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By jamie, April 3, 2012 2:41 am

I remember falling asleep in class when I was in high school. One time a teacher told me off in front of everyone else – I had gone to class at 6 am for an optional study session for Honors Chemistry after only sleeping about three hours, and I pretty much slept through the whole thing. I was convinced that something was wrong with me, that maybe I just didn’t have the drive necessary to stay awake even though everyone else seemed to be able to. Another time I was so excited to see Nelson Mandela interviewed on television – I slept through the interview and felt like such a failure afterwards.

It turns out I was just a normal, sleep deprived teenager, trying to juggle AP classes and extracurricular activities and finding that there were not enough hours in a day. The author mentions (but does not link to – at least the digital version does not include many notes – to me this is a major flaw of the book) studies about sleep deprivation and teens. (By the way, I read through Chapter 7.) Teenagers who juggle too many activities on too little sleep are, according to Robbins, more likely to be depressed, have “negative moods, decreased school performance, increased likelihood to try stimulants, and a higher risk of accidents and death.” I am inclined to believe her, because we heard similar things, and more, in NurtureShock (for example, that SAT and math scores improve when teens gets more sleep).

Another challenge students increasingly face is the emphasis on test scores over actual learning. Sometimes they tell me about their experiences with No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and, because we are in Florida, the FCAT. I have heard so many horror stories. It is extremely stressful, and there doesn’t seem to be any emphasis on actually retention of knowledge. And I wonder how much fun it is for the teachers? – if they have to devote the majority of their time to making sure one test goes well in order to keep their jobs, I don’t think we are best utilizing their skills and talents. how are your skills and talents. Here is a quote from the book:

No Child Left Behind has already changed the face of the United States classroom, and the results are disturbing. The exclusive emphasis on tests has left students sick with stress in even the youngest grades; some schools reported that on testing days, up to two dozen children vomit on their test booklets. In Florida, when a seventeen-year-old honor roll student failed the state test and was told she wouldn’t graduate with her class, she attempted to kill herself.

The book explains that NCLB was modeled after a program in Houston, which sounded as though it was extremely successful at increasing test scores and discouraging kids from dropping out of college. Evidently the program, which hasn’t been successful at the national level, didn’t work in Texas either – those impressive results that led to a national program turned out to be fraudulent. (Robbins gives specific evidence of this, but I haven’t fact checked her.)

There is so much in these chapters – I could go on and on. Here are a few more highlights:

Cheating is an epidemic among smart kids. One student explained it this way: “The whole reason cheating is popular is because it’s busywork, for the most part, and you don’t feel you need to learn the material because it’s not important. For teachers I respect, if they make the effort to teach me something useful, I’m not going to cheat.”

I try to make my assignments as engaging as possible, but I have caught some cheaters. It feels terrible to be the one the students don’t respect. On a positive note, I assign a lot of writing in my classes, and the blatant cheating has only happened a few times. And sometimes the student “accidentally” plagiarized by copying and pasting large passages of text, then slapping a citation at the bottom of the page. For me it is more common for students to speak to me about their papers as they are writing them – some show me drafts, other ask questions here and there, and sometimes they give me regular updates on papers they are particularly invested in.

Not only do we pressure kids too much in the classroom, we do it on the sports field as well. Robbins gives the following statistic: “Every year, more than 3.5 million children age fourteen and younger are treated for sports injuries.” That’s a lot, particularly because many of them are the types of injuries that can only occur with many hundreds of hours of repetitive activity. I remember reading about this in A Nation of Wimps, too, and I repeat that I don’t want to ever lose my head and make my children believe that being the best at any sports is worth permanent, irreparable injury. If this keeps them out of the Olympics or the “Big Leagues,” I’m alright with that.

