9 January 2011
Socialization: When parents are monkeys
Posted by DAVID BC TAN under: Socialization.
Of all the criticisms that homeschoolers find most irritating this one wins hands down: It is said our kids are so sheltered their lack of socialization will make them misfits. How will they survive (as in barely subsist) when they move from home to college, or when they finally start to work? Sometimes the derision can become ugly as a look of incredulity turns into a sneer that masks more unspoken scorn. When asked how 2 homeschooled kids could possibly be ‘socialized’ if all they had were their own parents, one mother I know shot back: “You don’t think we parents are capable enough for socialization? You think we are monkeys?”
So, I thought it was interesting to read an article in CNN that Harvard undergrads have problems ‘playing.’
“They’re all wonderful kids, but some can’t share easily or listen in a group. Some have impulse control problems and have trouble keeping their hands to themselves; others don’t always see that actions have consequences; a few suffer terribly from separation anxiety.
We’re not talking about preschool children. These are Harvard undergraduate students whom we teach and advise. They all know how to work, but some of them haven’t learned how to play.”
Erika and Nicholas Christakis who serve as Masters of Pforzheimer House, one of the undergraduate residential houses at Harvard College, say these students know how to work, “but some of them haven’t learned how to play.”
Oh wait. Isn’t Harvard where Mark Zuckerberg came from? The guy who taught the world how to make friends on Facebook?
And doesn’t the choice of word play say something? Like playing together? Perhaps they were avoiding the ‘S’ word, long seen as a mile-wide hole in a homeschooler’s neat argument. Undergrads who can’t share? Don’t know how to listen in a group? And gasp! Suffering from separation anxiety? Who would have thought?
When undergrads are said to not appreciate that actions have consequences, I say that schools have a bigger problem with socialization than homeschoolers.
The fact is, you don’t throw a bunch of wide-eyed kids in school and wait to see them coalesce into something resembling a civilized society. Think Lord of the Flies. If preschoolers and undergrads are to play together, they will have to learn how. Walk with the wise and become wise; associate with fools and get in trouble. So reads a proverb in the Bible.
I happen to believe that homeschoolers tend to be better socialized even if their circle of friends is not as big as their school-going friends. Yes, because they do play more, but also because they have their parents’ attention. Homeschool provides that like no school can.
Of course, a lot of times, values are often caught than taught. But at other times, our kids will need to learn the basis for the faith we hold dear, the things we do, and why moral choices count. Like it or not, that will require some articulation. Let’s face it: if parents do not spend time to instill eternal values and cultivate social skills, nature will take over and fill that vacuum with something else. Natural selection, anyone?
Related articles:
Homeschooling and Socialization by Alicia Ling Horsley
Socialization and dealing with conflict by Carrie Jean Ross
Biblical or worldly socialization by Michael F. Haverluck
Socialization in the real world by Chris Klicka, HSLDA
17 December 2010
What does a homeschool dad do? Part 1
Posted by DAVID BC TAN under: Parenting.
“What do dads do in homeschool?”
That’s a question I get asked a lot. I posed this question to my two boys and this is what then nine-year old Ethan wrote in his journal. He came up with 15 points and corresponding ‘examples.’ I’m posting Points 1 – 8 here, and you can read the rest in an upcoming post. Make sure you stick around for Part 2.
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Point 1: Dads can help discipline the children.
Example: Dads can help discipline the children when they’re bad. Dads also must be good judges to decide who is wrong and who is right, when they fight.
Point 2: Dads can get the heavy load of shouting off mom’s back by buying projects for the children to do. (That will keep them busy!)
Example: This point is very useful when mom’s sick or tired. When a dad buys a project that his kids like, it would be better for mom, ‘cause it would keep them even busier!
Point 3: Dads can help repair things in the house.
Example: Let’s say a door is spoilt (or jammed), he can fix it. But if he can’t he has to call the locksmith. But if worse comes to worse, he has to bang down the door!
