This post will continue the discussion of cognitive development for 3 to 4 year olds in the area of learning - Early Literacy. We will discuss the component - Listening and Understanding with its learning expectations and performance indicators. Remember, I am taking my information from the Tennessee Early Learning Developmental Standards (TN-ELDS).
The first learning expectation for this component is: Listens attentively to stories, conversations, and explanations and demonstrates understanding. The first performance indicator for this learning expectation is: Maintains attention to stories and responds to questions appropriately. Whether or not a child conquers this performance indicator very much depends on (1) how much exposure a child gets to books and being read to frequently and (2) how much a parent or caregiver has worked with the child as a 2 year old to sit and listen. Of course, if a child does not have a lot of experience with books, it takes a while for that child to learn to interact with stories correctly. Also, if a child has not had an adult work with them as a 2 year old to sit for at least a short time, that training must start when they are 3 years old. Many, many child experts must believe that certain behaviors just appear at certain ages without those behaviors having to be trained. That is ludicrous. I truly believe there is a huge disconnect between the "experts" and the frontlines of this industry. The experts feel that training a 2 and 1/2 to 3 year old to sit is developmentally inappropriate, but that 3 year olds will automatically display this behavior. This leaves 3 year old teachers with the enormous task of training a behavior that really should have been trained the previous six months to some degree. The same amount of training is required regardless of when it starts putting those 3 year olds behind the curve automatically. The lack of training affects other developmental milestones making the fulfillment of this performance indicator fall after a child's 4th birthday rather than before. I train my 2 and 1/2 to 3 year olds to sit for short amounts of time, and it makes an enormous difference in them as 3 to 4 year olds. When I get 3 year olds that have never been made to sit, that is all we can work on until they conquer it putting them behind the children I have had as 2 year olds.
An Aside
Before I move on to the next performance indicator I want to discuss the ideals of this industry versus the reality of this industry. Very often the ideals of this industry conflict with the gaining of long-held developmental milestones without the idealists realizing that their ideals create a conflict. However, those on the frontlines know that something just is not working without necessarily knowing the how and why. Some on the frontlines do understand the conflict and fix it on their own at their own risk. They understand they have to not adhere to certain principles in order to gain certain milestones (case in point - making 2 year olds sit). They run the risk of the full wrath of the idealists when they do this, and it can be one of the most stressful parts of this job. In some heavily regulated states, these people take great risk to do what they feel is actually right, and some really good caregivers have been driven from this industry over these issues. As an avid history buff, I find myself getting very frustrated with the idealists often. They believe that we have evolved as people and are much smarter than previous generations even though if you actually did studies that truly compare certain behaviors and milestones against previous generations we would see that maybe we are not as smart as we think we are. Most of the idealists look at history through their own perspectives rather than looking at history as it was. They judge history by their own standards rather than judging both groups by common standards. Did you know that the societal rate of literate adults was actually higher during the colonial days than it is now in the United States? That is just one of millions of ways modern society does not necessarily stack up to previous generations. Many times when the idealists do understand there is a conflict between their ideals and the developmental milestones, the milestones are changed rather than the ideals. In the grand scheme of history our present ideals are fairly untested compared to other ideals that have stood for centuries. Maybe just maybe the ideals are the problem and not the milestones.
The next performance indicator is: Participates with understanding in activities with stories, songs, finger plays, and poems. The operative word in that performance indicator is participates. How many of you childcare providers struggle with getting 3 year olds to participate in anything. A great deal of the time, you do the activity while they stare at you. Am I right? We will not even go to participates with understanding when we cannot get them to participate in the first place. Sometimes I literally work years to get some children to participate in group activities in a way that shows they understand what is happening. We have programmed children to do what they want to do and undoing that can be nearly impossible with some children. I am sorry, but this is a perfect example of where the ideals and the reality do not mesh. The ideal of free choice for children and the need for children to learn to participate in group activities do not compliment one another. Many children that are used to doing what they want to do all the time have to be made to participate in group activities. If we do not do it as early childhood educators, then the kindergarten teachers will have do it when they arrive on their doorstep. Believe me, the kindergarten teachers have enough on their plate without having to do that as well. Preschool children are fully capable of participating in group activities without it damaging their psyche. On the contrary, I am not so sure that giving children complete choice does not actually do long-lasting damage to a child's psyche. The jury is out on that one.
