Thanks and Giving

I blame it all on Spongebob. Once we let my daughter June, now 7, enter the world of Bikini Bottom when she was 5, she quickly lost interest in her old friends Max and Ruby on Nick, Jr. and forget about Martha, Curious George and Word Girl on PBS Kids. With Spongebob and the others shows on Nick came commercials. Lots of them. If you have children around a certain age, you know what I'm talking about and can probably sing all of the lyrics to the "Dream Light" jingle, too.

"Mommy, can I have..."--"Mommy, I want..."--"Mommy, so and so has..."...the world of commercials wet my daughter's appetite for stuff in a way that I was not quite prepared for. The truth is, our family lives in a generally non-materialistic way. My kids wear hand-me-downs. My plates don't match. Some of our best furniture was left on someone else's front curb. I think of us as Bohemian or maybe Shabby Chic...but ordering toys, dolls and glimmer tattoos advertised on TV is not really part of how we roll.

So how do we busy parents help our children to connect with a feeling of gratitude for all that they have, help them resist the desire to buy more, more, more, and even begin to think about all of the other people out there who are in need of resources? It's definitely not an easy task for most of us adults, let alone our children, given the consumerist culture that surrounds us most of the time.

But what I've discovered in the last few years is that making time for conversations and experiences connected to gratitude is really essential to my children's development. It doesn't mean that my daughter has stopped asking for all that she sees on TV, but it does mean that she is becoming aware of just how lucky she is to have so many things that she wants and that she does have a great capacity for thinking of others.

Here are a few ways that we build the conversation of thanks and giving into our busy lives:

1. Do A Mitzvah: Thankfully, the Jewish tradition has an ancient system that when put into practice helps us move away from thinking only of self to focus on doing for others. Even young children can help you do mitzvot--in fact, our jkidphilly Little Hands Make A Big Difference programs (that take place monthly all over the Greater Philadelphia area) involve young children in making snack bags for people who need food, packing socks or gloves for people who need them, and even making dog toys for pets who live in shelter. Giving your child the experience of doing for others helps him/her to internalize the idea that we all can help each other.
2. Donate: When my daughter wants new things, we initiate a process of looking at her current crop of toys and assessing what she really plays with. Could some toys go to her younger cousin? She has helped me drop off bags of her clothes to a nearby homeless shelter. Giving things away can be really hard for young children. My daughter has made clear to me that her dolls and animals are off limits and so we don't touch them, but instead focus on all of the things that she is willing to share.
3. Save: When birthday money or Hanukkah gelt comes from generous relatives, we love to fill those piggy banks (and some goes in the kids' Tzedekah boxes, too). When a commercial comes on TV with something very desirable, we can check in the piggy bank and see whether there is enough money to make that purchase. Saving helps young children to begin to grasp the abstract concept of money.
4. Reflect: It's as simple as asking some really direct questions when my daughter tells me that she wants something or that so and so has more (toys/clothes/dolls) than she does. I might say Tell me why you would like that new teddy bear when you already have five sitting on your bed...or Do you think that living in a big house makes people happier? Whatever she says, I listen and do not respond with a judgement or sermonize about right/wrong. I just try and create opportunities for her to reflect on "things" and "stuff" after her initial impulse to want more, more, more.
5. Bless: I go back to our Jewish tradition again. It is a really helpful ritual to say a blessing over food with children and to begin conversations about where our food comes from and how fortunate we are to have plenty of food. Blessings can be something special that you do on Friday night or they can become a daily ritual. We have a great jkidphilly program called Our Jewish Home that gives families very helpful resources to learn Shabbat blessings together.

May your season of "thanks" and "giving" be full of blessings and light!
Gabby Kaplan-Mayer,
Program Director for Family Engagement in Center City
and for Special Needs Resources

Fitting It In: Reading With Your Kids

Picture the scene: It’s 8:30pm at night, my seven-year-old daughter is tucked in her bed and has picked out her favorite new book for me to read to her. First she needs to kiss her dolls and stuffed animals and say good-night to them…and while she’s busy doing that, I, bad mommy, fall asleep on the rug next to her bed. “Wake up, Mommy!” she screams, shaking my shoulders. “I wasn’t asleep…I was just resting,” I say, groggily opening Ramona’s World and trying to focus on the page. But the truth is, I was out cold.

