This post will finish the discussion of the area of learning - Science, and the discussion for 3 to 4 year olds. The next time I do a post on child development we will move up to 4 to 5 year olds. This post will cover the last two components with their learning expectations and performance indicators. Remember I am taking my information from the Tennessee Early Learning Developmental Standards (TN-ELDS).
The next component is: Earth and Space Science. The learning expectations is: Understands sequencing and time in relation to knowledge and methods about Earth and space. The first performance indicator is: Understands the sequence of daily events. Conquering this performance indicator requires a daily routine for the child. If children have a daily routine, they will pick up the sequence of daily events. If children do not have a daily routine, there is no sequence for them to pick up. For those children life is random acts of chaos that follow one after the other. I know some people consider the sameness of following a daily routine to be maddening. However, if you work with children that is part of the program. Young children need a daily routine to learn so many different mathematical and science concepts. It does not have to be rigid, but it does have to be basically the same order of events from day to day. Think about children of long ago. Their days were measured in meals, naps, and stretches of free play. The schedule did not contain much, but it remained basically the same day after day. Those children reaped the benefits of a consistent daily schedule even though it was so simple. Today's children may or may not have meals that are consistent. Many experts are trying to do away with nap, and free play like it existed back then is extinct. We have all but lost the three basic components of a child's life in the last 30 years. Therefore, we have truly hurt a child's capacity to develop a sense of the passing of time.
The next performance indicator is: Demonstrates some understanding of duration of time, "all day," "for two days." It has been my experience that the language development of a child will determine if they conquer this particular performance indicator by 4 years old or not. Those that lag behind in language development will not conquer this one by 4 years old. Those that are behind in language development when they turn 3 years old but have good instruction during their third year usually do conquer this one by 4 years old. Those that have normal language development conquer this one easily. Language development affects all other domains of development. This is why I work so hard on language development in the preschool years. It seems all the other domains take care of themselves naturally when a child's language develops normally. However, in today's society language delay becomes more prevalent with every passing year, and this affects everything.
Now we will move on to the component - Physical Science. The learning expectation is: Solves problems in relation to knowledge and methods about energy. The first performance indicator is: Begins to participate in simple investigations to test observations, discuss and draw conclusions, and form generalizations. Wow! I do not even know where to begin with this one. I am having a hard enough time just getting 3 year olds to use enough language. Only my advanced children come even close to this one, and even with them they do not investigate without prompting. I have to plan activities to promote this type of behavior. The curiosity of childhood has been all but destroyed in today's children. By the time they are 3 years old, the majority of them expect to be entertained instead of entertaining themselves. Only the very few that have an extremely strong bent toward exploration will show this behavior on their own. Therefore, make sure you include simple science experiments in your weekly schedule. They will not get this instruction anywhere else.
The last performance indicator is: Thinks about a problem and figures what to do. I actually laughed out loud at this one. The typical response to a problem usually involves sitting in the floor and crying/wailing/hissy fit until the adult in the situation solves said problem for the child. I guess you could call that problem solving in a twisted way, but I call that being mentally lazy. I have really seen this first hand with preschools and even first and second graders when I go into schools to read my Lily books. Those books promote problem solving, and I stop in one place in the middle of Lily's Flower Igloo to ask the children how to solve Lily's problem. The responses I get can be rather amusing but some classes have so little problem solving skills that all I get are blank stares. It is like no one has ever asked them to problem solve before. I get that more than you would think. Helicopter parenting has killed this skill. If we adults would just step back and let children struggle just a little bit, we might be able to bring back the problem solving skills. Children as young as 2 years old can develop some pretty decent problem solving skills if the adults do not swoop in too fast. Children are capable of so much more than adults these days think. Give the children a little leeway, and let them start using the brain God gave them.
I hope you have enjoyed this post. Goodbye and God bless!! https://linktr.ee/natawade
Saturday, February 28, 2015
Saturday, February 21, 2015
What Happened to the Village?
This post will look at the third point brought up by the British nanny - we have lost the village. She maintained that parent competition is the main reason for this, but it involves a whole lot more. I will look at this from an American point of view.
Have we lost the village?
The answer to that question is unequivocally yes, and parent competition does have somewhat to do with it. When I was a child, all the adults in a community banded together as a united front to some degree. If a child got in trouble at school, that news usually beat him/her home, and he/she caught it again from the parents. To say that this deterred a great amount of bad behavior would be an understatement. For me, I caught it before I ever left school because my mother worked in the school system, my father was my bus driver and my uncle was my principal. Only one time in my elementary years did I have an episode where I had to be strongly reprimanded, and I cried so hard that I made myself sick. Fast forward to the present. We just recently had an episode in our area where a kindergarten child that had been removed from the classroom and set in the hall for being disruptive simply walked out of the front door and started walking down the 4 lane highway outside of the school. A couple spotted the child and brought the child back to the school. The teacher barely escaped being fired over this situation, and all the schools in the county had to readjust all of their security measures to accommodate this scenario. What happened to the child? Absolutely nothing. There was no reprimanding of any sort. The parents blamed the school. If this had happened when I was growing up, the child would have been held accountable. Number one, a child that was so disruptive that he/she had to be removed from the classroom took a trip to the principal and the matter was settled in short order. That is no longer the case. Number two, most parents and teachers stood with each other and children were expected to know better. Now, a great deal of the time, teachers bear the blame for most everything, and we expect nothing from children.
What happened?
The village did not just one day disappear, but it diminished gradually over time. Several factors contributed to this occurrence but one book in the 1940s triggered an acceleration of the village's demise. That book was Common Sense Baby and Child Care by Dr. Benjamin Spock. That book sparked the philosophical divide that now exists on the subject of parenting and introduced the beginnings of the "best practice" movement among early childhood theorists. It took nearly 4 decades for the teachings of Dr. Spock to become the consensus. However, even now in the rural areas of some parts of the county and among conservative and fundamentalist populations, Dr. Spock is still considered a heretic. Before I dive into the philosophical divide, I want to look at some of the other factors that have contributed to the demise of the village although the philosophical divide is by far the most prevalent.
The Great Melting Pot
One of America's greatest attributes also contributes to the problem at hand. Diversity of cultures melting into the great whole has always been considered a mighty blessing of our country. However, until recently that diversity within communities and neighborhoods did not exist as it does today. Neighborhoods and small communities tended to be mostly homogenous until about the late 1980s. Children tended to grow up and stay within their home communities until the 1970s. The trend to relocate started gradually but increased massively in the late 1980s and 1990s. Now even small towns have a wide variety of cultures and backgrounds. Families no longer live close together like they used to do. This trend when added with the philosophical divide that really began to take off in the 1980s produced the death knell for the village. Proponents of celebrating diversity tend to forget the benefits of a homogenous community. When everyone in a community knows one another and all of each other's relatives and is basically on the same page philosophically, a trust builds in that community that cannot be duplicated in a diverse community. A diverse community can respect one another, but that trust to oversee each other's children does not necessarily exist. Too many differing perspectives and priorities exist, and each family pulls into itself to maintain the core philosophy and beliefs of that particular family. This is true whether or not a family is religious or not. Everyone has a core belief system. It is called their world-view. When neighborhoods and communities do not share a core belief system or world-view, the village cannot exist.
The Philosophical Divide
What started as the debate over disciplining children has escalated into so many different factions of parenting that it is hard to keep up with them all. Anyone that is a student of history and has studied church history might see some similarities between what is going on today in the parenting world with the splintering of the church into denominations. It started with one schism which led to another schism and then another and another until we are so splintered that no one can agree on anything. The debate over vaccinations has probably brought this problem more to the forefront than anything else has in a while. However, this divide is very real. We all think that we have found the perfect way to raise our children, and we do not want anyone to tell us differently. This problem is made much worse by the "best practice" culture of early childhood theorists. Many conservative or fundamentalist populations have great problems with what these early childhood theorist consider "best practice" because it follows a liberal atheistic worldview, which they do not share. However, those in power have embraced the "best practice" views and are shoving it down everyone's throat whether they agree with it or not. This only serves to further entrench the distrust among groups. Therefore, the village is dead.
Can We Bring Back the Village?
