Month: November 2015

This season’s issue of C-VILLE Kids is packed with great advice for parents on everything from when your kid should be going to bed to how to encourage a love of reading to keeping them entertained during holiday parties. Here’s what you’ll find inside. And, below, flip through a digital copy of the magazine!

• One fuzzy friend with something to smile about.
• Choosing a preschool that doesn’t break the bank.
• A fifth grade teacher penned an inspiration kids’ book.
• This family made playtime a formal affair.
• How to get your kids into reading.
• Exercise spots with childcare.
• A few tricks for bedtime.
• Three local families with growing kids—and a growing business!

Establishing and building a business is one of the most exciting, intense and stressful experiences life has to offer—and you can say the same about establishing and building a family. So is it possible to do both at once without losing your mind? Might there even be advantages to growing a business at the same time you’re growing a family? We talked to three successful local entrepreneur parents to find out their take.

A bit of a stretch

Owning an exercise studio means leaning on the team for support

Amy Bright and her husband, Barclay, have five children ranging in age from 10 to 18, so it’s hard to imagine how they could each find time to own a business, as well, but, as of three years ago, when Amy became the co-owner/operating partner of Pure Barre Charlottesville, they do.

“It’s been a wild ride!” Amy laughs. “It’s hard and messy at times, but totally worth it.”

Pure Barre is the largest and most-established barre class franchise, with over 300 studios in North America, and Amy works hard to foster a sense of community in her Charlottesville studio. Because the technique is low-impact, focusing on isometric exercises and stretching, it’s appropriate for all ages. “I love that 18- and 80-year-olds can work out together here,” she says.

As for the challenges, she echoes the time-shortage lament: “There is always something to do, and not enough hours in a day to do all that I think needs to get done.” But she also finds that the demands of family force her to be a good organizer of her time.

“Work is like a gas: It expands to fill whatever space you give it,” she says. “It would take over if I let it, and having a family helps me manage that.”

Her transition from being a stay-at-home mom to working outside the home full-time was a challenge for their family, but Amy credits Barclay, himself the co-founder of a local private equity firm, and her kids with being very supportive, and expresses gratitude for her “incredible team” at Pure Barre, who enable her to turn work off when she gets home.

For other parents thinking of starting a business, Amy has this to say: “You don’t have to be perfect. Don’t listen to the parenting guilt, or hear any message that says you aren’t already enough, because you are. Take care of yourself, and try to enjoy the ride.”

Family business

Entrepreneur mixes work and family with help from her son

LaTrina Candia is a familiar face to many in the Charlottesville area due to the outrageously creative and popular wrestling personas she’s devised as one of the Charlottesville Lady Arm Wrestlers (CLAW). When she’s not dominating the sport of charity ladies’ arm wrestling, Candia runs her own business, LeopBird Concepts, and single-parents an outrageously creative (go figure!) 6-year-old boy named Cyrus.

Candia founded LeopBird Concepts in 2013 as a gathering place for her various interests and ideas, and her company’s mission is to encourage others to “unthink life.” Her most successful product to date is Luna Cream, which she describes as a “magical body cream from the moon.”

“Breaking the barriers that challenge your imagination benefits both your work and family life,” Candia says, and it informs her strategy of balancing work and family by bringing the two together.

Being able to bring her son along to LeopBird Concepts meetings and strategy sessions both suits her needs and “feels great.”

“Six-year-olds are the best business partners because they are honest and full of ideas,” she says, so she strives to actively include Cyrus in the ideation process, where they’re both able to “make suggestions, learn and grow.”

She acknowledges that intertwining family and business is tricky, and rarely seamless, but thinks having the opportunity to build a business as a family is worth the struggle.

Her goals for the future? Managing the media exposure and advertisement necessary to keep Luna Cream selling well. Plus, “Cyrus loves inventing, and I would like to continue to cultivate this interest and step back and be amazed.”