Sound familiar to any of you? I know how important reading with my children is in promoting their love of books and learning…and, sometimes, bedtime story time needs to be short and sweet because I’m tired after a full day of work and taking care of children and home. Fortunately, as a busy mom, I’ve figured out ways to integrate literacy skills into teachable moments that are just part of our everyday lives…and these are simple activities that you can share with your little ones.

My children are now seven and nine and because my son has autism and is delayed in some cognitive areas, we are still working on teaching him basic reading skills, while we are reinforcing the learning that is happening in my daughter’s first grade classroom. The activities that I describe below work well for toddlers, preschool age children and can be fun and productive for elementary age children as well: 
Read at the table: In my home, we try and sit down for a family dinner together as many nights during the week as we can. My kids eat in about ten minutes, so I invite them to stay at the table while my husband and I finish and look at a book. Sometimes when my husband needs to work late, I feed the children first and they come back to the table for dessert with dad. We’ll pull out a favorite story to read during dessert time. We’ll also pull out stories when we’re cuddling on the couch eating an after school snack.

2.       In the car: How much of your life do you spend in the car schlepping your sweeties to their various activities? Driving can be a fun time to make up your own stories. Get inspired by the sights that you’re driving by, the weather, the activities that are ahead in your day. You can start a story with one sentence, “One day, a big moving truck was on its way to a magical town…” and invite your child(ren) to make up the next sentence. Take turns until you’ve created your own tale! This activity helps your child understand that stories have a beginning, middle and end and inspires imagination.

4.       Tell Your Child’s Story: One of my favorite ways to make up an original story is to make my child the main character and simply narrate his/her day. “One day, a beautiful boy named George woke up and ate a very big breakfast. He helped to put on his clothes and put toothpaste on his toothbrush. He walked to school with mom…” Nothing fancy, just framing what your child does during the day into a narrative. You can enrich the story with vocabulary words that you’d like your child to learn and you can invite him/her to help tell the story. This process is a lovely way to bond with your babies after a busy day—your child can hear the ways that you’ve noticed all that he/she has done during a busy day.

5.       Sign up for PJ Library: If you haven’t already! How much fun is it to receive a monthly package with wonderful new books? Inside of the flap of the PJ Library books are questions that you can ask your child after reading together. Or simple ask, “What was your favorite part of the story?” You’ll be amazed with what conversations will be started.

My children keep their PJ books on a special bookshelf and they still pick out the stories to read many evenings before bed…when mommy stays awake. :)

Gabby Kaplan-Mayer,

Program Director for Family Engagement in Center City and for Special Needs Resources

Rosh Hashanah Rituals

Celebrating the New Year As A Family

By Gabrielle Kaplan-Mayer,

Program Director, Family Engagement, Center City

L’shana Tovah—Happy New Year! On Sunday at sundown, Jewish people all over the world will take a break from their daily schedule to honor the creation of the world, the opportunity to make changes in our behavior and to begin the year with a fresh start and to simply be grateful for the blessings that are abundant in our lives. For many, the holiday is a time to gather with family and friends for a festive meal and to spend time in synagogue gathered in community.

For families with young children, long days in synagogue are not always easy or optimal. There are many ways to celebrate and honor the spirit of holiday that may work well for your family. I am going to share some of the favorite Rosh Hashanah traditions that I’ve enjoyed with my children over the years and I hope that you’ll add some of your own in the comments section below!

·         Baking Challah: In my home growing up, my parents were not bakers and making cookies meant slicing up a tube of Pillsbury dough. But I still remember the year that my mom decided we should make our own round challah for Rosh Hashanah—a symbol of the seasons and cycle of life. We had so much fun kneading the dough that round challah-making became and annual tradition. Here is a great challah recipe. And if you don’t have time to bake your own challah this year, be sure to join one of our jkidphilly playdates and pick up a round challah from us!

