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072: Is the 30 Million Word Gap Real: Part II
3 september 2018 · 1 uur 3 min
This episode revisits the concept of the 30 Million Word Gap concept, which we first covered in an interview with Dr. Doug Sperry a few weeks back. Lees meer
After she heard that I was going to talk with Dr. Sperry, Dr. Roberta Golinkoff – with whom we discussed her book Becoming Brilliant almost two years ago now – asked to come back on to present a rebuttal. We’re going to learn a lot more about the importance of child-directed speech!
This episode serves two purposes: it helps us to understand another aspect of the 30 Million Word Gap, and it also demonstrates pretty clearly that scientists – both of whom have the best interests of children at heart – see very different ways of achieving that end.
Jump to highlights
(04:17) The origin of the 30-million-word gap
(06:32) Addressing children directly is important
(11:47) Kindergarten has become the new first grade.
(17:19) The difference between infant-directed and adult-directed speech.
(39:08) Children also need to be responded to in terms of things that are of interest to them
References
Adair, J.K., Colegrave, K.S-S, & McManus. M.E. (2017). How the word gap argument negatively impacts young children of Latinx immigrants’ conceptualizations of learning. Harvard Educational Review 87(3), 309-334.
Avineri, N., Johnson, E., Brice‐Heath, S., McCarty, T., Ochs, E., Kremer‐Sadlik, T., Blum, S., Zentella, A.C., Rosa, J., Flores, N., Alim, H.S., & Paris, D. (2015). Invited forum: Bridging the “language gap”. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 25(1), 66-86.
Bassok, D., Latham, S., & Rorem, A. (2016). Is Kindergarten the new first grade? AERA Open 1(4), 1-31.
Baugh, J. (2017). Meaning-less difference: Exposing fallacies and flaws in “The Word Gap” hypothesis that conceal a dangerous “language trap” for low-income American families and their children. International Multilingual Research Journal 11(1), 39-51.
Brennan, W. (2018, April). Julie Washington’s quest to get schools to respect African American English. The Atl…
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071: How your child can benefit from intergenerational relationships
19 augustus 2018 · 53 min
We recently did an episode on the impact of intergenerational trauma, which was about how the ways we were parented, and even the ways our parents were parented, ends up influencing the relationship we have with our children – and often not in a positive way. Lees meer
But there’s another side to this story: relationships between the generations can actually have enormously beneficial effects on children’s lives, even when these are affected by issues like radically different parenting styles, and mental illness.
Today we explore the more positive side of intergenerational relationship with Dr. Peter Whitehouse, who (along with his wife, Cathy) co-founded The Intergenerational School in Cleveland, OH, which is now part of a small network of three schools that use this model.
Have you ever thought about how you talk about ageing effects what your children think about older people? (I hadn’t, but I have now!) Do you struggle to navigate the difference between the things your parents want to say to and buy for your child, and your own values? Do you worry about what your child might think of their grandparent’s absent-mindedness or volatility? Join us as Dr. Whitehouse and I navigate a path through these and other issues.
Jump to highlights
(03:07) The definition of intergenerativity.
(09:04) how people and other cultures interact with the elderly generally, and specifically with grandparents in particular
(13:49) When kids have a good relationship with elders in their own family, they are more open to relationships with adults and elders in society at large.
(16:56) The underlying principle of the intergenerational school and how it differs from a typical school.
(19:35) What an intergenerational playground looks like.
(35:15) The tension we feel in life about the security of the same and the danger of difference.
(39:11) How can families encourage intergenerational relationships?
(51:46) The more we compartmentalize people and categorize them as sick or diseased, …
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070: Why isn’t my child grateful?
6 augustus 2018 · 46 min
“I spent the whole morning painting and doing origami and felting projects with my daughter – and not only did she not say “thank you,” but she refused to help clean up!” (I actually said this myself this morning:-)) Lees meer
“We took our son to Disneyland and went on every ride he wanted to go on except one, which was closed, and he spent the rest of the trip whining about how the whole trip was ruined because he didn’t get to go on that one ride.” (I hope I never have to say this one…I’m not sure I could make it through Disneyland in one piece.)