Picture perfect

Photographer mom makes family the priority

Sarah Cramer Shields has a passion for understanding people, and a keen eye for the little detail that makes a moment special, which, combined with her prodigious talent for photography, has led her to establish two successful ventures: Cramer Photo, which she started in 2005, and Our Local Commons, a 3-year-old joint business venture with photographer Andrea Hubbell. All this and two boys, Albert, 2, and Cramer, 5 months. As Sarah puts it, “Life is crazy, but awesome.”

She and her husband, Matt, both work full-time (Matt is a physics teacher at Charlottesville High School), and Sarah stresses that they couldn’t get by without help from friends and family.

“Matt’s parents are local and amazing, and our next door neighbor, Lorretta, is a saint. Truly,” she says.

Sarah often works weekends, which leaves Matt in charge of the kids. When things get too nutty, the family blows off steam with trips to the park or a walk downtown, and they regularly enjoy dinner as a family. Sarah says the hardest part of combining a growing business with a growing family is the ever-present sense of competing priorities.

“There is never enough time, and you’re never able to turn your brain off,” she says. But she also feels that having so much going on forces her to create boundaries and structure.

“I work hard in the designated time I have for business, and I cherish and appreciate the family time,” says Sarah. She recently built a studio in her backyard in an effort to keep work at work while remaining close by. Even so, baby Cramer occasionally “assists” from his baby carrier, and Matt “wears a million hats for Cramer Photo—he’s my sounding board, web guy and biggest cheerleader.”

Sarah offers this advice for parents scared to try balancing work and family: “There is never a perfect time to have kids. If you want to have a family and run your own gig, just go for it. It’s really beautiful to have a family to work for.”

You’ve probably seen those articles—the ones that spell out exactly how many hours of sleep children should get at each developmental stage and thus terrify you into thinking you’re a terrible parent if your first-grader isn’t getting exactly 10 hours.

Local neurologist and sleep medicine doctor Chris Winter advises parents to take those numbers with a grain of salt, and pay more attention to individual kids’ needs than what the studies say.

“You can look up typical sleep needs for kids, and we all know roughly what a baby needs vs. what a 5-year-old needs,” Winter says. “But sleep need is sort of individualized. I hesitate to throw numbers out there because some kids need more and some kids need less.”

According to Winter (who is also a parent), “about 90 percent of kids’ sleep problems are parents’ sleep problems.” Parents should pay close attention to patterns. Here are a few things Winter recommends keeping in mind when it comes to making sure children are getting enough sleep.

Make bedtime relaxing, not stressful. Try to avoid punishments and “if you come out of your room one more time I’m taking something away”-type warnings. Winter encourages his own kids to read in bed if they don’t feel sleepy.

Control wakeup time. If your daughter does stay up reading until 3am, though, don’t let her sleep in—make sure she’s up and moving at the normal time, regardless of how sleepy she may be. Don’t let her take a nap after school or skip out on softball practice. Winter says kids have a tendency to regulate themselves and their schedules, if you let them.

Pay attention to screen time. Avoid TV, movies and video games right before bed, and if your son seems particularly groggy or is having a hard time getting to sleep at night, take note of how much time he spends in front of a screen.

“There are kids who that’s all they do,” Winter says. “It’s unbelievable. They play until 2am, stay up too late and then never feel awake to go to school.”

Take note of hyperactivity and moods. “I tell parents all the time, ‘Don’t let your kids be diagnosed with ADHD until they’ve had a sleep evaluation,’” Winter says. “A lot of times, behaviors kids exhibit when they’re sleepy look a lot like a kid with ADHD.”

Fidgeting, tapping a pencil, pestering the students around them, trouble concentrating—Winter says all these can be symptoms of a child who’s sleepy.

“Then you give them a stimulant, and they settle down,” Winter says. “Why is it that way? Because they’re sleepy at their core, and you’re giving them something to address the sleepiness.”

Keep them active. Winter says “permissive schedules” may be a significant contributor to sleep problems for both kids and adults. He advises parents to get the family moving around the same time every morning, and keep them active throughout the day.

“Get them out and running and doing things,” he says. “Really try to prevent them from just sitting around or sleeping during the day.”

Winter emphasizes that each child is different, and not everybody needs the same amount of sleep. Ultimately, if you’re worried about how your kids are doing at night, pay attention to what’s going on with them during the day.

