Cognitive Development for 4 to 5 year olds - Early Literacy (Part 2)

We will continue the discussion of the area of learning, Early Literacy, picking up with the learning expectation:  Can organize more events and more complex events in sequential order.  Remember I am taking my information from the Tennessee Early Learning Developmental Standards (TN-ELDS).

The first performance indicator is:  Shows understanding of stories with more complex chain of events.  I hate to sound like a broken record, but children that have been read to on a regular basis conquer this while children that have not been read to on a regular basis do not.  This one falls into the category of reading comprehension and requires a certain level of exposure to read-aloud stories.  When that level of exposure is not there, children struggle horribly with anything sequential.  I have had 4 year olds that could not do even minor sequential tasks because of the inadequacy of their exposure to read-aloud activities.  A great many children in preschools and Headstarts have to conquer being able to sit through an entire story before they can even come close to conquering this particular performance indicator.  Language immaturity affects everything else.

The second performance indicator is:  Begins to predict what might happen next.  This one is also affected by the amount a child has had an adult read to them.  If they do not have enough experience with the basic structure of stories, they will not be able to do this.  Also, this one takes direct instruction.  Because so many children are language deprived by this age, you, the teacher, will have to work on this one.  At first, the children's predictions will be wild and completed unrelated to the story.  However, with practice they will begin to improve until they can with some accuracy predict what will happen next.  I see this one first hand when I read in classrooms.  Some kindergarten classrooms do well predicting what will happen next.  Some kindergarten classrooms look at me like I am crazy when I ask them what will happen next.  Some kindergarten classrooms just start telling stories that are completely unrelated when I ask them to predict what will happen next.  This means 5 and 6 year old children struggle with this one.  Many 4 year old children will not even touch this one until many, many other areas are pulled up to speed.

The last performance indicator for this learning expectation is:  Follows a sequence of 3 directions.  As I stated earlier in this post, many of today's children struggle horribly with anything sequential.  If you do not believe me, go to a typical preschool or Headstart and give a child a sequence of 3 directions.  Then stand back and watch.  If that child accomplishes the first item on the list without having to come and ask you multiple times what it is they are supposed to do, I would be pleasantly surprised.  Now most of the children in my care conquer this one by the time they are 4 years old because I expect it.  If I tell a child a sequence of directions, that child knows that I mean for him/her to pay attention and do what they are told.  Now I also have children with attention issues and those children do not conquer this one, but I still work this one hard and heavy even with the children with attention issues.  It helps them to improve.  Most of today's children have never been expected to listen and follow a sequence of directions.  You get what you expect.

We will now move on to the component - Verbal Expression and Communication.  The first learning expectation for this one is:  Engages in Dialogue (conversation with others).  The first performance indicator is:  Asks questions and makes comments related to a topic of discussion.  Truthfully, I have not met many kindergarten children that conquer this one nowadays let alone 4 year olds.  When I read to preschools and Headstarts, I have all but given up on having the children ask me questions.  They have no concept of what a question is.  All 4 year olds like to make comments but it is the rare 4 year old that can make a comment related to a discussion already in progress.  I have said on many occasions that language immaturity for preschoolers has nearly become the norm rather the exception in today's society.  Not only do parents not read to their children, but they also do not engage them in true conversation enough.

The last performance indicator for that learning expectation is:  Understands and uses past, present, and future verb tense appropriately.  I will say that probably the top 20% of 4 year olds conquer this one by 5 years old and most other children will conquer this by their 6th birthday.  However, I do know that kindergarten teachers have to work with nearly half of their children to conquer this one once and for all.  Too many four year olds are language immature, and this skill is simply too advanced for many of them.  I have had to explain verb tense and time words extensively to the 4 year olds I have had recently.  They simply do not have enough language reference to understand how all of that works.

I hope you have enjoyed this post.  Goodbye and God bless!!  https://linktr.ee/natawade

Relativism: Eat the Chicken, Spit Out the Bones

This post will finish up our discussion of the effects of relativism on early childhood theory and practices.  More specifically, this post will look at how to garner good information from the hours and hours of training most states require that have a definite relativistic bias.

The Weeding Process
Once you realize your training has a bias, the next step is to start the weeding process.  Whether we realize or not, every time we receive new information we pass it through our own personal filter.  For many Americans everything labeled "latest research" automatically passes through our filter.  That is mistake number one.  When you realize that a great deal of the information that comes to you through the media or your trainings has a bias toward relativism, it becomes easier to filter.  If you do not believe me that everyone has a filter, just ask a Democrat about Planned Parenthood.  Then ask the same question of a Republican.  We have built-in political filters on many subjects to the point that blatant evidence still does not sway us from our convictions without a fight.  The same is true for early childhood professionals.  Their training has taught them to have a liberal worldview filter for everything pertaining to children.  This drives me nuts because I do not have that filter.  I have a Christian worldview filter that has been trained over the years through homeschooling to weed out liberal bias.  If you switch your filter, then the very same information takes on a whole different meaning to you.  It is all in what you hold dear.  Many people do not even realize they filter information in the way they do until someone points this out to them.  If you think you have no filter, you are probably liberal.  Most conservatives know and understand this process.  Everyone has a filter because everyone has a worldview.  You filter information according to your priorities and beliefs on the subject.  If you do not believe in relativism, then make sure you filter out all information on every subject that denies the presence of God and His working Hand in the lives of men.  Most of the time if the information denies the fallen nature of man that is a sure sign of relativism.  I always filter information through what I know of the Word of God.  If the information contradicts the Word, the information goes out the window.  However, many people do not have a good working knowledge of the Word of God.  Even if you are not a Bible scholar, you can develop your filter by asking the two points I presented earlier.  Does the information deny God's working in the lives of men?  Does the information deny the fallen nature of man?  Those two questions will help you weed out a majority of the relativistic bias of most information.

Change Foundations
Once you become proficient at spotting the bias and weeding out the obvious relativism, it is now time to start looking for gems of truth.  In everything there will be some truth.  These little nuggets of truth can be very useful when repurposed on a different foundation.  Almost every single class I took in my pursuit of my graduate degree provided several of these little nuggets of truth.  I have had a couple of classes so badly biased that I could not even find any useful information.  This will happen.  However, if you keep an open mind, most of the time you can find what will usually be just a part of a whole point they mean to make.  Part of the point will be blatantly relativistic, but one little section will have some information that will be able to pass through the filter.  When you take that information and plug it into the foundation that the world is built on definite right and wrong principles, you get results that make everyone in the childcare world stand up and take notice.  You see, when you use the right foundation all your plans and procedures work so much better.  It confounds the liberals.  You should not be getting those results with the way you are using that information in their eyes.  They just do not understand that most of the time they have it upside down and backwards.  When you build your foundation on the Rock, your plans and purposes flourish.  When you build your foundation on the sand (relativism), you get a slow moving train wreck.

Specific Examples
One of the best examples of how I did this has to do with choices.  I agree that children need to learn to make decisions and must have opportunities to practice that skill.  However, I have major issue with the complete choice mantra pushed by so many early childhood theorists.  Children should not have complete choice over their lives.  That is ludicrous.  The way I handle choices gives children practice in real-world decision making.  I let them choose their centers whenever we have center times but with stipulations.  I let a different child choose first every day.  This is called the day privilege and rotates between the children.  Therefore, the day after a child gets to choose first they go to the bottom of the picking order.  This teaches them to deal with not getting their way.  The other stipulation I have on the choosing involves abiding by their choices.  I do not allow roaming.  Once you choose that is where you stay until that particular center time ends.  This teaches them to choose more carefully.  I also only allow a certain number of children in an area.  A child at the bottom of the picking order may have to deal with not getting what they want for an entire day.  It does them good.