You might recall that we did an episode a while back on manners, and what the research says about teaching manners, and how what the research says about teaching manners comes from the assumption that manners MUST be explicitly taught – that your child will NOT learn to say “thank you” unless you tell your child “say thank you” every time someone gives them a gift.
We also talked about how parent educator Robin Einzig uses the concept of “modeling graciousness” and that if you treat other people graciously, when your child is ready, she will be gracious as well. The problem here, of course, is that most people expect your child to display some kind of manners before they are developmentally ready to really understand the concept behind it.
But what really underlies manners? Well, ideas like gratitude. Because when we train children to say “thank you” before they are ready to do it themselves they might learn to recite the words at the appropriate time, but they aren’t really experiencing gratitude.
Dr. Jonathan Tudge of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro tells us much more about this, and how we can scaffold our child’s ability to experience gratitude, if we decide we might want to do that.
Dr. Tudge’s book, Developing Gratitude in Children and Adolescents (co-edited with Dr. Lia B. L. Freitas) contains lots more academic research on this topic if you’re interested.
Jump to highlights
00:38 Introduction to the …
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069: Reducing the impact of intergenerational trauma
23 juli 2018 · 57 min
Do you ever snap at your child over tiny things, and wonder where that intense anger comes from? You're not alone - and there's actually a scientific explanation for why this happens. Lees meer
What you're experiencing might be intergenerational trauma - the way traumatic experiences and their effects get passed down from parents to children, often without us even realizing it. But here's the hopeful part: understanding how this works is the first step to breaking the cycle.
In this episode, I talk with Dr. Rebecca Babcock-Fenerci, a clinical psychologist from Stonehill College who researches exactly how trauma transmits across generations and what we can do about it. She explains the science behind the reasons our brains react so strongly to certain parenting situations, and why some survivors seem to come through trauma unscathed while others struggle daily. Most importantly, she helps us to examine some of the ways we can recognize the impact of this trauma on ourselves. And with this awareness and the right tools, we can heal these patterns and create the calm, connected relationships with our children that we've always wanted.
Questions This Episode Will Answer
What is the definition of intergenerational trauma?
Dr. Babcock-Fenerci explains that intergenerational trauma occurs when parents who experienced trauma pass both the direct traumatic experiences and the psychological consequences (like PTSD, mood disorders, and disrupted attachment) to their children through various mechanisms including genetics, epigenetics, and parenting behaviors.
How is trauma actually passed down through generations?
Trauma transmits through multiple pathways: genetic predisposition, epigenetic changes (where experiences turn genes on or off), trauma-related thought patterns in parents, and when children serve as unconscious trauma reminders that trigger the parent's unprocessed emotions and memories.
Why do some trauma survivors seem fine while others struggle a lot more?
Individ…
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068: Do I HAVE to pretend play with my child?
9 juli 2018 · 49 min
Pretty regularly I see posts in online parenting groups saying “My child loves to pretend, and they always want me to participate. I dare not tell anyone else, but I CAN’T STAND PRETEND PLAY. What should I do?” Lees meer
In this final (unless something else catches my interest!) episode in our extended series on play, Dr. Ansley Gilpin of the University of Alabama helps us to do a deep dive into what children learn from pretend play, and specifically what they learn from fantasy play, which is pretend play regarding things that could not happen in real life (like making popcorn on Mars).
We’ll discuss the connection between fantasy play and children’s executive function, the problems with studying fantasy play, and the thing you’ve been waiting for: do you HAVE to do fantasy play with your child if you just can’t stand it (and what to do instead!)
If you missed other episodes in this series, you might want to check them out: we started out asking “what is the value of play?”, then we looked at the benefits of outdoor play and talked with Dr. Scott Sampson about his book How to Raise a Wild Child. We wrapped up with outdoor play by trying to understand whether we should allow our children to take more risks.
Jump to highlights
01:24 Introduction to Dr. Ansley Gilpin, developmental psychologist researching executive function and imagination
02:06 Defining fantasy play as distinct from ordinary pretend play
08:17 A correlational study linking fantasy play to executive function skills
11:33 A five-week intervention study comparing fantasy play, reality-based play, and non-imaginative games
20:30 Choosing culturally appropriate play prompts, including a story about religious families and pretend play
25:19 Anthropological evidence: many cultures don't expect parents to engage in children's make-believe at all
27:06 Should parents feel obligated to join fantasy play, or is redirecting sometimes okay?