I actually do not think it is possible in today's diverse culture to bring back the village as it once existed. The village calls for homogenous communities, and homogenous communities are typically viewed as a bad thing. All we can hope for is respect among the differing views. I also would like to see the demise of the "best practice" culture. Best practice varies so widely among differing worldviews that one set of 'best practice" standards really is not feasible. We must build our own villages among those we trust and lament the end of the way it used to be because it will probably never be again. The demise of the village has been a long time in the making, and parent competition is just the very tip of the iceberg.
I hope you have enjoyed this post. Goodbye and God bless!! https://linktr.ee/natawade
Have we lost the village?
The answer to that question is unequivocally yes, and parent competition does have somewhat to do with it. When I was a child, all the adults in a community banded together as a united front to some degree. If a child got in trouble at school, that news usually beat him/her home, and he/she caught it again from the parents. To say that this deterred a great amount of bad behavior would be an understatement. For me, I caught it before I ever left school because my mother worked in the school system, my father was my bus driver and my uncle was my principal. Only one time in my elementary years did I have an episode where I had to be strongly reprimanded, and I cried so hard that I made myself sick. Fast forward to the present. We just recently had an episode in our area where a kindergarten child that had been removed from the classroom and set in the hall for being disruptive simply walked out of the front door and started walking down the 4 lane highway outside of the school. A couple spotted the child and brought the child back to the school. The teacher barely escaped being fired over this situation, and all the schools in the county had to readjust all of their security measures to accommodate this scenario. What happened to the child? Absolutely nothing. There was no reprimanding of any sort. The parents blamed the school. If this had happened when I was growing up, the child would have been held accountable. Number one, a child that was so disruptive that he/she had to be removed from the classroom took a trip to the principal and the matter was settled in short order. That is no longer the case. Number two, most parents and teachers stood with each other and children were expected to know better. Now, a great deal of the time, teachers bear the blame for most everything, and we expect nothing from children.
What happened?
The village did not just one day disappear, but it diminished gradually over time. Several factors contributed to this occurrence but one book in the 1940s triggered an acceleration of the village's demise. That book was Common Sense Baby and Child Care by Dr. Benjamin Spock. That book sparked the philosophical divide that now exists on the subject of parenting and introduced the beginnings of the "best practice" movement among early childhood theorists. It took nearly 4 decades for the teachings of Dr. Spock to become the consensus. However, even now in the rural areas of some parts of the county and among conservative and fundamentalist populations, Dr. Spock is still considered a heretic. Before I dive into the philosophical divide, I want to look at some of the other factors that have contributed to the demise of the village although the philosophical divide is by far the most prevalent.
The Great Melting Pot
One of America's greatest attributes also contributes to the problem at hand. Diversity of cultures melting into the great whole has always been considered a mighty blessing of our country. However, until recently that diversity within communities and neighborhoods did not exist as it does today. Neighborhoods and small communities tended to be mostly homogenous until about the late 1980s. Children tended to grow up and stay within their home communities until the 1970s. The trend to relocate started gradually but increased massively in the late 1980s and 1990s. Now even small towns have a wide variety of cultures and backgrounds. Families no longer live close together like they used to do. This trend when added with the philosophical divide that really began to take off in the 1980s produced the death knell for the village. Proponents of celebrating diversity tend to forget the benefits of a homogenous community. When everyone in a community knows one another and all of each other's relatives and is basically on the same page philosophically, a trust builds in that community that cannot be duplicated in a diverse community. A diverse community can respect one another, but that trust to oversee each other's children does not necessarily exist. Too many differing perspectives and priorities exist, and each family pulls into itself to maintain the core philosophy and beliefs of that particular family. This is true whether or not a family is religious or not. Everyone has a core belief system. It is called their world-view. When neighborhoods and communities do not share a core belief system or world-view, the village cannot exist.
The Philosophical Divide
What started as the debate over disciplining children has escalated into so many different factions of parenting that it is hard to keep up with them all. Anyone that is a student of history and has studied church history might see some similarities between what is going on today in the parenting world with the splintering of the church into denominations. It started with one schism which led to another schism and then another and another until we are so splintered that no one can agree on anything. The debate over vaccinations has probably brought this problem more to the forefront than anything else has in a while. However, this divide is very real. We all think that we have found the perfect way to raise our children, and we do not want anyone to tell us differently. This problem is made much worse by the "best practice" culture of early childhood theorists. Many conservative or fundamentalist populations have great problems with what these early childhood theorist consider "best practice" because it follows a liberal atheistic worldview, which they do not share. However, those in power have embraced the "best practice" views and are shoving it down everyone's throat whether they agree with it or not. This only serves to further entrench the distrust among groups. Therefore, the village is dead.
Can We Bring Back the Village?
I actually do not think it is possible in today's diverse culture to bring back the village as it once existed. The village calls for homogenous communities, and homogenous communities are typically viewed as a bad thing. All we can hope for is respect among the differing views. I also would like to see the demise of the "best practice" culture. Best practice varies so widely among differing worldviews that one set of 'best practice" standards really is not feasible. We must build our own villages among those we trust and lament the end of the way it used to be because it will probably never be again. The demise of the village has been a long time in the making, and parent competition is just the very tip of the iceberg.
I hope you have enjoyed this post. Goodbye and God bless!! https://linktr.ee/natawade
Saturday, February 14, 2015
Cognitive Development for 3 to 4 year olds - Science (Part 1)
This post will start the discussion for the area of learning - Science. We will look at the component - Life Science with its learning expectation and performance indicators. Remember I am taking my information from the Tennessee Early Learning Developmental Standards (TN-ELDS).
The learning expectation for this component is: Observes surroundings in relation to knowledge and methods about life science. The first performance indicator is: Understands new information and begins to explore more complex situations and concepts. In that learning expectation and performance indicator several words stand out to me - observe, understand, complex, and explore. All of those words make this one laughable. Most of today's American 3 to 4 year old children are far too busy having to deal with social/emotional issues to even touch any of those concepts. This might have been true 30 to 40 years ago, but even my own children's generation of the 90s had stopped exploring as much as previous generations. We on the front lines are usually far too busy trying to deal with endless hissy fits and lack of self-help skills to touch these sorts of concepts until the children are 4 to 5 years old and that is in the best of programs. Other programs still deal with the social/emotional and lack of maturity well into a child's fourth year. With the push for more science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) in school curriculum this trend of not being mature enough for science development in the preschool years might present a problem. This downward spiral of emotional issues in children has been in the works since the 1990s. That might explain why STEM concepts also declined greatly in that time period. If children cannot go more than 10 minutes in a group setting without a meltdown, the teacher cannot present a great deal of academic content. I do not blame teachers. Most of them work very hard to pull these children up and help them gain some emotional maturity and self-help skills, but the raw material these teachers are sent takes hard nasty work to get there. To add to all the other, a great deal of these children are not really potty-trained either. They do what they can with what they are given. Society as a whole and parents need to do better.
The next performance indicator is: Expands knowledge of and respect for their body and the environment. In order for children to expand knowledge, they must have a basic knowledge. When all children come through my door, one of the first orders of business involves learning body parts whether they are 18 months or 4 years old. I do believe many of the "experts" that compiled these standards would sit down and cry at how little some 4 year olds know about their own bodies. This is further compounded by how little access to free play these children have. They are sheltered from risk, and therefore, do not develop the same healthy respect for their limitations that their predecessors enjoyed. It is documented that children are injuring themselves in much higher numbers than even 10 years ago. They have no workable knowledge of their own bodies and what those bodies are capable and not capable of doing. We have "helicoptered" this particular performance indicator right out the window. A childhood without risk is a childhood without conquering this particular performance indicator. Not only does lack of risk hinder a workable knowledge of their own bodies, but it also hinders a healthy respect for their environment and the dangers of it. Children of this age have a much greater capacity for understanding the dangers of their environment than today's adults give them credit. I see it everyday with the children in my care. Children that have been with me since they were toddlers are more responsible than some elementary children I have seen. I do not shelter them from experiences and hover over them like they are made of glass. The result usually completely amazes parents and other early childhood educators that come in contact with these children. We sell children so short in the United States. Once upon a time, children survived in environments that would send regulators into spasms and children all over the world still survive these types of environments. We are actually not doing them any favors with our squeaky clean hyper-safe environments if the truth be told. We are killing their powers of observation and their ability to develop risk management.