·      Apples, apples everywhere: Food helps to explain the meaning of our holidays to young children (and adults, too!). The sweetness and smell of apples and honey reminds us to have a sweet new year. There are so many great pick-your-own farms in the Greater Philadelphia area—why not take your family on an apple-picking adventure and slice up what you pick for Rosh Hashanah?

·         Books and Music: Hopefully your family is signed up for PJ Library (if not, just click here) and you have some wonderful High Holiday books to read with your children like Sammy Spider's First Rosh Hashana and It's Shofar Time. You can also listen and sing along to holiday songs with your children; click here for a link to some free songs that you can download.

·         Tashlich: On the second day of Rosh Hashanah, it is traditional to go to a body of water and toss in breadcrumbs, representing the process of tossing away old behaviors that are no longer serving us. This multi-sensory ritual is a wonderful one to experience with children. Pack some crumbs, head to a little creek near you (my family loves to go to Valley Green every year), and talk about the behaviors that each of you will try to say good-bye to in the New Year. How powerful it is for children to know that their parents make mistakes and that our tradition provides a way for us to say that we’re sorry and try better next time.

·         Attending children’s services: The High Holidays are a special time to experience Jewish worship together--for many children listening to the call of the shofar is a moment that they anticipate each year. If your family is not connected to a synagogue, there are many communities that will welcome you to children’s (and adult) services. Visit our jkidphilly calendar to look for Rosh Hashanah services. If you need help finding a synagogue to attend for the holidays in your Kehillah, our staff at Jewish Learning venture will be happy to help you.

Wishing you all a sweet, happy, healthy New Year and I look forward to connecting with you—online or in person—very soon!

Blessing the Backpacks

Last week, a friend of mine sent me a link to an article in the Huffington Post religion section about a church who gathers children together for a "blessing of the backpacks" ritual. This back to school ceremony gathers children together before the start of the school year to offer them a blessing and remind them that God is with them as they start off to school.
How smart! Like many of you, I just sent off my children to school this morning. My daughter begins first grade with a new teacher and my son begins third grade in the same autism support classroom that he was in last year. Both children have grown so much physically, emotionally and cognitively since leaving school last June. The summer was rich with family time, travel, outdoor concerts, camp and time just to relax and stay up late.

For many of us parents, Labor Day weekend is an emotionally-packed time, as we address our children's anxieties about the coming school year and face our own. Will our child have a teacher who "gets" them? Will they make new friends? How will we balance homework with down time and after-school activities?
The "Blessing of the Backpack" ritual is one way to calm and center families during this transitional time and help keep this new beginning in perspective. In our Jewish tradition, we are fortunate to begin the new school year just as we begin the new year with Rosh Hashana.
Rosh Hashana, coming in just a few weeks, is an opportunity for us to enter the new year with reflection, prayer and family traditions. Over the next couple of weeks, I'll share ideas about celebrating the new year with young children.
If you and your family have special traditions to celebrate the start of school or the start of the new year, please post your comments below--thank you.
May all of our children be blessed with a fantastic school year!