30:39 Imaginary friends: how common they are, and when (rarely) they'…
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067: Does the Marshmallow Test tell us anything useful?
25 juni 2018 · 52 min
The Marshmallow Test is one of the most famous experiments in Psychology: Dr. Walter Mischel and his colleagues presented a preschooler with a marshmallow. The child was told that the researcher had to leave the room for a period of time and the child could either wait until the researcher returned and have two marshmallows, or if the child couldn’t wait, they could call the researcher back by ringing a bell and just have one marshmallow. The idea was to figure how delayed gratification develops, and, in later studies, understand its importance in our children’s lives and academic success. Lees meer
Dr. Mischel and his colleagues have followed some of the children he originally studied and have made all kinds of observations about their academic, social, and coping competence, and even their health later in life.
But a new study by Dr. Tyler Watts casts some doubt on the original results. In this episode we talk with Dr. Watts about the original work and some of its flaws (for example, did you know that the original sample consisted entirely of White children of professors and grad students, but the results were extrapolated as if they apply to all children?). We then discuss the impact of his new work, and what parents should take away from all of this.
As a side note that you might enjoy, my almost 4YO saw me open my computer to publish this episode and asked me what I was doing. I said I needed to publish a podcast episode and she asked me what it was about. I told her it’s about the Marshmallow Test and asked her if she wanted to try it.
She is, as I type, sitting at our dining room table with three marshmallows on a plate in front of her, trying to hold out for 15 minutes. We’re not doing it in strictly; we are both still in the room with her, although we’re both typing and ignoring her and asking her to turn back toward the table when she asks us a question.
She keeps asking how many minutes have passed, which I imagine (as I tell her) is quite helpful to her in t…
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066: Is the 30 Million Word Gap real?
11 juni 2018 · 58 min
You all know that on the show we pretty much steer clear of the clickbait articles that try to convince you that something is wrong with your child, in favor of getting a balanced view of the overall body of literature on a topic. Lees meer
But every once in a while a study comes along and I think “we really MUST learn more about that, even though it muddies the water a bit and leads us more toward confusion than a clear picture.”
This is one of those studies. We’ll learn about the original Hart & Risley study that identified the “30 Million Word Gap” that so much policy has been based on since then, and what are the holes in that research (e.g. did you know that SIX African American families on welfare in that study are used as proxies for all poor families in the U.S., only 25% of whom are African American?).
Then, Dr. Doug Sperry will tell us about his research, which leads him to believe that overheard language can also make a meaningful contribution to children’s vocabulary development.
I do want to be 100% clear on one point: Dr. Sperry says very clearly that he believes parents speaking with children is important for their development; just that overheard language can contribute as well.
And this is not Dr. Sperry out on his own criticizing research that everyone else agrees with: if you’re interested, there are a host of other issues listed here.
The overarching problem, of course, is that our school system is so inflexible that linguistic skills – even really incredible ones of the type we discussed in our recent episode on storytelling – have no place in the classroom if they don’t mesh with the way that White, middle-class families (and, by extension, teachers and students) communicate.
But that will have to be an episode for another day.
References
Adair, J. K., Colegrove, K. S-S., & McManus, M. E. (2017). How the word gap argument negatively impacts young children of Latinx Immigrants’ conceptualizations of learning. Harvard Educational Review, 87(3), 3…
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065: Why storytelling is so important for our children
4 juni 2018 · 39 min
“Storytelling? I’m already reading books to my child – isn’t that enough?” Lees meer
Your child DOES get a lot out of reading books (which is why we’ve done a several episodes on that already, including What children learn from reading books, How to read with your child, and Did you already miss the boat on teaching your toddler how to read?.
But it turns out that storytelling benefits our relationship with our child in ways that reading books really can’t, because you’re looking at the book rather than at your child. If you ask your child what kind of story they’d like you to tell, you also get incredible insight into both their interests and concerns – I can attest to this, as I’ve been singing story-songs about poop and various kinds of baby animals who can’t find their mamas on and off for several weeks now (we had an incident a few months back where she couldn’t find me in a store).
