Choose Acceptance: children, reading, and play

In May, with spring in swing, we are looking at stages of growth.

Oh, how we loved playing Kickball in Akron, Pennsylvania, across the street from MCC’s (Mennonite Central Committee) headquarters!  The alleys and streets rang with our kids’ cries of Go, go!, Kick it! and the inevitable, Not fair! 

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash

We would wade through school days of cursive writing exercises and subtraction problems, run home, eat a snack of apple slices with peanut butter on crackers—prepared by our circle-skirted, Peter Pan-collared moms—and fly out the back door, past our big reading tree, through hidden patches of poisoned ivy to The Game. Man oh man, we got poisoned ivy, which Mom treated by scratching the medicine into our sores with a wooden popsicle stick. Ouch and Ah at the same time.

Our play produced joys, sorrows, bad kicks and genius plays, and of course all the arguments that Nobody settled by running home to Mommy. It was the 1950s, long before helicopter parenting became vogue. In good Anabaptist fashion, we stayed in the game, fought (verbally!) for our points, and took the consequences. We learned how to lose (without pouting) and we learned how to win (without gloating.) Well, learned is the operative word, preceded by gradually.

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Choose Acceptance is a lively, new YouTube station for parents, teachers, and kids. It is created and hosted by Anny Rusk and Christina Hoover Moorehead. With a relaxed, friendly approach, they review books, demonstrate activities for children, and interview writers and librarians about one of today’s most important topics: choosing to accept ourselves and others.

Here for your viewing pleasure, complete with racing bunny toys and Anny’s signature purple lipstick, is their interview with Elisa Gall of the Deerfield Public Library, north of Chicago. The interviewers and librarian discuss the relationship between play and the ability to accept our differences. This is play as serious business! Elisa describes her own avenues of play and challenges adults to think of play as developing the humility to take risks, which helps kids build relationships and understand the world. Recognizing and allowing others to be their true selves (yes, vulnerable) even if we do not agree, creates attitudes of acceptance. Play is a good thing, and parents are wise to discuss play with their children: what a child needs in the game, how  a child can listen and discern, and which behaviors help, rather than hurt, the experience.

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Here, Anny and Christina explain their interest in developing this new channel.

  

Choose Acceptance

Anny and Christina  

Elisa Gall is a member of Reading While White: Working for Racial Diversity & Inclusion in Books for Children and Teens. http://readingwhilewhite.blogspot.com. This librarians’ organization is beginning to interest me greatly. The mission statement reads: ‘We are White librarians organizing to confront racism in the field of children’s and young adult literature.’ The resources page alone makes a visit to the blog worth your while.

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The second Choose Acceptance video is Anny and Christina’s book review of In Plain Sight written by Richard Jackson and illustrated by Jerold Pinkney.

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Thank you, Anny and Christina for your energy and work for our children!

The URL for Choose Acceptance is: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVqBqekAZhm2mzOlhQCEaLw?view_as=public.

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I welcome your comments: gretaholtwriter.com/blog. Please enjoy a few short stories on the Home page, as well.

{Thank you to my niece, Addie Liechty, for taking the picture above that is this blog’s featured image. Her blog is: https://addieswriting.wordpress.com.}

Best wishes and have a good week.

Greta