How to Hold a Glue Stick and Other Clues to Parenting

The best teachers are also the best learners. Today we look at the book “How to Hold a Glue Stick and Other Clues to Parenting” by Froukje Matthews who combined her Montessori teaching experience with the knowledge gained as a parent.  Welcome to this edition of Newsgram! How many homeschoolers are out there?  The fall of […]

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The best teachers are also the best learners. Today we look at the book “How to Hold a Glue Stick and Other Clues to Parenting” by Froukje Matthews who combined her Montessori teaching experience with the knowledge gained as a parent. 

Welcome to this edition of Newsgram!

How many homeschoolers are out there?  The fall of 2020 saw a huge rise in parents choosing to homeschool and that shouldn’t come as a surprise. There was a global pandemic. Many school districts were closed but then something happened; Lots of parents chose to keep their kids at home. 

Whether it was mask mandates, faith and family issues, lifestyle choices or just the fear for their child’s safety the reality is, homeschooling is on the rise and with my own kids choosing the parent in this way it has forced me to think about their point of view and weigh the options. 

I keep stumbling over one fact. Being a parent does not make you a teacher just as I will never be a carpenter but does that mean we can’t be taught. 

Froukje M. Matthews  – Well the thing is when you become a parent, in hospital they show you how to breastfeed, how you need to sit up and who you have to hold your arms so you don’t get a sore back and a sore shoulder and by the time you are sent home it is usually within a matter of days if not the same day. You then are on our own. You might have read all sorts of books about how to look after a baby but doing it is another matter altogether. 

That is Froukje M. Matthews author of the book How to Hold a Glue Stick and Other Clues to Parenting. 

Parents who choose to homeschool have all kinds of resources at their disposal now and they don’t even have to do it full time, there is a hybrid approach available in some states. I found Froukje’s book to be a great resource because it is not only written by an experienced educator but one who embraces the principles of Maria Montessori. 

In case you don’t know who that is, Maria Montessori was a highly acclaimed Italian physician and educator who developed an approach to education that was more like that of an engineer. It was about building on the way children learn naturally and the thing I like most about her approach is that it made kids want to learn, along with these other principles…

Froukje M. Matthews – Treat the child as if he is already the well worth human being that you want him to be. Number one. And the other one is that there isn’t the matter there is just the child so observing first and loving a child is not a prerequisite. I mean, it will come when you pay attention and observe and the more you know about your subject the more you come to appreciate it and suddenly you find you are loving it so much that it hurts. 

I know that may sound strange to not be sure if you love your child or not, of course you do but parenting can be hard and it makes us doubt ourselves. This approach takes the emotion out of it and lets you focus on the task at hand. Tasks that sometimes seem extremely simple, like holding a glue stick — but in reality might be about a bigger problem, Communication. This is the story that was also the inspiration for her book’s title.  

Froukje M. Matthews – That is the story of a mom who was sitting at the table with her barely two year old child and this child was holding a glue stick just like the little child on the cover, in a stabbing grip and she was pressing it very hard the glue was all curled around the edges and mom kept saying don’t press too hard, don’t press too hard and the child was trying very hard to understand what she was talking about and looking up every time she said that she was looking up at her mom and to me, that was the moment that I could step in because the mom looked to me and said “ah, she is just so pig headed, you know” and I said no, she is just trying to understand you that is why she stops and she looks but she doesn’t know what you mean. Those words have no meaning. What means press, what means hard and what means pressing too hard? Then I said to the mother just watch me and I held my hand out and I touched the child’s hand and I said, “this is a glue stick” and then I touched my hand and I said put the glue stick in my hand and the  child did just that she put the glue stick in my hand and i held the glue stick, not in a stabbing grip but between my thumb and my other three fingers and I pressed it first really hard on the paper, the same as she did and I said, this is pressing hard and then i helps it very gently and I talked very softly to her and said “this is pressing gently” and then I gave it back to her and I said I’d like you to press it gently and she did exactly that and then i said to the mom if you offer something to your child in opposites and you show what you want the child to copy last, that is what she’ll remember and that is what she will copy and that is why it works. 

Sometimes there is more going on than meets the eye. Froukje is a natural story-teller as you can probably tell so we’re going to get to more of her stories in a minute but first I wanted to share this tip with you. It’s so simple and so perfect..

Froukje M. Matthews – If you are right-handed and you want to show a little child or anyone for that matter what your hands are doing, have that person sit on your left-hand side so they have a clear view of your hand and what your fingers are doing and whatever you have in your hand. 

If they are sitting across from you they are looking at the back of your hands. This approach takes all the guesswork out of the lesson.  Let’s be honest, parenting is like a hands-on Personal Development Course. We need all the help we can get. 

Froukje M. Matthews – When you are the husband you feel so responsible for your wife and your child that you can’t think of anything else and when you are the mother you feel so responsible for that little baby that you can’t think of anything else but you both  have to work at making a living as well and so how do you do that. You have bills to pay and there is a house to clean and dishes to be done and laundry to be hung up and you know all those things and it is a lot, it is just a lot. Just because it’s been done for millions of years doesn’t mean that every new parent has been born with the book of directions already stamped into their head. No, you have to start from scratch every time. 

Her book is laid out in chapters but they are not sequentially arranged so you pick and choose the stories at will. This particular story happens to be in the beginning. 

Froukje M. Matthews – Chapter one. Paying attention. (Paying Attention story) 

The examples and vignettes are true to life and based on nearly 30 years of observations and interactions with the very young.

Frokje says, parenting requires your conscious behavior. Stick to the here-and-now of the situation at hand when interacting with your child, rather than thinking “Why is this happening? What is this child doing to me?” It is easier said than done and it takes practice but it i s more than worth the effort. 

Her book is called How to Hold a Glue Stick and Other Clues to Parenting by Froukje M. Matthews and it’s available from BalboaPress. You can find it online in all the usual places like Barnes and Noble and Amazon.com and that will do it for this edition of Newsgram from Webtalkradio.com

Be sure and listen to Froukje’s interview with Suzanne Harris on the Books on Air podcast at webtalkradio.com 

The post How to Hold a Glue Stick and Other Clues to Parenting appeared first on WebTalkRadio.net.