Classic Strategies To Help Children Develop a Lifelong Love of Learning with Neil Rosen

Hey, welcome back, No Problem Parents, to today's Social Saturday, and we're talking all things nurturing, learning at home with my special guest, Mr. Neil Rosen. Hey, you guys, Neil's been around the block in education and psychology, and he is here to share with us how creating a nurturing home learning environment, why it's so important and how we can do that as parents, from building better relationships with our caregivers and teachers to finding balance between screen time and outdoor adventures.

Neil's got the scoop, plus he's given us a sneak peek into his upcoming book, Rediscovering the Village, which is packed with timeless strategies for making learning fun and building strong family school connections. Welcome to the No Problem Parenting Podcast. From toddler tantrums to teenage eye rolls, this podcast is your go-to for updated and old school tips and tools that are going to help you become the confident leader your kids crave you to be.

I'm your host, Jackie Finnaman, a 30-year counselor turned parenting coach, and I've got a lot to share, including hundreds of resources that you have access to right from your home and strategies that are going to boost your confidence and energize you. So whether you're knee deep in diapers or navigating the tween years, or you're launching your child into adulthood, subscribe and share this podcast with your friends, teachers, and daycare providers.

We're going to turn your parenting problems into no problem, one episode at a time. I'm really excited to have our conversation today. Welcome to the show. Thanks, Jackie. I appreciate you having me.

What is the key to creating a nurturing home learning environment? Why is this so important? Because when children have that type of an environment, when you create a home where learning is a part of the home, where learning is clearly important to everybody in the family, where it's something they do, not as a matter of scheduled time, but just as a matter of day-to-day activities revolve around learning, where everyone in the family is reading, where everyone in the family is exploring, where people have a safe space. And kids especially have to have their own space where they can learn, study, think, be on their own without being in the part of chaos of what some households are like or a lot of households are like when there are a lot of kids in the house. So creating that kind of an environment is the first step to allowing a kid to, every kid is born loving to learn. No kid is not at the age of six months, they're crawling around looking to learn anything they can possibly learn. And every kid is born that way. And yet when you look at schools,

By the time kids get to third, fourth, fifth grade, that love of learning starts to drop off. And not every kid retains that love of learning. But they all should, and they all can. And a strong home learning environment, which does not take a lot of work.

There's lots of easy things you can do. But a strong home learning environment is really step one. It's what says to the kid, we're a family to whom learning is really important. It's something we all do, and it's something we all love.

But just having a space where they're able to, like, get into it without worrying about chaotic things going on around them is really important. Then having a family that, you know, it can be little things. It can be parents or caregivers who attend the school meetings for their kids so that they know that learning is important to the parents. But it's not a – it's interesting because it's a group living in a home, but it's really more about the individuals.

You know, does mom read? Does the caregiver read? Does dad read? Do you go on field trips?

Where do you go on field trips? Do all of the family trips go to amusement parks or do you go to museums? Do you go to art galleries? Do you go to national parks?

Do you go to state parks and things like that? It's just finding ways to deliver the message that learning is important. And it's important to all the individuals in this family. And you're an individual in the family.

It's not forcing anything on anybody. because everybody wants to learn different things. But all learning activities are good activities. And I like that you mentioned that even with the school, kids see their parents are interested in what they're doing at school, what they're learning at school. What are maybe some techniques or strategies that parents can do to build and improve their relationships to support their child's education effectively? Yeah, it's simple things. And, you know, we have some of them, you know, the book we have coming out, it sounds almost trite, but a parent or a caregiver can look for a reason once a month to write a short note to the child's teacher, thanking them for something.