The last performance indicator for this learning expectation is: Expands knowledge of and abilities to observe, describe, and discuss the natural world, materials, living things, and natural processes. Oh my! I will say that if you are at least laying a foundation for the children to expand, you will be doing well. Many 3 year olds lack the language skills to describe and discuss anything. I have discussed the lack of observation and exploration until I am afraid I am sounding like a broken record. Most American children have so little exposure to the natural world and actual living things, they have no point of reference. As teachers we must give them experiences with the natural world and living things and natural processes. Until the children have the experiences expanding the knowledge will not happen. Just do your best to lay the foundation amid all the other that you must do. There is no way in the little time that you have these children that you can possibly fix the lack of knowledge in which they arrive on your doorstep. All you can do is take what you are given and make the most of it. Huge societal shifts will have to occur to fix it and that is way beyond what you as a teacher are capable of doing.
I hope you have enjoyed this post. Goodbye and God bless!! https://linktr.ee/natawade
The learning expectation for this component is: Observes surroundings in relation to knowledge and methods about life science. The first performance indicator is: Understands new information and begins to explore more complex situations and concepts. In that learning expectation and performance indicator several words stand out to me - observe, understand, complex, and explore. All of those words make this one laughable. Most of today's American 3 to 4 year old children are far too busy having to deal with social/emotional issues to even touch any of those concepts. This might have been true 30 to 40 years ago, but even my own children's generation of the 90s had stopped exploring as much as previous generations. We on the front lines are usually far too busy trying to deal with endless hissy fits and lack of self-help skills to touch these sorts of concepts until the children are 4 to 5 years old and that is in the best of programs. Other programs still deal with the social/emotional and lack of maturity well into a child's fourth year. With the push for more science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) in school curriculum this trend of not being mature enough for science development in the preschool years might present a problem. This downward spiral of emotional issues in children has been in the works since the 1990s. That might explain why STEM concepts also declined greatly in that time period. If children cannot go more than 10 minutes in a group setting without a meltdown, the teacher cannot present a great deal of academic content. I do not blame teachers. Most of them work very hard to pull these children up and help them gain some emotional maturity and self-help skills, but the raw material these teachers are sent takes hard nasty work to get there. To add to all the other, a great deal of these children are not really potty-trained either. They do what they can with what they are given. Society as a whole and parents need to do better.
The next performance indicator is: Expands knowledge of and respect for their body and the environment. In order for children to expand knowledge, they must have a basic knowledge. When all children come through my door, one of the first orders of business involves learning body parts whether they are 18 months or 4 years old. I do believe many of the "experts" that compiled these standards would sit down and cry at how little some 4 year olds know about their own bodies. This is further compounded by how little access to free play these children have. They are sheltered from risk, and therefore, do not develop the same healthy respect for their limitations that their predecessors enjoyed. It is documented that children are injuring themselves in much higher numbers than even 10 years ago. They have no workable knowledge of their own bodies and what those bodies are capable and not capable of doing. We have "helicoptered" this particular performance indicator right out the window. A childhood without risk is a childhood without conquering this particular performance indicator. Not only does lack of risk hinder a workable knowledge of their own bodies, but it also hinders a healthy respect for their environment and the dangers of it. Children of this age have a much greater capacity for understanding the dangers of their environment than today's adults give them credit. I see it everyday with the children in my care. Children that have been with me since they were toddlers are more responsible than some elementary children I have seen. I do not shelter them from experiences and hover over them like they are made of glass. The result usually completely amazes parents and other early childhood educators that come in contact with these children. We sell children so short in the United States. Once upon a time, children survived in environments that would send regulators into spasms and children all over the world still survive these types of environments. We are actually not doing them any favors with our squeaky clean hyper-safe environments if the truth be told. We are killing their powers of observation and their ability to develop risk management.
The last performance indicator for this learning expectation is: Expands knowledge of and abilities to observe, describe, and discuss the natural world, materials, living things, and natural processes. Oh my! I will say that if you are at least laying a foundation for the children to expand, you will be doing well. Many 3 year olds lack the language skills to describe and discuss anything. I have discussed the lack of observation and exploration until I am afraid I am sounding like a broken record. Most American children have so little exposure to the natural world and actual living things, they have no point of reference. As teachers we must give them experiences with the natural world and living things and natural processes. Until the children have the experiences expanding the knowledge will not happen. Just do your best to lay the foundation amid all the other that you must do. There is no way in the little time that you have these children that you can possibly fix the lack of knowledge in which they arrive on your doorstep. All you can do is take what you are given and make the most of it. Huge societal shifts will have to occur to fix it and that is way beyond what you as a teacher are capable of doing.
I hope you have enjoyed this post. Goodbye and God bless!! https://linktr.ee/natawade
Saturday, February 7, 2015
The Cost of Lowered Expectations
This post will return to my response to the article by the British nanny on the state of American parenting. Her second point involved a lowered bar or "the everyone gets a trophy mentality." In many ways she hit the nail on the head with this one, but it must also be paired with the unrealistic expectations for prosperity among "helicopter parents" for their children. Not only have American parents passed on the idea that everything must always be fair, but they have also instilled in their children an inflated sense of worth without substance. I will tackle both of these issues.
What Is Wrong with Everyone Getting a Trophy?
On the surface this seems like a harmless way to avoid the inevitable hissy fit and temper tantrum of children that do not win. However, just like redirection postpones life lessons for toddlers that should not be postponed, this trend does the same for learning to bounce back from disappointment. Many people might call me hardhearted for that stance. How can you disappointment a little child like that? What good does it do? Well, I am about to admit something from my childhood to give you perspective. I was a horrible loser. I wailed and cried every time I did not win to the utter frustration of my mother. Had I been born in the last few years, many might have used me as a poster child for why everyone needs to get a trophy, and they would have been dead wrong. In reality I needed more practice than most to learn to deal with disappointment not the other way around. Had I been shielded from disappointment as a child, I would probably still be immature in that area at my age now. I have seen people my age where the families have shielded them from as much disappointment and other negative consequences as possible. Those people are either in jail or complete do nothings that sit on the couch and expect everyone else to take care of them. Even though it took me until my teenage years to halfway learn to be a gracious loser, I did finally learn. Unfortunately, it takes the ugly reality of disappointment to learn that lesson and nothing should be substituted for it.
Some might still say that yes disappointment is inevitable but why should little children have to suffer through it. People, take a look around. How many times have you seen a ten or twelve year old throwing a hissy fit that could rival any two year old? Even I would not have thought about throwing a hissy fit at those ages. I might have still cried when I lost but I got over my hissy fits in my early elementary years. Children do not automatically learn to be gracious losers when they reach a certain age. Plus, if this lesson is not learned early enough it morphs. The hissy fits and temper tantrums turn into vengeful, spiteful acts that can cause great harm. If you have ever been on the receiving end of the vengeful side of a millenial, you will understand what I am talking about entirely. They have never learned to think of others before acting and will jump straight to vicious when they do not get their way. It is important to learn the proper way to handle disappointment before that behavior becomes ingrained into your personality. Unlearning this behavior as an adult takes years of therapy.
The Importance of Hard Work
Another ugly by-product of the "everyone gets a trophy" mentality involves the stifling of a hard work ethic. Children learn very early that it does not take much effort to win the trophy. Therefore, why should they exert any more effort than necessary. I hope you have enough common sense to see where this is going. If you have ever had the misfortune of being the employer of young adults that grew up without having a good work ethic instilled in them, you have witnessed the very ugly side of this philosophy. I have had that misfortune. I tried everything imaginable to inspire my employees to grasp the concept of doing a good job to no avail. They felt that simply showing up for work relatively on time entitled them to their minimum wage pay. If I actually wanted more work, that would require more pay. Before those employees, I had another employee that did not see the need to show up for work when she was scheduled, and when she needed more money, she would ask for more hours. I sent all of them packing as soon as I could, but in the childcare industry especially in our state, the regulations make it very difficult to fire someone on short notice. The regulations would rather have a useless warm body than giving the employer the freedom to fire freeloaders on the spot. I no longer have employees under the age of 30 unless they have been homeschooled and/or worked on a farm.
When a child goes through life without disappointments and setbacks, that child never learns to overcome adversity. It is a proven fact that successful people understand how to turn disappointments, mistakes, and setbacks into something positive. They learn from their mistakes and grow through adversity. We should never, ever, ever shield children from disappointment and setbacks if we want them to truly become successful, functioning adults.