The last performance indicator for this learning expectation is: Notices if reader omits parts of familiar story. This performance indicator assumes that a child has heard a story enough times to notice if parts of it have been omitted. That can be a huge assumption. Again, if a child has not been read to as a 2 year old, this performance indicator will not happen as a 3 year old. For many children that start with me as a 3 year old, this performance indicator is beyond them until they are 4 year olds. I know this is common occurrence in many childcares. You stop in the middle of a story to see if they can supply what happens next only to be met with blank stares or an entire group of children too busy doing their own thing to even notice that you are actually doing something. I will say that left-brain leaning children will be better at this one than right brain leaning children. Left-brain leaning children are all about the details and notice when one is omitted. Right-brain children may not notice at all or get so caught up in your new version that their brains go in an entirely different direction. Right-brain children need extra practice at details.
The second learning expectation for the component listening and understanding is: Understands an increasingly complex and varied vocabulary for objects, attributes, actions, and events. The performance indicator for this one is: Comprehends and uses new words that are introduced with stories, thematic units, field trips, and other daily activities. Again, this one assumes a lot of previous language development as a 2 year old. The breadth of the variations of language development in 3 year olds can be enormous. I will say the top 25% of 3 year olds handle this performance indicator well by the time they are 4 years old. The bottom 25% will not do this before kindergarten if then. The middle 50% may or may not handle this one by the time they are 4 years old, but will probably be able to handle it by the time they are 4 and 1/2 to 5 years old. It depends on the level of exposure the children have to language on a daily basis as to when they will be able to start incorporating new vocabulary into their spoken and responsive language. Children need to hear as large a variety of words as possible on a daily basis. I cannot stress enough how important that is to the language development of children.
I hope you have enjoyed this post. Goodbye and God bless!!
Check out Natalie's children's books at: https://www.amazon.com/author/nataliewade7457
Saturday, October 25, 2014
Saturday, October 18, 2014
Cognitive Development for 3 to 4 year olds - Early Literacy (Part 1)
We will now switch gears from Language Development to Cognitive Development zeroing in on the area of learning - Early Literacy. We will cover both of the learning expectations for the component - Verbal Expression and Communication. Remember I am taking my information from the Tennessee Early Learning Developmental Standards (TN-ELDS).
We will start with the learning expectation: Engages verbally with stories in books and movies. The first performance indicator is: Makes relevant comments and asks logical questions about the story; begins to predict what will happen next. I know I speak for many early childhood teachers when I say that at 3 years old we do well to get them to sit for an entire story. Asking them to verbally engage with the story might be asking a little much from many 3 year olds. Truthfully for most children that start at my program as 3 year olds, I will not get this behavior until they are 4 years old. Sometimes it does not show until closer to 4 and 1/2 years old if they started after they were 3 and 1/2 years old. It is a sad commentary on our culture that many children are so book deprived that it takes nearly a year in a literacy rich environment to catch them up to speed. Those children that I have had since they were toddlers will display this behavior at 3 years old because they grew up in a literacy rich environment. Most parents do not understand how much they deprive their children by not reading to them. It makes that big a difference.
The second performance indicator for this learning expectation is: Tells own story, with a sequence, using one or more pictures. Unless a 3 year old is in an environment where this is practiced, this skill will not emerge on its own. The same is true of a 4 year old. This has to be introduced by a teacher and demonstrated. Only the top 20% of children MIGHT develop this skill on their own. In my facility we do creative writing lessons on a regular basis. My 3 year olds can come up with elaborate stories because they have watched the older children and have had lots of practice. Sequencing is one of those skills, a left-brain skill, that requires direct instruction unless the child is very heavily left-brain dominate. Many children these days struggle with a sequencing activity unless they have had lots of practice at it.
Now we will move on to the second learning expectation: Uses more advanced sentence structure and varied vocabulary in verbal expression. The first performance indicator is: Speaks in longer sentences, using more adjectives and adverbs, and some clauses beginning with when, if, after; asks to have unknown words explained. Again, I am not really seeing this behavior until right at or after 4 years old. Children from literacy-rich environments conquer this around 3 and 1/2, but unfortunately that does not include a great deal of children these days. Children in literacy-rich programs but literacy-poor homes still drag behind those children that spend all of their waking hours in literacy-rich environments. What do I mean by literacy-rich? The child is read to at least once per day usually more. The child is able to engage in conversation with adults and not just children his/her own age. A child is a literacy-rich environment hears lots of words in a day - around 1000. Whereas, children in literacy-poor environments hear an average of 200 words per day. This makes a huge difference in development. This is why children with educated parents tend to do better than children with uneducated parents. The educated parents tend to use a much wider variety of vocabulary around the children.