This section also discusses private preschools for children, and highly competitive kindergartens that involve standardized testing and personal interviews with both parents and children. Naturally, I read these paragraphs with great interest. I’m not sure how Little Mama would do on the tests. As a parent, I know it’s hard to resist the urge to compare our kids to other people’s, so I tried to imagine our girl in the interview room when the author was describing the ones she got to witness. At nearly four, she is decent at math, and spends a great deal of time voluntarily filling pages with letter practice. She isn’t reading yet, but enthusiastically points out her sight words (from school) when I read to her. She can draw a few shapes (she has been practicing stars lately – her attempts look pretty much like “A’s”), and I think she is excellent with scissors. I’m proud of her, of course.

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By jamie, May 11, 2010 1:33 pm

My mom has always said that all kids are smart, you just have to work with them. Please indulge me while I take a moment to brag about my kid, in order to illustrate this point: My daughter, at 25 months, is talking in fairly complex complete sentences, and using words such as “actually” and “delicious.” Yesterday, when she saw me for the first time after I got dressed, she looked at me with excitement in her face and said, “Wow! Mommy you are wearing green!” I asked her if she liked my shirt, and she replied, “It’s so HAPPY, Mama! I do like it.”

The final chapter of this book is about children’s language development. Some kids take much longer to speak clearly than others, and most of this variation is not caused by genetics, which means that we can contribute to our children’ progress. I am sure most of you know about the research showing that children’s DVDs may hinder language development. Interaction is a vital part of language acquisition, and they seem to learn more when we respond to what they say than they do listening to us speak.

When our daughter was an infant, she seemed to be fascinated with watching us speak. Just like in the laboratory settings described in this chapter, she would increase her attempts at communication when we gave her positive feedback for trying. She would also study my mouth as I was speaking to her, and sometimes she would even reach up and touch my mouth while I was talking. Then she would try to imitate my lip and tongue position to recreate the sounds I was making. This was always amazing to me that she was actively engaged in trying to learn how to speak, so I always gave her as much time as she remained interested whenever she watched me speak. For all of the “rookie errors” we have made as first-time parents, it looks as though we did this one right – we have helped her become so effectively communicative at such a young age.

She doesn’t know all of her ABCs by sight, she mixes up her colors, and she obviously isn’t reading yet (which some of those infant DVDs promise), but she speaks at a level way beyond her age, which is great for her – it is rare that she says something we do not understand, so she experiences far less frustration than if she spoke less clearly.

The chapter emphasizes that, in language development, we can definitely help our children advance, and very quickly at that. We should give positive feedback when our infants attempt to speak to us, and we should also give them the names of objects accompanied by shaking the object in order to help them connect the word to the item. At the same time, we should give them plenty of quiet time, and time to practice babbling on their own without pummeling them with feedback so their brains can process all that they are learning. We should also avoid trying to guess what word they are attempting to say if it refers to something outside of their sight, because we might end up hindering language development in the process. (The authors did a great job of explaining this – parents of infants should probably read the chapter, as I am trying to simplify the explanation, and am probably leaving out vital information.)

As for the DVDs, I personally think that they are probably fine if parents use them sparingly, as long as we spend time interacting with our kids, or “working with them” as my mom says.

I will review it eventually, but I want to say that I highly recommend this book, even if you do not have children. For me, it has lived up to its hype – it’s very helpful to have current developmental psychological data in one place, particularly since it also provides suggestions for parents to help encourage healthy development.

Other posts about NurtureShock:

Post 1: NurtureShock, by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman
Post 2: Your Brain is a Muscle
Post 3: Sleeping Makes Kids Smarter
Post 4: Race is a Tricky Topic
Post 5: Tattletails and Liars
Post 6: IQ Tests for Toddlers
Post 7: I Love My Sister
Post 8: Those Wacky Teenagers
Post 9: Learning Through Play
Post 10: Daddy, Hug Mommy Now
Post 11: I am Raising a Little Chatterbox

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By jamie, May 10, 2010 2:15 pm

Hubby and I have had arguments in front of our daughter. Not very often, because we do not argue very often, and we do make an effort to reserve heated discussion topics for times when she is either asleep or at school. She clearly does not like to see us in conflict – we know this because she puts a stop to it by making us hug. “Daddy – hug Mommy now,” she says sternly, and then she watches to make sure her instructions are followed. Then she makes us hug a few more times just to make sure all is right with her world.

