Dear Clients and Colleagues

We are already one twelfth of the way through 2007, ‘007 for short, or the James Bond Year! When it comes to James Bond anything is possible – anyone, anything, anywhere, anytime – kind of like the world we are living in today – full of chaos and change but definitely the Age of Possibility.

In our connected world a massive shift in power has begun – from governments and corporations over to individuals like you and me. We will increasingly have the power to create our own reality (anyone, anything, anywhere, anytime) by influencing and shaping the world we live in. Take China for example, which is not a democratic country. The Pop Idols TV show gave the Chinese people their first real taste of democracy when over 8-million votes were received via SMS from cellphones belonging to individual viewers. They were shaping their reality regardless of their government’s ideology. With personal computers and cellphones linked to the internet, it has become a plug and play world. If you can plug in you can play, that is the only barrier to entry. The new game called Possibility comes with new rules. Playing the new game without adopting new rules and adapting old ones may leave you standing on the sidelines watching the game.

James Bond always starts off his missions with some inside intelligence from MI6 and thereafter he creates and breaks the rules along the way. His mission is always clear but how he is going to achieve it only unveils itself in the moment. Our mission as parents and teachers is to facilitate, mentor and coach our children to prepare them for the future by showing them how to play The Game of Possibility.

Futurist Dr Graeme Codrington and I are in the throes of completing a book on parenting in the 21st century precisely to give you some intelligence so that you can play The Game of Possibility with your children. When individuals hold the power – whether or not they use it and how they use it – is dependent on their values and worldview. This is why children need parental input today. Taking personal responsibility for all the moves you make in The Game of Possibility becomes the number one rule, which is why parents will need knowledge, insight and understanding about the future.

Our book will help you to create a framework for your parenting experience as you embark on the adventure of a lifetime, that of raising the next generation of talent. It will answer these questions:

 What do parents need to know about tomorrow, today?
 Why do they need to know this?
 What action do they need to take?

TALKS & WORKSHOPS

Due to the writing deadlines for the parenting book discussed above, I will not be hosting talks again until May. My Winter Series kicks off with the following (see attached flyers for details):

Nuts & Bolts Workshop
Parents of under 5s
Wednesday, 9 May 2007 9.00 – 11.30am R150.00 per person

Connect the Tots Workshop
Parents of children from birth to 6 years
Wednesday,16 May 10.00 – 11.30am R75.00 per person
Thursday, 17 May 7.30 – 9.00pm R75.00 per person

Parenting on the Run Workshop
Parents of children from 4 – 7 years
Saturday, 26 May 2007 9.00 – 11.30 R150.00 per person

Our Toy Season series at the end of 2006 was oversubscribed. Please remember that payment secures your seat, so book soon to avoid disappointment. Refunds will be entertained up until two weeks prior to each talk. Thereafter, payment is non-refundable.

FEEDBACK FROM MY RADIO INTERVIEW ON SAFM ABOUT TOY TALK

After my interview in November last year on SAFM’s Afternoon Talk, I was left with two recurring thoughts based on the comments or questions the callers had:

1. Many people think about toys in terms of an object that does something to entertain the child. I prefer to think about toys like this:
• How can my child play with this or what can my child do with this toy or game?
• In how many different ways can this game or toy be played?
• For how many months/years will this toy or game be relevant in my child’s life

This is how I determine the value of a toy. Anything that winks and blinks and can only be played with in a limited or prescriptive way, or a toy that does all the entertaining without engaging the child, is a toy that is not worth my investment.

Yes, I hear you! We sometimes need toys that will distract and entertain our children while we get on with what we have to do, and you’re right. But these toys need to make up a very small percentage of your child’s toy box. If children are constantly entertained they will not learn how to play or learn how to entertain themselves. Without such skills they will constantly seek out your attention because they are bored, requiring ever more stimulation. So invest your time and wisely and early on to avoid landing up in a Catch-22 situation.

2. Our awareness of what’s available in the toy and game market is often limited to big brands that advertise.

Comments were made about the high cost of toys as mentioned in a Sunday Time article a few weeks prior to my interview. Most of the toys highlighted in the article were well known characters and brands. Brands and licenced characters attract a premium. You don’t have to buy them! More often than not there is a cheaper equivalent available, saving you anywhere from 30 – 50%, if you are prepared to buy unbranded goods for your child. Having spent many hours roaming the aisles of both large and small toy stores in preparation for Toy Talk 2006, I am also in a position to tell you that there are many excellent games and toys available at under R99.00 that would give children many hours of fun and learning. You can cut your coat according to your cloth and it is possible to bring up young children who are not hooked on particular characters, eg Spiderman, Barney, Power Rangers etc. It largely depends on how much they are exposed to the character and how much attention you pay to that character.