The Ugly Side of Self-Esteem
This brings me to the other side and untold aspect of this particular problem. When you mix shielding children from disappointment and teaching them to feel good about themselves without any reference to accomplishments, you produce the employees that I described earlier. These young adults have an inflated opinion of themselves and feel entitled to pay without effort. We should pay them for just being because they are so wonderful. This also affects school work at all levels and instills the laziness that millenials have been accused of having. Millenials become so angry when people call them lazy and yet they act just like I described. However, in their defense we created these monsters. We gave them trophies for just participating. We pushed self-esteem without any regard for earning it. We really have no right to complain about the monsters of our own creation.
How Do We Fix It?
Unfortunately for the millenials, they will have to learn the hard way unless their parents are willing to take care of them until the parents pass from this life. Then they will have to learn the hard way. I am afraid that this life lesson will be particularly painful for this age group as they realize that all the cushy jobs with all the great benefits are either becoming extinct or only available to the ones that work their butt off for them. Life will teach them if you do not work you do not eat if we the parents do not teach them that first. How much harder it is to learn that lesson in adulthood when bad habits have been allowed to take root. In trying to make their life easier, we have made it exponentially harder in the long run. When we will ever learn better? The British nanny called this one right. High expectations within reason produce good results. Low expectations produce all the things so very wrong with our society.
I hope you have enjoyed this post. Goodbye and God bless!! https://linktr.ee/natawade
What Is Wrong with Everyone Getting a Trophy?
On the surface this seems like a harmless way to avoid the inevitable hissy fit and temper tantrum of children that do not win. However, just like redirection postpones life lessons for toddlers that should not be postponed, this trend does the same for learning to bounce back from disappointment. Many people might call me hardhearted for that stance. How can you disappointment a little child like that? What good does it do? Well, I am about to admit something from my childhood to give you perspective. I was a horrible loser. I wailed and cried every time I did not win to the utter frustration of my mother. Had I been born in the last few years, many might have used me as a poster child for why everyone needs to get a trophy, and they would have been dead wrong. In reality I needed more practice than most to learn to deal with disappointment not the other way around. Had I been shielded from disappointment as a child, I would probably still be immature in that area at my age now. I have seen people my age where the families have shielded them from as much disappointment and other negative consequences as possible. Those people are either in jail or complete do nothings that sit on the couch and expect everyone else to take care of them. Even though it took me until my teenage years to halfway learn to be a gracious loser, I did finally learn. Unfortunately, it takes the ugly reality of disappointment to learn that lesson and nothing should be substituted for it.
Some might still say that yes disappointment is inevitable but why should little children have to suffer through it. People, take a look around. How many times have you seen a ten or twelve year old throwing a hissy fit that could rival any two year old? Even I would not have thought about throwing a hissy fit at those ages. I might have still cried when I lost but I got over my hissy fits in my early elementary years. Children do not automatically learn to be gracious losers when they reach a certain age. Plus, if this lesson is not learned early enough it morphs. The hissy fits and temper tantrums turn into vengeful, spiteful acts that can cause great harm. If you have ever been on the receiving end of the vengeful side of a millenial, you will understand what I am talking about entirely. They have never learned to think of others before acting and will jump straight to vicious when they do not get their way. It is important to learn the proper way to handle disappointment before that behavior becomes ingrained into your personality. Unlearning this behavior as an adult takes years of therapy.
The Importance of Hard Work
Another ugly by-product of the "everyone gets a trophy" mentality involves the stifling of a hard work ethic. Children learn very early that it does not take much effort to win the trophy. Therefore, why should they exert any more effort than necessary. I hope you have enough common sense to see where this is going. If you have ever had the misfortune of being the employer of young adults that grew up without having a good work ethic instilled in them, you have witnessed the very ugly side of this philosophy. I have had that misfortune. I tried everything imaginable to inspire my employees to grasp the concept of doing a good job to no avail. They felt that simply showing up for work relatively on time entitled them to their minimum wage pay. If I actually wanted more work, that would require more pay. Before those employees, I had another employee that did not see the need to show up for work when she was scheduled, and when she needed more money, she would ask for more hours. I sent all of them packing as soon as I could, but in the childcare industry especially in our state, the regulations make it very difficult to fire someone on short notice. The regulations would rather have a useless warm body than giving the employer the freedom to fire freeloaders on the spot. I no longer have employees under the age of 30 unless they have been homeschooled and/or worked on a farm.
When a child goes through life without disappointments and setbacks, that child never learns to overcome adversity. It is a proven fact that successful people understand how to turn disappointments, mistakes, and setbacks into something positive. They learn from their mistakes and grow through adversity. We should never, ever, ever shield children from disappointment and setbacks if we want them to truly become successful, functioning adults.
The Ugly Side of Self-Esteem
This brings me to the other side and untold aspect of this particular problem. When you mix shielding children from disappointment and teaching them to feel good about themselves without any reference to accomplishments, you produce the employees that I described earlier. These young adults have an inflated opinion of themselves and feel entitled to pay without effort. We should pay them for just being because they are so wonderful. This also affects school work at all levels and instills the laziness that millenials have been accused of having. Millenials become so angry when people call them lazy and yet they act just like I described. However, in their defense we created these monsters. We gave them trophies for just participating. We pushed self-esteem without any regard for earning it. We really have no right to complain about the monsters of our own creation.
How Do We Fix It?
Unfortunately for the millenials, they will have to learn the hard way unless their parents are willing to take care of them until the parents pass from this life. Then they will have to learn the hard way. I am afraid that this life lesson will be particularly painful for this age group as they realize that all the cushy jobs with all the great benefits are either becoming extinct or only available to the ones that work their butt off for them. Life will teach them if you do not work you do not eat if we the parents do not teach them that first. How much harder it is to learn that lesson in adulthood when bad habits have been allowed to take root. In trying to make their life easier, we have made it exponentially harder in the long run. When we will ever learn better? The British nanny called this one right. High expectations within reason produce good results. Low expectations produce all the things so very wrong with our society.
I hope you have enjoyed this post. Goodbye and God bless!! https://linktr.ee/natawade
Saturday, January 31, 2015
Cognitive Development for 3 to 4 year olds - Math (Part 4)
This post will finish up the discussion of the area of learning - Math. We will finish the component - Geometry and Spatial Sense and do the component - Problem Solving and Analyzing Data. Remember I am taking my information from the Tennessee Early Learning Developmental Standards (TN-ELDS).
First we will start with the learning expectation: Begins to explore the size, shape, and spatial arrangement of real objects. The first performance indicator is: Notices and copies simple repeating patterns, such as a wall of blocks with long, short, long, short, . . . Again, we have patterns, and as I have said before, children these days struggle horribly with patterns. Unless that child is hardwired for math concepts, which only happens to be about the top 20% of children and mostly the wealthy and privileged, they will not simply recognize patterns from their environment. One of the ugly truths of American education is the fact that two very different realities exist between the haves and the have nots. It really is not dependent on race but has more to do with wealth and power. Even though it probably does affect minorities in higher percentages, it also affects white children in rural and poor urban areas. The haves' educational experience is filled with endless possibilities and resources. The have nots' educational experience is filled with regulations and crazy fads, etc. They tend to be the guinea pigs. However, this experience does not begin when the children start school. It actually starts from birth. The wealthy and privileged tend to have better learning experiences at home and in care. By the time the children start school the gap is so wide that the have nots usually never ever catch up. The children that usually show up on my doorstep are rural lower middle class or middle class children, and if they are older than toddlers when I get them, they are behind the children I have had since toddlerhood. Middle and lower class parents by in large just are too busy making a living to provide good experiences for their children in a home setting. Some stay-at-home moms buck this trend, but others make it worse. See this trend of the have and have nots has been in existence since at least the 1980s and has gotten slowly more pronounced over time. The parents that grew up as have nots usually perpetrate the same cycle of not providing good experiences for their children because to them it is normal. It takes a dedicated individual to break this cycle for his/her children.