It's always something the kid came home. Oh man, my kid came home the other day. He was so excited because he learned something about dinosaurs or, or whatever it is. But a once in a month note to a teacher, which sounds like a little thing and probably takes you five minutes can have a huge thing. All of a sudden, your teacher's giving your child more attention for the next day or two, because she's feeling really good about that. She knows you're real interested, and that creates, again, more attention for your child. Your child feels good about it, and you're developing that kind of relationship. But it's simple little things like that that show the kind of interest that says education is really important to this family. Most teachers, probably 90% of the notes teachers get is somebody complaining about something well and the other thing is they're doing it in email right so we're loading up the teacher's email and when they open it it's a complaint or you know concern about something so oh i absolutely love that right and no we got to bring the note writing back yeah but thank you note just just do that and i love it it can be a thank you note and an or an i noticed i teach that in no problem parenting to notice things so even And just saying, I noticed that my son is talking about your class a lot at home and he's curious and interested in X, Y, or Z.

And just putting that in a note. That's 100% right. That's 100% right. Yes.

Yes. Absolute notice is big. But those are the kinds of little things that you can do. I love that little, this is really key too.

You said having your child hand the note to the teacher. That's very key. Yeah. Just mail it to the school.

like have your kiddo bring that note because there is a lot that a child can as far as relationship with the the teacher and the child too but the pride that the child can feel when they're handing that note to the teacher exactly one of the things we recommend doing with with children even young children is having a little in-out box in your house for the kids where they anything they bring home from school for a parent to see or sign it could be they're going on a class trip It could be whatever it is.

And anything the parent wants to send back with the kid to the teacher goes into the in-out box. And so, one, it helps kids see the importance of communication going back and forth. And it gets the notes home and things don't get lost. And it's just a habit that you get kids into, which is, again, just a very strong parenting habit and just a strong part of that environment, the learning environment you want to spend at home.

You know, and again, everything depends on the age of the child and it changes. Of course. You're also, you know, you read a book your child reads or you read a book with them or your child reads a book on your own. And then you read the book that your child read and you're in the car driving somewhere with your child and you're able to have a conversation about the book.

and in my mind any kind of conversation with the child is is a conversation that you know is incredibly valuable you know a one-on-one conversation the other thing about the home environment is you have to not only think of the home environment as the indoor environment but you have to think of the outdoor environment because outdoors is a very different space than indoors when you're outdoors you'll find your child actually is different there's uh you have different kinds of conversations you have different kinds of interactions you can be having a catch with your child you could be kicking a ball around with your child you could be taking a walk around the block with your child and it's a very different kind of conversation and activity than you'll ever get with your child when you're sitting at the kitchen table to have a conversation or you're doing something else. It's very different. It tends to be more open. Children tend to be more at ease and different kinds of things will come out of their mouth. As far as parents modeling positive habits for their kids, what are some things that they can do? We've been talking a lot about the typical things like don't be on your cell phone, mom and dad, you know, all the time.

Do you have some other ideas for us? I think the number one thing that I've seen, you know, again, working with parents and kids, I haven't done with school, the number one thing is not communicating this overwhelming busyness. Parents have to make time for stuff that's important to them and have time for stuff that's important to them, like being with their kids. And the more their behavior is along the lines of, I want to do that, but I don't have time, I have too much to do, I'm overwhelmed, I've got so much at work, I've got so much with that, then all of a sudden, your kid's going to come home in exactly the same place. I didn't have time to do my homework. I didn't have time to get this done. I didn't have time to study for the test. I'm doing too many things. I've got too much on my plate. I got volleyball and I got this and I got that.

So the parent has to be the model of how best to use time. And that's a really tough one. That's probably the hardest thing for parents to conquer is to understand that their relationship to time becomes their children's relationship to time. That's a great tip.

I love that tip. We need to remember we're modeling that I'm so busy. I'm crazy busy. You hear it all the time.

I mean, I'm guilty of it. And I like to be busy. I actually enjoy it until it gets to that point where you're tired and overwhelmed. And that's a really great point.

If that's what our kids are growing up hearing. Exactly. I mean, being busy is not a bad thing. And having a lot to do is not a bad thing.

But there are an awful lot of parents who are proud of being well-organized and able to handle a lot of things and having different balls in the air and still having time for their kids or whatever needs to be done in doing that. And that's the kind of behavior you want to model. You don't want to model a behavior that says, I have nothing to do and I'm sitting around the house all day being lazy either. You know, the behavior you want to model is that using time smart is, again, that's part of learning.

