Ep #29: How Your Child’s Character is Developed with Maria Dismondy

Schools are often focusing on hard skills like math and literacy. But how do we make sure children are also getting soft skills like character development and social emotional skills? Today I’m talking with Maria Dismondy. Maria is a children’s book author and also is now the founder of The Cardinal Rule Press where they print lots of books that focus on character development. Maria started out as a teacher before switching over to being an author and has a lot of interesting insight into the classroom as well as home and being a parent, as a parent of children herself.

We talked about a lot of her suggestions around books and getting children to read more books and how to bring books into your day. We talked about character development and some ways to bring more of that into your day at home or into the classroom. And she shared her cherry and pit game that I think you’ll enjoy, it’s a fun one. You’ll want to try it at the dinner table. I hope you’ll enjoy this really fun conversation, it felt natural and also doable. And I hope you’ll enjoy these suggestions. It’s coming up right after this.

Welcome to the Raising Healthy Kid Brains podcast where moms and teachers come to learn all about kids’ brains, how they work, how they learn, how they grow and simple tips and tricks for raising the most resilient, kind, smart, compassionate kids we can. All while having lots of grace and compassion for ourselves because you know what? We all really need and deserve that too. I am your host, Amy Nielson. Let’s get ready to start the show.

Amy: Maria, welcome to the show. We’re so happy to have you on today.

Maria: I am looking forward to being here.

Amy: This is going to be so fun. I’m excited about this conversation. Tell me a little bit about your background and what you do.

Maria: Yes. In a nutshell, I graduated a long time ago in child development and elementary education. So I taught elementary school for just over a decade. And in that time I noticed that there was something missing in children’s books and that was realistic fiction. So I wrote my first book, Spaghetti in a Hot Tub Bun in 2006. And resigned from teaching to continue growing my writing business. And at the same time we were growing our family. So here I am.

I am no longer really writing because I have wanted to give that gift to others so I started a publishing company after writing 10 of my own picture books and now I’m giving that gift to others. So I’m helping other individuals to write their books and we have three children and two dogs. So in a nutshell that’s where I’m at.

Amy: And that sounds like a lot. I am so excited though to talk about this because obviously children’s books are such a passion for all of us. We love children’s picture books. And I thought your approach to this was so interesting, with realistic fiction. And when you and I were talking earlier, we talked a lot about character development and maybe how some of that was missing. Talk to me a little bit about that.

Maria: Absolutely. Well, for those of you who don’t know and I don’t expect people to know this because it depends on what you studied and what you’re into, but when we’re born we’re actually born, the doctor delivers a child or you get a child through adoption. They don’t hand the child over to you and say, “You have a girl and she is kind and generous.” So character is really developed, which I think it’s wonderful, because at any time in our lives we can develop a different character trait within ourselves.

We can help our children to develop certain character traits. So I think it’s a really positive thing knowing that it’s not innate.

Amy: That is really powerful because it’s something you can have an impact on which I think is something we all want because then we have some control, it’s not just something you’re set with when you get here. What I found really interesting when we were talking about this. I did an episode a couple of months ago on toys. And as I was kind of researching and looking at toys, they used to have a lot more toys that were based around character development.

And then kind of as we’ve gotten into more branded type of toys it feels like that’s been more taken away and we have these very fantastic type of toys that are really fun to play with. Super heroes or My Little Pony or even just all these different kinds but they’ve kind of moved more into branding instead of character development. And so I found that to be an interesting trend as well as you talking about maybe some of that being missing in our books. So tell me a little bit about how you feel like books can help with this and kind of what you’ve found and what’s available book wise and what you’re kind of doing there.

Maria: Absolutely. So for those of you who are parents and you’re listening to this, let’s talk about all the different times books can be part of your child’s life. You wake up in the morning and you want to use the restroom, put a basket of books in front of your child. You are preparing breakfast or lunch for your child and maybe instead of the screen time because you want to save that screen time up for the witching hour later on throughout the day, put a basket of books. And then you’re driving in the car, you can have a basket of books in the car. Before nap time, it’s a really great way to soothe a child down for nap time.