In this episode we also discuss the ways that people from different cultures tell stories, and what implications this has for them as they interact with our education system.
Other episodes mentioned in this show:
035: Is your parenting All Joy and No Fun?
Jump to highlights
06:52 Introduction to today's topic: the origins and history of storytelling
09:27 How storytelling became something mostly reserved for children in Western culture
12:06 Weighing whether and how to share original, unsanitized versions of fairy tales with kids
15:16 Introducing James Paul Gee's concept of "discourse" from Jen's Master's coursework
18:34 How L's story was misunderstood and penalized by her white teacher, and Gee's defense of its sophistication
20:36 Connecting this to Show and Tell as a vehicle for transmitting "correct" cultural literacy norms
23:29 How different cultures use storytelling to transmit different values, and a caution about cultural appropriation
25:22 Why we tell stories: Kendall Haven's review of 350 papers on the science of storytelling
27:09 How stories create meaning tha…
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064: Compassion (and how to help your child develop it)
21 mei 2018 · 55 min
“Social and Emotional Learning” is all the rage in school these days, along with claims that it can help children to manage their emotions, make responsible decisions, as well as improve academic outcomes. Lees meer
But what if those programs don’t go nearly far enough?
What if we could support our child in developing a sense of compassion that acts as a moral compass to not only display compassion toward others, but also to pursue those things in life that have been demonstrated – through research – to make us happy? And what if we could do that by supporting them in reading cues they already feel in their own bodies, and that we ordinarily train out of them at a young age?
Dr. Brendan Ozawa-de Silva, Associate Director for the Emory University’s Center for Contemplative Science and Compassion-Based Ethics, tells us about his work to bring secular ethics, which he calls the cultivation of basic human values, into education and society.
Learn more about Breandan’s work here:
www.compassion.emory.edu
https://www.facebook.com/emoryseelearning/
We also mentioned the Yale University course The Psychology of Wellbeing, which is available on Coursera here.
Jump to highlights
01:42 Introduction to Dr. Brendan Ozawa-de Silva of Emory's Center for Contemplative Science and Compassion-Based Ethics
01:51 Defining "secular ethics" and how it connects to social and emotional learning
08:22 Why adults not having all the answers can still be a productive, courageous space to open up
10:21 A four-year-old's spontaneous conversation about compassion, and why this starts before school age
14:53 Free resources at compassion.emory.edu, and starting with "what is kindness?"
17:21 How reciprocity develops over childhood, from tit-for-tat to a broader, farsighted sense of responsibility
21:37 The state of SEL research: why inconsistent results don't necessarily mean the approach doesn't work
27:43 Weighing structured programs against unstructured outdoor play as another path to the…
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063: How family storytelling can help you to develop closer relationships and overcome struggles
7 mei 2018 · 27 min
"How much can there really be to learn about storytelling?" I thought when I started on this mini-series. Lees meer
It turns out that there's actually quite a lot to learn, and that family storytelling can be a particularly useful tool for parents. We're all trying to figure out how to transmit our values to our children, and storytelling can be quite an effective way of doing this. Further, storytelling can be a really valuable way to support children in overcoming traumatic experiences - and even to repair relationships after difficult moments like yelling. In this episode we dig into the research on the benefits of family storytelling and look at how to do it effectively.
Questions this episode will answer
What exactly is family storytelling and how is it different from just reading books to my kids?
We often feel safest when we read books to our kids. It seems like a ‘script’ that saves us from having to fully understand the situation and come up with our own words to describe it. Family storytelling involves sharing narratives about your own family experiences, values, and history. It creates a powerful connection between generations as you transmit important values. It can help children make sense of their place in your family relationships. The episode explores fascinating research about how these personal narratives shape children's identity in ways that storybooks can't match!
How can family storytelling help during difficult times or after traumatic experiences?
When difficult emotions arise in our family, it can be tempting to pretend the situation didn’t happen. We hope our kids will just forget about difficult experiences. Instead, children may worry more when they 'can't talk about what happened. Family storytelling is a valuable tool for helping children overcome traumatic experiences. It helps them to make sense of what happened, and repair their family relationships. This can help children build resilience.