I love that. Do you have some ideas about balancing screen time and outdoor adventures and or merging the two? What are your thoughts on that? Yeah, I think that it's one of the hardest things parents are dealing with today.

Getting their kids to spend less time on their screens is absolutely one of the hardest things you ever can do. So for parents with young children, it's a great time to always have outdoor activities and no phones on outdoor activities. no screens on outdoor activities i'm talking about going for a walk i'm talking about going to the park i'm talking about going to the zoo i'm talking about you know any of those kind of activities if you start at a young age that screens are not a part of those activities that's a good way to start and then that can be expanded and i think with outdoor activities if you're going out to shoot baskets or have a catch or kick a soccer ball or do whatever you're doing those activities lend themselves including for kids to not be on screens because they're not going to be bored they're going to they're going to be out there doing an activity so i really think more outdoor time is incredibly important it is so easy for parents and kids to get home from school planning to go outside for an hour and having a catch and just getting into things and parents start doing stuff and the kids sitting in the corner on the screen and that outdoor thing goes by. You have to really make a definite commitment to outdoor time. And it has to be a lot of time. It can't be something once every two weeks. It's got to be multiple times a week.

It could be, you know, every night after dinner, we go outside and sit in the backyard for an hour and read together or a half hour and read together. It's got to be a consistent thing of getting out of that house. Absolutely. Love it. So let's talk about the books. Let's talk about the books that you already have out. And then let's talk about the one that is coming out this summer. Well, the books I've written so far for children, they're mostly for younger children in the three to eight range. I wrote one book that is a graphic novel for kids who are more in the eight to 10, 11 year old range. They're all picture books. So they're all, they're all illustrated.

and I think that books have to do more than just entertain. I think that books have to really have a purpose. So one of the series I wrote is a series called Penelope and Jack and the first book in the Penelope and Jack series was a book that toward the end of COVID and it was about two kids who lived in the city. They lived in high-rises. They lived in facing apartments on opposite streets. There were balconies on opposite streets facing each other. And while these kids were isolating during COVID with masks and everything else, how they developed a friendship across from one balcony to another balcony. And that's Penelope and Jack. And it was how important friendship was and how much friendship offered to people who weren't in school and weren't with their classmates and weren't doing anything and they were on their own.

And then in the second book, Penelope and Jack are back in school, and there's a teacher who is not treating everybody in the class equally. And that is Penelope and Jack. And what this teacher does is when a kid doesn't do something he's told to do, he tells the kid he's going to get banished to Misfit Hill. and Penelope finally has enough and gets up from her class from her chair and walks across the street and climbs Misfit Hill on her own and goes up there on her own and the next day Jack does it and the next day another kid in the class does it the next day another kid you know he told one girl that she had to take off her headscarf and it was Boniface Linden she got up and went and another girl had another reason and he didn't call on another kid so so soon the entire class was all up on Misfit Hill with Penelope and Jack. And then of course, Penelope, because of who she is,

now she's feeling sorry for the teacher, Mr. Grumpus, who's all alone in the classroom. So she goes down and invites him to join them up on Misfit Hill. So now they all go up and being outside and being up on Misfit Hill with all this stuff, everything changes. And Mr. Grumpus becomes a whole different person and that kind of thing. So that's what that book is about.

Oh, I love that story. Third book in the series, Penelope and Jack Crisis in the Ocean, is about they go to the beach after school ended before the beginning of summer. And Jack's dog, Frampton, gets stuck in some plastic in the ocean when he goes out to retrieve a ball. And the lifeguard has to go out and save him from the plastic in the ocean.

So the book is all about plastic in the ocean and helping the environment. And since you love the outdoors so much, becoming involved in conservation and helping take care of it. And then so these are books. They're fun. They're exciting. They have good characters.

The kids love to read them. Kids are interested in them. So it's not that there's not entertainment value, but I think books for children really need to have more. Another series is called Skywatch.