As it turns out, children SHOULD see their parents argue, and we should not stop in the middle of a fight to take things out of the kids’ earshot, because then they miss out on a valuable lesson in conflict resolution – if all they see is the argument, they learn to be negatively aggressive in their relationships with people, and if they NEVER see their parents engaged in conflict, they will still suspect that it occurs, and will be insecure in not knowing how much it happens. So, score one point for us, and about a thousand points for Baby Girl, who is not only learning about conflict resolution, but facilitating it in her own home.

This chapter is about how, though parents have tons of techniques and parenting aids to help us teach our children to be peacemakers instead of bullies, our kids are not less aggressive than children from previous generations. There is a lot here, so I’m going to focus on a few of the most interesting points.

Do your kids watch children’s television? If so, then they are probably more aggressive than they would be if they watched more violent programming instead. Are you shocked by this? Evidently, programming aimed at children inadvertently teaches them to be MORE relationally aggressive – this includes ignoring other kids, telling lies about them, or deciding not to be friendly to previous friends. These shows typically spend the bulk of their time modeling conflict, and only a few minutes dealing with conflict resolution – this is not enough time for kids to get the message, if they even watch long enough to see the happy ending. I will try not to feel too self-righteous about not encouraging my daughter to watch television – the bulk of her children’s television experience consists of a few music clips from Sesame Street and a single episode of Dora the Explorer – after all, those judges on American Idol might not be the most positive influences for her either.

Another interesting point is that, while spanking causes children in white families to be more physically aggressive, the same cannot be said of black families. When Duke professor, Dr. Kenneth Dodge, released these findings, based on solid longitudinal research, he was obviously criticized. After studies of corporal punishment were conducted on a global basis, however, it seems that, if a particular culture condones spanking, children become less physically aggressive as a result of being spanked – in the United States, African American communities as well as Conservative Protestant communities (this population spanks their kids at least three times a week!!!!) see it as a normal part of parenting, and so the effects on children are positive ones. The chapter did not say anything about Latinos and spanking – either way, I have told my daughter that we don’t hit each other in our home, and I’m sticking to that promise, so I guess if we ever do spank her, it will not have a positive effect.

One more: If you have ever seen the movie Heathers, or other, more recent films about popular kids who are mean, it will not surprise you to find out that the biggest bullies in schools are usually also the most popular children. This is why many researchers do not approve of “zero tolerance” policies at schools as a way of combating bullying. Many popular kids know how to work every social angle, including using cruelty to control other people – they are also the ones least likely to be punished, because everyone likes them.

This morning when I dropped my daughter off a school, I observed an incident that made me think about this idea of popular kids being bullies. There is a new little girl at school, who is friendly, cute, and assertive, and my daughter likes her a lot – Baby Girl talks about her all the time. My daughter is also friendly, cute, and assertive, and I am not only saying this because I am her mother – everyone seems to admire her wherever we go because she has a sort of glow about her, and she’s so NICE. Anyway, when I dropped my kiddo off, this little girl (we’ll call her “Holly”) went over to her right away and greeted her. My daughter bent down to buckle her shoe and Holly looked down at her, and then kicked her – I was the only one to witness this. Baby Girl stood up, and before she could do anything, was distracted by the teacher, who suggested that she go to the bathroom before beginning her day. Holly looked around to see if she had been caught, and locked eyes with me – I glared at her, and she opened her eyes very wide. Then she threw her arms around my Baby Girl and told her “I’m sorry.” My girl did not acknowledge the apology, but went up to the teacher and took her hand to be led to the bathroom, which prompted Holly to exclaim that she also needed to go to the potty.

In that moment, I wondered about the future for these two little girls (one more than the other, obviously). Who will be popular? Who will be nice? I am crossing my fingers that my little peacemaker stays friendly and manages to avoid becoming a “mean girl.”