If you have very young children under the age of 5, attend the Nuts & Bolts Workshop where you will discover that by playing with core classic toys in an interactive way with your child, you don’t need a licensed character to make it fun – you are the character! A young child’s world today can be dominated Barney, Barbie, Spiderman etc, which are shaping and influencing them constantly, as I explain in detail in my presentation Connecting with Children through the Noise & Clutter. Committing yourself to playing creatively with your little one at least once a week, is one way of balancing the noise & clutter in their world. You, the parent, can still remain the best toy in the store!

EXCITING PRODUCTS FOR 10 YEAR OLDS AND UP – MYTH AND LEGEND BOARD GAMESAnd now for something totally different! Eco Kids, the toy shop in Lonehilll, has imported a range of unusual board games for older children, based on myth and legend. Eco Kids owner, Silke Ceruti (previously a judge in the Toy of the Year Awards) has provided a review of the following interesting games which retail from R279.00 upwards http://www.brightideasoutfit.com/2007/02/01/myth-and-legend-boardgames-for-older-children/:
• Carcassone
• Maharaja
• Ticket to Ride
• Lost Cities
• Lord of the Rings

TO READ ON MY WEBSITE

THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, BABY EINSTEIN AND YOU
……………It’s easy to seduce parents into purchasing by offering them something that will help them to make their children brighter and more successful. As I reiterate in all my talks and presentations to parents, gen yourself up with some basic knowledge about early childhood learning, then use your common sense when it comes to choosing appropriate toys and games (including video, computer and Playstation games.) Remember that babies and young children were born to move in order to explore and discover the world around them. For learning to have any meaning the child must use his physical body to experience his world. Occupational and physiotherapists tell us that the body is the architect of the brain, so encourage your baby to move rather than leaving him or her sitting in front of the goggle box. For the full story: http://www.brightideasoutfit.com/2007/01/29/the-president-of-the-united-states-baby-einstein-and-you/

May 2007 be your James Bond year! Stay connected to your children and remember that anything is possible.

NIKKI BUSH
The Bright Ideas Outfit
083 265 5754
brightideas@powerpt.co.za
www.brightideasoutfit.com

And now for something totally different! Eco Kids, the toy shop in Lonehilll, has imported a range of unusual board games for older children, based on myth and legend. Eco Kids owner, Silke Ceruti (previously a judge in the Toy of the Year Awards) has provided a review of the following interesting games which retail from R279.00 upwards:
• Carcassone
• Maharaja
• Ticket to Ride
• Lost Cities
• Lord of the Rings

Carcassonne (R279.00)
“Kar-ka-son” has to be the simplest, most amazing game ever! It can be played by EVERYONE, from little kids to grandma. Take turns in drawing tiles randomly from the box and lay them out domino-fashion to build a random landscape in the French town of “Carcassonne”. As you place the tiles, deploy your pieces strategically to gain the most points as the landscape develops. This is an incredibly easy game to learn … yet very deep in strategy and tactics. The more you play the more you see how much there is to this super game. See attached picture.

Maharaja (R410.00)
The Maharaja has called and you, a distinguished Indian prince, are obeying his call! Build magnificent houses and palaces in his name! Maharaja is a clever strategic board game for two to five players. During the game the players take different roles and travel from city to city in India. Their architects build palaces and houses for the Maharaja. Of course, building a palace is expensive. Therefore it is important to earn enough money in the cities. The first player to build seven palaces is the winner. Besides the basic game the rules booklet contains two advanced versions for players who seek even more depth.

Ticket to Ride (R430.00)
October 2, 1900 – 28 years to the day that noted London eccentric, Phineas Fogg, accepted and then won a £20,000 bet that he could travel “Around the World in 80 Days”. Now at the dawn of the century it is time for a new “impossible journey”. Some old friends have gathered to celebrate Fogg’s impetuous and lucrative gamble – and to propose a new wager of their own. The stakes: $1 Million in a winner-takes-all competition. The objective: to see which of them can travel by rail to the most cities in North America – in just 7 days. The journey begins immediately……Ticket to Ride is a cross-country train adventure where players collect cards of various types of train cars that enable them to claim railway routes connecting cities throughout North America.

