Plus, summer reads, small goals, SharkFest!
|  | Sunday, July 19, 2020 | | | | |
 | | PHOTOGRAPH BY PEOPLE IMAGES, GETTY IMAGES | | By Rachel Buchholz, KIDS AND FAMILY Editor in Chief
I’m watching summer go by from my third-story window. Kids are riding bikes, families are having picnics, children are playing tag.
Of course, the bicyclists are wearing masks. The families are throwing stink-eyes to any others who get too close. And the taggers aren’t likely school friends—they’re siblings.
Inevitably, a child will melt down. This isn’t a teary little protest because she’s not quite ready to go home. I’m talking full-on splayed out on the sidewalk, screaming into her exasperated parents’ faces, issuing unintelligible gurglings that have something to do with “Whhhhyyyyyy?”
Hey, kid. We’re all with you.
As many families enter their fourth month of some kind of stay-at-home life, we’re all starting to realize that we have no idea when this is going to end. Maintaining some kind of patience is hard enough for adults. For children? Forget about it. “For kids, such a long time frame can feel like forever,” Baylor’s Sarah A Schnitker, an associate professor of psychology and neuroscience, tells Nat Geo in an article about fostering pandemic patience in children.
Letting kids express those negative emotions can be healthy. But so, too, can teaching patience: Sure, it brings short-term calm to kids, but studies show that it can also help children achieve future goals, become more hopeful, and increase their self-esteem. Easy first steps are simple breathing exercises, new projects, and—yes—a loose daily schedule. (Tell us how patient your kids have been!)
Now if we could just figure out how to delay those sidewalk meltdowns till we get inside …
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 | | PHOTOGRAPH BY CYNDI MONAGHAN / GETTY IMAGES | | | |
 | | PHOTOGRAPH BY HARPER S., AGE 10 | |
Activate summer brains with family camp: Last week at Nat Geo Family Camp, at-home campers learned to tell an original spooky ghost story and write lyrics for a brand-new camp song. (The one above goes to the tune of “Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah.”) Coming up Wednesday: making solar-oven s’mores and homemade ice cream! Parents can join our Facebook event to see what other at-home campers are doing.
Family discussion: Do you have lines on the wall to measure how your children have grown? Sometimes measuring small changes improves well-being. How about this topic for a family talk: Is there something really small you could do that could improve your life? If your kid says, read an hour a day, suggest a paragraph. Small habits are the hardest to make—but the easiest to keep, studies show. Piggyback a micro-habit onto something else. Meditate for 30 seconds when you toast bread. Read that paragraph when you brush your teeth. Let us know if your family begins any micro-habits—or is way ahead of us on this.
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| TRY THIS: BOREDOM BUSTERS FOR KIDS | |
| SHARKFEST 2020! Kids might not be aware that even though sharks are super important to our oceans’ health, many are threatened or endangered. Help children show these fish some love by taking this just-for-fun shark personality quiz (apparently this writer is most like a great white) or watching a silly video about “smiley” sharks. Learn about sand tiger sharks, hammerheads, bull sharks, and others (Nat Geo Kids’ Ultimate Book of Sharks has some great ones!), then see which family member is the sharkiest with our quiz. Brave adults and their older children can keep the shark party going with five weeks of shark awesomeness on the Nat Geo Channel, starting this weekend.
Flower-pressing 2.0: Introduce this activity to the next generation—and teach some science at the same time. All you need is a book, paper towels, newspaper, and, uh, some flowers from your backyard or a nearby field. Teaching kids to pick flowers responsibly also teaches them the importance of biodiversity. Plus it smells delightful.
There be dragons (and maybe you can see one): They’re 10 feet long and weigh more than 300 pounds. They clamber in the Indonesian wilds. Or, Jason Bittel writes, maybe hang out in a zoo near you. We're talking about Komodo dragons, the closest thing we’ve got to the mythical beasts that haunt our dreams. Seeing them at a zoo, of course, dispels fear. “More than anything,” Bittel writes, ”these lizards are prone to lounging.”
This newsletter was edited and curated by David Beard and Rachel Buchholz. Have a healthy and a sane (as possible) week ahead! | | | |
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