Other posts about NurtureShock:

Post 1: NurtureShock, by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman
Post 2: Your Brain is a Muscle
Post 3: Sleeping Makes Kids Smarter
Post 4: Race is a Tricky Topic
Post 5: Tattletails and Liars
Post 6: IQ Tests for Toddlers
Post 7: I Love My Sister
Post 8: Those Wacky Teenagers
Post 9: Learning Through Play
Post 10: Daddy, Hug Mommy Now
Post 11: I am Raising a Little Chatterbox

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By jamie, May 7, 2010 12:50 pm

Yesterday I took my daughter shopping for a denim skirt. She decided that she wanted to choose some clothing too, and I decided to let her since it is getting very hot here and she doesn’t have that many pairs of shorts. She was a delight for the other shoppers: Her dialogue: “I want choices, Mommy, please. Show me that one [pause for deliberation] No, put it back. Show me the other one. I like the blue one. Put it in the cart. Take it out – I want a different one. I need the red shirt…..” She mixes up some of her colors, but she concentrated on her shopping task close to an hour, and narrowed down her choices to three complete outfits and two extra pairs of shorts. My job was only to hand her different items and to neatly replace everything she rejected (which was a lot). Incidentally, she politely told me I could put back the denim skirt I selected for her -this was not my shopping trip, after all.

When my two-year-old does things like this, I always wonder about the idea that little kids do not have long attention spans and that they are not able to concentrate on one task for two long. This chapter was just what I needed to help solidify my belief that preschool aged children CAN learn to attend to something interesting for a prolonged period (something besides cartoons, which Baby Girl doesn’t watch). It talks about a preschool and kindergarten curriculum called “Tools of the Mind.” I had never heard of it, but it helps small children develop impulse control, and actually helps them develop their brains so they can be more successful when they move onto more complicated learning.

The authors give a lot of information about the Tools of the Mind program, or Tools, for short. I will only talk about a few techniques that I found particularly interesting:

Every morning, the kids are given a directed play assignment and instructed to decide which role they would like to play in the game. The example given in the book is a fire engine scenario, and the roles include firefighters, 911-dispatchers, the family living at the site of the fire (maybe witnesses can be added to include more children). Then the children get together and write a detailed plan for how they will play their various roles, and how their intentional play will proceed. Obviously not all of the children are able to write a detailed script as part of their play plan, but they can write or draw something to help them remember how their role will be played. Then they play. For up to an hour. If a child starts to get off task, the teacher will guide them back to their written play plan. Because the children are actively involved in determining their own roles and how they will be played, they are more intrinsically motivated to participate, and they do not find it difficult to participate in a single activity for a prolonged period of time.

Another interesting thing about a Tools classroom is how they teach the alphabet. They do not post an ordered letter list, choosing instead to group letters by sound and posting each word next to a picture that provides a clue about the sound it makes. The kids work with letter sounds to help them learn to read. They don’t just memorize characters and learn how to write them – they are taught how to think about symbols and concepts and then use what they have learned to read and write.

I am amazed at the positive results these schools are having using what seem to be very unconventional techniques. I’m not going to paraphrase the entire chapter for you, but I will give you a few links for more information (scroll down to the final paragraph of this post). It is shocking how effective Tools is – who wouldn’t want their kid in one of these classrooms?

I have heard that toddlers and preschoolers, especially boys, are really too young to concentrate on one task for a prolonged period, and that it is extremely difficult for them to learn impulse control at so young an age. In the Tools program, kids as young as three, even those with special needs, are able to participate in prolonged play for as long as an hour with getting distracted or disruptive. And they end up doing better in academic subjects, so it seems that prolonged, somewhat self directed play actually helps their brains develop to be more efficient at other tasks.

I want to read more about Montessori, but it seems like Tools might be even better – I know a kindergarten teacher who says that when she has students who have come from Montessori preschools, she has to work very hard to teach them to sit still and follow directions because they are used to having no real structure in school – I think the Tools methods might eliminate this problem, while still allowing children to direct their own activities.