Point 4: Dads can read to their children.
Example: Dads can read to their children at night before they go to bed, or when they beg for a story. But I think that made up stories by dads are better. Dads who read with expressive reading are better (also).
Point 5: Dads can discuss what they have done or seen.
Example: Like, after a movie, he can discuss about its lesson, is it a good show? Is it five stars? Or even after reading a book! Anything! Anywhere! (It’s what I like to do the best!)
Point 6: Dads can take out the whole family on holiday (to relax!)
Example: Sometimes if a dad isn’t so busy, he can take out the whole family for a holiday, if he’s nice enough to do that.
Point 7: Dads who play with their children are liked better (I think).
Example: The word ‘play’ means play computer. Just kidding! Dads can play like most animals do. That’s what I like, too. He holds us and tickles us until we cough and sputter until we can’t say, “mercy!”
Point 8: Dads can read the Bible to them and discuss about it.
Example: After reading a chapter of the Bible, dads can talk about what they have just read, or he can ask, “Any questions?”
8 October 2009
Playing with infants and toddlers
Posted by DAVID BC TAN under: Child Development.
PLAYING IT UP
by Jeanie Hurley
Playing is the most natural thing in the world, but there’s much more to it than just having fun. Jeanie Hurley investigates the role of play in development from newborn baby to boisterous pre-schooler to see why playing is never a waste of time.
CHILDREN JUST LOVE TO PLAY and the great news is that play is good for them. From four months old a baby will smile and giggle when you make funny sounds or cuddle them up close. By eight months they’ve grasped the ‘where’s it gone?’ theory and are delighted by peek-a-boo games.
Early days
Dr Julie C Coultas, a social psychologist at East Sussex University, says playing has an essential role in children’s mental and physical development and as such says parents should see their role in helping babies and children play as ‘parental investment’. She explains that before 15 months the games should be led by the mother or carer with little peer interaction.
Liz Attenborough, from the National Literacy Trust, has helped launch a campaign to encourage parents to communicate with their babies. She believes what babies and young children learn from playing, equips them with valuable skills later on, and that it’s never too early to start. “Babies are born social and need an adult partner to develop their social skills. Playing involves being engaged in an enjoyable activity and you can begin playing with your baby as soon as she is conceived. Your baby will already be familiar with your voice if you talk to your bump while you’re pregnant, and you can start interacting now, when you feel the baby kick, gently tap back to see if you get a response.”
Development skills
Child development falls into the two main categories of physical and neurological. Physical skills involve both gross motor skills such as rolling over, crawling and walking, and fine motor skills such as hand-eye coordination, grasping objects, drawing and later writing. Sensory development is also physical and includes sight, sound, touch, smell and taste. Intellectual and cognitive development centre on activity in the brain including use of language, smiling and giggling, imagination and working out. Our children’s emotional wellbeing also develops in the brain and comprises many areas such as self awareness, self esteem and the ability to interact with others. Playing in some form or another helps to refine these different areas of development in babies and young children.
Communication
Good communication makes for good and rewarding play, although in young children under two years this doesn’t necessarily mean having to speak with words. Facial expressions denoting surprise, pleasure, not knowing where something is and praise will all help your child find enjoyment in play. Talking to your toddler in simple language helps them learn to give their feelings expression. Use single words such as ‘Happy’, ‘Gone’, ‘Oh no’ right from the beginning.
How to help
Young children usually have short attention spans which adults can find frustrating. You can create a more beneficial atmosphere that encourages your little one to ‘stay with it’, by avoiding distractions such as the television or other people. If you lack confidence in how to play, start with a board book for a baby of around 6 months that you can look at together. Ask your son or daughter if they can see certain pictures and see if they can point to them. Your show them how, then let them try. Try covering things up with your hand to see if they can remember what’s there. As they get older you’ll notice how more perceptive they become. Simple games that have a clear cause and effect are good to being with.