Books when the child wakes up from nap time, maybe they’re in a crib and you can have books in the crib. Or they wake up from their nap and they’re in the room, they can have a basket of books to go to. And maybe that’s part of their routine is they look at books for a little while. And then again really just winding down the evening, books before bedtime. So they can really be part of your routine and I always say in the home you want to have a different variety of books. So you always want to have high interest books.

So right now my son is really into hockey so we would definitely when we go to the library I know exactly what the Dewey Decimal symbol number is for hockey, 531.4.

Amy: I love it.

Maria: Yeah. So you want to have books that interest your child. And then you also want to have books that I say are those character driven books. And then third, I always say it’s important to have non-fiction. So if you’re reading a lot of fiction stories, you want to also incorporate some non-fiction. So I always say you want to have a variety of at least those three types of books in your home.

Amy: Love it. That’s interesting, I find sometimes it feels like screens are more readily available than books because remotes are just so within reach or if you have an iPad or phones or things like that. And so do you think there’s value to maybe putting a remote up on a higher shelf where it’s a little bit more difficult to get to and having books very easily available?

Maria: Yeah. And for those of you listening who maybe feel as though financially you don’t have access to books in the home for your child, well, yes, putting the remote up is a great thing or setting boundaries around that. So with our kids they just always knew that TV time was at a certain time of day. It wasn’t an option any other time throughout the day or putting the remote up like you said. But I do want to talk real quickly about access to books. So your local library is a great resource, local Thrift stores. They usually have one day a week, in our town it’s on Tuesdays. So you get 50% off on books.

So you can buy books for 10 cents, 20 cents, quality children’s picture books. And then another one is garage sales. The kids love going to the garage sale. I give them a dollar and they can pick out books. And another one is social media, so reaching out to your family and friends and saying, “Hey, we have children these ages, we would love to build our family library, do you have any books in your home?” A lot of times there are families who their children just graduated from high school. What do they want all these picture books in their home for? So really being able to have access to books is important.

Amy: Yes. So true. And I love that you included the different types because I think that is really valuable. And then I was talking to Natalie Wexler on the podcast, she talked about too the value of having read alouds that are a little bit higher level than what your children are capable of reading on their own so that you’re giving them exposure to new language and new ideas and building their knowledge base and vocabulary. Yeah, I love that. Let’s talk about, so with character development one of the things we talked about was hard versus soft skills. Can you tell me a little bit more about that.

Maria: For sure. So if you think about soft skills, those are really I like to say our life skills. So it’s generosity and empathy and kindness. And the hard skills are what we learn from school. So when employers are looking for children or I would say young adults from college, young adults right now think that the hard skills are what’s really important. They think that 4.0, 4. + is what they’re getting now is really important. But really employers, and I’ve done the research through Career Builder, they are looking for those soft skills. They want individuals who can work together as a team.

They want those communication skills and flexibility. How important is flexibility after we just went through this pandemic or we’re still continuing to. Just the ability to work in an office, work at home, be flexible, get on a Zoom call. So hard versus soft, I want everyone to remember that soft skills are life skills and they’re going to take your children through everything. And those hard skills are only going to go so far especially with Google.

Amy: Yes. So true.

Maria: We can just Google everything, [crosstalk].

Amy: Right, yes, and AI and all the new cool things coming out. So do you feel like we’re emphasizing soft skills enough in school? Because it feels like school is really kind of focused on hard skills. Talk to me a little bit about that with your experience as a teacher.

Maria: We are not focusing enough on soft skills and that is a big issue right now. And that’s why as parents I think that we can step in and say, “Okay, I’ve got it, the teachers are teaching to the curriculum, they have to get certain hard skills in throughout the year. And the problem is it’s not all school districts, it’s not consistent. Not all school districts have adapted or adopted a curriculum for character education. So nine times out of ten character skills are not formally being taught in the classroom. You may get those gems of those teachers who are incorporating it because they believe it’s important.

But it’s not formally being taught where you have to teach this. So I think it’s up to us as parents to be doing things at home that are helping our children to develop these skills because when they’re out there in the real world, those are the tools that are really going to help them at the end of the day.

