't see it, check your Inbox.  It's a great read.

Parent Teacher Student Conferences are on the horizon at Peregian Springs State School. Class teachers will meet with parents and students during the last two weeks of Term 1 to share the learning progress your child has made throughout the term. This is meant to be a celebratory time focused on your child and your child only. It's a time to celebrate how far they have come in relation to their own developmental clocks (and not in relation to how far other children have travelled).

Parent Teacher Student Conferences can be a tense time. Parents sometimes worry about whether their child has learned as much as another child, whether they are on the same reading level as last year, whether a friend's son is faster at their number facts, and even whether their child is as fast a runner as the neighbour's daughter. The fact is that all humans are stretched along a developmental scale and worrying about whether someone is further along the scale than your child tends to lead to anxiety and tension.

As parents, we want our kids to be the best they can be - and this is the trick. We need to think of the difference between being the best they can be, and being better than everyone else. The messages we send our children either directly or unconsciously tells them which we think is more important.

If you want your child to concentrate on their own learning and recognise their movement along the developmental scale then our language must focus on their growth - and not on the growth of other children. A comment such as 'Your reading is much more fluent now than it was a few months ago' is a much better measure of progress than 'You are the best reader in the class!'  Or 'Look at these big numbers you can partition now compared to the small numbers you were working with last year' sends a better message about the learning we are looking for than 'You know more number facts than anyone else in Year 2!'

No matter where your child is on the developmental scale he or she will have taken some steps along it in at least one area and probably many more. Focusing on these will make Parent Teacher Student Conferences a celebration and will go a long way to ensuring your child maintains their love of the learning process. Kids who love to learn will continue to be learners.

Check, check and check again

Wearing red at Peregian Springs State School

Yesterday was 'Day for Daniel' - a day when we all wear some red (a colour that has become synonymous with child safety) to promote awareness of the protection of children in our community. Daniel Morcombe was abducted at the end of 2003. Our children have lived with his disappearance all their lives. We, as parents and teachers, have lived with the tragedy and the heartbreaking sadness of the Morcombe family for nearly ten years. A sentiment this strong tends to create a climate of fear and a tendency to overprotect our kids by hovering over them, warning them and tethering them to us closely.

When you think your child has disappeared it is a gut wrenching, heart stopping, sickening feeling of total panic and loss of all rational reasoning. Shortly after Daniel disappeared my daughter (ten at the time) was supposed to be catching the bus from school just 3km into Noosa Junction to where my husband works - simple, just get on the bus outside the school, there's a teacher on duty, sit next to someone you know, get off the bus at the stop outside Dad's office - what could go wrong?

At 4.00pm Rick rings me (I was in Brisbane) and then came the news - 'have you got Maddie? She hasn't come here. I've been looking for her all over the Junction. I've rung the school. I've rung the bus company. We don't know where she is.' It was like a heart attack. I was at least a two hour drive away and Rick was in a mad panic.

After half an hour of madness, phone calls, checking with friends, checking with Maddie's friends, and rechecking all over again while trying not to scream at everyone who said 'no, we haven't seen her', we finally located her at the bus depot in Tewantin.

What the bus company hadn't told us was that the school bus went to the high school where she was supposed to get off and get on a different bus that went to the Junction. As the bus she was on sailed past the end of the Sunshine Beach Road she told the driver she needed to get off. 'No, we don't stop here - you'll have to stay on', she was told. Well, at least it was a happy ending. There is a bit more to this story that I'll tell another time but the point I'm trying to make is that as parents we need to check and check and check AND we also need to make sure our children are building the skills of resilience, self-reliance and problem solving.

Hovering, tethering and warning frightens them - as a parent said to me this week 'Gwen, they think there's a paedophile on every corner'. Of course, there isn't but our kids need to be able to recognise the signs that tell them something is a 'bit off' and then have some behaviours they have practised to remove themselves from the situation. Our student protection lessons at school are about this very thing and on Assembly on Friday 3L demonstrated this brilliantly with their three little skits.

So Day for Daniel is over again for another year, our awareness is heightened and our safety skills are honed...and at 4.10pm as we were all packing up at the end of a week in comes a Dad 'My daughter didn't get of the bus. We don't know where she is'.

Thankfully, another happy ending - she had missed her stop and had to stay on!