Another example of how I lifted information and plugged it into a different foundation has to do with how I handle those areas that are not optional.  The training you receive to teach handwashing and other such self-help skills that are universally considered not optional can be transferred to those areas that you do not consider optional that more liberally minded early childhood professionals might.  I do not consider nap optional neither do I consider their one-on-one instruction optional.  I treat this the same way I treat handwashing.  Does this get me in trouble?  Sometimes.  However, once trained I rarely have any issues.  I have only received flack when I had to be observed during the training process.

Conclusion
I labeled this post "Eat the Chicken, Spit Out the Bones."  When you learn to weed out the relativistic bias and glean useful information that can then be plugged into the right foundation, that is exactly what you do.  Life is full of "bones."  Learn to be people that do not gullibly accept everything that comes down the pike and use a little wisdom.

Hope you enjoyed this post!!  Goodbye and God bless!!  https://linktr.ee/natawade

Cognitive Development for 4 to 5 year olds - Early Literacy (Part 1)

We will now switch gears from Language Development to Cognitive Development with the area of learning - Early Literacy.  In this post we will cover the component - Listening and Understanding.  Remember I am taking my information from the Tennessee Early Learning Developmental Standards (TN-ELDS).

The first learning expectation for this component is:  Understands story events and overall theme, and conversations.  The first performance indicator is:  Recalls more detail from stories, using growing vocabulary. Wow, this performance indicator assumes quite a bit.  I have read to many, many PreK programs and Headstarts, and for the first half of the year those poor teachers do well to get them to sit through an entire short book.  Trying to recall details and story events is sometimes not even attempted until nearly Christmas.  Children are simply not read to on a daily basis at home.  Parents just do not understand how vitally important that is for their children's language development.  For those few parents that do read to their children, their children nearly shine out from the pack.  I can tell within 5 minutes of meeting a child for the first time whether or not they have been read to on a daily basis.  Parents, it is that obvious.  Most PreK and Headstarts spend the year trying desperately to undo the language deficiency in which the children arrive at the start of the year.  Some make it.  Some do not.

The next performance indicator is:  Recalls many events from recent experiences.  This one has more potential to be acquired by today's children than the previous one.  However, I am seeing children that still do not have a great concept of time by this age.  They remember what they did and can talk about it using the vocabulary they have developed, but sometimes they confuse when it happened.  Some children cannot do this right after their fourth birthday but can by their fifth birthday.  I have had some very immature 4 year olds that took until nearly their fifth birthday to be able to do this.  A language delay will also affect how well children can recall events and be able to talk about those events.  Language delay affects so many other areas of development.

Next on the list is:  Holds conversation with adult or peers about familiar books.  This one again assumes quite a bit.  A lot of 4 year old children are not familiar enough with a book to have a conversation.  Even if they are in a program at 4 years old that stresses reading books, it takes nearly 6 months of exposure to books to be familiar enough to hold a conversation.  Many of these children do not pay attention during story time enough to even pick up on the plot or the characters.  When the teachers try to have discussion about the book afterwards, these children often interject off the wall comments.  This is where children that are read to on a regular basis shine like the sun.  They can do this.  The others cannot.

Now we move on to the next learning expectation - Relates plot of story to self and own experiences.  The first performance indicator is:  Makes comments during story reading that relate the story content to previous stories, or to his own life experiences.  Realistically, every class of preschoolers has one or two children that can do this well.  Most of the other children usually make comments that might somewhat relate but are usually off the subject entirely.  If the conversation of the class turns to something they know, they will make appropriate comments.  However, the one or two that really conquer this concept start the conversation.  The others just chase rabbits.

The other performance indicator for this learning expectation is:  Correctly answers questions about the story plot and events.  This one assumes the child was listening.  Most often that is not the case.  There will always be those few that do listen and can answer these questions, but they are usually the lucky few that have parents that read to them on a consistent basis.  I hope you are picking up on the theme of this post.  Parents read to your children!!!!!!!!!  Nothing replaces this valuable experience for your children and if you do not, your children's teachers will have to work that much harder to make up for your lack of reading.  Rant over.

I hope you have enjoyed this post.  Goodbye and God bless!! https://linktr.ee/natawade

Relativism and the Concept of Self-Esteem

This post will continue the discussion of the effects of relativism on early childhood practices and theories.  This post will zero in on the concept of self-esteem.

The Concept of Self-Esteem
Self-Esteem can be defined as self-love or feeling good about oneself.  No one will dispute that it is important for our emotional well-being to love ourselves.  However, there are times when it is also important to not necessarily like the person we have become.  Change especially positive change in a person's life requires coming to a place where you do not like life the way that it has become.  You may not like the person you have become.  You will still love yourself but will understand you cannot always feel good about yourself.  This is the point where relativism has skewed healthy self-esteem into the unhealthy version we have shoved down our throats on a consistent basis.  Because relativism does not recognize right and wrong, there should never be a point where we should not feel good about ourselves.  Relativism preaches self-esteem without basis in reality.  When we lie, cheat, steal, etc., we still feel good about ourselves because right and wrong are all relative.  What we do is right in our own eyes.  Therefore we never have reason to feel remorse and shame.  In the early childhood world this manifests itself in the mantra "you should never shame a child."  Shaming a child makes them feel bad about themselves and a child should always feel good about themselves.  Really?  Should a child ALWAYS feel good about themselves?  Or should a child always love themselves?  There is a difference.  The first leads to narcissism.  The second leads to self acceptance.

Self-Esteem and the Rise of Narcissism
It does not take much hunting in the national news feed to find at least one article on narcissism nowadays.  It seems millenials have brought this particular personality quirk to the forefront but why?  What is narcissism?  Narcissism can be defined as an egotistical self-love; having an inflated view of one's own appearance and/or accomplishments.  It comes from the Greek myth of Narcissus who fell in love with his own reflection.  Does it surprise anyone that millenials who grew up when the push for self-esteem in children was beginning to really hit its stride now have a problem with narcissism?  These children were taught to always feel good about themselves.  Shaming children ceased to be an accepted way of dealing with bad behavior.  They hardly ever had to truly answer for their mistakes.  Instead everyone else always received the blame.  They grew up in a "victim" culture.  Now we have a generation of entitled, completely self-absorbed young adults that have no sense of responsibility, but they sure do feel good about themselves.  What went wrong?  We did not tie self-esteem to reality.  Children should feel good about themselves when they accomplish something.  Being a productive member of society should have been stressed over just feeling good about simply being.  At this point, I am sure some of you are screaming that children should love themselves no matter what, and you would be correct.  However, there is a huge difference between loving yourself and feeling good about yourself.  This leads me to self-acceptance.

Self-Esteem vs. Self-Acceptance
Whereas self-esteem is feeling good about yourself, self-acceptance is having a healthy view of both your strong and weak points.  Self-acceptance means you love yourself but understand where you need improvement.  We all have weak areas.  We all have sins that easily beset us.  When we understand these areas and accept them, we put ourselves in a position to change them.  You will never change what you do not accept as needing change.  That is the main problem with an overemphasis on self-esteem.  When everything is relative and we are doing what is right in our own eyes, we will never see how we hurt each other.  We will never understand why we never accomplish any goals.  We will never see our own weaknesses.  Narcissists do not see beyond their own point of view.  They feel like you need to improve, but they are fine.  However, when we have a realistic view of who we are as people, we understand our faults and flaws.  We also tend to be more forgiving of other people's faults and flaws.  This helps us to have better relationships.  Narcissists cannot have healthy relationships.  It has been proven.