The second performance indicator for that learning expectation is: Begins to notice different shapes and identifies big and small shapes. I would love to know where they are finding 3 year olds that notice any type of details in today's culture. It has been my experience that only children that have had adults point out shapes and even the difference between big and small really know what those terms mean. Again, this will fall in the same group as all the other performance indicators affected by language delay, and language delay seems to be the name of the game these days. Children have to be exposed to concepts in order for those concepts to have any meaning to them. Therefore, children with language delays will not notice mathematical details such as shape because they have no foundation for that concept. I have just started another two year old with massive language delays. This poor child might as well be a 20 month old and he is approaching 2 and 1/2. He is pulling up fast with good experiences so we are not dealing with developmental delays just lack of good experiences. However, when his peers hit kindergarten this language delay problem will cause havoc in the American school systems.
Now we will move on to the component - Problem Solving and Analyzing Data. The learning expectation for this one is: Begins to develop foundation for linking concepts and procedures with active experiences. The first performance indicator is: Sorts objects and counts and compares the groups formed. I have a 3 year old that has basically mastered this performance indicator. I have had her since she was 9 months old. I have a 4 and 1/2 year old that just mastered this performance indicator in the last 3 to 4 months. The 3 year old is full-time. The 4 and 1/2 year old is part-time and attends a PreK program at the local school. This 4 year old embodies all the downward trends I have been seeing in children the past several years. The 3 year old is academically ahead of this child, and she will leave him in a trail of dust. She embodies the haves and unfortunately he is have not. Her academic experience already so outdoes his even though they both attend my program that she will be light years ahead of him by the time she hits the third grade. She received the good learning experiences from infancy, and he is playing catch-up hard at the moment. Children that come through my doors at the age of 2 and 3 will not be ready for this concept until after their fourth birthday. However, I will say that my insistence during pick-up times that toys be placed in the right containers actually does more for the children's sorting skills than probably any other activity that I do with them. Even so, counting and comparing still come along slowly for the majority of the children that come in here after the age of 2 years old. I usually have a year's worth of social/emotional and language foundation to lay before we can even begin to cover such topics in earnest.
The last performance indicator is: Builds simple structures with blocks. Most of today's children do not know how to build with basic blocks until an adult shows them how. Even 4 year olds coming into my center for the first time have to be taught to build with basic blocks. Sometimes I believe they have never seen plain wood blocks before in their short lives. Blocks probably represents one of the most important basic toys for all children and a great deal of American homes have no blocks whatsoever. They may have connecting blocks if they have boys, but plain wooden blocks are becoming obsolete. My own granddaughters would never get to play with blocks if it were not for the ones at my house. They do not have any blocks at their house, and they represent the norm. Toys are becoming more and more electronic, and the children are suffering for it. Math and Science development start with children exploring and building with basic blocks. This will come back to bite us hard in the not so distant future if it is not already biting us. Elementary teachers will have to fill in gaps and let children play with blocks when they should have had those experiences in preschool. Meeting ever higher standards and expectations in American schools will soon meet a brick wall called immaturity and lack of experiences.
I hope you have enjoyed this post. Goodbye and God bless!! https://linktr.ee/natawade
First we will start with the learning expectation: Begins to explore the size, shape, and spatial arrangement of real objects. The first performance indicator is: Notices and copies simple repeating patterns, such as a wall of blocks with long, short, long, short, . . . Again, we have patterns, and as I have said before, children these days struggle horribly with patterns. Unless that child is hardwired for math concepts, which only happens to be about the top 20% of children and mostly the wealthy and privileged, they will not simply recognize patterns from their environment. One of the ugly truths of American education is the fact that two very different realities exist between the haves and the have nots. It really is not dependent on race but has more to do with wealth and power. Even though it probably does affect minorities in higher percentages, it also affects white children in rural and poor urban areas. The haves' educational experience is filled with endless possibilities and resources. The have nots' educational experience is filled with regulations and crazy fads, etc. They tend to be the guinea pigs. However, this experience does not begin when the children start school. It actually starts from birth. The wealthy and privileged tend to have better learning experiences at home and in care. By the time the children start school the gap is so wide that the have nots usually never ever catch up. The children that usually show up on my doorstep are rural lower middle class or middle class children, and if they are older than toddlers when I get them, they are behind the children I have had since toddlerhood. Middle and lower class parents by in large just are too busy making a living to provide good experiences for their children in a home setting. Some stay-at-home moms buck this trend, but others make it worse. See this trend of the have and have nots has been in existence since at least the 1980s and has gotten slowly more pronounced over time. The parents that grew up as have nots usually perpetrate the same cycle of not providing good experiences for their children because to them it is normal. It takes a dedicated individual to break this cycle for his/her children.
The second performance indicator for that learning expectation is: Begins to notice different shapes and identifies big and small shapes. I would love to know where they are finding 3 year olds that notice any type of details in today's culture. It has been my experience that only children that have had adults point out shapes and even the difference between big and small really know what those terms mean. Again, this will fall in the same group as all the other performance indicators affected by language delay, and language delay seems to be the name of the game these days. Children have to be exposed to concepts in order for those concepts to have any meaning to them. Therefore, children with language delays will not notice mathematical details such as shape because they have no foundation for that concept. I have just started another two year old with massive language delays. This poor child might as well be a 20 month old and he is approaching 2 and 1/2. He is pulling up fast with good experiences so we are not dealing with developmental delays just lack of good experiences. However, when his peers hit kindergarten this language delay problem will cause havoc in the American school systems.
Now we will move on to the component - Problem Solving and Analyzing Data. The learning expectation for this one is: Begins to develop foundation for linking concepts and procedures with active experiences. The first performance indicator is: Sorts objects and counts and compares the groups formed. I have a 3 year old that has basically mastered this performance indicator. I have had her since she was 9 months old. I have a 4 and 1/2 year old that just mastered this performance indicator in the last 3 to 4 months. The 3 year old is full-time. The 4 and 1/2 year old is part-time and attends a PreK program at the local school. This 4 year old embodies all the downward trends I have been seeing in children the past several years. The 3 year old is academically ahead of this child, and she will leave him in a trail of dust. She embodies the haves and unfortunately he is have not. Her academic experience already so outdoes his even though they both attend my program that she will be light years ahead of him by the time she hits the third grade. She received the good learning experiences from infancy, and he is playing catch-up hard at the moment. Children that come through my doors at the age of 2 and 3 will not be ready for this concept until after their fourth birthday. However, I will say that my insistence during pick-up times that toys be placed in the right containers actually does more for the children's sorting skills than probably any other activity that I do with them. Even so, counting and comparing still come along slowly for the majority of the children that come in here after the age of 2 years old. I usually have a year's worth of social/emotional and language foundation to lay before we can even begin to cover such topics in earnest.
The last performance indicator is: Builds simple structures with blocks. Most of today's children do not know how to build with basic blocks until an adult shows them how. Even 4 year olds coming into my center for the first time have to be taught to build with basic blocks. Sometimes I believe they have never seen plain wood blocks before in their short lives. Blocks probably represents one of the most important basic toys for all children and a great deal of American homes have no blocks whatsoever. They may have connecting blocks if they have boys, but plain wooden blocks are becoming obsolete. My own granddaughters would never get to play with blocks if it were not for the ones at my house. They do not have any blocks at their house, and they represent the norm. Toys are becoming more and more electronic, and the children are suffering for it. Math and Science development start with children exploring and building with basic blocks. This will come back to bite us hard in the not so distant future if it is not already biting us. Elementary teachers will have to fill in gaps and let children play with blocks when they should have had those experiences in preschool. Meeting ever higher standards and expectations in American schools will soon meet a brick wall called immaturity and lack of experiences.
I hope you have enjoyed this post. Goodbye and God bless!! https://linktr.ee/natawade
Saturday, January 24, 2015
Are Americans Afraid of Their Children?
I recently read a very interesting article by a British nanny that detailed five different reasons American parents struggle with parenting issues. I will be taking each of her five reasons and delving into them more deeply from an American point of view. The first of those reasons was that American parents are actually afraid of their children. Is this really true and if it is, why?
Are Americans really afraid of their own children?
If you were to ask American parents this question point blank, almost all would vehemently deny it. However, just let that precious little one begin to throw a hissy fit in a public place, and the fear nearly exudes from that parent. The British nanny accused American parents of not being the adult in the situation, but as an American I understand that the cause of that fear goes so much deeper than just an unwillingness to be the adult even though that is part of the problem. In this article I am going to delve into the rest of the story.
