This post will start the discussion of 4 to 5 year olds. I hope you have been enjoying these posts on child development and have found them helpful in determining curriculum needs. Remember I am taking my information from the Tennessee Early Learning Developmental Standards (TN-ELDS).
We will start with the component - Receptive Language. The learning expectation for this one is: Listens with understanding and interest to conversations, directions, music, and a variety of reading materials. The first performance indicator is: Understands "today." Most children by the time they are 5 years old do understand the concept of today. I am finding that many children struggle with this concept until right before their fifth birthday, but for the most part children these days are actually conquering this one. Some children that have come to me very immature during their fourth year will still struggle with this one into their fifth year. At this point, children without a good foundation will function like developmentally delayed because the amount of information needed to succeed in kindergarten has been elevated from years past. A struggling four year old really needs an extra year in PreK before hitting kindergarten, but I do not know if schools are allowing children to repeat PreK. The number of children repeating kindergarten has been on the rise for many years. Maybe they will come to understand that repeating PreK would be more beneficial for very immature four year olds.
The next performance indicator is: Knows the names and sex of family members. Again, this a performance indicator that most children conquer well before their fifth birthday. In some complicated family relationships, a child might not know the names and sexes of some of his/her family members. In some bitter divorce situations siblings are kept from one another or half-siblings may not know of each other's existence. However, most typically developing children know the names and sexes of those people that constitute their immediate family. Not being able to conquer this one should definitely be a red flag for severe developmental delays.
Next on the list is: Understands the concept of siblings and can name brothers and sisters. For the most part, I am seeing four year olds conquer this one. However, as childcare providers we are running into more and more complex family situations. Many times siblings are only half-siblings. It is not uncommon for a woman to have 3 or 4 children all by different fathers. Sometimes single mothers live together with the children not being siblings at all. The list of variations continues on infinitum. This performance indicator does not necessarily fit the times. All the children presently in my care have divorced families or single mothers that have never been married. It has been a while since I have had a family that fits the traditional family model. Children in these complicated situations do not necessarily truly understand the difference between siblings, half-siblings, and/or children that happen to live in the same house.
The fourth performance indicator is: Knows concept of age (e.g. big brother/oldest brother; baby sister/littlest sister). This performance indicator assumes the child understands superlatives like old, older, oldest. However, this is a far stretch for many four year olds even in family situations. I have a five year old with a half-sister, and I have yet to figure out whether she is younger or older than he is. He has no concept of age in relation to her compared to him. I have another five year old that understands superlatives fairly well, but he really did not make that leap until his fifth birthday. Then I have a three year old that has a fairly decent idea of age and superlatives. Children can vary so widely in skill from the age of 2 years old and upward. Many times this is a concept that must be explained over and over for the children to fully understand. Some children never get that type of instruction. Therefore, they struggle with concepts like this.
The last performance indicator for this post is: Understands the meaning of more prepositions (e.g. "beneath," "between," "below"). The conquering of this particular performance indicator very much depends on a child's level of language development. If a child's language development is lagging, then this performance indicator will not be met. As I have stated before on numerous occasions, I am seeing more and more language development problems with the children that walk through my door. I am also seeing these same problems in the PreK and Headstart classrooms that I read to regularly. Some children with immature language skills do not conquer this before their fifth birthday. Those represent the children most in need of an extra year before kindergarten as I spoke of earlier. School systems around the country are beginning to realize this. I have seen a trend of schools moving back their age cut-off dates to push the median age of their kindergarteners higher. I believe this trend will continue.
I hope you have enjoy this post. Goodbye and God bless!! https://linktr.ee/natawade
Saturday, March 21, 2015
Saturday, March 14, 2015
Will Shortcuts Be the Death of Us?
This post will look at the fourth reason the British nanny gave for why American parents have so many problems - shortcuts. On this one the British nanny nailed it. I will not only look at what shortcuts are doing to us culturally, but I will also look at some very specific shortcuts and how detrimental they really are in the long run.
Shortcuts - A Sign of Laziness?
Even though we as Americans would never ever admit this, we are typically a lazy culture. If we can find a way to do things easier, we will even if that means a reduction in quality. We embrace the notion that faster is better and convenience is king. I blame a lack of logical thinking skills for quite a few of our ridiculous notions. However, at the very heart of it all, laziness reigns as the root cause. I will be the first to admit that when I was younger I embraced that philosophy wholeheartedly. If it took a great deal of work, I was not terribly interested in that endeavor. As I have aged, I have learned my share of lessons on this subject and have thrown out quite a few shortcuts realizing that I made more work for myself in the long run with the shortcuts and conveniences. This is a hard one for Americans to swallow, but I hope you will sit and take a hard look at several of our shortcuts and conveniences.