Conclusion
How does all of this relate to the early childhood world?  Are you teaching children to have a realistic view of themselves or are you teaching them to always feel good about themselves?  If you never point out a child's faults, that child will never understand he/she has a fault.  Remember, the "no shame" mantra comes from the relativism camp.  There is a difference between shaming a child to repentance and shaming a child in a manner that belittles.  The first type tells the child they are better than their behavior.  The second type tells a child they are worthless.  We must bring back the shame that leads to repentance if we want to teach children to have self-acceptance.  Children will continue to grow up to be narcissists until we decide maybe teaching children right and wrong might be a good idea.

I hope you have enjoyed this post.  Goodbye and God bless!! https://linktr.ee/natawade

Language Development for 4 to 5 year olds - Communication (Part 6)

This post will continue the discussion of the component - Expressive Language.  We will finish this component and then move on to begin the component - Speech.  Remember I am taking my information from the Tennessee Early Learning Developmental Standards (TN-ELDS).

Continuing the learning expectation - Uses conventions of speech while expressing ideas, the next performance indicator is:  Understands and uses colloquial expressions in daily conversation.  While people from other cultures may struggle greatly with picking up colloquial expressions when learning English as a second language.  Children in America usually have no issue with this.  Proper grammar proves much more difficult.  In fact, our colloquial expressions often hinder the instruction of proper grammar.  Maybe that is why children pick this up so easily.  Many adults tend to use colloquial expressions in their daily speech rather than proper grammar.

The next performance indicator is:  Talks in more complete and more complex sentences; sentences are related to each other and fit together in thought.  Most children by the time they are 5 years old will conquer this one to some respect.  The complexity of the children's sentences may vary wildly according to whether or not a language delay has come into play.  However, even those with language delays will be putting together complete thoughts using their limited vocabulary unless a moderate to severe developmental delay exists.  Five year olds that have not conquered this particular performance indicator should be tested for developmental delays and/or autism.

Now, we will move on to the learning expectation:  Participates in conversations.  The first performance indicator is:  Takes turns in conversation and interrupts less frequently.  It has been my experience in the last several years that interrupting by 4 year olds has gotten considerably worse.  It may be that the language delays many 4 year olds have been manifesting slow down the development of conversational skills.  However, I blame the overindulgence of American children.  Learning not to interrupt requires that a child develop patience.  Patience does not develop when a child is not corrected.  Children today are hardly ever corrected.  They are redirected.  They have their environments micromanaged in order to avoid power struggles.  They are allowed free rein to do whatever the heck they want to do.  Correction to today's children is a foreign concept.  Therefore, today's children do not develop the patience necessary to have good conversational skills.

The next performance indicator for this learning expectation is:  Engages in "give and take" conversations with friends on topics of interest.  I have seen a few children in the last several years conquer this performance indicator.  However, most children I have observed recently tend to talk "at" each other instead of "with" each other.  I have seen the same trend in adults recently as well.  Americans are becoming very guilty of talking about what they want to talk about without any sense of carrying on a conversation.  The children are picking this trait up from the adults.  Cohesive conversations might be on the verge of extinction.  I blame this on the disappearing of the family dinner table.  Children of the past learned their conversational skills from listening to the adults carry on conversations at the dinner table with family and guests.  We have become a society that talks "at" each other instead of "with" each other.

We will now switch to the component - Speech.  The learning expectation for this one is:  Speaks clearly enough to be understood.  The first performance indicator is:  Generally produces all sounds of language accurately and is easily understood by others.  Most 4 year olds usually speak well enough to be understood by those that spend time with them.  However, I am definitely seeing an uptick in speech problems.  I call the new trend "lazy tongue" because most of the problems deal with the placement of the tongue.  I have worked more in the last two years helping children develop their tongue muscles than ever before.  Children are having problems with more than just a few of the consonant sounds nowadays.  It is becoming necessary to do activities where the children strengthen their tongue muscles.  I blame the sippee cups, and I now have the evidence in which I have been looking for a long time.  I recently started a new two year old child that could not drink from a regular cup.  He had exclusively drunk from a sippee cup since being weaned from the bottle.  It took us a couple of months to conquer drinking from a regular cup.  Therefore, I have watched this child for the "lazy tongue" problems I have seen in other children.  Lo and behold, he has developed every single one of the issues I have been encountering.  It may take us until this child is 5 years old to straighten out all these issues.  He is the worst case of lazy tongue I have encountered.  People, please teach children to use regular cups and only use sippee cups sparingly.

The second performance indicator for this one is:  Learns to say new words easily, even those with 4 or 5 syllables.  With all the speech problems I have been encountering many children are not conquering this one at all.  A lot of children attempt these words but leave out or jumble middle sounds.  At this age it is the middle sounds I have to work on so hard.  With 3 year olds I work on the onset sounds at the beginning of a word only to have to work on the same sound in the middle and end of words at 4 years old.  If I ever go back to school for a second masters, I do believe I will get my degree in speech pathology because I do that job already.

I am going to combine the last two performance indicators for this one.  They are:  Uses a dialect that matches peers and adults in family, neighborhood and part of county in which he lives.  Uses dialect that patterns the rhythm, pitches, stress and intonation of geographic area and cultural background.  Dialect tends to be something children do pick up easily.  If a child has not picked up the dialect of at least their family by 4 years old, I immediately look for developmental delays or other issues.  That is a definite red flag.

I hope you have enjoyed this post.  Goodbye and God bless!! https://linktr.ee/natawade

 

Relativism and the Concept of Child Discipline

This post will continue the discussion of relativism and how it affects early childhood theory and practice.  This particular post will look heavily into history and take a logical approach to some assertions among leading experts on this topic.  Sometimes when one takes a statement and weighs it against history and logic, the philosophical bias becomes more evident.

Relativism and Good and Evil
The most basic premise of relativism involves the nonexistence of a definite good and evil.  Everything falls into different shades of gray.  Therefore, punishing a child because they have done "wrong" contradicts the very foundation of relativism.  Children should be led to better choices not punished for wrongdoing.  However, in the real world we really cannot get away from the concept of good and evil.  Even liberals have their own concept of evil and it usually involves conservatives.  Let a conservative in public life make a mistake or misstep, and liberals will very quickly pounce and label that person with every "evil" label in their arsenal.  How many people have been labeled "bigots," "racists," "homophobes," "sexist," etc. when they took a stand against a liberal point of view.  Believe me, liberals really do have their own concept of good and evil.  It just does not match the conservative point of view.  Therefore, in reality relativism stands for the removal of what has historically been morally right in order for them to push the boundaries of what is acceptable.  They want to do what is right in their own eyes.  History contains a plethora of examples of people following this very philosophy.  Those societies usually imploded.  Please keep that in mind.

A Look at Corporal Punishment from a Logical Point of View
Now, we will turn our attention to corporal punishment.  In this, I am going to play devil's advocate and take the statements made by progressives and liberals on this subject and apply logic to it.  First, we will look at the statement "spanking makes children more violent."  This statement represents the "common knowledge" of today's parenting experts.  I am using an If/Then approach for the rest of this discussion.  If this statement is true, then children should be less violent than they were 30 or 40 years ago.  As more and more parents adopt a "no spanking" policy, we as a society should see a significant drop in the level of violence in children.  Are we seeing a drop in the level of violence?  For this you would need to speak to someone old enough to have seen society both ways.  What do those that have been in childcare for 20 to 30 years say about children today?  Most of them will admit that children have become more violent not less.  I keep up with several childcare chat groups, and it is not uncommon at all for providers and other children to be punched, cussed, or otherwise physically assaulted by 3 and 4 year olds.  I am old enough to know that this type of behavior was not common 30 to 40 years ago.  Up until about 30 years ago most children were still spanked by their parents.  That was the point in our history spanking began to fall out of favor.  Now, spanking has nearly completely fallen out of favor.  Therefore, if the assertion that spanking makes children more violent is true, then we should be seeing a significant drop in the level of violence among children.  We are not.  I will leave it at that.