As they grow
Psychologists agree that babies learn much through watching other babies and imitating their parents. Dr Coultas terms this ‘social pretend play’. She explains that from around 15 months a child is able to imitate, watch and comply with his mother’s suggestions, which means time to offer up plenty of ideas. Toddlers don’t actually play together properly until about 21 months when they being to learn independence. You should now take on the more passive role of spectator. Pretend tea parties are a favourite at about this age. At about 25-30 months your child will be able to develop a story with his friends. They love to mimic scenes from home, playgroup and television. From around three years of age children create pretend worlds together and enjoy embellishing them in greater detail as they get older. All this leads to the important social skill of the ‘theory of mind’, which simply means that they have now learnt that what they think isn’t always what others will think, and they are able to put themselves in someone else’s shoes.
Age appropriate toys and games
0-3 months: Wind chimes, unbreakable mirrors (babies tend to look right 80% of the time so make sure you put any objects in their line of vision), high contrasting mobiles, cloth books
3-6 months: Baby play gyms, rattles, squeaky rubber toys, colourful teethers, socks with bells
6-9 months: Textured books, soft blocks to knock down, activity boards, toys that pop up when your baby pushes the button, balls – throw the ball and encourage your baby to crawl after it
9-12 months: Walker, rocker, toy, telephone, shape sorter, books with flaps, bucket and spade for natural sand play – your baby will love the texture
12-18 months: Simple puzzles such as cut-out circles and squares, stacking, pull toys for confident walkers; climbing frame, washable non-toxic crayons, ride-on vehicle, toy buggy
18-24 months: Musical instruments such as keyboards, drum, plastic tea set, play house or den (throw a blanket on the old baby gym), shopping trolley, gardening tools, building blocks
24-36 months: Illustrated books, dressing-up clothes, child-size household equipment, construction toys, eg Lego, wooden puzzles, dolls to undress
36 months +: Basic jigsaw puzzles, memory games such as snap, child-size pots and pans, plasticine, bats and balls, golf sets, reference books
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This article was previously published in Baby and Toddler Gear, Nov/Dec 2005 and can be accessed at The National Literacy Trust
6 October 2009
A child’s work is play
Posted by DAVID BC TAN under: Child Development.
The child’s play is important in his development.
As a matter of fact, play for the small child is his work– a means of achieving
better and better skills to do the things he sees older children and adults do.
Raymond & Dorothy Moore (Better Late than Early)
IT WAS OUR OLDEST SON’S FIRST VISIT TO THE DENTIST, and there was a form to fill. He was 5 years old. When it came to the part that said OCCUPATION, Mom told him the word meant a person’s job or work. Without any hesitation he said, “My job is to play.”
Wisdom from the mouths of babes, as they say. Few people would object that children are meant to play and almost all experts agree that play is essential to their development. Without the benefit of playschool or kindergarten, our two boys played endlessly – by themselves, and with kids who occasionally visited.
They pulled out their buckets of Lego, emptied them on the carpet, built things, and knocked them down with glee. Whatever they could lay their hands on were transformed into fortresses and castles, props for tales of adventure and epic battles, interplanetary spacecraft, and improbable mazes or bridges for marbles and toy cars doing an Evel Knievel.
When they were a little older, I remember how they would pick a CD, choose a theatrical score, turn the volume up, and argue if the soundtrack was appropriately triumphant or tragic for the drama played out with their toy soldiers. If they were not at their board games or making things up, they were scrambling in the playground and clambering up monkey bars. After they learned to swim, we couldn’t keep them away from the pool. Often theirs were the only chatter and laughter you would hear because everyone else would be at school.
I can imagine why our boys were the envy of their relatives and neighbours. They inhabited a kind of Neverland without schoolmasters looking over their shoulders or a report card dangling over their heads. It needs be said that far from resembling Toys-R-Us, our home was relatively deprived – all our children had were a few board games, several buckets of Lego, a mixed-bag of plastic toy vehicles, soldiers and figurines (the PC came later, but that’s another story!).
