Finding Your Child’s Element

Ever since Aristotle was little, he has had a very good concentration span. He could sit down to an activity and stay with it for a significant amount of time. Hercules, on the other hand, looked like a child with ADD in comparison. He would bounce from activity to activity, never staying long enough to see it through to the end. I confess that I had become fearful that the only thing that could hold his attention for any significant amount of time was a screen… Well, okay, that’s not entirely true either because Hercules can spend hours at a playground and in a swimming pool but neither of these activities are practical if we need to be indoors. For instance, how do I keep him busy when I need to cook?

Then I discovered the power of play doh with a child like Hercules. Although we have various play doh sets around the house, I confess I have been reluctant to bring them out because Hercules has a penchant for making a huge mess out of anything he plays with. He once found a tub of play doh and managed to open it by himself. For a change, he had been silent for a really long time until I started to worry about what might have happened to him. When I found him, he was industriously smearing his play doh onto every square inch of my glass-topped table. Kids… even when they’re quiet you need to worry about what they’re up to.

So I finally braved the mess issue and gave Hercules a free reign with his play doh…

The chef has been busy cooking all morning... The feast should be delicious!

My I-can’t-focus-on-anything-for-very-long child spent the entire morning cooking up a storm with his play doh. I’m certain he would have spent the whole afternoon there if I hadn’t pulled him away for lunch. I thought perhaps it was a rare occurrence because he doesn’t usually get to play with play doh, but he has consistently been asking for play doh. Whenever I do take it out, I am the one who has to tell him it’s time to stop.

So there you go… if you feel your child has a short attention span, perhaps you just haven’t found that element which ignites his passion.

Sometimes, without intending to, we are the barriers that block our children’s paths. I’ve written before about how easy it is to get caught up in wanting something for your child more than your child wants it. For instance, you’ve always wanted to play the piano but never had the chance to learn as a child. Now you’re determined to give your child music lessons. At first your child is excited. Music lessons are fun. The teacher is encouraging because your child shows promise. You get excited and your excitement carries you way ahead of your child. Instead of encouraging your child’s interest in music, you’ve unwittingly squashed it.

The example above is the exact opposite. Instead of overtaking our children’s enthusiasm for a particular interest, we allow our dislike for that interest get in the way of our children’s pursuits. In this case, it isn’t that I dislike play doh. I dislike the mess it creates and the cleaning up that I’ll have to do after. Because of that, I’ve been discouraging the boys from playing with play doh instead of encouraging their interest. Another example might be a child who likes to pretend he’s playing the drums. Can you imagine the awful racket that he makes? It’s enough to give you a migraine to last you until New Year.

I realise that molding play doh and banging on pretend drums probably seem insignificant but you can extrapolate it to something bigger, like a career. Similar to this example, our biases may mean that we discourage our children’s aspirations for certain careers that we don’t like. It isn’t just pushing our children to do things that can be detrimental. Holding them back from pursuing their dreams can be just as bad.

So what are some interests that you really dislike? Are you unwittingly preventing your child from pursuing that interest? Something to think about.

Related:


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How Bad is Screen Time?

I’ve been asking this question in my mind for some time now. There are plenty of warnings against screen time – or at least a restriction on screen time. However, if you examine the guidelines for the amount of screen time is advisable for specific age groups, I am pretty sure many parents have exceeded the recommended daily allowance for it – myself included. I’m sure we all feel guilty about it but we still allow it.

Even the “no screen time for children under 2″ recommendation has been in question – the arguments for which have been highlighted in the article Multimedia Babies: What’s a Parent to Do? In summary:

  • the recommendation: “no screen time for children under two” is not helpful in this day and age of technology
  • there is insufficient research on the effects to conclusively state or negate the harmful effects of screen time
  • parents, in general, do not view multimedia as bad
  • parents are concerned that their children will miss out if they do not receive multimedia exposure

The guidelines recommended by Live Science:

No adult TV when youngsters are in the room. Rachel Barr of Georgetown University says parents think babies aren’t paying attention, but research showed that when “Jeopardy!” was on in the background, tots’ play was distracted.

If you need to pop in a video for the under-2 set while you cook dinner, talk them through it. “Look, that’s a ball, just like your ball.” “Oh, see the kitty—what does a kitty say?” It helps their comprehension, Barr’s research shows.

What we have been doing:

Both of my boys have had screen time before the age of two. They have also had more than the recommended 1-2 hours of educational screen time a day on some days, although they also have days when they have little or no screen time at all. I do allow more than the recommended screen time sometimes because I do not feel screen time is as harmful as we are made to believe. In fact, I have seen sufficient evidence for the educational benefits of screen time to advocate the use of such technologies in educating our children:

And there have also been incidences where screen time has provided other benefits:

Although I believe in the benefits from screen time, I still set limits for my boys. But as I mentioned earlier, my screen time limitations do exceed the recommendations of the AAP. On occasion, they have received a free reign on screen time, for example, when we are travelling, when there are special traditional festivities where I need to assist my MIL, or when I’m too sick to distract them with regular play. Usually after such occasions, they go through a screen time detox to reset balance.