Is all Corporal Punishment Child Abuse?
Next, we will look at the second most popular stance on corporal punishment.  Many progressives and liberals assert that all corporal punishment is child abuse.  Using the If/Then approach again, let us discuss that.  If all corporal punishment is child abuse, then every or almost every child born before say 1960 was abused.  If every single child from the dawn of time until 1960 suffered abuse as a child, then every person from the dawn of time until 1960 should have shown the effects of toxic stress.  Now, I know some progressives and liberals that would run with that statement and really do some rewriting of history.  However, as an avid student of history I have much more respect for history than that.  Have we had stable communities and societies since the dawn of time?  Yes and no.  However, if even one community or society remained stable for even a few years, that would dispute the claim that all children before 1960 were abused.  Children that endure toxic stress have trouble functioning as adults.  Those children would have problems establishing stable communities and societies.  We have had lots of stable communities and societies that have lasted in some cases thousands of years and in some cases hundreds of years.  All of these stable communities and societies were filled with people that had been spanked as a child.  Remember, there is a huge difference between normal stress and toxic stress.  Normal stress produces fully functioning adults.  Toxic stress produces people incapable of handling the normal stresses of life.  Maybe, just maybe spanking does not fall into the toxic stress category.

The Dangers of Too Liberal of an Interpretation
Progressives and Liberals fail to understand one very important concept.  Laws and regulations need to be specific in their interpretation in order for them to be enforceable.  When laws and regulations are too broadly defined, they leave too much open for interpretation and become nearly impossible to enforce.  When you too broadly define child abuse, you water down the effectiveness of enforcing what is true child abuse.  Have you ever heard of the old proverb, "Strain out a gnat and swallow a camel?"  True child abuse has been around since the dawn of time.  Be careful not to become too broad in what you consider child abuse or you may find yourself going after people that are not abusing their children and completely missing the ones that do.

I hope you have enjoyed this post.  Goodbye and God bless!! https://linktr.ee/natawade

Language Development for 4 to 5 year olds - Communication (Part 5)

This post will continue the discussion of the component - Expressive Language and the learning expectation:  Uses conventions of speech while expressing ideas.  Remember I am taking my information from the Tennessee Early Learning Developmental Standards (TN-ELDS).

We will start with the performance indicator:  Understands "yesterday," "today," and "tomorrow."  Like so many other performance indicators in the language development section, this one very much depends on the child's language exposure.  Those children that have language delays will have trouble with this one.  Those that do not will conquer it easily.  These concepts are picked up in conversations with adults.  For the adults, this will mean that they will have to constantly correct the child's wrong notions of time over and over and over when they are 3 years old.  Many adults do not bother with this very critical step.  Therefore, many children will not conquer this one until they are 5 or 6 years old.

The next performance indicator is:  May use slang (e.g., "Give me five," "Cool!").  Unlike proper language, slang tends to be the one thing most children pick up quite quickly.  I had one little boy that was three years old.  He called the police "Po Po," which we all found quite amusing.  However, this little boy really thought that is what the police were called.  Obviously, every adult around him called the police that, and so he thought that is what they were called.  Adults sometimes forget how powerful their influence can be on the children around them.  Many, many a cuss word has come out of small children's mouths because the adults in their life do not filter their language around the children.  Children pick up slang without effort.  Please, remember that.

That brings us to the next performance indicator:  Generally uses sentences with correct grammar.  This one depends so greatly on a child's language experiences that it should shame adults into using better grammar around their children.  Children that have educated parents and have been read to regularly conquer this one easily.  Children with uneducated parents that never or rarely read to them, use the same level of grammar correctness of the people in their lives.  Children with uneducated parents that try to read to them regularly but still use horrible grammar in their everyday speech will still have children that struggle with this performance indicator.  Remember, I told you in the previous paragraph that children pick up slang without effort.  Picking up correct grammar usage takes time and practice.  It is like everything else in life.  The bad comes easy.  The good comes with hard work and effort.

The next performance indicator is:  Pronounces new words easily.  This one hits on the growing issue of speech problems I have touched on in other posts.  I am seeing more and more speech problems with 3 and 4 year olds than I have seen before.  Children are having more and varied problems with consonant and blend sounds.  I have called this phenomenon "lazy tongue" because most of the problems have to do with tongue placement and usage to create the sounds.  I still have not pinpointed what is causing this problem.  It may be a conglomeration of many different trends coming together to create this particular issue.  Whatever the cause, I am having to work much harder at teaching phonemic awareness and letter sounds these days.  For many of the sounds I am having to break it down to its mechanics and teach the children where to place the tongue and lips to make each sound.  What amazes me is how hard it is for many of the children to do.  The tongue muscle is so underdeveloped that is takes days and sometimes weeks of trying to get the sounds correct.  I have never seen anything like it.

The last performance indicator for this post is:  Has expanding vocabulary (keep in mind that a child knows more words than he says).  This holds true for most 4 year olds.  However, the amount of vocabulary from one four year old to another four year old can vary astronomically.  Some 4 year olds have vocabulary of 1000 words or more.  Some 4 year olds have barely 100 words.  Language delays play heavily into the level of vocabulary a child has.  This one is also heavily affected by how much the child has had an adult read to them.  This diversity of ability makes the jobs of preschool and Headstart teachers difficult.  Trying to catch the children at the bottom end of the skill level up with those at the top level proves impossible in just one year of preschool.  Therefore, this problem spills over into kindergarten and beyond.  Truthfully, those children at the bottom never catch those at the top.  Many of those children at the bottom of the skill level need two years of preschool before kindergarten not just one.  I fear politics will never allow these children to receive the additional instruction they need because many would construe the practice as racist since minority children tend to be the majority of children at the bottom of the skill level.  That is unfortunate for these children.

I hope you have enjoyed this post.  Goodbye and God bless!! https://linktr.ee/natawade

Relativism and the Concept of Choices

This post will look in more depth at the concept of choices in early childhood theory.  We will start with the concept of right and wrong versus social norms.  We will then move on to how social norms play out in society at large.  Finally we will look at the importance of obedience.

Right and Wrong vs. Social Norms
Whether you realize it or not, our society has moved from the concept of right and wrong toward social norms.  Instead of everything being cut and dry or black and white, everything has now become different shades of grey.  The lighter the grey the more "accepted" it is.  The darker the grey the more "misunderstood" it is.  The liberal population of this country want to take us away from set principles of right and wrong.  Why has this happened?  To be brutally honest, liberals do not want to answer to an all-powerful God and His ideas of right and wrong.  They want to do what is right in their own eyes.  What is wrong with that?  A hundred years ago most everyone could answer that question without using too much brain power.  However, since our society has gone down this path for several decades many people do not see the harm in that statement.  What is wrong with everyone doing what is right in their own eyes?  That brings me back to the Boston Marathon Bomber.  In his eyes killing infidels (Americans) was right.  However, what he did was not right in the eyes of anyone in Boston.  This brings us to social norms.  It is the liberal's answer to the conundrum of situations like the Boston Marathon Bomber.  However, the social norms do not necessarily follow the old traditional path of right and wrong.  Many, many behaviors and lifestyles that were once considered wrong have gained prominence in the idea of social norms.  AND if you dare to follow the old ideas of right and wrong and cross their social norms, you are the evil one not the other way around.  For those of us that still hold to the traditional view of right and wrong, it feels like our culture is upside down and backwards.  One of my favorite quotes that I see quite often on Facebook is this:  "Just because a majority says that something is right does not make it right."  A student of history would know this.  Need an example?  The Nazis of Germany were followed by the majority at least in the beginning.  As time went on, the people of Germany began to see the error of their way.  Maybe just maybe Americans will begin to open their eyes and understand the peril of the path they have chosen.