The last performance indicator for that learning expectation is: Asks for names of unknown objects, colors, etc. I have actually seen a decrease in this inquisitiveness in kids recently. A decade ago, 3 and 4 year old children were known for driving adults crazy with questions. Now, they still drive adults crazy but most of it is hissy fits and whining. The questions have diminished greatly. I have my theories on why this is occurring, but I have yet to see any studies on this yet. However, I know more and more studies have been done on how social media is causing people to become more isolated. It only makes sense that the same is happening to children. I know from experience that parents arrive to pick up their children talking on their cell phone and never stop while they sign out, pick up their kid, and leave. The child never really gets acknowledged at all except to be crammed in a carseat and strapped in. The parent then drives away still talking on the cell phone. People, when a child's emotional needs for attachment are not being met, then all other areas of development will suffer. The questions have disappeared and been replaced with hissy fits and whining because the children need attention. Parents, please put down the phones and start paying attention to your children.
I hope you have enjoyed this post. Goodbye and God bless!! Check out Natalie's children's books at: https://www.amazon.com/author/nataliewade7457
We will start with the learning expectation: Engages verbally with stories in books and movies. The first performance indicator is: Makes relevant comments and asks logical questions about the story; begins to predict what will happen next. I know I speak for many early childhood teachers when I say that at 3 years old we do well to get them to sit for an entire story. Asking them to verbally engage with the story might be asking a little much from many 3 year olds. Truthfully for most children that start at my program as 3 year olds, I will not get this behavior until they are 4 years old. Sometimes it does not show until closer to 4 and 1/2 years old if they started after they were 3 and 1/2 years old. It is a sad commentary on our culture that many children are so book deprived that it takes nearly a year in a literacy rich environment to catch them up to speed. Those children that I have had since they were toddlers will display this behavior at 3 years old because they grew up in a literacy rich environment. Most parents do not understand how much they deprive their children by not reading to them. It makes that big a difference.
The second performance indicator for this learning expectation is: Tells own story, with a sequence, using one or more pictures. Unless a 3 year old is in an environment where this is practiced, this skill will not emerge on its own. The same is true of a 4 year old. This has to be introduced by a teacher and demonstrated. Only the top 20% of children MIGHT develop this skill on their own. In my facility we do creative writing lessons on a regular basis. My 3 year olds can come up with elaborate stories because they have watched the older children and have had lots of practice. Sequencing is one of those skills, a left-brain skill, that requires direct instruction unless the child is very heavily left-brain dominate. Many children these days struggle with a sequencing activity unless they have had lots of practice at it.
Now we will move on to the second learning expectation: Uses more advanced sentence structure and varied vocabulary in verbal expression. The first performance indicator is: Speaks in longer sentences, using more adjectives and adverbs, and some clauses beginning with when, if, after; asks to have unknown words explained. Again, I am not really seeing this behavior until right at or after 4 years old. Children from literacy-rich environments conquer this around 3 and 1/2, but unfortunately that does not include a great deal of children these days. Children in literacy-rich programs but literacy-poor homes still drag behind those children that spend all of their waking hours in literacy-rich environments. What do I mean by literacy-rich? The child is read to at least once per day usually more. The child is able to engage in conversation with adults and not just children his/her own age. A child is a literacy-rich environment hears lots of words in a day - around 1000. Whereas, children in literacy-poor environments hear an average of 200 words per day. This makes a huge difference in development. This is why children with educated parents tend to do better than children with uneducated parents. The educated parents tend to use a much wider variety of vocabulary around the children.