Despite my willingness to allow my boys to spend significant amounts of time with screen technology, there is always this consciousness at the forefront of my mind seeking to establish more screen free time. Although I believe in the benefits of  appropriate screen time, as a parent, I have never lost that fear that I might be unwittingly harming my children even when I think I’m doing the right thing.

Computer

Recently, I read an article from Psychology Today – “The Many Benefits, for Kids, of Playing Video Games” – that flies in the face of all the “anti-screen time” and “screen time limitation” warnings. In his article, Peter Gray not only writes about the benefits of video game playing but that we should allow children to decide for themselves how much of it they get – in other words, no limitations. It seems like a scary thought, but he does point out some good arguments for it. Here are some of Gray’s beliefs and arguments:

  • Children should be free to choose what they want to do because they are capable of making good choices when they are given a chance to choose for themselves. They know what they need to learn what they want to learn about. And if they choose what they want to learn about, they will learn much more, more easily and more rapidly. This argument is essentially the teaching philosophies of Sudbury Valley School and Unschooling
  • Children suffer from too much adult control. Such control conveys the underlying message that their decisions are not to be trusted because they are incapable of making good choices.
  • Why do we limit how much time a child can spend in front of a screen but not when they spend hours reading a book? Why is it okay to limit computer time that a child chooses for himself but not when a child spends hours doing homework – an activity that has been forced upon him? Which activity do you think a child gets more from – the homework (which he does grudgingly) or the computer (which he does willingly)? This is a controversial argument because it challenges some of our beliefs as parents but Gray asks us to “consider the possibility that the kid is learning more valuable lessons at the computer than at school, in part because the computer activity is self-chosen and the school activity is not”.
  • Why do we want to limit a child’s computer time when the computer is such an important tool of modern society? Isn’t this argument akin to Plato’s arguments in The Republic that plays and poetry should be banned because of their harmful effects on the young. Is it not like the elders who warned that writing would rot the minds of the young because they would no longer have to exercise their memories? And that printed novels would lead the young, especially girls and young women, to moral degeneracy?
  • I have read articles that talk about the research that supports the argument on the negative “potential” of screen time but none of them are able to conclusively argue that screen time really is bad because there is insufficient scientific evidence to make such claims. Now Gray cites articles that support the opposite – that “regular video-game players are, if anything, more physically fit, less likely to be obese, more likely to also enjoy outdoor play, more socially engaged, more socially well-adjusted, and more civic minded than are their non-gaming peers”, “that kids who had a computer and/or a television set in their own room were significantly more likely to play outside than were otherwise similar kids who didn’t have such easy and private access to screen play”, “that video games, far from being socially isolating, serve to connect young people with their peers and to society at large”, “that video games promote social interactions and friendships”, and that “kids make friends with other gamers, both in person and online. They talk about their games with one another, teach one another strategies, and often play together, either in the same room or online”.
  • Concerning the arguments on video games and violence, there seems to be a positive correlation between playing violent video games and decreased real world violence. One study showed that “that regular players of violent video games felt less depressed and less hostile 45 minutes after the frustrating experience than did otherwise similar students who didn’t play such games”.
  • Video games have been shown to have positive effects on brain power – there were marked increases in visuospatial ability, working memory, critical thinking, and problem solving. There is also “growing evidence that kids who previously showed little interest in reading and writing are now acquiring advanced literacy skills through the text-based communication in on-line video games”.
  • The children who play video games felt that it gave them a sense of freedom, self-direction, and competence in a world where they are generally treated like idiots who need constant direction.
  • Furthermore, playing “massively multiplayer online role-playing games” (MMORPG) developed skills that are required in the running of a real world corporation.

Personal Anecdotes:

When Gray wrote about the benefits of playing MMORPGs, I was reminded of the time when I was watching a friend play War Craft. Although she was playing alone in her study, her game was connected to her friends through the internet. I had played the game before so I was familiar with the workings of it. I remember how amazed I was watching her – one minute she was building new structures for her base, then she was sending her men off to fight, then she was collecting gold, and in between it all she was sending messages to her friends. I was the person watching and I couldn’t even keep up with what she was doing. It was like her brain was functioning on a different level to mine. There was definitely nothing deficient about how her brain was working.

In spite of all the articles I have read stating that screen time negatively impacts the brain’s development, I have yet to observe any real negative effects on my children’s development. I cannot help but wonder if Gray might be right – that all these warnings on screen time are merely the result of scaremongering or perhaps the fear of the future, the great unknown. That has always been the case in history – we distrust the things that are new because it undermines our security and throws us out of our comfort zone. The old ways are always the best and anything that states otherwise is not to be trusted.