For a town that’s both fitness- and family-oriented, there don’t seem to be many local gyms that offer to take care of your little ones while you sweat it out. There are obviously plenty of all-day and half-day child care options in Charlottesville, but for stay-at-home parents who just need an hour on a mat or with a punching bag, there aren’t a lot of choices. Here are five we found.

FlyDog Yoga

FlyDog Yoga owners Eliza and Brad Whiteman have four children, and Eliza says the lack of local studios with childcare is part of what inspired her to open the studio this summer. While big-box gyms are more likely to offer childcare, she says she’s always preferred a more specialized workout and she wanted to give parents the best of both worlds.

In addition to regular childcare sessions throughout the week, the schedule features classed for little kids, big kids and teens. flydogyoga.com/youth

barre.[d] studio

At barre.[d] studio downtown, kids ages 3 months to 10 years can hang out in a room full of toys, books and Legos while you’re working your glutes at the barre. Several childcare sessions are available during classes throughout the week, and owner Hanna Dobbels says if those times don’t work out, there’s the BYON (bring your own nanny) option for use of the childcare room. barredstudio.com/rates

Gold’s Gym

Available for kids from 3 months to 12 years old, Gold’s Gym features a large kids’ area with supervised childcare. goldsgym.com/charlottesvilleva/amenities

ACAC

Both Charlottesville ACAC locations feature a Kids Zone, which keeps kids safe and entertained while you swim, do laps around the track or try your hand at tai chi. acac.com/charlottesville/youth/kids-zone

Bend Yoga

At Bend Yoga, instructors want you and your young child to bond doing your practice. Classes include “Mamaste” for pregnant moms, sessions for moms and their kids of all ages to enjoy together, plus those just for tweens and teens. bendcville.com

Reading with children before bedtime is a great way to connect with your kids and establish a routine. But creating a household in which reading is valued can benefit your child in a variety of ways, especially when it comes to their attitude toward reading and their knowledge base.

Dr. Daniel Willingham, professor of psychology at the University of Virginia, has authored several articles and books on the subject of cognitive psychology as it pertains to the classroom and home environment. His 2015 book, Raising Kids Who Read, gives parents and teachers concrete, research-based steps that help instill a love of reading.

Creating a learning-based environment is more intuitive than you might think. Instead of scheduling set reading times or telling your child she must read a certain number of minutes before she earns privileges (which communicates that reading is not something pleasurable), it’s best for your child to learn reading is a family value. This can be done by your child seeing you read the newspaper, or making learning a part of everyday trips to the grocery store as well as educational trips to the zoo or museum.

“The parents who raise kids who have very broad background knowledge are interested in the world and thirsting for knowledge all the time,” Willingham says. “Parents are doing this kind of stuff always—it pervades every aspect of their life and they hardly think about it because that’s just who they are.”

Willingham notes that one of the best things parents can do before their children enter school is not teach them to read but teach them the sounds of each letter. Instead of saying this is a “T,” it’s more important to tell them “T” makes a “tuh” sound. It is important to teach them the alphabetic principle that “these squiggles correspond with language” and that single letters or pairs of letters correspond to a single sound.

“If you really want to raise a kid who’s an avid reader, the whole theme of this book is that there are three components that go into reading: You have to be a fluent decoder (know the sounds of words), you need to have a broad background knowledge for comprehension and you need to have motivation,” he says.

One mistake parents might make, Willingham says, is to focus on each of these three things only when they become a problem—for instance, reading motivation tends to fall off in middle school as children become more social and involved in additional activities. Motivation is at its peak in kindergarten or first grade and generally goes down every year.

If you notice your child is struggling to read after they enter school and you think they should be further along, talk with your child’s teacher about your concerns. Teachers set benchmarks about where the class should be at certain periods and can tell you if your child is reading on par with his peers or if he needs some additional help. And some classes are structured at a slower pace for learning letters to incorporate other subjects such as art, history, science and drama into the curriculum. That contributes to a child’s knowledge base, which corresponds directly with reading comprehension.