And Skywatch is about a team of clouds that do things to help people on the Earth with environmental things. So, again, it's another real outdoor theme. And you have Claudia and you have Tiny, who's a thundercloud. And you've got Twister, who's a funnel cloud.

And you've got Scout, who's a cirrus cloud that goes flying around looking for things. And so they find they find they see a place where there's strip mining going on. And the clouds help take care of the problem and save the area from being damaged and stuff like that. So that's the cloud hero team.

The graphic novel is called Mila on Purpose. And Mila on Purpose is about an older girl. She's 11, 12 years old. And she lives in a town that's a very white town.

And she has a new girl who moves to school who comes from Jamaica and gets put in her classroom. who on one hand really intrigues her. Her name is Letty. And on the other hand, she's scared to go about becoming friends with her. And through a whole process, Mila and Letty become best friends. And there's a whole lot of interaction with Mila and her mother and her father and Letty's parents and just getting feelings. It's called Grow Your Circle. It's called Mila on Purpose, hashtag grow your circle. And the book is all about circles, all about the circles you have in your life, your family circle, your friend circle, your support circle, your education circle, and how these circles contribute to your life and how important it is to always grow your circles, that that's really an important thing that don't become comfortable within your own circle and reach out because people outside of your circle have so much to offer you. And unless you're willing to expand outside, you never reap that benefit.

oh you melt my heart and I love that you know we were talking before we recorded the art of reading to our kids and the and the benefits of reading to our kids and then all of a sudden they hit a certain age where they're reading on their own and we stop this is another great example of a book that you could read together yeah and I've worked with parents and others and I'm telling you parents of older kids should try it again it's one of those things that doesn't sound like anything but if you do it once, you'll never stop. With your 14-year-old, whatever book they're reading, just, you like that book? Yeah, great book. I'm reading about, I'm reading Harry Potter, whatever I'm reading. I'm reading this great book. Read the book. Just read it. Don't read every book your child reads, but you can 16. I don't care. Read a book they're reading,

and it'll open conversations. It'll open discussions. And not only that, but I'm finding people like these books. You haven't read a book for a 16-year-old since you were 16.

Read one. You'll be shocked. You'll enjoy it, but mostly you'll enjoy the different kind of conversation. It's hard to talk to a 16-year-old and a 15-year-old and a 14-year-old. It's hard to have conversations with them. And this just gives you a common ground. You both read the same book and you can have it. One of the things I do on my website is I have a family book club where parents can sign up for a family book club. It doesn't cost anything. And every month I send out for different age groups, different books where the kid reads the book and the parent reads the book. And you have once a month, you meet for a half hour and I give them some questions to ask to some icebreakers and some starters. And you just talk about a book and you've both read the book. And if, if everybody in the family wants to read the book, it could be, so you could have a whole family sitting around discussing a picture book for a five-year-old, or you could have a family talking about a, you know, a graphic novel for a 12-year-old or just one parent and the child together talking about, talking about a book. It's a game changer. And, and when you want to know what your kids are into and how many parents say, God, I 16 year old, I got no idea what he's doing.

I don't know what he's thinking. I don't know where he's had that. Read a book he's read and talked about. That'll, you'll learn a lot.

Don't quit. It is a really good idea too. We've been talking about technology so much and screens get so much of our attention and the do's and don'ts of that. And so we're, you know, I'm even saying to parents, sit down and play the game with your kid.

Watch them play their game. So when it comes to screens, like make sure you're learning about what, what interests them about the game that they're playing and what are they good at? And what did it used to drive me nuts when my son was playing? Cause I'd get dizzy, you know, watching Minecraft and he's building these things and I'm like, I can't keep up. I love this.

And I know that every time, you know, we said it right at the beginning and I think you always have to be aware about that. Time is just our most valuable commodity. And we have to be, we have to be strong about how we use it, but you don't have to read every book your kid reads. If you read one book a month, the book for a 16 year old, will take a caregiver or a parent a couple of hours to read. I mean, you don't have to read every book they're reading just once in a while, because it's again, it's just a game changer.