When I think of this, I think of the arguments against homeschooling, unschooling, and early learning. So many people think that homeschooled children are socially inept and they turn out all “weird” because they did not follow the conventional form of schooling despite the number of successful homeschooled children who grew up to achieve amazing things. Then there are those who feel uncomfortable about handing over the educational reigns to their children in the unschooling method because how can a child know what he needs to know? I don’t even need to get started on all the naysayers on early childhood education because they believe the children are being pressured to do things that are beyond the capabilities of their brains and may cause irreparable trauma.

I also remember a time when I read an article and a reader commented that they had seen a child who spent many hours watching TV and they believed the child to be damaged because the child would often repeat lines he had seen from the programs he watched on TV. At the time I read that comment, I did wonder if TV had negatively impacted that child until my own son, Hercules, developed a pattern of repeating the things he had seen and heard. Some times he would suddenly break into a monologue, narrating the entire content of a book that happened to be a favourite of his at the time. Does that mean he’s been damaged by books?

Looks like the only thing we can conclude is that nothing is conclusive. Our children will be the generation that shows us what will come of all this technology exposure from early childhood and I can’t help but feel that it really won’t be as bad as we fear. Or perhaps I kid myself because I’ve always been a child of the Next Generation and I have always dreamed of a future the likes of which we have seen in Star Trek.

So what do you think – does Gray have a point?


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Developing Stress Tolerance in Children

The 2013 World Education Games are coming up in March and Aristotle’s school has registered for the Maths category. So when Aristotle came home with his login details, I thought to give him a chance to practice to help build his confidence. I was not prepared for the reaction I received.

Aristotle was not keen to practice and he seemed distressed when he had to compete against faceless children from other parts of the world. The more children he was pitted against, the more worked up he became. It was so bad that he could hardly concentrate on his own questions because he was too busy worrying about the performance of the children he was competing against.

I took a look at the questions that were being given in his age category and they were all well within his ability so I knew it was not because the questions were too hard. I wanted him to practice because although he could do the questions easily, his main stumbling point was keying them in. If he got flustered, he sometimes mis-typed the answers and he would press enter without checking if the answer he keyed in was the answer he worked out. And if he accidentally got them wrong, he would get upset with the keyboard.

What was supposed to be light, friendly competition had turned into a highly stressful environment for my son and he was not reacting well to it.

The same evening, Daddy reported to me that Aristotle was almost in tears as he related to his father about an award he was gunning for at school. From the sound of it, it was something very personal to him and it seemed very important to him that he get the award.

I was naturally stunned and upset by all of this. Aristotle has always been competitive – that was a trait that manifested very early. He likes to win and he hates to lose. We’ve talked to him before about good sportsmanship and losing with grace and although he accepts what we say when all things are calm, it’s like everything goes out the door when he’s in competition. I figured it was something he would grow to learn with constant guidance and coaching but I never expected it to get to this boiling point.

It was starting to appear to me that if Aristotle felt he couldn’t be good at something, he wanted nothing to do with it. He didn’t even want to try. He didn’t like to practice. He was developing my greatest fear – a fixed mindset.

This is a danger for many children who are precocious. I believe that many bright and gifted children end up with this problem because there is so much expectation placed upon them before they have learned to cope with the pressures. Before they can even realise their potential, they have burnt out. They develop the fixed mindset because too many people praise them for being smart (see: the inverse power of praise) and suddenly they are afraid to make mistakes and get things wrong. So instead of taking on challenges, they shy away from them because of the fear of failing.

Despite all my efforts to offer the right kind of praise of Aristotle, to talk to him about the need for effort, to describe the brain as a muscle that gets stronger with practice, to explain that mistakes help us learn; it appears it has not been enough. Aristotle still fears failure.

So I recently redoubled my efforts to emphasise:

  • the importance of having fun
  • that winning or losing doesn’t matter and that no one wins all the time
  • the importance of giving everything a go – just to try and do your best

Beyond that, I’ve also started to look into developing stress tolerance. Yes, it seems a heavy topic for someone who is only a child, and yet, it appears that some children need it more than others. The polar differences between Aristotle and Hercules has demonstrated that some children are more susceptible to stress (like Aristotle) while others just take everything in stride (like Hercules). If you’re interested, there is an interesting article that talks about stress tolerance and inheritance.

Although susceptibility to stress can be inborn, children can be taught resilience and how to cope with stress. Here are a few articles on the topic that I found and some of their suggestions:

Helping Children Cope with Stress

Junior Stress

  • Reduce activities and give your child more free time
  • Teaching relaxation techniques (yoga for kids can also be good)

Stress and Young Children

  • Help your child anticipate stressful events
  • Provide a supportive environment for your child to express his concerns
  • Help your child develop a variety of coping strategies
  • Help your child recognise, name, express and accept their feelings
  • Practice positive self-talk skills

What about you? How do you help your child cope with stress?


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