Social Norms and Political Correctness
Moving toward social norms also moves us toward choices over obedience.  In the social norms' mindset everything is a matter of choice.  Removing right and wrong makes the concept of obedience obsolete.  However, has anyone ever stopped to consider the logical conclusion to the path our society has chosen?  When you remove absolutes, everything from laws to customs becomes subject to the whims of the popular mindset of the day.  We already have this to some degree.  It is called political correctness, and more and more it becomes the law of the land.  Many people may not see the harm in political correctness, but as many people are sick to death of constantly doing and saying the wrong thing innocently because they have not gotten the memo on the latest correct thing to do and say.  It has now become politically incorrect to say "you guys."  I say that all the time.  Where does it end?  Where do we reach the point where we achieve absolute political correctness?  We will never reach the end because there will always be someone that wants to push it in a different direction.  Do we really want a society where everything is subject to the whims of the political correctness police?  It has already reached the point of ridiculous.  Personally, I am ready to send the political correctness police packing.  Without absolutes a society drifts from one crazy notion to the next crazy notion.  A society needs stability.  Whether you like them or not, a society needs absolutes.

The Importance of Obedience
Now let us take this into the early childhood realm.  Most of us in the early childhood world understand that children need structure.  However, when you move that structure over into the realm of boundaries many liberals cry "foul."  Can you have one without the other?  Can you provide structure for children and give them complete choice?  The answer to that question is a big NO.  I am sorry, but you cannot have it both ways.  If you want to have structure for children, boundaries must be in place.  To enforce boundaries, obedience is necessary.  Children will not choose of their own accord to be restricted.  It goes against their fallen nature.  The concept of choices in the early childhood world equates the concept of social norms and political correctness in the adult world.  It represents the removal of absolutes from the picture.  I am sorry if this upsets many in the early childhood realm, but the fact remains.  You cannot remove absolutes without creating chaos.  I have seen so many early childhood professionals following the theory of giving children choices thinking they were doing the most wonderful job in the world.  Usually, I leave those classrooms with my teeth chattering because it was utter and complete chaos.  I have been in other classrooms where boundaries were the norm.  Not only were the children well-behaved, but they were also light years ahead of the other classrooms academically.  Children thrive with boundaries in place.  They do not thrive in utter and complete chaos.  The evidence should be overwhelming, but some people are so dead set on removing absolutes that they do not allow themselves to see the true consequences.

I hope you have enjoyed this post.  Goodbye and God bless!! https://linktr.ee/natawade

Language Development for 4 to 5 year olds - Communication (Part 4)

This post will continue the discussion of the component - Expressive Language.  First we will finish the learning expectation:  Uses language for a variety of purposes, and then move on to the next learning expectation.  Remember I am taking my information from the Tennessee Early Learning Developmental Standards (TN-ELDS).

The first performance indicator for this post is:  Talks about something this is not in front of him ("Last night, we went to the movies.")  This performance indicator does usually manifest before a child's fifth birthday, but for some children it may be the month of the child's fifth birthday.  Those children will language delays will not conquer this one until closer to their fifth birthday.  Those without language delays may conquer this one shortly after their fourth birthday.  Some advanced children may conquer this one while they are three years old.  A child must reach a certain level of language maturity to be able to carry out this performance indicator.  In today's society some children will simply not get enough language exposure to develop this one on time.  A great deal of the language delay we see in early childhood settings these days is caused by lack of experiences rather than a physical reason for the delay.  I am sorry, but parents remain the main cause of this type of delay.  Too many parents in America put too little emphasis on reading to their children and other activities that build language skills.

The next performance indicator is:  Easily expresses his feelings, fears, ideas, wishes, and dreams.  This one goes straight to what is called "emotional intelligence," and it is something American children struggle with horribly.  Much has been written and said in recent years trying to help children express their feelings.  Part of the problem involves the language delay we are seeing in so many children.  However, it goes deeper than that.  Unfortunately, a great number of adults cannot easily express their feeling, fears, ideas, wishes, and dreams.  This rubs off on the children in the sphere of influence of these adults.  The bullying epidemic we have seen explode over the last several years has as its root cause this lack of emotional intelligence.  Children do not come by emotional intelligence naturally.  It must be taught and modeled.  However, the adults must possess it first in order to pass it along.  I know we fight against the tide sometimes, but make it a priority to help children develop emotional intelligence along with academic intelligence.  Both are necessary to function in the adult world.

The last performance indicator for this learning expectation is:  Says full name and full address; knows more about where she lives (state, country).  Again ten years ago this was a prerequisite for kindergarten and everyone had to learn this information.  Now, it is not that simple.  Many, many children have more than one address.  Custody division is as such sometimes that they divide weeks between two residences or even within the same week.  Very often children do not share the same last name as their mother anymore, and sometimes not even with their siblings.  Many schools require this information still.  Therefore, the last 3 or 4 months before kindergarten becomes a marathon session of learning this information.  Whereas, years ago children acquired this information in a much more natural way.  The children I presently have in my care that will start kindergarten in a few months knowing their full name but not their address.  One of them has two addresses.  This will be something we have to conquer in the next two months before they start school.  Both of them are already five years old.  As for the knowledge of state and country, unless a child has been in a quality preschool setting, they do not know this information.  It is another item that seems to fall through the cracks these days.

Now we will move on to the learning expectation:  Uses conventions of speech while expressing ideas.  The first performance indicator is:  Uses past, present, and future verb tense.  Again, this one is affected by language delay.  Those children that have not had good language experiences will struggle with using past, present, and future tense correctly in conversation.  Those children that have had good language experiences will conquer this one.  Good books and good conversation experience develop this particular performance indicator.  Nothing can replace the importance of having adults read and talk to children.

I hope you have enjoyed this post.  Goodbye and God bless!! https://linktr.ee/natawade

 

The Role of Relativism in Early Childhood Theory

This post will continue the discussion of philosophical bias in early childhood theory.  Specifically, it will look at the role the philosophical theory of relativism plays in the foundation of many early childhood theories and conclusions.  Remember, theories in the humanities cannot be divorced from their philosophical base.  It is very important, then, to understand the effect this philosophical base plays in the conclusions drawn from said theories.

The Definition of Relativism
The concept of relativism we will discuss for this article is the absence of absolute truth.  All truth is relative to the cultures and circumstances of the situation.  Universal truths for the relativist do not exist.  Therefore, the concept of right and wrong cannot be taught.  Everything comes down to choices based on the what is acceptable and appropriate according to the situation and societal norms.  I should not have to point out that this philosophy is mainly embraced in the agnostic and atheistic Western world.  Most of the world's religions dictate a definite right and wrong, and thus take issue with this philosophy.  Therefore, when dealing with a theory that has as its base the theory of relativism, the first item of business for you to decide is whether or not you believe in a definite right and wrong.  Are there behaviors that are universally wrong?  Are there behaviors that are universally right?  I find it interesting that even in the Western world, some circumstances make even liberals throw out their relativism.  Case in point, the trial of the Boston Marathon Bomber.  In a state that absolutely abhors the death penalty, he received the death penalty to satisfy everyone's sense of justice.  If there are no absolute right and wrong, why would these people need justice in this situation.  For everyone that has a hard time with this concept, I suggest you read Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis.  I have never seen someone tear apart relativism like Mr. C. S. Lewis.