The last performance indicator for that learning expectation is: Asks for names of unknown objects, colors, etc. I have actually seen a decrease in this inquisitiveness in kids recently. A decade ago, 3 and 4 year old children were known for driving adults crazy with questions. Now, they still drive adults crazy but most of it is hissy fits and whining. The questions have diminished greatly. I have my theories on why this is occurring, but I have yet to see any studies on this yet. However, I know more and more studies have been done on how social media is causing people to become more isolated. It only makes sense that the same is happening to children. I know from experience that parents arrive to pick up their children talking on their cell phone and never stop while they sign out, pick up their kid, and leave. The child never really gets acknowledged at all except to be crammed in a carseat and strapped in. The parent then drives away still talking on the cell phone. People, when a child's emotional needs for attachment are not being met, then all other areas of development will suffer. The questions have disappeared and been replaced with hissy fits and whining because the children need attention. Parents, please put down the phones and start paying attention to your children.
I hope you have enjoyed this post. Goodbye and God bless!! Check out Natalie's children's books at: https://www.amazon.com/author/nataliewade7457
Saturday, October 4, 2014
Language Development for 3 to 4 year olds - Communication (Part 6)
This post will finish the discussion of language development for the area of learning - Communication. I will finish the performance indicators for the component - Expressive Language, and then move on to the component - Speech. Remember I am taking my information from the Tennessee Early Learning Developmental Standards (TN-ELDS).
First, we will look at the last two performance indicators for the component - Expressive Language. We are still in the learning expectation: Uses conventions of speech while expressing ideas. The first performance indicator is: Uses new vocabulary and grammatical construction in language. This performance indicator does not have as definite a benchmark as some of the others have had. Therefore, I would say that all 3 to 4 year olds conquer this one. They all incorporate new vocabulary and grammatical construction in language as they gain exposure. Can this vary wildly from child to child? Absolutely. The level of competence for this one directly depends on the amount of language exposure the child receives. Those that get more will have a greater level of competence unless they have physical developmental issues holding them back.
The last performance indicator for that learning expectation is: Talks in complete, complex sentences 4-8 words in length. I know the authors of these standards tried to hit the middle of the road on this one as of the time the standards were written. However, nowadays the 4 word sentences might be closer to the middle even though I have seen children talk in complete, complex paragraphs at 4 years old. Again, the level of the competence depends on the amount of language exposure the child has received. This past week I was the guest speaker for a literacy night at an urban school. I told those parents that the importance of reading to your children every single day could not be overemphasized. I explained to them that I can tell when a child has or has not had adequate language exposure as soon as they walk in my door. I think that might have shocked a great deal of them. Many parents do not think it is such a big deal, and to find out that I can tell that quickly made many of them uncomfortable. Then I told them that if they will only do one thing for the development of their children and read to them, it will make a huge difference in the academic life of their child.
Now, we will shift gears to the component of Speech. The learning expectation is: Speech is clear enough to be understood by most people. The first performance indicator is: Uses some slang words and common colloquial expressions like "Mama carried grandma to the doctor." Slang and colloquial expressions represent some of the first items of speech a child will conquer. In fact, once established these types of language uses are extremely difficult to correct especially in spoken speech. As a Southerner, I will say certain things in spoken language that I would never dream of using in written language especially in academic work. We all seem to learn this one well.
The second performance indicator for this learning expectation is: Produces most of the consonant sounds of our language correctly. This one has gone downhill very quickly in the last 3 to 5 years. I am seeing speech issues I have never encountered. One of the families I serve has a mom and grandmom that are speech therapists, and they, too, have not encountered many of the speech issues that I have seen recently. Some of it is pure laziness because we will correct one problem only to have that consonant sound be the one that replaces everything. A great deal of it is underdeveloped tongues, and I have not figured out what is causing that issue yet. If I ever go back for a second degree, I will get it in speech therapy because I spend a great deal of my day acting as a speech therapist anyway. My thesis proposal for graduate school revolved around how phonics reading instruction helped children with speech issues. Because of the emphasis on whole language instruction in the early childhood field, phonemic awareness has taken a backseat, and it is affecting children's speech and reading abilities. However, something physical is causing the underdeveloped tongues, and that one still has me greatly puzzled.
The third performance indicator is: May still have difficulty saying certain sounds that are hard to produce, most frequently with (r), (er), and (l). So that I do not repeat myself let me give you a list of sounds that are now becoming an issue - (k), (g), (f), (v), (th), (ch), (y), (t), and the list grows with every new kid I encounter. I have several speech therapists that are friends of mine, and they will attest to the fact that the old standby problems do not even cover the new extent of the problem. I may have to break down one of these days and actually conduct a study on the underlying causes of this explosion in speech issues.