Problem One: Perfect Childhood Syndrome
The notion that childhood should be carefree and magical permeates every nook and cranny of American society. This philosophy is so engrained in our national psyche that most of us do not even realize how much we have been affected by it. "It's all about the children." How many times have you heard these words from parents, marketers, early childhood experts, etc.? We scrimp and sacrifice to give our children everything we believe they deserve especially if we had to do without these things as children. The problem, however, is that giving children everything usually turns them into spoiled brats. The "doing without" from our own childhood did more good for us than we will probably ever realize. Even though childhood should have moments that are carefree and magical, when an entire childhood is carefree and magical children do not grow up to be functioning adults. They tend to be overgrown children with no idea how to take care of themselves. The hard lessons of life are just as necessary as the carefree and magical moments. We, as American parents, have tried with all our might to save our children from the hard lessons of life and have ended up doing so much more harm than those hard lessons ever would have done. It is so much easier for a two year old to learn that he/she cannot have everything he/she wants than it is for a twenty year old to all at once have to learn that lesson. However, we are so focused on making sure the two year is happy all the time that we let the lessons necessary for that stage of development slip away only to have to be learned at a different stage of development where is will be exponentially harder for the child to learn. Our predecessors were not ignorant people with no concept of how to raise children, but looking at our current track record, the same might not be said of us.
Problem Two: Self-Esteem
A great deal of emphasis has been placed on the importance of self-esteem in the last two or three decades. This grew out of an era where too much emphasis was placed on putting oneself down. However, we hit the ditch on the other side of the road very quickly with this concept because we divorced it from the more important concept - self-acceptance. Whereas the previous era put way too much emphasis on a person's weaknesses, we now put way too much emphasis on feeling good about ourselves. We now have children especially teenagers and young adults that feel good about themselves apart from any accomplishments or strengths. If you do not see the problem with that scenario, you have swallowed the self-esteem pill hook, line, and sinker. A person that does nothing or accomplishes nothing, should not really feel good about themselves. That is being lazy. Self-esteem without self-acceptance produces people that can be mean as snakes making life completely miserable for everyone around them and still feel good in their own skin. What is self-acceptance and how does it differ from self-esteem? Self-acceptance takes into account a person's strengths and weaknesses. It is a realistic view of who you are as a person. Without self-acceptance a person cannot change or strengthen their weak areas because one must know their weaknesses in order to work on them. Self-esteem when coupled with self-acceptance comes from accomplishment and change. You feel good about yourself because you have become a better, stronger person through adversity and hard work. Self-esteem should never be divorced from hard work. Self-esteem without self-acceptance is only a shallow image of the real thing. True self-esteem comes from knowing who you are and what you have accomplished. Therefore, do not be afraid to help children see their weak areas. It does not destroy real self-esteem to help a child have a realistic view of who they are as a person. However, do not just point out weaknesses without showing them how to fix it. Simply pointing out weaknesses was the problem of the previous era. When you show children the proper way to behave and work, you build them up as people. It is okay to tell them "no, that is not the way to behave or do that," but it must be coupled with modeling the correct way.
Problem Three: To Stress or Not To Stress
Several years ago toxic stress became one of the hot button topics of the day. Media and specialists began to cry against the dangers of toxic stress on children. I even remember seeing brain scans of children that had endured chronic toxic stress. What these people failed to point out was the difference between normal stress and toxic stress. The result was a hysteria about stressing children in the least. Letting children "cry it out" became akin to child abuse because it might damage the brain. Making children endure the stress of embarrassment or failure was thought to be unimaginable. Thus, was born the "everybody gets a trophy" culture. Fortunately, now psychologists have seen the error of their ways and are trying to make people understand that some stress in necessary for normal development. However, undoing a hysteria in America takes more than these psychologists ever imagined. This particular hysteria has found its way into childcare regulations and the accepted practices of educators. In some states it is against regulations to let a child cry for longer than 5 minutes, and it has long been the practice of many schools to avoid any activity that has "winners and losers." I will give today's psychologists an "A" for effort. I have seen many reports on the national media about the need for some stress for proper child development and the detrimental effects of the "everybody gets a trophy" mentality. However, they are screaming at a fast moving train that left the station years ago. The damage is done, and it will take years and years to undo all the many facets of where that philosophy embedded itself. Parents will not feel comfortable allowing their child normal stress especially in a public place until that philosophy has been rooted out at its core.
Problem Four: Parent Competition
I recently saw a commercial where all the different camps of parenting were about to duke it out on the playground. Even though the commercial ended on a positive note, the culture it portrayed is very real in America. Many different camps exist that believe with all of their being that their way of raising children is the "best" way. I actually blame this one on the "best practice" mentality so prevalent among early childhood theorists and educational circles. What no one ever explains when dealing with "best practice" whether it be in early childhood circles or parenting circles is that "best practice" wholly depends on the worldview of the people involved. A person's worldview determines his/her priorities and priorities determine what is or is not best practice. Among the varying worldviews in existence today the priorities of those worldviews can be complete opposites of one another. Therefore, what is best practice for one group is at the bottom of the barrel for another group. Many experts would have you believe that only one best practice exists for every aspect of a child's care, but that really could not be further from the truth. What is considered "best practice" by most early childhood experts only reflects a liberal Western worldview. Any other worldview would have a different standard for "best practice." Herein lies the rub for American parents. They have all been sold the idea that their worldview and way of doing things is "best practice," and anyone that does not follow their way does not have all the right information. Our entire culture needs to take a deep breath and realize that different people have different priorities and those different priorities determine "best practice" in their world. We really need to cut each other some slack. We are all only fallible human beings and do the best we can most of the time. There is not one "best practice" for raising children. Just determine what your priorities are and strive to do your best to follow your own standards. Leave everyone else alone.
Problem Five: Liberal Definition of Child Abuse
This brings me to my last point. With the "best practice" culture has also come the liberalizing of the definition of child abuse. Now true child abuse is a horrible, despicable crime, but when we start having people being labeled child abusers for letting their child "cry it out" or having the least little scrape, bruise, or mark on them, we have a problem. Any law professional worth anything will tell you the best way to minimize the effects of a law is to define it too liberally. The more all-encompassing you try to make a law or regulation the more difficult you make it to enforce. This is simple, basic common sense. I come at this one as a former homeschooling mom, and I will tell you that I lived in horror of the idea of having someone turn us into the Department of Human Services just because they disliked the idea of homeschooling. A great deal of the time the Department of Human Services acts first and asks questions later, and you are very often guilty until proven innocent. Most people understand that or have witnessed that firsthand. Therefore, mothers of rowdy boys live with the same constant fear that someone will be petty enough to turn them in for child abuse simply because their boys always have bruises. As a childcare provider, I have actually had that conversation with a mom because my state makes me a mandatory reporter of child abuse. I told her that my definition of child abuse is not even remotely that liberal, and that as a mother of a boy I understand about little boys and bruises. As a former homeschooling mom I would never turn someone in unless I was sure something horrible was happening. I have heard and witnessed far too many horror stories of children being taken away from good parents for no other reason than other people's pettiness. On the other hand, I have seen situations where the children needed to be taken but were kept in the situation because the parents worked the system. In today's society one cannot rule out the possibility that someone might "report" them simply because they do not agree with their parenting style. This makes for a very toxic situation, and probably the biggest reason we Americans seem to fear our children. We are not really afraid of the child as much as we are afraid of what someone will do to us if we actually try to discipline our child in public.
Conclusion
To the British nanny I would say that we are really scared of each other and the intolerance that exists when it comes to parenting practices. Therefore, we have allowed ourselves to fall hook, line, and sinker for pop parenting styles that are nowhere near good for anyone in the long run. I hope we will eventually learn our lessons and return to some basic common sense, but in the mean time we are doing the best we can in a culture and environment that fights us every step of the way.
I hope you have enjoyed this post. Goodbye and God bless!! https://linktr.ee/natawade
Are Americans really afraid of their own children?
If you were to ask American parents this question point blank, almost all would vehemently deny it. However, just let that precious little one begin to throw a hissy fit in a public place, and the fear nearly exudes from that parent. The British nanny accused American parents of not being the adult in the situation, but as an American I understand that the cause of that fear goes so much deeper than just an unwillingness to be the adult even though that is part of the problem. In this article I am going to delve into the rest of the story.