Relativism and Choices
Probably the most obvious sign of relativism in early childhood theory is the prevalence of choices over obedience.  Since right and wrong are all relative, it is not proper to teach children right and wrong as they did in the old days.  Children must be led to appropriate choices.  Does this sound familiar early childhood people?  Instead of making a child choose between right and wrong, we give them two positive choices to teach them how to make good choices.  However, when in life as adults do we ever get to choose between two positives?  Do we not most of time have to choose the lesser of two evils or it is a clear choice between a positive we should do versus a negative we want to do?  Is not the latter really the choice that faces most children?  How does two positive choices prepare children for the choices of the real world?  It does not.  However, when you remove the concept of right and wrong, you must find another way to instill social norms.  Do not get me wrong, liberals have their own concept of right and wrong.  They just do not want to call it that.  They want a world without having to answer to a higher authority.  They want to do what is right in their own eyes, but believe me, if you cross their social norms, you will feel the wrath.  They will make you feel like you are the most evil person on the planet because you crossed what they feel is socially acceptable.  I am afraid God built into us a sense of right and wrong that we just cannot shake.  It comes out despite our best efforts to create the world in our own image of reality.

How Relativism Affects Environmental Structure and Practice
You might be wondering how in the world does relativism come into play in how I set up my environment.  The answer to that is one word - accessibility.  How many times does that word accessibility show up in rating scales and accreditation standards?  The concept of accessibility has its roots in the foundation of choices over obedience.  In the world of relativism children should be allowed to grow and discover on their own terms and not the terms of the adult.  Adults should not exercise authority over the children but lead them down appropriate paths.  Children should have access to a multitude of choices and limiting those choices through inaccessibility will hinder their development.  I hope that sounds as silly to you as it does to me.  Early childhood practitioners in parts of the world outside the Western world find this notion of accessibility to be one of the worst concepts of Western philosophy.  They look at this as the reason our children are spoiled brats.  Of course, I have already spoken to how people outside the Western world feel about our notion of choices over obedience.  They understand that the notion of accessibility flows from the concept of choices.  It flies in the face of their cultural foundation.  When I dropped down to unregulated, one of the first things to go out the door was accessibility.  The children in my care have been so much better for it.  I have spoken in other posts about the "poof" environment where everything that is broken or lost is immediately replaced.  Accessibility plays heavily in the "poof" environment, which is not healthy for children.  They will never learn responsibility if everything magically reappears when they have destroyed or lost it.  When my children reach preschool age the destruction of my materials is almost nonexistent.  Toddlers still destroy things but even they soon learn better when those things go away when they destroy them.  My good materials only come out for special occasions, and that has not in the least stifled the development of the children in my care.

How Relativism Affects the Teaching of Academic Content
In the world of relativism adults should never dictate to children but lead them into appropriate choices.  It should be obvious how teaching academic content to preschool children and relativism would clash.  Academic content takes teacher directed lessons.  Relativism wants child directed lessons.  In recent days I have come across an article that states that teaching academic content to preschoolers actually hurts them in the long run.  The bias for that article is so intense it makes blood boil every time I see it.  Remember I told you that it is impossible to divorce a study's philosophical base from its results.  You must take a study of this type and filter it through its philosophical bias.  The philosophical bias for this is relativism.  Adults should not dictate the content of preschool.  The children should dictate the content of preschool.  That is the bias of that particular article.  Let us look at this logically.  Are they saying that children unlearn concepts when they get older?  Does a child that learns their colors at two or three develop learning problems later in life because they learned their colors too early?  Does learning your letters and numbers at three and four cause you to have learning difficulties in elementary school?  This is so ridiculous I do not even want to comment, but I will.  In all my years as a preschool teacher that teaches academic content to two and three year olds that were ready for said content, I have never EVER seen negative results.  Now, there have been many children that were not ready for academic content at three or even four because they had language delays and immaturity issues.  You cannot teach academic content to those children before you fix the language delays and immaturity issues.  I would wager lots of money that the above study used children with language delays and immaturity issues to prove their point.  Trying to teach them academic content would make them hate school and do worse in elementary school.  However, a good half of the population can be taught academic content in preschool and do well for the rest of their life.  Remember, I do not take age into consideration.  I take skill level no matter how old they are.  Maybe one of these days grouping by age will go out the window, and we will understand that not all two-, three-, four-, five-, six-year olds, etc. are created equal.

How Relativism Affects Child Discipline Practices
In the world of relativism adults should not dictate right and wrong.  No where in the early childhood field does the effects of relativism become more evident than in the area of child discipline practices.  Teaching children to be obedient is equated with child abuse in many circles.  Children must be given choices not told "no."  Toddlers must be redirected not told '"no."  Punishment leads to violent tendencies in children.  We must facilitate children's upbringing never dictate.  I am actually very thankful that few facilities follow this philosophical train wholeheartedly.  A great big majority of preschool teachers tell children "no" often, but just not when the state people are present.  Also, when it comes to certain aspects of a child's environment, dictating by the rules is completely acceptable.  Case in point - handwashing and other sanitary practices.  It is perfectly acceptable to force children to wash their hands a thousand a times a day.  However, when you hit the areas that have for generations upon generations been considered "wrong" behavior, you had better redirect or give two positive choices.  People it really is all about removing God and all He stands for from the classroom.  These discipline rules are ridiculous.  I will in a future post look at most of these topics in more detail.  I just wanted to give you a taste of how relativism finds its way into nearly every aspect of early childhood "best practice."

I hope you have enjoyed this post.  Goodbye and God bless!! https://linktr.ee/natawade

Language Development for 4 to 5 year olds - Communication (Part 3)

This post will continue the discussion of language development in the area of learning - Communication.  We will finish the component - Receptive Language and move on to the component - Expressive Language.  Remember I am taking my information from the Tennessee Early Learning Developmental Standards (TN-ELDS).

We are still in the component:  Listens with understanding and interest to conversations, directions, music, and a variety of reading materials.  The first performance indicator for this post is:  Understands simple, then more complex, sequences of events.  It has been my experience that children will little exposure to the concept of sequencing struggle with this concept.  Children that have had good exposure pick up on this concept and run with it.  Therefore, if you have a group of 4 year olds that have had little exposure with sequencing, you will need to start with simple sequencing and slowly build to more complex sequencing activities.  Building sequencing activities in your schedule helps this process immensely.  If you do certain activities in the same order every day or week, then it will be easier for children to pick up on the concept.  However, this does not guarantee that all children will pick it up easily.  It will be necessary to discuss with them on a consistent basis the order of events to give them constant practice.  Sequencing does not come naturally to many children.

The last performance indicator for this learning expectation is:  Understands concept of more/less, full/empty, which lays a foundation for math concepts.  Most 4 year olds do conquer this particular performance indicator.  However, I have learned to never assume anything when it comes to what a child does/does not know.  Make sure to ask the child to demonstrate understanding of this concept.  If a problem occurs, it usually occurs in the more/less category when actual counting of objects is required.  When a situation is obvious visually, the majority of children know when a group has more/less objects.  If a child has no understanding of full/empty, that usually denotes lack of experience with the concept.  It completely blows my mind how so many concepts seem to be falling through the cracks from lack of experiences.

Now we will move on to the component - Expressive Language.  The first learning expectation is:  Uses language for a variety of purposes.  The first performance indicator is:  Likes telling and retelling stories, poems, and songs.  Most 4 year old children like to tell and retell stories.  However, many times you can tell a great deal about that child's language development by the coherence of those stories.  I can also tell how much a child has been read to in his/her life by the coherence of the stories they tell.  A child that has had good experiences with books and having stories read to him/her will be able to tell stories that have a definite beginning, middle, and end.  Children that have not had good experiences with books and having stories read to him/her will tell stories that ramble without point or plot.  As far as retelling poems, only those children in high quality programs or that have academically devoted stay-at-home moms will even be familiar with the concept of a poem.  Nursery rhymes no longer have the same place in childhood that they once held.  As far as songs are concerned, most children will sing the songs in which they have the most experience.  Sometimes this can be a problem in a childcare setting if that involves certain popular music on the radio.  Some of those songs are vulgar and completely inappropriate for preschool age children.  Therefore, make sure you provide many opportunities for age appropriate music in your setting to give these children something decent to sing.