Lost Cities (R269.00)
For the daring and adventurous, there are many lost cities to explore. They are in the Himalayas, the ever-shifting sands of the desert, the Brazilian rain forest, ancient volcanoes in Neptune’s Realm. With limited resources the players must choose which expedition to begin. Those with high confidence may want to up the stakes, increasing the rewards for success, but risking more should the expedition fail. The player who finds the right balance will find victory!

Lord of the Rings (R410.00)
This is a brilliant two-player game that pits good against evil, bringing all the characters from the trilogy to life. Take on the role of the huge and powerful dark forces to try and catch Frodo or invade the shire. Use their sheer strength and flying abilities to scavenge the lands looking for the little Hobbit. Or lead the forces of light, who rely on their cunning and special abilities, to work together and help Frodo get to Mount Doom to destroy the Ring. This game has many wonderful elements from Lord of the Rings in it, and the game-play is quick but intense. Feel the tension as you guide the band of heroes through the treacherous mountain regions and make touch decision as the situations get more and more helpless the closer they get to the mountain. Are YOU the Chosen One?

You can find Eco Kids at the Leaping Frog Centre in Fourways. Telephone: 011 465 1530.

I began writing about early learning 9 years ago because I was always searching for credible sources of information to back up the sale of the educational toys that I was involved with. I would be told things like, “Children learn through play, young children need to learn about shape because it is the foundation for handwriting, movement wires the brain”, etc. These facts were dished out to me regularly and I wanted to know where they came from and if they were all true, or whether some were just marketing speak. So I took a whole lot of interesting facts and researched them by interviewing professionals in the field, doing a lot of reading and attending many talks and seminars. Not only was I able to build a speaking and writing career out of this research, but it gave me a good frame of reference as a parent – a lense through which to view the world and make my decisions about what I would and would not purchase for my children, without being overly influenced by the power of marketing and advertising campaigns. With a little bit of knowledge you can see through the claims the advertisers and marketers often make about their products and services. I cannot claim to be so wise when it comes to purchasing computers and printers, that’s not my field of speciality!

It’s easy to seduce parents into purchasing by offering them something that will help them to make their children brighter and more successful. As I reiterate in all my talks and presentations to parents, gen yourself up with some basic knowledge about early childhood learning, then use your common sense when it comes to choosing appropriate toys and games (including video, computer and Playstation games.) Remember that babies and young children were born to move in order to explore and discover the world around them. For learning to have any meaning the child must use his physical body to experience his world. Occupational and physiotherapists tell us that the body is the architect of the brain, so encourage your baby to move rather than leaving him or her sitting in front of the goggle box.

More on this in an opinionated piece from Michael Mendizza from Touch the Future………………….

In the State of the Union address the President took several minutes to applaud the founder of Baby Einstein, a beautiful woman, for her entrepreneurial and philanthropic spirit. No doubt she is all that and much more.

Touch the Future is a public service. Your financial support is needed and appreciated.

I picked up my six year old son from a playdate this afternoon and he was having the time of his life. His friend’s parents are doing an alteration to their home and the boys had found a plank of wood and a few bricks with which they made a see saw ramp for their bikes. What incredible fun they had for over two hours. The exercise was creative, challenging and very physical. It entailed thinking, planning and problem solving to set it up, and then the gross motor skills of balance, co-ordination and spatial planning (how fast or slow to go and when to accelerate so that you don’t fall off the ramp). This was the perfect balancing act to the hour spent playing a computer game earlier in the day.

That hour of on-screen activity itself was also well spent playing a game called Hugo. This entailed fine motor co-ordination to move the cursor all over the screen, helping the worker ants collect food for the queen. On depositing food in the anthill, my son then had to decide on his reward - select either a worker ant or a soldier ant. This introduced thinking skills and strategy to the game. The anthill was under attack from enemy ants from time to time, so there needed to be a good spread of worker ants and army ants to deal with whatever situation arose. This game involved basic thinking and planning skills in a virtual environment.

It’s amazing how quickly children work out how the game is played and what the rules and consequences are – and all of this without actually reading a rules booklet! Come to think of it, there was no rules book or adult supervision with the bike ramp game either! Aren’t children so naturally resourceful!

