| OCR Text |
Show share with your child learning about work, effort, planning, responsibility and about reaping the fruits of one's labor. You both will grow closer through sharing in the experience. The university specialists also point out that a garden project provides opportunity to observe and discuss how plants and people grow and develop similarly. Seeing tiny objects planted, then sprout, grow, blossom and bear mature fruit can result in powerful learning as parents explain these parallels in understandable ways to their children. Similarities between the life cycles of vegetables and of people provide many teaching moments. Explain that just as plants need different care at different stages of their life cycle, so do people. These similarities observed open doors for talking to children about the nurturing and maturing processes and even about death. As you embark on your parent-child garden project, realize that just as plants are not all the same, neither are parents or children. Also, while it takes generally only one season to grow and harvest a garden, Continued on page 11 Grow vegetables and strengthen parent-child parent-child relationships at the same time? Yes, it's possible say specialists at Utah State University. But they remind parents that certain conditions must be met. You must want to make both the garden and the relationship with the child grow. Both parent and child must become interested in-terested in gardening. Your chances of success diminish if you have to coerce, threaten, or punish children to get them to participate in the garden project. It certainly helps if a good parent-child parent-child relationship already exists. Consider the demands. You, the gardener, gar-dener, must have patience and an ample supply of time and energy. You must exert the will to answer countless questions and be able to handle disappointment, disaster and desertion calmly. It works best if parent and child plan together. Select the site then plan for preparing the soil, selecting seeds, planting, plan-ting, caretaking, harvesting and storing. Discuss the skills needed for each. These plans will help cultivate communication com-munication skills between the adult and child. The child learns that there is a systematic way of doing things. It takes into account the soil, climate, seed, equipment, energy and the human skills needed. Realize that disappointments and even disasters in gardening with children are teachable moments. The child may hoe up a row of young vegetable plants with the weeds, or kill plants with too much fertilizer. fer-tilizer. These occasions provide opportunities op-portunities for calm discussions that can teach children not only about gardening, but about life on a broader scale. Realize that communication coupled with planning is one of the most important lessons to be learned by both parent and child. If the child is reluctant to join you in the garden, consider whether you have scheduled the gardening time well in advance ad-vance and communicated that schedule to your child. Don't expect enthusiastic cooperation if the first time the child knows about your weeding schedule is when you interrupt a game or a favorite television program. For a successful experience, strive to Children Cont. from page 5 remember that it requires many seasons to explore the many facets of human relationships. Take this time to build and strengthen the good feelings, the mutual trust and respect that can and ought to exist between parent and child. Of course there are no guarantees at the time of planting seeds that you'll harvest the entire product. Remember also that the successful strengthening of parent-child bonds is not guaranteed. Many things can and will occur throughout the season to affect the outcome, the specialists note. Just keep in mind that good gardeners learn from their mistakes. They keep on trying and growing. |