The last performance indicator for this post is:  Tells the sequence of a story without pictures.  To be truthful, I do not know very many 4 year olds that can accurately tell a story with the pictures.  Only the very top 5% of children today can tell a story without picture prompts.  It is a sad reality of today's culture.  Children are not read to often enough to conquer this particular performance indicator.  In all honesty, American children have struggled with this one for decades.  Even though children 10, 20, or 30 years ago had adults read to them more than children today, most of them did not get enough experience to handle this particular performance indicator at 4 years old.  Reading to children is so important.  If every single American parent would make a commitment to read aloud to his/her child(ren) every day, we would have such a surge in academic performance it would be astounding.  Alas, most parents do not make the time to read to their children.  That leaves it to the childcare providers to fill in the gap, but group readings will never have the same impact as that one-on-one contact between a parent, child, and a good book.

I hope you have enjoyed this post.  Goodbye and God bless!! https://linktr.ee/natawade

 

An Introduction to the Effects of Philosophical Bias on Early Childhood Theory

This post will start a series on how philosophical bias plays into early childhood theory and research.  Researchers in the humanities often do not allude to the impact philosophical bias can have on their research.  Many times these researchers want to appear to be as impartial as research that uses hard data.  However, the nature of research in the humanities cannot be divorced from its philosophical base.  That will be the topic of this post.

The Truth about Bias in Research
Americans live by their research.  However, most of the time we Americans have no idea how bias plays into that research.  We also seem to be very quick to forget how research of even a year ago has been completely disputed by the latest research.  In the humanities, all subjects involving people and their cultures, the data collected for research must come from questionnaires or observation.  Unlike research done using strictly scientific methods involving hard data, this soft data lends itself to bias in ways that hard data does not.  Hard data can be measured and the results computed with mathematical operations.  Soft data can be manipulated using statistical methods but the exact measurement aspect does not exist.  Mind you, even research done with scientific methods can be skewed by bias, but when soft data is used, removing bias remains nearly impossible.  I will explain this completely in the next several sections.

Worldviews
What is a worldview?  It is how a person defines life and existence on this planet.  Everyone has a worldview whether they are religious or not.  Atheists define life in the absence of an all powerful God.  All of the world religions define life according to the tenets of their faith.  We all hold to some belief in the purpose of life or the laws governing the concept of life on this planet.  Our worldview defines us as people.  We function according to our worldview whether we realize it or not.  Therefore, when we propose theories that deal with the human experience, our worldview biases those theories whether we realize it or not.  Our worldview constitutes what we consider to be important and unimportant.  We cannot divorce our worldview from our theories.  It is impossible.

The Foundation - Priorities
This brings me to priorities.  Priorities constitute the ranking system we give to the various and assorted aspects of life.  It is what we consider important or unimportant.  We all have priorities.  Every time we make a decision our brain pulls from our personal list of priorities.  We do this without even realizing that it happens.  When two items from our list come into conflict with one another, the brain will go with the one most important to us.  Sometimes our perceived priorities and our actual priorities do not match.  Oftentimes this shows itself in what we consider bad decisions.  For example, a person may believe that family has a higher priority than wealth, but every time a decision must be made, acquiring wealth always triumphs what the family needs.  Sometimes this is so subtle we do not realize that our actual priorities and our perceived priorities do not match.  However, when we find ourselves making excuses for our choices, that should be a clear sign that our perceived priorities and actual priorities are not in agreement.  Most people have discrepancies between their perceived priorities and actual priorities.  Very few people are so in tune with who they are as people that both of those priorities agree.  Our actual priorities flow from our actual worldview, which can also be different than our perceived worldview.  These actual priorities govern our thoughts and our actions.  They are the rules we live by.  If a person feels that his/her priorities seem out of whack, that person needs to take a good hard look at their actual worldview.  We as human beings very often give lip service to many tenets of thought without actually internalizing those tenets.  We also internalize some tenets of thought without regard to how that fits into our perceived worldview.  Americans seem to be especially guilty of the second phenomenon especially when it comes to the "latest research."  We hardly ever filter new research by its bias and therefore, oftentimes find ourselves conflicted without knowing why we are conflicted.  Many other cultures hold harder to their worldviews and automatically filter new information by their worldviews.  We as Americans tend to flip flop quite a bit in our actual worldview.  This causes us to have a constantly changing list of priorities without even realizing it is happening.  Remember our actual priorities will follow our actual worldview.  Our brains will make decisions based on that list of priorities.  This makes it extremely important for people to understand their own worldview and how new information affects that worldview.  Bias is a big deal.  When we accept information just because it is information and we never filter it according to its bias, that will make us wishy-washy people or brainwashed people.  We need to understand what we believe about life and why we believe that way.  This affects our priorities.

How Priorities Form Theories
When researchers in the humanities postulate theories, the form those theories take depends greatly on their own priorities.  We often do not think about that process, but when we theorize in the humanities, we are often trying to give credence to our own priorities and prove them to be the most important.  This is how bias enters the theoretical process in the research of the humanities.  We cannot escape it.  Our worldview dictates our priorities.  Our priorities shape our theories.  Remember theories are educated guesses.  Laws in the humanities do not exist.  Laws can only be established when dealing with physical properties such as gravity.  The human race consists of so many different customs and cultures that establishing laws of human nature runs afoul of a culture somewhere on the planet.  Many people in the Western world would have you believe that laws of human nature exist, but people of other cultures would disagree wholeheartedly.  Culture plays a major role in how people function and interact.  We cannot divorce a people's culture from the theories that people produces.  This is true of Western culture as well as every other culture on the planet.

How Priorities Affect Conclusions
Now we come to the heart of the matter.  If a researcher's priorities have set the parameters of a theory, does that not also affect the conclusions of the research?  Most researchers set out to prove a certain point to be true.  They place importance on the point and whether they admit or not, the whole structure of the research project leads in that direction.  Some researchers do this blatantly.  Some researchers do try to remain unbiased, but the bias remains.  If you find a research project that proves the opposite of what the researchers set out to prove, that is a rare humanities research project indeed.  Therefore, when considering the conclusions of a research project, the underlying philosophical bias must be taken into consideration.  This is especially true when the research project is trying to prove the tenets of another culture to be wrong.  You cannot compare apples and oranges.  You cannot prove the rightness or wrongness of a point when dealing with opposing cultures.  The results of the research only hold for the culture in which it was conducted.  Any other use of research belittles other people's worldview.

I hope you have enjoyed this post.  Goodbye and God bless!! https://linktr.ee/natawade

Language Development for 4 to 5 year olds - Communication (Part 2)

This post will continue the discussion of Language Development for 4 to 5 year olds.  We are still in the component - Receptive Language and the learning expectation - Listens with understanding and interest to conversations, directions, music and a variety of reading materials.  Remember I am taking my information from the Tennessee Early Learning Developmental Standards (TN-ELDS).

The first performance indicator for this post is:  Understands "yesterday" and "tomorrow."  I have found that children that spend the majority of their time in structured settings conquer this one easily most of the time.  Children that spend most of their time in unstructured settings do not conquer this one.  Structure of schedule helps children develop a sense of the passage of time.  If a child's schedule is fairly consistent from day to day even if it is as simple as meals, snacks, and naptime at approximately the same time every day, then that child will understand the passage of time.  If a child's day is a random mash of events that has no consistency or order from day to day, then that child will struggle with the concept of the passage of time.  This one also depends on the level of the child's language development.  If a 4 year old has language delays, this concept will be a struggle for them.  Language development affects everything.