“I specifically say to parents in the book: Do not try to teach your child how to read unless you’re really ready to do your homework. It’s not an easy thing,” he says. “I think parents should be enthusiastic cheerleaders of their kid’s reading and also a source of reading fun.”

Make learning fun

“Children who have trouble learning to read often have difficulty hearing individual speech sounds,” Willingham writes in Raising Kids Who Read. “At the other end of the spectrum, children who more or less teach themselves to read turn out to hear them easily.”

The good news is there are many games you can play with your children so that they hear individual speech sounds:

The Name Game (“Dan, Dan, bo-Ban, banana-fanna fo-Fan, fee fi-mo-Man. Dan!”)

Classic nursery rhymes are a great example of word play (Mother Goose rhymes, and Dr. Seuss and Shel Silverstein books are good choices.)

Sing songs your kids know, replacing the initial letter of each word with a different letter ( “Mary had a little lamb” becomes “Bary bad a bittle bamb.”)

Compound words are fascinating for kids (Explain that a scarecrow scares crows.)—J.L.

For Ali and Jim Harshaw, there was only one way to address their home’s formal living room: Hand it over to the kids.

“I really wanted an area that would bring us together as a family and the kids together,” Ali says, so they turned it into a playroom for their four children—Jesse, 10, Wyatt, 8, Elliana, 5, and Isla, 2.

“It’s the first thing you see when you walk in our front door…most people probably think we’re a little crazy,” she says. And if things get a little too, um, informal? Jim installed French doors to keep things separate when needed.

It started with the hammock. At the boys’ elementary school, there is a hammock where kids with anxiety and ADHD can take 15 minutes to sit and calm down. Ali says the hammock at their house serves the same purpose.

“Honestly, when my kids are upset, I can usually find them there,” she says.

Next came the rock wall. “We thought the kids would get sick of it, but they are on them every single day,” Ali says. After that, the couple added the rings (“They can all flip and do fun tricks”), then the swing, followed by the rope.

There are other, less intensive playthings in the area too—marbles, Legos, dolls, games—but the kids have fun coming up with routines and challenges for each other with the climbing wall and swings. (And, don’t worry, the floor is covered in wrestling mats that they solicited on Facebook.)

“[The kids] love to climb the wall, grab the rings from the corner of the room, swing on the rope and land on the other side of the room,” Ali says. “Totally my fault if they all end up in the circus.”

After almost 20 years as a teacher, Joseph Hicks knows a thing or two about kids. And it’s that knowledge that led him to write Paige and Sophie: Soccer Twins, a children’s book about two soccer-playing sisters who are identical on the outside but very different inside. Paige, a natural athlete, struggles in school, while her twin sister, Sophie, is a classroom whiz who stumbles and trips on the soccer pitch. Eventually, though, the girls make a plan: Paige will help Sophie become a champion athlete and Sophie will teach Paige “how to read like an ace” and “multiply like a maniac.”

“The initial idea for the book came from observing students for many years,” says Hicks, a fifth-grade teacher at Meriwether Lewis Elementary School. “In particular, siblings. I was always amazed at how different siblings can be and how their individual strengths made them unique.”

After he finished his book, which is illustrated by Chiara Civati, Hicks sent “an optimistic” e-mail with his manuscript to Megan Rapinoe, a player on the U.S. women’s national team who has a twin sister. “Amazingly, a couple months later, I got a reply,” Hicks says. “She and her sister loved the story,” and the World Cup and Olympic champion agreed to write the introduction for the Team USA edition of Paige and Sophie. But Rapinoe isn’t the only high-profile member of the soccer world who has gotten behind Hicks’ book. Steve Swanson, UVA’s head women’s soccer coach and an assistant on the U.S. National Team, says this in the book’s afterword: “Whether you are part of a team, a classroom, a family or a society, one of the best lessons you can learn is how to serve one another. Sophie and Paige helped one another improve and in turn they helped themselves. The greatest reward you can give yourself is to help someone grow and reach their dreams.”

Paige and Sophie: Soccer Twins will be available online and at Mincer’s at the end of November.