Technology in General
Today we have an app for everything. We rely so heavily on all the technology around us that if it were to ever be taken away, it would get ugly very quickly. I do believe that over the last couple of winters many many people have gotten a taste of this when ice storms and severe weather have taken out our electricity for extended periods of time. Some people were completely lost without all their conveniences. Only those whose homes were somewhat designed to function without electricity fared fairly well in these circumstances. What would we do if a hacker crashed our electric grid and it took months to restore it? That is not such a far-fetched notion in today's world. Many groups of people in this world hate the United States enough to do something like that to us. When they become savvy enough to do it, we are up a creek without a paddle. It might just be a little necessary to know how to function without modern technology and conveniences. Americans do not like to think this way. We like to believe we will find a way to restore everything quickly and not have to go there. I was like that in my twenties until an ice storm took out our electricity for two weeks. After that I started acquiring some basic knowledge on survival without electricity. I have also since learned that in the long run some of our shortcuts and conveniences actually make for more work in the long run. The next several topics fit into this category.
Processed Food and Fast Food
This one might actually be the death of us. Processed food and fast food account for 100% of American's bad eating habits. We learn more and more each day how research shows that fresher food makes for healthier people. However, many many Americans especially young Americans do not know basic cooking. If it cannot be microwaved, they are lost. They also do not know basic food handling techniques and practices. That was me to some degree when I left high school and went to college. The scary thing for me was that I knew more than most of my peers and I knew very little. I had been raised on a farm and had an inkling about how to handle fresh produce, but my cooking repertoire was extremely limited. Most of that involved cooking from a box. Thankfully, my cooking abilities have grown exponentially as I have aged. I now cook most everything from scratch. Even for the childcare, I cook their meals from scratch as much as possible. Processed food is highly additive and accounts for more of our parenting problems than we will ever want to admit. Fresher food makes for calmer, smarter, and more well-rounded children. Our convenience in one area has caused us great grief in another. Cooking meals takes time and is inconvenient. However, my health has improved as well as my husband's health. The benefit for the children is probably immeasurable. The lifelong benefits they will receive because I fed them fresh food in their formative years is priceless.
Training Pants
Now I want to touch on a few that involve early childhood specifically. Disposable training pants represent by far the convenience in the short term that ends up costing us the most in the long term. These days it is nothing for a child to not be potty trained by 3 years old. Many early childhood people will tell you that is normal and nothing to cause concern. However, did you know that just 50 years ago children potty trained between the ages of 18 months and 2 years. I potty trained at 18 months. All of my children potty trained later because I used disposable diapers, but I did not use disposable training pants. Therefore, all of my children potty trained by the time they were 2 and 1/2 years old. Disposable diapers fall into this problem to some degree but I am not really willing to go back to cloth diapers for infants. I am with you on the disposable diapers for that age. However, disposable training pants so multiply the effects of this problem that I have drawn the line there. Whether you want to admit it or not, disposable training pants still count as diapers for older children. They function like diapers. Children potty trained earlier 50 years ago because wet cloth diapers are uncomfortable. Also, cloth diapers let children experience what I call the "whoosh" effect. When pee runs all down your legs wetting everything in its path, peeing in the potty becomes a viable option to that child. I always get tickled at the look on kid's faces when they pee themselves the first time after I put them in regular underwear. The pee was not contained, and that usually lights a fire under them to learn how to put that pee in the potty. The convenience of disposable training pants causes the potty training process to take years longer than it should, but we do not want to mess with a few months of puddles. Most of our houses are not equipped for puddles. I purposefully designed my childcare with floors capable of handling the occasional puddle. It really does not take very long once you start putting them in underwear to make it to potty trained, but you do have to get through the puddle stage to get there.