Like all children, what they lacked in an abundance of stuff, they made up with a lot of imagination. All we parents did was to provide the necessary space and time, and also play with them. Tragically and despite our effusion of warm feelings at a child happily playing in a world of his own, more and more parents are beginning to have second thoughts.
Today increasing numbers of anxious parents are resorting to competence programmes to give junior a leg up. The proliferation of preschool courses to build a superkid or a superior mind are staggering. More troubling is the fact that the loss of childhood is uncritically accepted as a necessary price of academic advantage and social mobility.
David Elkind, the author and professor emeritus of Child Development at Tufts University calls this miseducation. Parents have been misled and misinformed, he says. In fact the eminent doctor concludes that all this hurrying is never about the child and all about the parents. Unfortunately much of the pressure put on young children is often a projection of adult insecurity and parental competition.
Infants and young children are not just sitting twiddling their thumbs, waiting for their parents to teach them to read and do math. They are expending a vast amount of time and effort in exploring and understanding their immediate world. Healthy education supports and encourages this spontaneous learning. Early instruction miseducates, not because it attempts to teach, but because it attempts to teach the wrong things at the wrong time. When we ignore what the child has to learn and instead impose what we want to teach, we put infants and young children at risk for no purpose.
David Elkind (Miseducation: Preschoolers at Risk)
I think we are not saying a young child should therefore forego any form of competence or academic instruction. It just means one has to take note of a child’s readiness and consider if any activity is developmentally appropriate. I’ll have more to say in a later post.
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Read more:
Here are two child development authorities whose books had a profound influence on my journey as a parent and a homeschooling father. You can’t go wrong reading their books. Check them out:
Dr David Elkind is a leading authority on child development and the author of several well-known books, including The Hurried Child and The Power of Play. Dr Elkind has a blog at Just Ask Baby.
Dr Raymond Moore and his wife Dorothy wrote the landmark book Better Late than Never and practically gave a new push to the homeschooling movement. Dr Moore passed away in 2007 while his wife Dorothy passed away in 2002.
Related posts:
My previous writings on the same topic-
Preschool for a head start?
Kicked out of kindy
Life in the fast lane
Finding Balance
30 September 2009
Let the children play!
Posted by DAVID BC TAN under: Announcement.
Oops, I know this notice comes a little late, but there you go. Consider signing up if you are a Christian parent with young children, or if you are involved in children’s work and ministry.
I do think it will be extremely helpful to look at how ‘play’ forms a large part of child development. Unfortunately it is misunderstood as ‘unproductive’ and dismissed as a waste of time. So now you have children in preschool and kindy who are put through the academic grind – exams! tuition! – as if all that matters is a leg up in book learning. Here’s what the New York Times reported recently:
More recently, though, a backlash has been growing against the preacademic approach among educators and child psychologists who argue that it misses the whole point of early-childhood education. “Kindergarten has ceased to be a garden of delight and has become a place of stress and distress,” warned a report released in March by a research group called the Alliance for Childhood, which is advised by some of the country’s most esteemed progressive-education scholars. There is now too much testing and too little free time, the report argues, and kids are being forced to try to read before they are ready. The solution, according to the report’s authors, is a return to ample doses of “unstructured play” in kindergarten. If kids are allowed to develop at their own paces, they will be happier and healthier and less stressed out. And there will still be plenty of time later on to learn how to read.
‘Godly Play’ while built on similar concepts places the whole idea of play in the context of Christian education. It’s a method designed to help children develop awareness of God, the language of faith, and an appreciation of the sacred in their lives, through the use of child-centered and creative play activities.
Related links:
Godly Play UK – resources, training, and articles by founder Jerome Berryman
Children and Mature Spirituality – By Jerome Berryman on concepts and foundation of Godly Play