The last performance indicator for this learning expectation is: Says multi-syllable words easily (balloon, dinosaur, umbrella, automobile). My experience with this one is that the children attempt multi-syllable words but very often the middle or ending sounds are not correct. I am working on as many middle and ending sounds of words as onset sounds. Many times when I correct the pronunciation at the onset of the word, we have to then concentrate on that same sound in the middle or end of the word. People, we have serious speech issues here. If anyone else figures out why we are having such problems with underdeveloped tongues, I would love to hear their ideas.
I hope you have enjoyed this post. Goodbye and God bless!! Check out Natalie's children's books at: https://www.amazon.com/author/nataliewade7457
First, we will look at the last two performance indicators for the component - Expressive Language. We are still in the learning expectation: Uses conventions of speech while expressing ideas. The first performance indicator is: Uses new vocabulary and grammatical construction in language. This performance indicator does not have as definite a benchmark as some of the others have had. Therefore, I would say that all 3 to 4 year olds conquer this one. They all incorporate new vocabulary and grammatical construction in language as they gain exposure. Can this vary wildly from child to child? Absolutely. The level of competence for this one directly depends on the amount of language exposure the child receives. Those that get more will have a greater level of competence unless they have physical developmental issues holding them back.
The last performance indicator for that learning expectation is: Talks in complete, complex sentences 4-8 words in length. I know the authors of these standards tried to hit the middle of the road on this one as of the time the standards were written. However, nowadays the 4 word sentences might be closer to the middle even though I have seen children talk in complete, complex paragraphs at 4 years old. Again, the level of the competence depends on the amount of language exposure the child has received. This past week I was the guest speaker for a literacy night at an urban school. I told those parents that the importance of reading to your children every single day could not be overemphasized. I explained to them that I can tell when a child has or has not had adequate language exposure as soon as they walk in my door. I think that might have shocked a great deal of them. Many parents do not think it is such a big deal, and to find out that I can tell that quickly made many of them uncomfortable. Then I told them that if they will only do one thing for the development of their children and read to them, it will make a huge difference in the academic life of their child.
Now, we will shift gears to the component of Speech. The learning expectation is: Speech is clear enough to be understood by most people. The first performance indicator is: Uses some slang words and common colloquial expressions like "Mama carried grandma to the doctor." Slang and colloquial expressions represent some of the first items of speech a child will conquer. In fact, once established these types of language uses are extremely difficult to correct especially in spoken speech. As a Southerner, I will say certain things in spoken language that I would never dream of using in written language especially in academic work. We all seem to learn this one well.
The second performance indicator for this learning expectation is: Produces most of the consonant sounds of our language correctly. This one has gone downhill very quickly in the last 3 to 5 years. I am seeing speech issues I have never encountered. One of the families I serve has a mom and grandmom that are speech therapists, and they, too, have not encountered many of the speech issues that I have seen recently. Some of it is pure laziness because we will correct one problem only to have that consonant sound be the one that replaces everything. A great deal of it is underdeveloped tongues, and I have not figured out what is causing that issue yet. If I ever go back for a second degree, I will get it in speech therapy because I spend a great deal of my day acting as a speech therapist anyway. My thesis proposal for graduate school revolved around how phonics reading instruction helped children with speech issues. Because of the emphasis on whole language instruction in the early childhood field, phonemic awareness has taken a backseat, and it is affecting children's speech and reading abilities. However, something physical is causing the underdeveloped tongues, and that one still has me greatly puzzled.
The third performance indicator is: May still have difficulty saying certain sounds that are hard to produce, most frequently with (r), (er), and (l). So that I do not repeat myself let me give you a list of sounds that are now becoming an issue - (k), (g), (f), (v), (th), (ch), (y), (t), and the list grows with every new kid I encounter. I have several speech therapists that are friends of mine, and they will attest to the fact that the old standby problems do not even cover the new extent of the problem. I may have to break down one of these days and actually conduct a study on the underlying causes of this explosion in speech issues.