Sippee Cups
Like disposable training pants, sippee cups are a convenience with long term detrimental consequences. I recently did a workshop on speech issues. When I told the participants that the overuse of sippee cups causes the roof of a child's mouth not to develop properly, a great deal of them looked completely dismayed. Number one, no one had ever told them that sippee cup use could cause that. Number two, I could see the wheels turning over having to deal with the spills sippee cups are designed to avoid. When a child uses sippee cups exclusively after the age of 18 months, the roof of their mouth does not develop properly. Drinking from an open cup uses muscles in the mouth that drinking from a sippee cup does not use. Drinking from a regular cup should start at around 18 months. At my childcare, I refuse to use sippee cups after 18 months. Does this mean I have to deal with spills at snacks and mealtimes? Yes, but after a speech pathologist explained to me about the importance of drinking from a real cup, I decided the spills would be just one of those things you must deal with when working with children. It is highly inconvenient especially in a mixed age setting to have to deal with 18 month olds learning to use a real cup. However, it really does not take as long as you would think to teach them to use a real cup. Children are capable of so much more than we give them credit. By the time they are 2 years old, the spills only happen rarely unless they have physical developmental issues.
Redirection and other Parenting Shortcuts
In American we want parenting to be as painless as possible for both the parents and the children. Many of the parenting techniques that have been developed over the last several decades cater to that desire. However, I have bad news for you. Growing up is full of painful processes for both the parent and the child. Avoiding those painful processes only postpones them to a future time when the process will be even more painful. Case in point, redirection. Redirecting two year olds instead of dealing with the underlying issues makes for three, four, and five year olds that never learned the lessons needed at two years old. Sometimes it goes into the teenage years before the children learn the lessons that were supposed to be learned at two years old. It is exponentially harder to teach a teenager not to throw a hissy fit when they do not get their way than it is to teach a two year old this lesson. Is it unpleasant to have to deal with this at two years old? Absolutely, but it is also absolutely necessary. If a parenting technique tries to get around dealing with the underlying issue, I can guarantee that the parenting technique is just kicking the can down the road to where it will be MUCH harder to correct later. People, suck it up and deal with the issues at hand before we cause our society to implode upon itself. Parenting does not have viable shortcuts. Every so-called shortcut comes with a price. When you understand that, you will have this parenting thing downpat.
I hope you have enjoyed this post. Goodbye and God bless!! https://linktr.ee/natawade
Shortcuts - A Sign of Laziness?
Even though we as Americans would never ever admit this, we are typically a lazy culture. If we can find a way to do things easier, we will even if that means a reduction in quality. We embrace the notion that faster is better and convenience is king. I blame a lack of logical thinking skills for quite a few of our ridiculous notions. However, at the very heart of it all, laziness reigns as the root cause. I will be the first to admit that when I was younger I embraced that philosophy wholeheartedly. If it took a great deal of work, I was not terribly interested in that endeavor. As I have aged, I have learned my share of lessons on this subject and have thrown out quite a few shortcuts realizing that I made more work for myself in the long run with the shortcuts and conveniences. This is a hard one for Americans to swallow, but I hope you will sit and take a hard look at several of our shortcuts and conveniences.
Technology in General
Today we have an app for everything. We rely so heavily on all the technology around us that if it were to ever be taken away, it would get ugly very quickly. I do believe that over the last couple of winters many many people have gotten a taste of this when ice storms and severe weather have taken out our electricity for extended periods of time. Some people were completely lost without all their conveniences. Only those whose homes were somewhat designed to function without electricity fared fairly well in these circumstances. What would we do if a hacker crashed our electric grid and it took months to restore it? That is not such a far-fetched notion in today's world. Many groups of people in this world hate the United States enough to do something like that to us. When they become savvy enough to do it, we are up a creek without a paddle. It might just be a little necessary to know how to function without modern technology and conveniences. Americans do not like to think this way. We like to believe we will find a way to restore everything quickly and not have to go there. I was like that in my twenties until an ice storm took out our electricity for two weeks. After that I started acquiring some basic knowledge on survival without electricity. I have also since learned that in the long run some of our shortcuts and conveniences actually make for more work in the long run. The next several topics fit into this category.
Processed Food and Fast Food
This one might actually be the death of us. Processed food and fast food account for 100% of American's bad eating habits. We learn more and more each day how research shows that fresher food makes for healthier people. However, many many Americans especially young Americans do not know basic cooking. If it cannot be microwaved, they are lost. They also do not know basic food handling techniques and practices. That was me to some degree when I left high school and went to college. The scary thing for me was that I knew more than most of my peers and I knew very little. I had been raised on a farm and had an inkling about how to handle fresh produce, but my cooking repertoire was extremely limited. Most of that involved cooking from a box. Thankfully, my cooking abilities have grown exponentially as I have aged. I now cook most everything from scratch. Even for the childcare, I cook their meals from scratch as much as possible. Processed food is highly additive and accounts for more of our parenting problems than we will ever want to admit. Fresher food makes for calmer, smarter, and more well-rounded children. Our convenience in one area has caused us great grief in another. Cooking meals takes time and is inconvenient. However, my health has improved as well as my husband's health. The benefit for the children is probably immeasurable. The lifelong benefits they will receive because I fed them fresh food in their formative years is priceless.