Do all families tell stories the same way, o…
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062: Why we need to let our kids need to take more risks
23 april 2018 · 39 min
We should protect our children from risks, right? Isn’t that our job as parents? Lees meer
This episode comes mid-way in an extended series on the importance of play for children. The first episode in the series was an interview with Dr. Stuart Brown of the National Institute for Play on the value of play, both for children and for adults. Then we followed with a look at the research on the benefits of outdoor play, followed by an interview with Dr. Scott Sampson who wrote the book How to Raise a Wild Child, which had tons of practical advice for getting kids outside more, as well as getting outside more with your kids.
Today we move on to the topic of risky play. We’ll define it, and discuss its benefits and drawbacks, as well as things we as parents can do to encourage more risky play if we decide we want to do that.
Because it turns out that insulating our children from risk may not be such a good thing after all.
Other episodes referenced in this show:
What is the value of play?
The benefits of outdoor play
How to Raise a Wild Child
Free to Learn
Grit
References
Brackett-Milburn, K., & Harden, J. (2004). How children and their families construct and negotiate risk, safety, and danger. Childhood 11(4), 429-447.
Brussoni, M., Brunelle, S., Pike, I., Sandseter, E.B.H., Herrington, S., Turner, H., Belair, S., Logan, L., Fuselli, P., & Ball, D.J. (2015). Can child injury prevention include healthy risk promotion? Injury Prevention 21, 344-347.
Brussoni, M., Ishikawa, T., Brunelle, S., & Herrington, S. (2017). Landscapes for play: Effects of an intervention to promote nature-based risky play in early childhood centres. Journal of Environmental Psychology 54, 139-150.
Christensen, P., & Mikkelsen, M.R. (2008). Jumping off and being careful: Children’s strategies of risk management in everyday life. Sociology of Health & Illness 30(1), 112-130.
Hill, A., & Bundy, A.C. (2012). Reliability and validity of a new instrument to measure tolerance of everyday risk for ch…
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061: Can Growth Mindset live up to the hype?
9 april 2018 · 45 min
Growth mindset is everywhere these days. Dr. Carol Dweck’s research showing that a growth mindset can help children to overcome academic struggles is being incorporated to curriculum planning across the U.S. and in many other countries, and school districts in California are even using it to evaluate schools’ performance. I get ads popping up in my Facebook feed every day for a journal that helps children to develop a growth mindset, and judging from the comments those folks selling the journal are doing very nicely for themselves. Lees meer
Which means that the science underlying the idea of growth mindset must be rock solid, right?
Well, perhaps you might be surprised (or not, if you’re a regular listener) to know that this actually isn’t the case. The main study on which the entire growth mindset theory is based has never been replicated, which is the gold standard for considering whether an effect that was found in a study is really real. And a variety of subsequent studies supporting the findings of the original one were either so tiny as to be not useful or failed to find any relevant effect (although in some cases they went on to report their findings as if they did…).
We’ll tease all this out in the episode, and will discuss whether growth mindset is something worth fostering in your child.
Other shows mentioned in this episode
Don’t bother trying to increase your child’s self-esteem
Do you punish your child with rewards?
References
Adams, J.M. (2014, May 5). Measuring a ‘growth mindset in a new school accountability system. Edsource. Retrieved from https://edsource.org/2014/measuring-a-growth-mindset-in-a-new-school-accountability-system/63557
Bandura, A. (1981). Self-referent thought: A developmental analysis of self-efficacy. In J.H. Flavell & L. Ross (Eds.), Social cognitive development: Frontiers and possible futures. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Baumeister, R.F., Campbell, J.D., Krueger, J.I., & Vohs, K.D. (2003). Does high self-esteem c…
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060: What do children learn from reading books?
25 maart 2018 · 54 min
We’ve done a couple of episodes on reading by now; episode 3 (which seems so long ago!) asked whether you might have missed the boat on teaching your toddler to read. Of course, we know that you’ve only missed the boat on that if you think that sitting your child in front of a video so they can recite the words they see without really understanding them counts as “reading.” Lees meer
Much more recently in episode 48 we talked with Dr. Laura Froyen about the benefits of shared reading with your child and how to do that according to best practices from the research literature.