Problem One: Perfect Childhood Syndrome
The notion that childhood should be carefree and magical permeates every nook and cranny of American society. This philosophy is so engrained in our national psyche that most of us do not even realize how much we have been affected by it. "It's all about the children." How many times have you heard these words from parents, marketers, early childhood experts, etc.? We scrimp and sacrifice to give our children everything we believe they deserve especially if we had to do without these things as children. The problem, however, is that giving children everything usually turns them into spoiled brats. The "doing without" from our own childhood did more good for us than we will probably ever realize. Even though childhood should have moments that are carefree and magical, when an entire childhood is carefree and magical children do not grow up to be functioning adults. They tend to be overgrown children with no idea how to take care of themselves. The hard lessons of life are just as necessary as the carefree and magical moments. We, as American parents, have tried with all our might to save our children from the hard lessons of life and have ended up doing so much more harm than those hard lessons ever would have done. It is so much easier for a two year old to learn that he/she cannot have everything he/she wants than it is for a twenty year old to all at once have to learn that lesson. However, we are so focused on making sure the two year is happy all the time that we let the lessons necessary for that stage of development slip away only to have to be learned at a different stage of development where is will be exponentially harder for the child to learn. Our predecessors were not ignorant people with no concept of how to raise children, but looking at our current track record, the same might not be said of us.
Problem Two: Self-Esteem
A great deal of emphasis has been placed on the importance of self-esteem in the last two or three decades. This grew out of an era where too much emphasis was placed on putting oneself down. However, we hit the ditch on the other side of the road very quickly with this concept because we divorced it from the more important concept - self-acceptance. Whereas the previous era put way too much emphasis on a person's weaknesses, we now put way too much emphasis on feeling good about ourselves. We now have children especially teenagers and young adults that feel good about themselves apart from any accomplishments or strengths. If you do not see the problem with that scenario, you have swallowed the self-esteem pill hook, line, and sinker. A person that does nothing or accomplishes nothing, should not really feel good about themselves. That is being lazy. Self-esteem without self-acceptance produces people that can be mean as snakes making life completely miserable for everyone around them and still feel good in their own skin. What is self-acceptance and how does it differ from self-esteem? Self-acceptance takes into account a person's strengths and weaknesses. It is a realistic view of who you are as a person. Without self-acceptance a person cannot change or strengthen their weak areas because one must know their weaknesses in order to work on them. Self-esteem when coupled with self-acceptance comes from accomplishment and change. You feel good about yourself because you have become a better, stronger person through adversity and hard work. Self-esteem should never be divorced from hard work. Self-esteem without self-acceptance is only a shallow image of the real thing. True self-esteem comes from knowing who you are and what you have accomplished. Therefore, do not be afraid to help children see their weak areas. It does not destroy real self-esteem to help a child have a realistic view of who they are as a person. However, do not just point out weaknesses without showing them how to fix it. Simply pointing out weaknesses was the problem of the previous era. When you show children the proper way to behave and work, you build them up as people. It is okay to tell them "no, that is not the way to behave or do that," but it must be coupled with modeling the correct way.
Problem Three: To Stress or Not To Stress
Several years ago toxic stress became one of the hot button topics of the day. Media and specialists began to cry against the dangers of toxic stress on children. I even remember seeing brain scans of children that had endured chronic toxic stress. What these people failed to point out was the difference between normal stress and toxic stress. The result was a hysteria about stressing children in the least. Letting children "cry it out" became akin to child abuse because it might damage the brain. Making children endure the stress of embarrassment or failure was thought to be unimaginable. Thus, was born the "everybody gets a trophy" culture. Fortunately, now psychologists have seen the error of their ways and are trying to make people understand that some stress in necessary for normal development. However, undoing a hysteria in America takes more than these psychologists ever imagined. This particular hysteria has found its way into childcare regulations and the accepted practices of educators. In some states it is against regulations to let a child cry for longer than 5 minutes, and it has long been the practice of many schools to avoid any activity that has "winners and losers." I will give today's psychologists an "A" for effort. I have seen many reports on the national media about the need for some stress for proper child development and the detrimental effects of the "everybody gets a trophy" mentality. However, they are screaming at a fast moving train that left the station years ago. The damage is done, and it will take years and years to undo all the many facets of where that philosophy embedded itself. Parents will not feel comfortable allowing their child normal stress especially in a public place until that philosophy has been rooted out at its core.
Problem Four: Parent Competition
I recently saw a commercial where all the different camps of parenting were about to duke it out on the playground. Even though the commercial ended on a positive note, the culture it portrayed is very real in America. Many different camps exist that believe with all of their being that their way of raising children is the "best" way. I actually blame this one on the "best practice" mentality so prevalent among early childhood theorists and educational circles. What no one ever explains when dealing with "best practice" whether it be in early childhood circles or parenting circles is that "best practice" wholly depends on the worldview of the people involved. A person's worldview determines his/her priorities and priorities determine what is or is not best practice. Among the varying worldviews in existence today the priorities of those worldviews can be complete opposites of one another. Therefore, what is best practice for one group is at the bottom of the barrel for another group. Many experts would have you believe that only one best practice exists for every aspect of a child's care, but that really could not be further from the truth. What is considered "best practice" by most early childhood experts only reflects a liberal Western worldview. Any other worldview would have a different standard for "best practice." Herein lies the rub for American parents. They have all been sold the idea that their worldview and way of doing things is "best practice," and anyone that does not follow their way does not have all the right information. Our entire culture needs to take a deep breath and realize that different people have different priorities and those different priorities determine "best practice" in their world. We really need to cut each other some slack. We are all only fallible human beings and do the best we can most of the time. There is not one "best practice" for raising children. Just determine what your priorities are and strive to do your best to follow your own standards. Leave everyone else alone.
Problem Five: Liberal Definition of Child Abuse
This brings me to my last point. With the "best practice" culture has also come the liberalizing of the definition of child abuse. Now true child abuse is a horrible, despicable crime, but when we start having people being labeled child abusers for letting their child "cry it out" or having the least little scrape, bruise, or mark on them, we have a problem. Any law professional worth anything will tell you the best way to minimize the effects of a law is to define it too liberally. The more all-encompassing you try to make a law or regulation the more difficult you make it to enforce. This is simple, basic common sense. I come at this one as a former homeschooling mom, and I will tell you that I lived in horror of the idea of having someone turn us into the Department of Human Services just because they disliked the idea of homeschooling. A great deal of the time the Department of Human Services acts first and asks questions later, and you are very often guilty until proven innocent. Most people understand that or have witnessed that firsthand. Therefore, mothers of rowdy boys live with the same constant fear that someone will be petty enough to turn them in for child abuse simply because their boys always have bruises. As a childcare provider, I have actually had that conversation with a mom because my state makes me a mandatory reporter of child abuse. I told her that my definition of child abuse is not even remotely that liberal, and that as a mother of a boy I understand about little boys and bruises. As a former homeschooling mom I would never turn someone in unless I was sure something horrible was happening. I have heard and witnessed far too many horror stories of children being taken away from good parents for no other reason than other people's pettiness. On the other hand, I have seen situations where the children needed to be taken but were kept in the situation because the parents worked the system. In today's society one cannot rule out the possibility that someone might "report" them simply because they do not agree with their parenting style. This makes for a very toxic situation, and probably the biggest reason we Americans seem to fear our children. We are not really afraid of the child as much as we are afraid of what someone will do to us if we actually try to discipline our child in public.
Conclusion
To the British nanny I would say that we are really scared of each other and the intolerance that exists when it comes to parenting practices. Therefore, we have allowed ourselves to fall hook, line, and sinker for pop parenting styles that are nowhere near good for anyone in the long run. I hope we will eventually learn our lessons and return to some basic common sense, but in the mean time we are doing the best we can in a culture and environment that fights us every step of the way.
I hope you have enjoyed this post. Goodbye and God bless!! https://linktr.ee/natawade
Sunday, January 11, 2015
Cognitive Development for 3 to 4 year olds - Math (Part 3)
This post will continue to discussion of the component - Measurement, and then begin the discussion of the component - Geometry and Spatial Sense. Remember I am taking my information from the Tennessee Early Learning Developmental Standards (TN-ELDS).