The next performance indicator is:  Defines objects by their use.  Most 4 year olds conquer this at his/her own level.  Some children will have a larger vocabulary of "uses" but most 4 year olds will define the objects they know by their uses.  This one will also be determined by a child's level of language development as well as science/nature development.  The amount of objects and concepts in which a 4 year old is exposed will determine the level of a child's "uses" vocabulary.  If a 4 year old does not define objects by their uses, a developmental delay may be in play.  Developmental screening should be employed in that case.

Next on the list is:  Understands "same" and "different."  Some children find this performance indicator easy.  Some children do not.  Left-brain children that notice details will catch sameness and differentness faster than right-brain children that look more at the whole picture.  Being able to spot details in right-brain leaning children will take practice and adult-driven instruction.  If a child shows difficulty in noticing details, simply switch to teacher-directed activities that demonstrate the differences.  Never assume a child will learn this on his/her own.  Some children really struggle with details.

The next performance indicator is:  Carries out a four-order, related direction (four levels would be "Time to go to bed; you need to take a bath, brush your teeth, put on your clean pajamas and find your favorite book for me to read to you.").  I do not know many 6 or 7 year old children in today's society that can actually do this one without constant reminders at every single level.  My own biological children could do this 20 years ago, but even they were not the norm for their time period.  I had very high expectations for following directions, and it showed.  There is the key to why this one has fallen so dramatically in recent years and why my own biological children could do it.  You get what you expect.  Period.  Many parents and even early childhood providers do not hold today's children to very high standards at all when it comes to following directions.  Most of these parents were not held to high expectations as children.  Therefore, the low expectations are normal to them.  In the 1980s and 1990s society scolded parents for being too demanding.  It was the social taboo of the era.  Now, we as a society are realizing those low standards bring disastrous societal results, but we have 20 to 30 years of low expectations to redo.  What amazes me is that the children in my care can do this if they have been with me for years, but they will not do the same at home.  They know I have high expectations, but they also understand that their parents do not have the same expectations.  The children will adjust to the expectation level of the adult.  The parents cannot understand how I get the children to do the things that they do here.  I try to show them how to have higher expectations, but they will always regress to what is normal for them.  It takes great effort to undo that "normal" expectation.

The last performance indicator for this post is:  Able to follow several unrelated directions in proper order, such as "Turn off the television, pick up the toys in your bedroom, and then come to the table for lunch.  This one is directly related to the last one.  Very few 4 year olds could accomplish this one in today's society because we do not expect them to follow directions that well.  Following directions has to be one of the weakest skills of today's American children.  Children in other parts of the world may be able to do this one well.  However, we are paying for years and years and years of low expectations for following directions.  To undo this, will require laying aside the stigma of high expectations for children.  Very often, high expectations are demonized as cruel and demanding.  Until we as a society lay that stigma aside, we will forever suffer with children that have great difficulty in following directions.  We cannot have one without the other.  Children are capable of so much more than we as Americans give them credit.  If the children have someone in their life that holds them to a higher standard, they will pull up and meet the challenge.  We are so far in the other ditch on this one, it would take great leaps to make it to being too strict and demanding.  I do believe it is time for us as a society to start holding our children to a higher standard in a lot of areas.  We will be so much better for it.

I hope you have enjoyed this post.  Goodbye and God bless!! https://linktr.ee/natawade

The Importance of Parental Needs

This post will cover the last of the points made by the British nanny on why American parents have such a hard time.  Her point was that American parents put their children's needs ahead of their own.  We will look at this in several different ways.

Putting Your Child First - A Bad Thing?
It has become the American symbol for excellence in parenting - always putting your child first.  I have read article after article on parenting websites about the importance of putting your child's needs ahead of your own needs.  However, that British nanny called us out on this for very good reason.  By doing what seems to be the best practice in parenting, we are sending so many negative signals to our children inadvertently.  Even though we have the best of intentions, a lack of wisdom bites us in the butt.

The Airplane Lesson
At the beginning of every flight in the United States, flight attendants give the emergency procedures information.  In it, they recommend in the event of an emergency that parents put on their oxygen masks first, then they put on the children's masks.  I am sure to many parents that seems backwards, but a true gem of wisdom hides in this procedure.  In the event of an emergency it is more important for the parents to get oxygen first so that they can take care of their children.  If they pass out due to lack of oxygen, both the parents and the child(ren) might die.  Many, many times American parents fall into the trap of being so consumed with fulfilling their child's needs and wants that their own needs fall to the wayside.  This can destroy their health and mental well-being to the point that they are no longer able to care for their children.  I am afraid it is a dirty little secret that many abuse cases in the US could have been avoided if the parent's needs had become a priority.  You can only push your needs aside so long before you snap.  Once you snap, bad things happen.  Once your health goes south, someone else must step in to take care of your children.  You must take care of you so that you can take care of them.  It is that simple.

Teaching Children to Respect Themselves
This one comes from an article I read recently.  In it a mother explains why giving into her children's preferences even when it seemed innocent sent a very unintended message to her children.  Whether we like it or not, children learn by example rather than by what we say.  When a mom constantly bends over backwards to let her children have what they want when they want it, she sends them the message that her wants and needs are unimportant.  This actually makes children insecure.  They do not learn to stand up for themselves when faced with a demanding person.  The mother has set the example of constantly giving in to demanding people.  This actually makes them more susceptible to bullying and being bullied.

This also removes a strong parental figure from the child's life.  Children need boundaries.  Without proper boundaries they feel lost and floundering.  When a child has that strong standard to butt up against, it makes them feel secure in themselves.  It helps the world make sense to them.  They see the parent standing up for what is expected and what is right.  They may not like it in the heat of the moment, but in the long run this sets an example for them to emulate.  They see the parent expecting respect, and it teaches them how to demand respect for themselves.

The Myth of the Magical Childhood
Most American parents give the reasoning that they want their children's childhood to be magical to explain their practices.  It is the number one reason parents put their child's needs ahead of their own.  However, I am afraid we have been sold bad goods on this one.  We have been led to believe that when children never have to face stress and always get what they want when they want it, these children will be secure and happy.  Unfortunately, the opposite is actually true.  Children that never face stress never learn to take risks.  Risks in this life are necessary for success.  We are setting our children up for constant failure because they are incapable of handling the least bit of stress.  Also, when a child gets everything he/she wants when he/she wants it, we create entitled brats that do not value anything.  Open up your eyes and look around!  We have done major damage to the millenials and all who follow them.

Another point on the magical childhood issue stems from the micromanaging of childhood.  We, the parents, schedule everything for the children to give them everything we did not have, and in the process, we take from them what actually made our childhoods magical.  Children make childhood magical through their imaginations and innate curiosity.  We have killed our children's ability to be imaginative and curious through our micromanagement of their childhoods.  We do let them go outside.  We do not let them explore.  It is too dangerous, we cry.  Parents need to back off and let their children be children - dirt, grime, risks, and all.

Conclusion
Parents, your needs are important.  Take care of yourself so that you will be there to take care of your children.  Set boundaries and stick to them like glue.  Those boundaries are what make for secure, happy children.  All the stuff is just stuff.  Be parents and let your children be children.  Your children do not need peers.  They need parents.  Give them the freedom to find their own magical childhood.  Do not try to make it for them.

I hope you have enjoyed this post.  Goodbye and God bless!! https://linktr.ee/natawade

 

Language Development for 4 to 5 year olds - Communication (Part 1)

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

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