Meant to be

Joseph Hicks has always been interested in soccer, “but it was not even on the radar in my small hometown.” Now, however, the long-time elementary school teacher says he’s “very fortunate to have my own first-grade soccer star at home,” which is one reason he decided to write Paige and Sophie: Soccer Twins.

Hicks also wanted to share what he’s gleaned from working with children with a wider audience, and a children’s book seemed to be a perfect way to do that. “I believe that giving children the time, space and support to nurture their interests is crucial. Sophie and Paige each have their own talents, but kindness and patience helps them become who they are really meant to be.”—S.S.

Twenty-four tykes sit on the stoop of St. Paul’s Church on the Corner, dutifully clutching their Chancellor Street totes, as Bodo’s-bound undergrads stream by. Just before noon, one by one, teachers Heather Swindler or Pam Evans (who prefer kids don’t call them “Ms.”) escort each student to his parent’s idling vehicle, buckles him into his car seat and recounts a specific anecdote from that child’s day.

“I like the way Theo took turns shooting basketballs at the hoop with Dylan today,” Evans says to me as I pick up my 4-year-old son one afternoon.

Another successful day at one of Charlottesville’s two veteran cooperative preschools. The other is Molly Michie, Charlottesville’s first racially integrated preschool, which opened in 1967. They stand out among our region’s many Reggio Emilia- and Montessori-inspired preschools. A co-op teaches students—and their parents—how to  cooperate with difficult peers, forging ties that bind long after socialization to kindergarten.

These families initially choose co-ops because the price is right. It costs around $250 a month to attend either Chancellor Street or Molly Michie five mornings a week. In turn, parents do significantly more volunteer work than their peers at standard drop-and-pickup daycares, to supplement the limited staff (just two full-time teachers at both co-ops). Each parent “co-ops” (works side-by-side with staff teachers) once every few weeks, and has a mandatory annual post, from handbook editor to the treasurer to guest speaker coordinator. It’s a quid pro quo system that only functions if all parents participate, whether that means showing up for work days and meetings, reading school listserv e-mails or even trading shifts when someone’s homebound with a new baby or illness.

“Our first year here everyone stepped up 100 percent all the time,” says Chancellor Street board co-chair Jake Oswalt, whose 5-year-old son Eoin is in his third year. “It just depends on the generation of parents coming through, and how accepting the teachers are.”

Co-ops aren’t just cheap. They offer instant community, which attracts young families new to the area. Each summer, parents host weekly spray park play dates; after-school playgroups continue to meet at Greenleaf, Belmont and Forest Hills parks come fall; bonds form at potlucks, Camp Albemarle overnights, an annual Halloween parade and parent-chaperoned field trips.

Chancellor Street and Molly Michie strike the balance between free play—including 30 minutes outdoors every day—and fixed routine. After morning meeting, Chancellor students flex their fine motor skills cutting and gluing a mixed-media art project. There’s a free hour to bang on marimbas, hammer nails and crank hand drills at the woodworking table or don a fireman suit to write up reports at the station. During a unit on fruits and vegetables, Molly Michie students cut and plant potato eyes, green pepper seeds, beans and popcorn kernels, lessons reinforced through field trips to Earlysville’s Open Gate Farm and to see The Very Hungry Caterpillar at The Paramount Theater.

Chancellor Street (c-street.org) commingles ages: 3-year-old “Bugs” and 4-year-old “Clowns” only separate at group check-in and then for snack. Molly Michie (mollymichiepreschool.org) keeps 4-year-olds, the only ones who attend five days, in a separate classroom, with a more formal Creative Curriculum framework. Molly Michie enrolls children as young as 2.

Both schools offer limited scholarships, and are thoroughly secular. Says Evans, “[Chancellor Street and Molly Michie] pay rent to our church landlords—both lovely, community-oriented congregations—but we are open to all and run secular curricula.”—Laura McCandlish

Can’t make the co-op commitment?