It makes me sad to think that more schools are not using these techniques with small children. It seems that there is enough evidence that it gives kids a much stronger foundation for future learning than other teaching methods. Here in Florida, children go to full-day kindergarten, with no naps and only occasional recess. Teachers are required to hit a ton of benchmarks – kids need to be able to read and write by the end of the school year, including writing out their full name, for example. If Tools can help kids surpass these requirements, while also setting them up to do even better once they move on to elementary school, it’s a shame that more schools have not adopted a similar structure.

After I read this chapter, I spent the better part of an hour trying to see if there are any preschools or kindergartens in San Diego or in Florida that utilize the Tools of the Mind curriculum. I didn’t have any luck, but I did find the website that best explains the program. It includes some ideas for parents who want to use some of the techniques with their children at home – I am definitely going to try them with our kiddo!

Other posts about NurtureShock:

Post 1: NurtureShock, by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman
Post 2: Your Brain is a Muscle
Post 3: Sleeping Makes Kids Smarter
Post 4: Race is a Tricky Topic
Post 5: Tattletails and Liars
Post 6: IQ Tests for Toddlers
Post 7: I Love My Sister
Post 8: Those Wacky Teenagers
Post 9: Learning Through Play
Post 10: Daddy, Hug Mommy Now
Post 11: I am Raising a Little Chatterbox

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By jamie, May 6, 2010 12:34 am

When we were kids, my mom used to get upset when we said we were bored. It was almost like saying a bad word – “only boring people get bored,” my mom would say. Today I hear kids saying that all the time, and it annoys me. Well, this chapter reveals that for many teenagers, their brains actually register boredom for all but extremely exciting/exhilarating activities. For activities that excite the adult brain, they actually feel no response, or even a negative one. This is probably why teens often make impulsive, bad decisions that their parents are shocked about – their brains crave excitement. Experts try to teach teens how to combat boredom and how to be intrinsically motivated – I think we can do that too as parents.

This chapter is on teenage rebellion. It contains a lot of research on brain development, as well as a history of how the various psychological studies on teens and rebellion have contradicted each other, and why. There is too much to cover in a single blog post – I’ll only mention a couple more major points.

Remember Barbara Coloroso’s preference for “backbone” parents? Well it turns out she has scientific evidence to back her up – these parents are more likely to have solid relationships with their children through the teen years, are less likely to be lied to and rebelled against. These parents set rules for their children to follow, but are willing to discuss and negotiate with their teens, sometimes amending rules as they see fit. Children know this, and so they are less likely to lie or sneak.

Parents who do not set rules for their children (the “jellyfish parents”) are more likely to have rebellious teenagers. Sometimes overly-lenient parents try to avoid teen rebellion by giving into every whim and even allowing their children to do things that are clearly wrong. The teens get the idea that their parents do not care about them, so they tend to engage in more risky behavior. I once knew a fourteen-year-old girl whose parents allowed her to date and ultimately marry a 20-year-old man – they figured she was going to do it anyway, and so at least this way she would not be sneaking around. I always wondered about that parental decision.

Really strict households where rules are not negotiable under any circumstances DO tend to experience less teen rebellion. They also have more incidents of teen depression.

Oh, and many teenagers see arguing with their parents as a sign of respect. If parents listen to their children and are willing to negotiate, they might experience more arguments along the way, but their children will continue to communicate with them because they respect them and know that their opinions are heard.

Other posts about NurtureShock:

Post 1: NurtureShock, by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman
Post 2: Your Brain is a Muscle
Post 3: Sleeping Makes Kids Smarter
Post 4: Race is a Tricky Topic
Post 5: Tattletails and Liars
Post 6: IQ Tests for Toddlers
Post 7: I Love My Sister
Post 8: Those Wacky Teenagers
Post 9: Learning Through Play
Post 10: Daddy, Hug Mommy Now
Post 11: I am Raising a Little Chatterbox