The last performance indicator for this learning expectation is: Says multi-syllable words easily (balloon, dinosaur, umbrella, automobile). My experience with this one is that the children attempt multi-syllable words but very often the middle or ending sounds are not correct. I am working on as many middle and ending sounds of words as onset sounds. Many times when I correct the pronunciation at the onset of the word, we have to then concentrate on that same sound in the middle or end of the word. People, we have serious speech issues here. If anyone else figures out why we are having such problems with underdeveloped tongues, I would love to hear their ideas.
I hope you have enjoyed this post. Goodbye and God bless!! Check out Natalie's children's books at: https://www.amazon.com/author/nataliewade7457
Wednesday, October 1, 2014
Dealing with the Effects of Helicopter Parenting - Indecisiveness
This post will continue the discussion of the effects of helicopter parenting. Specifically, this post will zero in on the problem of indecisiveness or fear of making decisions that has manifested itself in the first generation of helicopter parented children - the millenials.
Fear of Decisions
Even though helicopter parenting has not been around very long in the broad scheme of time, it has now been around long enough to notice very specific trends that have developed in the generation raised in this way. One of the most disturbing trends manifesting itself encompasses an intense fear of making decisions. This goes beyond just being indecisive. The millenials have meltdowns over having to make mild life decisions much less tough life decisions. These young adults have now reached their twenties, and for the most part, they still rely more heavily on their parents than any other previous generation. A large majority of them still live with their parents and do not hold down regular jobs. This fear of decisions has caused many, many of them to not really be functioning adults. We have had to invent a whole other developmental stage for this generation because of this.
Failure to Launch
For the record, I was absolutely not a helicopter parent even though my children are considered millenials. My children knew when they hit adulthood, my husband and I expected them to leave the nest. Moving back in on us would only happen if dire and extreme circumstances overtook them. We kept a spare bedroom for them when they were in college, but we did not keep "their" bedroom. We meant business because we were seeing so many of our friends having twenty something children not even remotely interested in leaving the nest. We actually saw this coming when our children were in their teens. Many, many of their friends had no desire to get their driver's license. I thought that odd to say the least. However, many of their friends' parents considered that a blessing at the time. I do not think they consider it a blessing now that their twenty something child still does not have a license and sits on the couch all day playing video games. We have a serious problem on our hands.
The Downside of a Perfect Childhood
What went wrong? My peers began the trend of trying to make childhood perfect. They did everything for their children. They tried to give them everything they did not have when they were children. They really did not have expectations for their children because they felt their parents had too many expectations for them. In short, they made a mess. My husband and I bucked the parenting trends popular with our peers, and it was not easy. Many, many people gave us a horrible time because we actually expected our children to work and made them go without a lot of the trendy clothes and toys the other children their age had. Now, many of them have twenty something children still living at home without jobs that function more like overgrown teenagers than adults. We have actual adult children that are on their own, and they are 27, 25, and 23. Our oldest owns a home and 2 cars, our middle child works 3 jobs, and our youngest owns a car. Millenials do not, on average, do any of those things.
Fear of Taking Risks
Millenials' fear of making decisions keeps them from taking risks that before this generation defined the twenties. They do not move out of their parents' home until they absolutely must. By and large many of them are deferring marriage because they are petrified of commitment. They will not even keep credit cards of their own. They will use their parent's credit cards but will not get their own. The responsibility of having to pay monthly bills terrifies them. My generation for the most part could not wait to get out of our own. We struggled in the beginning, but we were not afraid to take risks. I guess my generation decided that struggling was the most horrible experience they had ever encountered and vowed their children would never have to struggle like that. Now, my generation works so many jobs it is unbelievable to support not only their children but their children's children as well. Maybe my generation had a distorted view of reality and made some bad judgement calls. Maybe struggling was the best thing that ever happened to us.
The Need for Struggle
Therein, lies the solution to all this mess. Helicopter parenting failed so miserably because they did not let the children struggle and work to accomplish things. When everything is handed to you on a silver platter, it makes you dependent not independent. These children have to struggle in order to understand and calculate risk. Being able to calculate risk lies at the very heart of being a good decision maker.
The Trouble with Choice
I will say that about a decade ago, early childhood professionals began to see the ramifications of children not being able to make decisions. Therefore, they began to push "choice." Their theory was that if a child had more control over their lives, this would make them more decisive. This brought about the practice of giving children two positive choices instead of making them do things. However, two positive choices and getting things their way does not produce children that can calculate risk. It takes negative experiences to develop risk-taking abilities. Again, the experts have it upside down and backwards. Actually, children that are made to do what they need to do develop risk taking abilities because they understand how the real world works. All this other just adds to the mess.