The next performance indicator for the component - Measurement and the learning expectation - Begins to demonstrate understanding of time, length, weight, capacity, and temperature is: Begins to use conventional measurement terms (mile, age span, month, cup, etc) without accuracy. Again, this math performance indicator relies heavily on language development for its fulfillment. A child must hear these terms in context to be able to even play with them inaccurately. American children just do not seem to have the same exposure to these types of terms as their counterparts of a few decades ago unless they are in a program where they receive good exposure. I cannot stress the importance of using measurement terms in the presence of children. You need to talk about the day of the week and the month of the year. When you cook, talk about the measurements that you use. Talk, Talk, Talk. A child's language development hinges on how much that child has heard talking that has as varied a vocabulary as possible. When a child's language development lags, so does everything else.
The last performance indicator for this learning expectation is: Understands time as a sequence of events that relates to her daily life. This particular performance indicator depends very heavily on how structured a child's life is or is not. When a child's life has a rhythm where the daily events usually flow in a certain order, then that child will quickly develop a sense of the sequence of time. Nap follows lunch. Snack follows nap. These events do not have to happen at exactly the same time every day, but as long as they happen within a 30 minute window of the same time every day, the child's inner clock will set itself to this rhythm. On the other hand, if a child lives in a free-for-all every day without any sense of structure, that child will not develop a sense of the sequence of time. I have found children to be happier people when the rhythm is there. Understanding the flow of time in this way helps soothe them and give them purpose. Living in chaos usually makes no one happy. Structure actually helps the development of math concepts because it is a very structured academic discipline. When a child understands structure, math makes more sense.
Now we will move on to the component - Geometry and Spatial Sense. The first learning expectation for this one is: Becomes aware of his body and personal space during active exploration of physical environment. The first performance indicator is: Begins to build mental and physical maps of their surroundings. Unless a child never explores his/her surroundings, this one usually comes along without assistance. I will say that I have noticed that children today do not have the same sense of the surrounding outside space as I did as a child. I can remember knowing every single nook and cranny of my yard. I also could follow the road from my house to the highway, a span of over a mile, in my mind. My own biological children could maybe tell you every nook and cranny of our yard and property and maybe even the neighborhood, but to follow the road in their mind from our house to town, they could not do. Children today do not even know their own yards and neighborhoods. My children played outside more than their peers because we were homeschoolers, but even they lost that sense of the town that I developed as a child. Children today do not play outside and explore their neighborhoods anymore. In fact, if parents let their children explore like I explored as a child, those parents would be put in jail. We have changed what is acceptable in the unhindered exploration of children, and I personally do not think it is a good change. Yes, it does put the children at risk, but it did when I was a child. I had more of a sense of my world because I was allowed that risk. Taking away the risk is sometimes not a good thing. Something has been lost that is affecting the children's development in certain subjects. Helicopter parenting and regulations have not made our world better.
The next performance indicator is: Responds to "Put it beside,' or "Put it under." Guess what? This one depends on language development. When children start with me, I have learned to never assume they know anything. I have been absolutely flabbergasted at the words and concepts in which children come to me with no understanding. "Beside" is one of those concepts children regularly come to me without understanding. "Under" usually has been conquered by the age of three, but I have seen that one, too. All of these position and direction words have to be used around children for them to develop a sense of what they mean. When children are handed an electronic device so that the parents do not have to deal with them, those children have a tendency to not hear these concepts as much as those children whose parents regularly converse with them. Talk to the children, please.
The last performance indicator for this learning expectation is: Explores geometric shapes using their hands, eyes, and mind. To demonstrate how little children these days actually do this one, hand a child a puzzle where the shapes of the pieces are marked on the board. Explain to the child that the outline of each piece is marked on the board, and then let the child try to put the puzzle together. I will guarantee that 90% of the children will not try to match the shape of the piece to the outline of the puzzle. The other 10% that will have very strong natural math ability. Children walking through my door these days have so little experience with puzzles that I usually have to teach puzzles for a year or more to get them to the point where they have basic competence. This particular performance indicator will have to adult directed well into a child's fourth year unless that child has had great experiences with puzzles as a toddler.
I hope you have enjoyed this post. Goodbye and God bless!! https://linktr.ee/natawade
The next performance indicator for the component - Measurement and the learning expectation - Begins to demonstrate understanding of time, length, weight, capacity, and temperature is: Begins to use conventional measurement terms (mile, age span, month, cup, etc) without accuracy. Again, this math performance indicator relies heavily on language development for its fulfillment. A child must hear these terms in context to be able to even play with them inaccurately. American children just do not seem to have the same exposure to these types of terms as their counterparts of a few decades ago unless they are in a program where they receive good exposure. I cannot stress the importance of using measurement terms in the presence of children. You need to talk about the day of the week and the month of the year. When you cook, talk about the measurements that you use. Talk, Talk, Talk. A child's language development hinges on how much that child has heard talking that has as varied a vocabulary as possible. When a child's language development lags, so does everything else.
The last performance indicator for this learning expectation is: Understands time as a sequence of events that relates to her daily life. This particular performance indicator depends very heavily on how structured a child's life is or is not. When a child's life has a rhythm where the daily events usually flow in a certain order, then that child will quickly develop a sense of the sequence of time. Nap follows lunch. Snack follows nap. These events do not have to happen at exactly the same time every day, but as long as they happen within a 30 minute window of the same time every day, the child's inner clock will set itself to this rhythm. On the other hand, if a child lives in a free-for-all every day without any sense of structure, that child will not develop a sense of the sequence of time. I have found children to be happier people when the rhythm is there. Understanding the flow of time in this way helps soothe them and give them purpose. Living in chaos usually makes no one happy. Structure actually helps the development of math concepts because it is a very structured academic discipline. When a child understands structure, math makes more sense.
Now we will move on to the component - Geometry and Spatial Sense. The first learning expectation for this one is: Becomes aware of his body and personal space during active exploration of physical environment. The first performance indicator is: Begins to build mental and physical maps of their surroundings. Unless a child never explores his/her surroundings, this one usually comes along without assistance. I will say that I have noticed that children today do not have the same sense of the surrounding outside space as I did as a child. I can remember knowing every single nook and cranny of my yard. I also could follow the road from my house to the highway, a span of over a mile, in my mind. My own biological children could maybe tell you every nook and cranny of our yard and property and maybe even the neighborhood, but to follow the road in their mind from our house to town, they could not do. Children today do not even know their own yards and neighborhoods. My children played outside more than their peers because we were homeschoolers, but even they lost that sense of the town that I developed as a child. Children today do not play outside and explore their neighborhoods anymore. In fact, if parents let their children explore like I explored as a child, those parents would be put in jail. We have changed what is acceptable in the unhindered exploration of children, and I personally do not think it is a good change. Yes, it does put the children at risk, but it did when I was a child. I had more of a sense of my world because I was allowed that risk. Taking away the risk is sometimes not a good thing. Something has been lost that is affecting the children's development in certain subjects. Helicopter parenting and regulations have not made our world better.
The next performance indicator is: Responds to "Put it beside,' or "Put it under." Guess what? This one depends on language development. When children start with me, I have learned to never assume they know anything. I have been absolutely flabbergasted at the words and concepts in which children come to me with no understanding. "Beside" is one of those concepts children regularly come to me without understanding. "Under" usually has been conquered by the age of three, but I have seen that one, too. All of these position and direction words have to be used around children for them to develop a sense of what they mean. When children are handed an electronic device so that the parents do not have to deal with them, those children have a tendency to not hear these concepts as much as those children whose parents regularly converse with them. Talk to the children, please.
The last performance indicator for this learning expectation is: Explores geometric shapes using their hands, eyes, and mind. To demonstrate how little children these days actually do this one, hand a child a puzzle where the shapes of the pieces are marked on the board. Explain to the child that the outline of each piece is marked on the board, and then let the child try to put the puzzle together. I will guarantee that 90% of the children will not try to match the shape of the piece to the outline of the puzzle. The other 10% that will have very strong natural math ability. Children walking through my door these days have so little experience with puzzles that I usually have to teach puzzles for a year or more to get them to the point where they have basic competence. This particular performance indicator will have to adult directed well into a child's fourth year unless that child has had great experiences with puzzles as a toddler.
I hope you have enjoyed this post. Goodbye and God bless!! https://linktr.ee/natawade
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