Amy: It’s so true. How does literature play into that? How do books and literature play into that character development? Because I think it is so critical and books are such a neat way to do that but how do you see those playing together?

Maria: For sure. Remember, I talked about all the different routines throughout your day when your children are young? Actually the best time to teach character is between ages four and seven. That’s the magical spongy years. So when I share that some parents are like, “I missed it.” I’m like, “Don’t worry.” So really think about all those routines. And if you have those character books in the home, that’s the first step.

The second step is actually reading them and reading them to your children. And the importance of that is your child is listening to a story and they’re indirectly learning that character trait. So you’re not sitting there saying, “Suzie, you need to be kind to your brother.” Because that’s what we do in our home. So typically when a parent is saying that to their child, it’s going in one ear and out the other, that we’ll say. However, when a character is experiencing that in a story, it’s different. They’re seeing that experiencing, they’re witnessing how is a character handling this.

The character is not hitting her brother, she’s using her words to explain what she needs instead of using her physical force. And so it’s really a bridge between the caregiver and the child, a bridge of giving that lesson. And it’s indirect and they’re going to accept it in different ways than if a parent were to tell them what they should be doing.

Amy: Interesting. So it’s kind of almost modeling it for them a little bit but through a character that they can connect with. Are there questions or things that we do as we’re reading to engage a child even more into that modeling or help them see themselves in that character? Or is there anything you recommend around that?

Maria: Of course, I’m a former teacher. But I think at the end of the day, a parent is tired, just read the book, that’s enough. That is enough. Because at the end of the day you’re tapped out. You’re like, “Anything more than these 10 pages I can’t do it.” But let’s say the next day you’re driving in the car, you’ve had your cup of coffee, you can say, “Hey, Joe, remember last night when we read that story about that little girl and her brother who were arguing. Remind me, what did the little girl do when she wanted that toy from her brother?”

So I think bringing it up at a different time is always a good key but just asking questions. I know a lot of times what we do at Cardinal Rule Press, the publishing company that I run, we actually put questions on the copyright page for parents and caregivers who are tired. So you can always look on the copyright page to see if there are questions that have been given with the story. But yeah, just taking it, that’s really what we call next level is kind of asking those questions to talk about the story, but I think if anything, get the story out there.

And then I’ve talked about access, I just need to rewind real quick. Don’t forget you can listen to audiobooks too. So if your children are a little bit more older, as you’re driving from here to there and everywhere, you can have books coming and streaming through free from your library in your car. So you’re actually learning on the go.

Amy: And I’ve heard that’s really valuable across a variety of things. It gives them exposure to different accents and different language styles and helps them learn new vocabulary and new phrases and just different parts of the English language that really help with reading comprehension later on so that can be really valuable for that as well.

Maria: For sure. And can I just say one more thing? I’m not sure how much time we have. There is a woman and her name is Ruth, Dr. Ruth, Windows and Mirrors and Books. I just want to make sure I share her name with you. But she talked about the importance of stories being like windows and mirrors. So let’s think about this. Let’s say you live in a very rural town and the population is very Caucasian. Where are your children going to learn about different skin tones and different people in the world? They’re going to learn, books are going to be like a window to them into a different culture.

And they can also be like mirrors. So your child, where are they going to learn about people like themselves? I had many Indian students when I was a teacher and that hurt me so bad that I couldn’t find realistic picture books that depicted Indian characters. I wanted my students to be able to see themselves in a book like a mirror. And so there’s a beautiful woman named Dr. Ruth, and I’m going to have to follow up with you because I’m trying to Google her. Bishop, Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop. She just talked about that, thinking about books like mirrors and windows. I think it’s really important to think like that.

Amy: I love that, yeah, that picture in my mind of what that can be, yes, because it does. And I’m going to have to look it up too. There’s a really good TED Talk on that about the importance of stories and hearing so many different kinds of stories to get a bigger picture from all different perspectives of life. And books are such a gift that way I think.

Maria: They are. They can take you anywhere.

Amy: That’s amazing. As we’re wrapping up, I wanted to ask you, what other tips do you have for busy parents who are trying to incorporate character development into their day because it is so important and books are such a beautiful opportunity for that. But what other, do you have any other tips for parents that are trying to work on those character development skills?

