Seattle Sun Newspaper - Vol. 8, Issue 3, March 2004

Copyright 2004 Seattle Sun. Please feel free to use the article below in your research. Be sure to cite the Seattle Sun as your source.

Author says children should be respected

By JAMES BUSH

Julie Moss Scandora saw a little girl with a toy stroller climbing a steep set of steps. Her mother stopped her with the admonition: "You cannot do that." Yet, the little girl tried again and again to climb the steps until her frustrated mother gave her a swat and took her home.

Was this a bad child? Or just a youngster determined to show her mother that, yes, she could successfully climb the steps. Scandora definitely agrees with the latter statement.

In her recently published book, "One In A Million: Bringing Out What is Wondrous in Your Child Through Trust, Understanding and Respect," Scandora, a writer/editor and parent who lives in the Maple Leaf neighborhood, spotlights the misunderstandings that occur between parents and children. "Too often," she says, "people think they're giving children respect when they're not giving children what they need."

While her evidence is admittedly anecdotal, the anecdotes are powerful. The book opens with the scene of a father berating his son during a lesson at the computer. Before the lesson is over, the father has called his son "stupid" and "lazy" and refused to explain his commands, insisting that the boy "just do as I say."

If you'd asked the man what he was doing, writes Scandora, he'd have replied that he was teaching his son how to use the computer. He certainly would not have said that he was throwing insults at his child.

The major lessons in "One In A Million"' are that parents must realize what they are saying and doing to their children, understand the impact of their words and actions, and acknowledge the need children have to feel respected by their parents.

Oh, and one more thing: You don't need to a degree in child psychology to raise good kids.

Although her book includes an eight-page bibliography of books on the topic of raising children, Scandora admits that "the ones I especially like are not [written] by professionals with degrees."

The book, which was created with the aid of Hara Publishing, an Eastside-based firm which works with self-published authors, grew from Scandora's own experiences as a parent. The first of her writings were communications addressed to her daughter Rhiannon's third-grade teacher. "I put my thoughts on paper so he could read them at his leisure," she recalls. Then she began to keep a journal both on her observations about children and those gleaned from books she had read. Intending to rewrite her journals in book form, she found time to write when she would take her son, Ty, to the Seattle Center skateboard park, and she would sit in her car waiting for him.

The book reveals a lot about Scandora's own parenting style in raising daughters Rhiannon, 21, and Rikki, 19, and son, Ty, 16 . For instance, she doesn't allow her children to watch television (the family owns a set and a VCR, which is used to watch the occasional movie). She says that, during Rhiannon's early childhood, she found herself using the TV as a babysitter, especially to help the toddler wind down before bedtime. She decided to substitute reading a story and retired the family TV. "It's really, I think, a very poor way of a child spending time," she says. "The main reason for not watching TV is you can always be doing something better."

While her kids have occasionally snuck off to friends' homes to indulge in TV shows or video games, that didn't constitute grounds to lift the ban, she says. "Just because it's hard doesn't mean we shouldn't do what we believe is right."

She also laments the replacement of neighborhood pick-up games with adult-run league sports for children. Kids learn from having to mind the rules and settle disputes without an adult doing it for them, she asserts.

Scandora is also critical of the increased use of drugs such as ritalin to treat children with behavior problems in school. Restlessness in a formal school setting is typical of young children, she says ("Little children are not made for sitting still for a long time."), and the use of drugs can merely cover up deeper problems that the child is reacting to through his or her behavior.

While she has home-schooled her three children for the last dozen years, this fact doesn't rate a mention in her book. "It's not a book about homeschooling," she says.

Scandora grew up in Milwaukee and graduated from Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. Her first job was for Ayer Press, a Philadelphia publishing company. "It was a good job, well paying and it had a lot of potential," she says, but she couldn't imagine living in Philadelphia the rest of her life.

Relocating to Seattle on Valentine's Day, 1977 (it was 70 degrees outside that day, she recalls), Scandora met her future husband, Keith, when both were students in the University of Washington MBA program. Her passion for writing has been kept alive over the years through volunteer work editing newsletters for several organizations, plus freelance editing and ghostwriting work.

Despite her extensive reading on child behavior, she says she gets many of her best insights from her own children. In her book, she describes how she would see her son working on a project and try to comment on or compliment his work. To her surprise, he seemed annoyed by her comments. Later that day, 3-year-old Ty spotted his mother trying to remove a bulky lawn mower from its box and began his own supportive commentary. "Good," he told his mom. "That's right. That's right."

"Far from being bolstered by his comments, I felt insulted and annoyed," Scandora writes in "One in a Million." "His comments were not necessary, not appreciated and not helpful. But they were effective in showing me how such evaluations are often received by children."

It's easy to learn when you have such good teachers.

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"One In A Million," by Julie Moss Scandora, can be ordered through any book store, online from Amazon.com, or purchased at Wallingford's Second Story Bookstore, Ravenna's Third Place Books, or the University Village Barnes & Noble Booksellers.