Creating Connections

Who do you turn to when you have a parenting question? Your own parents, best friends, or a parenting expert like Dr. Sears? In my own parenting journey, these sources haven't always been the most helpful...despite everyone's good intentions. As a mom of a child with special needs, my family and friends are always happy to listen and lend love and support, but because they haven't walked in my shoes, they don't necessarily know how to answer my questions or where to guide me for resources. When my nine-year-old son was diagnosed with autism at age three, I thankfully found a number of online discussion groups made up of smart, savvy parents who helped me to both  muster my own courage and also find the resources that I needed to begin my son's healing journey. Six years later, our family is strong, our son makes continual progress and I make sure to visit those online forums so that I can share my experiences (and maybe even some wisdom) with new parents who are just making their way through the diagnosis experience. 
At jkidphilly, one of our main goals is to create opportunities for parents raising Jewish children to meet, connect and share experiences. We work on this goal by hosting play dates across the Greater Philadelphia area, through our Our Jewish Home and Making Connections programs, and also by creating online communities. Many of you have already found us on facebook, meetup and twitter--and now we're adding discussion forums right here on our jkidphilly web site.
What is unique about our discussion forums is that we're bringing questions and experiences about Jewish parenting into the mix. So while I have lots of special needs discussion forums to go to, I will now have a place to ask other Jewish parents about their experiences finding inclusive preschool, synagogue and camp experiences...as well as discussing advocates, IEPS, social skills and all of the many issues that are part of life raising kids with different abilities.
We've tried to create discussion groups for all different kinds of parents and for parents (and grandparents, too) along different stages of the journey. You'll find a group for expecting parents, birth--eighteen months, nineteen months to three-year-olds, three to six-year-olds, and seven to twelve-year-olds. You'll find forums for interfaith, multicultural, single, LGBTQ parents. You'll find forums for Jewish parents new to the Philly area who'd like to connect to other families. You'll find a general forum to ask questions and seek opinions from a broad range of parents. And if you are looking for a forum that you don't find, just let us know and we'll add a new group.
We look forward to hearing your voice and encouraging new connections on our forum!
Gabrielle Kaplan-Mayer
Program Director, Family Engagement, Bucks County

Families Just Like Yours

When we here at jkidphilly publicize our programs, we add the tag line "for families just like yours." We hope that message lets everyone in the Jewish community know that wherever you are in your Jewish observance and whatever your family make-up looks like, we welcome you.
We really get that there is no "one size fits all" for contemporary Jewish families and in fact, the diversity of who Jewish families  today brings a richness to our community.
Take my family, for example. I am a middle child, with an older sister and younger brother. We all grew up with the same two Jewish parents, but as adults, each of our families looks quite different from the others (I joke that we could be a great source for another "Modern Family" series). My older sister married an Israeli citizen who has made the US his home for the last twenty years, and their family of three boys echoes two languages and great Israeli food.
My younger brother is married to a woman who grew up not identified with a religion, as her mom had left the Mormon church that she had grown up in. My sister-in-law has always been eager to learn about Judaism and take part in holiday rituals (she makes an incredible charoset), but has not chosen to convert to Judaism. Together, she and my brother have chosen to raise their young daughter as Jewish and although they are not connected to a synagogue community right now, they love finding ways to do Jewish things together. For example, my sister-in-law invited my niece's two-year-old friends over at Purim time for a make your own hamantashen party!
On the surface, my  husband and I might look like the least complicated pair since we each group in Jewish homes here in the US. But our backgrounds (mine Reform, his Conservative), have also lead us to navigate differences and find creative ways to express what being part of a Jewish home means to each of us. Although my husband identifies as culturally Jewish, he has been a practicing Buddhist for twenty years, and that practice inspires his faith. We are the parents of two great children, including a nine-year-old son who has autism. The experience of parenting a child with a disability has also inspired us to seek out Jewish community for support and connection and experiencing tradition through our children's eyes has re-connected each of us to the joy of  simple rituals like lighting Shabbat candles together.
This tells you just a little bit about my family--and I will share more stories as I blog here at jkidphilly this year. I would love to hear about your Jewish family and learn about what helps you create a Jewish home and community.
And please remember--our jkidphilly programs are for families just like yours!