Ivy single mom Ambha Lessard didn’t research options for her 4-year-old son Kingston until last spring—when most coveted spots were already snatched up. Lessard contemplated Head Start but then found Kingston a reduced-tuition slot at Charlottesville Waldorf School—and appreciated the same focus on outdoor play her son enjoyed at Nature’s Bloom Childcare. “Any discount helps,” said Lessard, who works at State Farm and goes to college at UVA.

Here’s an incomplete list (there are too many!) of other credible preschools to consider. Don’t forget perennial Best of C-VILLE winners ACAC and Bright Beginnings, plus reputable daycares (including those that are home-based). It’s not too early to apply for next year; popular preschools can fill up by mid-winter.

CBI Preschool & Kindergarten: Reggio Emilia-style curriculum; Jewish values, music and holidays; weekly challah baking. cbipreschool.org

Charlottesville Day School: Age 2 through Pre-K (or stay through eighth grade); Spanish and music classes. cvilledayschool.org

First Presbyterian: Popular even with non-religious parents of kids age 20 months through 5 years. firstprescharlottesville.org/preschool

First United Methodist: Several Chancellor Street families considered this and First Presbyterian, too. cvillefirstunitedmethodist.org/preschool.htm

Hillside School: Home-based art preschool. facebook.com/Hillside-School-344676532316071

The International School of Charlottesville: Spanish and French immersion. theisc.org

It Takes a Village Playschool: Tuesday and Thursday Waldorf/Reggio/Montessori-esque, nature- and home-based school for kids ages 2 and 3. facebook.com/ITVplayschool

Mountaintop, Frost, Montessori School of Charlottesville (Cutler Lane and Gordon Avenue): Four quick-to-fill Montessori locations around Charlottesville. mountaintopmontessori.org, frostmontessori.org, montessoriofcville.org

Preschool Program of the Charlottesville City Schools: Free kindergarten prep for 4-year-olds at all six elementary schools. wwwold.ccs.k12.va.us/programs/docs/4yoletter.pdf

Trinity Presbyterian Church: Christian preschool cooperative open to non-church members. trinitycville.org/Great-Beginnings-Preschool—L.M.

Maddie Waters has something to say. But rather than hold forth in a classroom or the school cafeteria, the Western Albemarle High School freshman is taking her message to a bigger stage and a larger audience as a TEDx speaker at the Paramount Theater on Friday, November 13.

The 14-year-old, who will be among heady company that includes author John Grisham, organic farmer Joel Salatin and astronomer Anne Verbiscer, says she is nervous—“There’s the distinct possibility that I’ll pass out,” she says—but stage fright is a small price to pay for sharing her message about the importance of not judging a book by its cover. Or as Waters puts it, “how people perceive themselves within society’s parameters and how people feel they are allowed to see other people based on appearance and the assumptions they make.”

She gave a version of this talk in September at The Jefferson Theater’s open mic night, and, while she wasn’t voted the audience favorite that evening, Waters did impress the TEDx steering committee enough to earn an invite to speak at this year’s Paramount event, which will ask attendees to consider “What If…,” in hopes of getting them to think about how different the world would be if we suspended judgment.

“So many people see so many situations as things that don’t apply to them, or that they shouldn’t be responsible for, when really they are,” Waters says. “Since I can’t [tell this] to the entire world, at least I can say it to the Charlottesville audience, and TEDx gives me that opportunity.”

When not fine-tuning her speech, Waters spends time reading, writing, painting and listening to music. She’s also in Western’s robotics, fine arts and creative writing clubs, as well as a member of the school’s Environmental Sciences Academy, and she likes “to spend as much time as I can with friends, but I’m bogged down a lot with homework, and a lot of the time I’m too tired or too busy to go out.”

Ask Waters what she learned from preparing her talk, and she mentions stage presence and brings up a recent storytelling conference that was taught by children’s author Carmen Deedy, who’s also speaking at TEDx Charlottesville. “Carmen did a section in the beginning about the best possible way to stand and how to conduct yourself to feel more confident, or to accept your audience, which helped me a lot,” Waters says, adding that she also figured out how to compress a large topic into a short amount of time and “really get my point across to the audience.”

Mostly, though, she says it’s “an incredible experience for me—but passing out is still a possible issue.”