Training Pants
Now I want to touch on a few that involve early childhood specifically. Disposable training pants represent by far the convenience in the short term that ends up costing us the most in the long term. These days it is nothing for a child to not be potty trained by 3 years old. Many early childhood people will tell you that is normal and nothing to cause concern. However, did you know that just 50 years ago children potty trained between the ages of 18 months and 2 years. I potty trained at 18 months. All of my children potty trained later because I used disposable diapers, but I did not use disposable training pants. Therefore, all of my children potty trained by the time they were 2 and 1/2 years old. Disposable diapers fall into this problem to some degree but I am not really willing to go back to cloth diapers for infants. I am with you on the disposable diapers for that age. However, disposable training pants so multiply the effects of this problem that I have drawn the line there. Whether you want to admit it or not, disposable training pants still count as diapers for older children. They function like diapers. Children potty trained earlier 50 years ago because wet cloth diapers are uncomfortable. Also, cloth diapers let children experience what I call the "whoosh" effect. When pee runs all down your legs wetting everything in its path, peeing in the potty becomes a viable option to that child. I always get tickled at the look on kid's faces when they pee themselves the first time after I put them in regular underwear. The pee was not contained, and that usually lights a fire under them to learn how to put that pee in the potty. The convenience of disposable training pants causes the potty training process to take years longer than it should, but we do not want to mess with a few months of puddles. Most of our houses are not equipped for puddles. I purposefully designed my childcare with floors capable of handling the occasional puddle. It really does not take very long once you start putting them in underwear to make it to potty trained, but you do have to get through the puddle stage to get there.
Sippee Cups
Like disposable training pants, sippee cups are a convenience with long term detrimental consequences. I recently did a workshop on speech issues. When I told the participants that the overuse of sippee cups causes the roof of a child's mouth not to develop properly, a great deal of them looked completely dismayed. Number one, no one had ever told them that sippee cup use could cause that. Number two, I could see the wheels turning over having to deal with the spills sippee cups are designed to avoid. When a child uses sippee cups exclusively after the age of 18 months, the roof of their mouth does not develop properly. Drinking from an open cup uses muscles in the mouth that drinking from a sippee cup does not use. Drinking from a regular cup should start at around 18 months. At my childcare, I refuse to use sippee cups after 18 months. Does this mean I have to deal with spills at snacks and mealtimes? Yes, but after a speech pathologist explained to me about the importance of drinking from a real cup, I decided the spills would be just one of those things you must deal with when working with children. It is highly inconvenient especially in a mixed age setting to have to deal with 18 month olds learning to use a real cup. However, it really does not take as long as you would think to teach them to use a real cup. Children are capable of so much more than we give them credit. By the time they are 2 years old, the spills only happen rarely unless they have physical developmental issues.
Redirection and other Parenting Shortcuts
In American we want parenting to be as painless as possible for both the parents and the children. Many of the parenting techniques that have been developed over the last several decades cater to that desire. However, I have bad news for you. Growing up is full of painful processes for both the parent and the child. Avoiding those painful processes only postpones them to a future time when the process will be even more painful. Case in point, redirection. Redirecting two year olds instead of dealing with the underlying issues makes for three, four, and five year olds that never learned the lessons needed at two years old. Sometimes it goes into the teenage years before the children learn the lessons that were supposed to be learned at two years old. It is exponentially harder to teach a teenager not to throw a hissy fit when they do not get their way than it is to teach a two year old this lesson. Is it unpleasant to have to deal with this at two years old? Absolutely, but it is also absolutely necessary. If a parenting technique tries to get around dealing with the underlying issue, I can guarantee that the parenting technique is just kicking the can down the road to where it will be MUCH harder to correct later. People, suck it up and deal with the issues at hand before we cause our society to implode upon itself. Parenting does not have viable shortcuts. Every so-called shortcut comes with a price. When you understand that, you will have this parenting thing downpat.
I hope you have enjoyed this post. Goodbye and God bless!! https://linktr.ee/natawade
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