Family Celebrations for July 4th

Family Celebrations for July 4th

What are your plans for the 4th of July? While American Independence Day is not technically a Jewish holiday, it's a day that emphasizes important values, including freedom and independence, that we can connect to our experience of being Jewish. Here are a few ways to think about connecting to July 4th in a Jewish way:

• Explaining Freedom: How do you explain the concept of "freedom" to a young child? We try to explain it every year when we sit down for our seder at Passover. Take out some of your favorite Passover books (such as "Nachson Who Was Afraid to Swim" )and remind your child about how the Jewish people could not be free until they left Egypt. It draws a great parallel to why the early settlers of our country came here in search of freedom to live and worship as they chose.
• Our Family's Story: July 4th is also a great time to tell your child(ren) about how and when your family of origin came to this country. It's a great time to celebrate the value of diversity and think about how many different kinds of people live in the United States. "The Castle of Hester Street" is a great story about a grandfather recalling his journey from Russia to New York to his grandchild.
• Celebrating in the Cradle of Liberty: For families who live in the Philadelphia area, we have the opportunity to show our kids first hand so many important symbols of the American Revolution. This year, the National Museum of American Jewish History will be open with free admission so that families can come and learn. (An hour in an air-conditioned museum might be just the right thing for this year's holiday!).

BTW: All of the books mentioned above are part of  PJ Library. If your child(ren) isn't signed up to receive these wonderful, free books every month, just click here to sign up!

Have a happy, safe & fun 4th!

Meeting Families Just Like Yours

When I was pregnant with my first child, I was really lucky to have a close friend who was due with her first baby just a few weeks after me. When our babies were born, we met every week to go for walks and spent hours, bleary-eyed as we were, talking about the ups and downs of being a new mom. When either of us had an appointment, we would watch each other's baby. Many weekends we'd get together with the daddies in tow and eat pizza and try to watch a movie, although generally half of us fell asleep.

When our babies were three months old, I decided to go back to work part-time and my friend decided to go back to work full-time. Our schedules changed our relationship; even though we still had weekends to hang out, that time was more often reserved for catching up on laundry or taking care of errands that we couldn't manage during the week.

What I discovered during those early years of parenting was that friendships change and shift as our work/family balance continues to evolve. I became closer with other friends who also worked part-time, parents that I met at my local park and moms in my synagogue community.
It's not always easy to make those new friendships when you're just so busy keeping up with the demands of being a new parent. At jkidphilly, we are hoping to make making those connections just a little bit easier for you. All summer long, we've got lots of informal playdates scheduled around the Greater Philadelphia area where you can come with your babies, toddlers and children to hang out at a playground and meet some other parents--who may live just around the corner from you. Come as often as you like and help us to spread the word! Just check out the calendar box on the top right of our home page.

Hope to see you & your little ones soon!

Enjoying the Ride

So many of us busy parents struggle to find down time to just be with our kids. Juggling demands of work and home, shuttling children to and from activities, we can easily lose sight of how important it is to spend time with our children--with no agenda, and no demands.

One way that I love to carve out that "just being" time is during our summer family road trips. Headed to see our grandparents or cousins who live several hours away or stealing away to a weekend at the shore, the time that we share together in the car gives us a chance to share jokes, favorite music and stories. Car trips take me back to my own childhood and the many miles I sat squeezed in the middle of my brother and sister in the backseat of our station wagon--headed south to Florida, north to Toronto or west to Chicago to see family and friends. These were the pre-ipod days when we each took a turn choosing a cassette tape to play that everyone had to enjoy--or at least endure.

I'm grateful that my children aren't yet of the age when they'll plug into their ipods and tune out our conversations. For now, they enjoy our car time, even when they're filled with some "When will get there?!" energy.

Here at jkidphilly, we've recently created "Shore Stories"--podcasts of some of our favorite books that you can download and listen to with your little ones during your summer drives. I'm excited to listen to them with my family and integrate this new tradition into our 'Summer of 2012' road trips.

Gabrielle Kaplan-Mayer
 Family Engagement Program Director, Bucks County

Welcome to Summer

So glad you found us at jkidphilly.org! We have lots of fun summer events planned for you and your family. Come out to hear Jewish stories, play in the park, do a mitzvah project and meet other families just like yours! We'll be posting about events all summer and sharing resources for families raising Jewish children. Let us know about any special topics that you'd like to learn more about.

Write to me, Debbie Leon, Director of Family Engagement--hope to hear from you soon!