What you said is right, by the way. I mean, yes, sit down and play a game with a kid. And maybe if you play a game with your kid, maybe then they'd be open to a game you recommend. And maybe every game they're playing right now is a game where everybody's killing everybody else.

And maybe there's another game like Minecraft, where you're building something or doing something that you recommend. I mean, you become a part, you become just more a part of their life. You're not forcing them to conform to your life totally. You're becoming a part of theirs.

Yep. So great. And we should mention too that your pen name is Professor Stork. Correct. Funny story about that. When I was a teacher, young, I was a tennis player and I'm tall and I'm thin. And they always used to call me the Mad Stork on the tennis court. That was what my name was, the Mad Stork. And my kids are teasing me about it one day in the classroom. And one of the kids said, well, when you're here, you're Professor Stork. Oh my gosh, that's a fun story. Yeah. I'm so excited to have met you, Neil. Tell us a little bit about the book that is coming out in the summer and the purpose. And first of all, when that book was written. Well, I'm publishing a book. It's coming out this summer with another teacher that I worked with. And we actually wrote this book in the 1960s and 70s. And the book's called Rediscovering the Village,

Classic Strategies to Help Your Child Develop a Lifelong Level of Learning. And it was strategies we developed and used in the classroom and with families in the 1960s and 70s to help them both build a really good, strong home learning environment and develop a great home school partnership, not relationship, partnership, working together to get the best for their children. It comes down to there are 50 strategies in the book, which we call educational home runs, which any one of them, if you use it in your house, is going to make a change in your child's approach to school, your approach to school and education, how you work together, and you're going to see benefit. And there are time-saving kinds of strategies, like the ones I mentioned earlier, as simple as writing a note, that kind of thing. And there's a whole section, which is really fun, that's on technology. And technology back then was just beginning. I mean, it was just nothing. Parents back then, you think it was different, but it wasn't. They were just freaked out about television, which was brand new. And they couldn't get their kids off television to get them to go out and do stuff. So it's a lot of that and you can use a lot of these so there's video tape recorders there's also that weight 30 pounds there's all sorts of stuff now all of which can be done with your phone but the strategies are still just as good you know when your kid is going to school and they have they're

making a speech or they're doing a report the next day or they're doing something sit home the the evening before and videotape it and show them show them themselves being videotaped they will feel so much confident going into school the next day. Game changer, game changer, little things like that. And there's 50 of them in there, which will really be helpful. And it's called Rediscovering the Village. And it'll be out this summer. And it's exciting. It's an act of love. And we did not update it. So when you read this book, I mean, there's an introduction, but this book is the words of the 1960s and 70s and what was written back then and what was done back then. But it's just as relevant today. One thing people don't realize that much, and just to mention it because it's crazy, I was talking with some friends. The 1960s and 70s weren't that different than what life is like today. It really feels like it was that different. But we had the Cold War with Russia where we were sitting in the hall worried about nuclear bombs dropping. We had Vietnam. We had women's rights. Black rights was a huge issue back then. We had gas lines we had to wait on when the economy got bad. So, so many of the same types of things that shape life today were shaping it back then. And that's probably why a lot of the things in this book, what parents did back then to get great education for the kids is so relevant today. It's just really interesting. I love it. I can't

wait for it to come out. Every parent and caregiver, everyone, if you ask them, says, my children come first. They all use those words, right? Here are some ways they can turn that into more than words because a lot of them don't for whatever reason and they're all good reasons and they're all good excuses i'm not beating anybody up but in the day-to-day life the children don't come first and they should yeah and using the time we have a bunch of the tips in here are things like little things you can do driving your kid back and forth to school or to a volleyball game or to whatever so that's time where you already have and instead of you driving and the kids sitting in the back on their phone, there are some things you can do that are both a lot of fun and engaging. It's just going to be so great. I can't wait. I am so grateful that we connected and really appreciate your tips and all that you're doing for kids and families. So thank you so much for being on the show. You're welcome. And I appreciate it. And thank you. And there'll be stuff we'll do together. It'll be fun. I look forward to working together more.

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