It is so important for parents to help their children to develop a balanced approach to on and off screen activities. We must ensure that they are able to switch easily between the real and virtual worlds with which they engage because they do need to master both to survive in today’s hi-tech world. While it is possible to do things and visit places via technology that would never be possible in real life (remember the recent Mweb ADSL TV ad with the grandson and his grandparents?), nothing is a substitute for a real life experiences with real time consequences. A few key points to remember:

• The American Academy of Paediatricians recommends no TV for children under the age of 2.
• The rule of thumb for total time spent doing on-screen activities for children is not more than 2 hours a day (this includes TV, Playstation, computers, Gameboys, cellphone games etc).
• According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, toddlers are already watching an average of 1.5 hours of TV per day and South African children age 7 – 12 are watching 3.75 hours a day. This would be considered bingeing on screen media by the authors of The Media Diet for Kids – a good read if you can get hold of a copy.
• Don’t put a television in your child’s bedroom.
• Make sure your child continues to ask for permission to switch on the TV or play a computer game or Playstation for as long as possible. It will help you to keep control of their media habits.
• Let kids get dirty
• Encourage play dates

Keep striving for balance between high tech and high touch activities. It’s more important than you think!

NIKKI BUSH Presenter of Connecting with Children through the Noise & Clutter www.brightideasoutfit.com brightideas@powerpt.co.za

There’s nothing like a child reaching a developmental milestone to make a parent “ooh” and “aah”! The first time your baby sits, crawls or walks results in a flurry of telephone calls to family and friends who, in turn, pass this groundbreaking news along the grapevine to anyone who’s interested. And who hasn’t been in the position of predicting their baby is about to start walking, and then it takes another three or four months before it really happens in earnest?

Each human being has his or her own genetically encoded developmental timeline. There is a natural progression from one milestone to the next that is driven by the connection between the brain and the body. The communication between the two, and thus the achievement of developmental milestones, is dependent on a magical substance called myelin.

MAGICAL MYELIN

Paediatrician, Dr Gillian de Vos, specialises in neuro-developmentmental issues. She explains that the formation of myelin, the fatty coating of the nerve fibres of the brain, starts in utero, peaking at around one to two years of age and continuing until around the age of five.

“There is a specific progression. Myelination starts at the head and works its way down the body, and from the centre of the body outwards. Parents are usually unaware that physical developmental milestones or phases are all in line with myelination development. In fact they can’t happen until sufficient myelination takes place,” she says. Head and neck control precede rolling, for example.

STIMULATION IS VITAL

“Stimulation speeds up myelination because the more a particular neural pathway in the brain is used, the more of this white, fatty, segmented coating is laid down, making it a more permanent pathway. Myelin increases the speed of nerve impulse transmission, meaning messages can be relayed more efficiently between brain cells.” In highly myelinated neurons, impulses travel at 100 metres per second. 

Brain Gym specialist, Melodie de Jager, stresses the importance of not rushing your child through the important developmental stages of rolling, sitting, crawling, standing and walking. “For good myelination to take place, repetition is essential. A baby should perform in the region of 50 000 crawling movements, for example, wiring the brain in preparation for the fine-motor skills of reading and writing. A child receiving occupational or neuro-developmental physiotherapy is repatterning his or her brain through repeated movements to use more efficient neural pathways. In therapy, up to 2 000 repetitions are required to form a new memory cell in the brain,” she explains.

DON’T RUSH YOUR CHILD

Melodie stresses that the quality of a baby’s physical development forms the basis of all learning and academic achievement later on because it is intrinsically linked to the development of the neural pathways in the brain. It is an incredible feat for a baby to work his way through all the milestones that will eventually enable him to support himself upright against gravity. But she warns that it could be detrimental to a child if he does not complete all the phases in the correct sequence and for long enough. “There is little truth in the myth that the sooner a baby reaches his milestones, the more intelligent he will be. In fact research shows that there is an enormous correlation between incomplete developmental phases in babies and academic underachievement later on. Repetition at every phase is required in order to build a strong cognitive network in the brain,” Melodie explains.

Gillian’s explanation of the sequential nature of myelin formation makes it obvious why a baby would normally sit before crawling and stand before walking. Inadequate myelination may result in messages moving more slowly through the system and could lead to delays in development and even in learning gaps or difficulties. 

In the 21st century, children are spending more time being entertained or educated in front of one screen or another. This conditioning starts from babyhood with the introduction of videos, DVDs and even TV channels especially for babies.  Television should be a supplement to regular stimulation, love and fun and not a substitute.  Toddlers should not be allowed to switch on the television at any time, condition your toddler from early on that the TV only goes on when you switch it on.  If your toddler is given the appropriate stimulation and learns how to entertain himself, he will not get bored.  For a bored child a screen is heaven, but it does nothing for the stimulation and myelination of the brain.  Effective myelination takes place through body movement which is not encouraged when a child spends hours being babysat by a screen. See article: Now babies have their own TV channel.