I hope you have enjoyed this post. Goodbye and God bless!! Check out Natalie's children's books at: https://www.amazon.com/author/nataliewade7457
Fear of Decisions
Even though helicopter parenting has not been around very long in the broad scheme of time, it has now been around long enough to notice very specific trends that have developed in the generation raised in this way. One of the most disturbing trends manifesting itself encompasses an intense fear of making decisions. This goes beyond just being indecisive. The millenials have meltdowns over having to make mild life decisions much less tough life decisions. These young adults have now reached their twenties, and for the most part, they still rely more heavily on their parents than any other previous generation. A large majority of them still live with their parents and do not hold down regular jobs. This fear of decisions has caused many, many of them to not really be functioning adults. We have had to invent a whole other developmental stage for this generation because of this.
Failure to Launch
For the record, I was absolutely not a helicopter parent even though my children are considered millenials. My children knew when they hit adulthood, my husband and I expected them to leave the nest. Moving back in on us would only happen if dire and extreme circumstances overtook them. We kept a spare bedroom for them when they were in college, but we did not keep "their" bedroom. We meant business because we were seeing so many of our friends having twenty something children not even remotely interested in leaving the nest. We actually saw this coming when our children were in their teens. Many, many of their friends had no desire to get their driver's license. I thought that odd to say the least. However, many of their friends' parents considered that a blessing at the time. I do not think they consider it a blessing now that their twenty something child still does not have a license and sits on the couch all day playing video games. We have a serious problem on our hands.
The Downside of a Perfect Childhood
What went wrong? My peers began the trend of trying to make childhood perfect. They did everything for their children. They tried to give them everything they did not have when they were children. They really did not have expectations for their children because they felt their parents had too many expectations for them. In short, they made a mess. My husband and I bucked the parenting trends popular with our peers, and it was not easy. Many, many people gave us a horrible time because we actually expected our children to work and made them go without a lot of the trendy clothes and toys the other children their age had. Now, many of them have twenty something children still living at home without jobs that function more like overgrown teenagers than adults. We have actual adult children that are on their own, and they are 27, 25, and 23. Our oldest owns a home and 2 cars, our middle child works 3 jobs, and our youngest owns a car. Millenials do not, on average, do any of those things.
Fear of Taking Risks
Millenials' fear of making decisions keeps them from taking risks that before this generation defined the twenties. They do not move out of their parents' home until they absolutely must. By and large many of them are deferring marriage because they are petrified of commitment. They will not even keep credit cards of their own. They will use their parent's credit cards but will not get their own. The responsibility of having to pay monthly bills terrifies them. My generation for the most part could not wait to get out of our own. We struggled in the beginning, but we were not afraid to take risks. I guess my generation decided that struggling was the most horrible experience they had ever encountered and vowed their children would never have to struggle like that. Now, my generation works so many jobs it is unbelievable to support not only their children but their children's children as well. Maybe my generation had a distorted view of reality and made some bad judgement calls. Maybe struggling was the best thing that ever happened to us.
The Need for Struggle
Therein, lies the solution to all this mess. Helicopter parenting failed so miserably because they did not let the children struggle and work to accomplish things. When everything is handed to you on a silver platter, it makes you dependent not independent. These children have to struggle in order to understand and calculate risk. Being able to calculate risk lies at the very heart of being a good decision maker.
The Trouble with Choice
I will say that about a decade ago, early childhood professionals began to see the ramifications of children not being able to make decisions. Therefore, they began to push "choice." Their theory was that if a child had more control over their lives, this would make them more decisive. This brought about the practice of giving children two positive choices instead of making them do things. However, two positive choices and getting things their way does not produce children that can calculate risk. It takes negative experiences to develop risk-taking abilities. Again, the experts have it upside down and backwards. Actually, children that are made to do what they need to do develop risk taking abilities because they understand how the real world works. All this other just adds to the mess.
I hope you have enjoyed this post. Goodbye and God bless!! Check out Natalie's children's books at: https://www.amazon.com/author/nataliewade7457
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)