Maria: For sure. And I know families are very busy. You talked about games. I think games teach us a lot about decision making, problem solving, taking turns, so definitely games. We try to do game night once a week in our home. And I have a sign that I printed out from Pinterest and I put it on the countertop in the morning. And it’s not always the same night, it depends on everyone’s schedule but it’s when everyone’s home. And I put it on the countertop to remind myself and to show the kids, tonight is family game night. And we’ll just usually play one game, a couple of rounds.

But it’s a time together, love, compassion, but then it’s also teaching those things that we talked about. If your family has the opportunity to eat dinner together, that’s really powerful. We have a rule, no devices at the dinner table and sometimes the kids have to remind my husband. I’m pretty good about that one but he needs reminders. And we play a game called Cherry Pit which is really simple. So think about your cherry from the day which is the sweet thing and your pit which was the not so good thing.

Yesterday my kids had some of their neighborhood friends over and they stayed for tacos and we played Cherry Pit with extra kids at our table. And it’s just a really great time to talk about what was a really positive thing from your day and what was a negative thing? And how did you get over the negative thing? Are you still holding onto it? Is there something you want to talk about? So that simple game, Cherry Pit we can play it in the car, we can play at the dinner table. It really brings up conversations to talk about characters throughout the day.

Amy: I love that so much. And I love that it’s an and I’ve been learning the power of and. And that we can have these hard things and good things and both can be true at the same time. And just because you didn’t like your PE class or someone was mean to you at recess doesn’t mean the whole day was ruined. It can be an and, there were all these good parts and hard parts and they all kind of go together. So I love that part of your Cherry Pit and I want to try that out now.

Maria: It’s really fun. And one of the neighborhood kids said that their cherry was my taco dinner.

Amy: Awesome.

Maria: So it can really benefit us as parents as well.

Amy: I love that, that’s amazing. So good. Tell me, where is the best place for people to find some of these amazing books that you’re putting out into the world?

Maria: Yeah. So our company is called Cardinal Rule Press. And not only do we talk about our own books, we’re primarily on Facebook and Instagram. But we also like to highlight other companies that are putting out really important character driven and social emotional learning titles. So you can find us on Instagram or you can head over to our website, Cardinal Rule Press. And if anyone reaches out to me I respond to emails. So if you have any questions, feel free to reach out. And I did want to share one of my favorite resources is Pinterest and not many people know this. It’s kind of crazy.

But Pinterest is actually a search engine. It’s not a social media platform. So when we talk about search engines, number one is Google, number two is YouTube, number three is Pinterest. So head over to Pinterest, if your child is having issues around a certain topic, maybe they’re doing a lot of lying. Go onto Pinterest, search picture books about lying and voila, somebody has already curated a great list of books for you, go to your library’s website, put them on hold, pick them up, read them to your child and have those discussions.

Amy: That’s such a great tip. I love Pinterest for its search engine abilities. And it’s pictures, which I love. It makes it really easy to find what you’re looking for, so that’s fantastic. That’s amazing. Thank you so much for coming on today and we will of course include links for your site and your social media in the podcast notes so people can just click on that really easily. But thank you so much for coming on and talking with me today. This has been just a really fun conversation and I appreciate what you’re doing.

Maria: For sure, thank you, Amy, I appreciate you too. Don’t you just love all the fun things we’re learning on the show together? Well, we wanted to give you a chance to practice a little bit of it at home. And so we made you a special freebie just for being a listener here. And you can grab it at planningplaytime.com\special-freebie. That is planningplaytime.com\special-freebie.

So what this freebie is I’ll tell you, is an amazing alphabet activity that you can start using with your kiddos. And it is based in play and is so fun. You can use dot markets with it. You can use Q-Tip painting. You could use circle cereals. There’s all kinds of options, but you can print it out today and get started. Just head over to planningplaytime.com\special-freebie and we’ll send that to you right away.

Thank you for hanging out with me today for this fun chat on Raising Healthy Kid Brains. If you want to see more of what we’re doing to support kiddos and their amazing brains, come visit us on our website, planningplaytime.com. See you next week.