Those of you who subscribe to my newsletter will recall that I’ve been working on an episode on storytelling for months now. Part of the reason it’s taking so long is that books on storytelling technique say to use original stories wherever possible because the language in them is so much richer, but if you’ve ever read something like an original fairytale you know they can be pretty gory, and even the most harmless ones actually contain some pretty adult themes if you read between the lines.
So I wanted to know: what do children really learn from stories? How do they figure out that we want them to learn morals from stories but not that animal characters walk on two legs and wear clothes? How do they generalize that knowledge to the real world? And are there specific types of books that promote learning?
Join me in a conversation with Dr. Deena Weisberg of The University of Pennsylvania as she helps us to help our children learn through reading!
Other shows mentioned in this episode
003: Did you miss the boat on teaching your child how to read?
010: Becoming Brilliant
048: The benefits of shared reading
References
Cheung, C.S., Monroy, J.A., & Delany, D.E. (2017). Learning-related values in young children’s storybooks: An investigation in the United States, China, and Mexico. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 48(4), 532-541.
Ganea, P.A., Ma, L., & DeLoache, J.S. (2011). Young children’s le…
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059: How to Raise a Wild Child
12 maart 2018 · 45 min
So you listened to episode 58 and you’re convinced of the benefits of outdoor play. But you’re a grown-up. You don’t play outdoors. And you don’t know anything about nature. How can you possibly get started in helping your child to play outdoors more? Lees meer
There are a number of books out there on getting outside with children – some arguably more well-known than this one, but I have to say that Dr. Scott Sampson’s book How to Raise a Wild Child is the BEST book I’ve seen on this topic because it balances just the right amount of information on why it’s important to get outside, with just enough pointers on how to do it, without overwhelming you with hundreds of options to choose between. And it turns out that you don’t need to know a thing at all about The Environment to have a successful outing with children!
If you’ve been wishing you could get outdoors more but just don’t know where to start, then this episode – and book! – are for you.
Other shows referenced in this episode
058: What are the benefits of outdoor play?
Dr. Scott Sampson's Book
How to raise a wild child - Affiliate link
References
Gopnik, A. (2009). The philosophical baby: What children’s minds tell us about truth, love, and the meaning of life. New York, NY: Picador.
Sampson, S.D. (2015). How to raise a wild child: The art and science of falling in love with nature. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. (Affiliate link)
Young, J., Haas, E., & McGown, E. (2010). Coyote’s guide to connecting with nature. OWLink Media.
Read Full Transcript
Transcript
Jen: [00:38]
Hello and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. For those of you who get my fortnightly newsletter, which you can receive by subscribing to the show YourParentingMojo.com, you know that I have a bit of a penchant for the outdoors. I went on a 10 day backpacking trip across North Cascades National Park in September, and I’m trying to pass on my love of the outdoors to my daughter, most of our newsletters have a photo at the t…
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058: What are the benefits of outdoor play?
26 februari 2018 · 34 min
This is the second in our extended series of episodes on children’s play. We kicked off last week with a look at the benefits of play in general for children, and now we’re going to take a more specific look at the benefits of outdoor play. Really, if someone could bottle up and sell outdoor play they’d make a killing, because it’s hard to imagine something children can do that benefits them more than this. Lees meer
This episode also tees up our conversation, which will be an interview with Dr. Scott Sampson on his book How To Raise A Wild Child, which gives TONS of practical suggestions for getting outdoors with children.
Other episodes referenced in this show
How to scaffold children’s learning to help them succeed
Is a Reggio Emilia-inspired preschool right for my child?
Understanding the AAP’s new screen time guidelines
Raising your child in a digital world
Jump to highlights
00:38 Introduction to this episode's topic: outdoor play, as part of a broader series on play
04:02 Reframing nature as part of everyday life, and acknowledging colonialism and cultural appropriation in this territory
06:12 The decline in children's outdoor and unsupervised time, from Richard Louv's research to modern statistics
09:47 The perception of stranger danger versus the actual, much rarer risks children face outdoors
14:23 How technology and screen-based toys differ from natural play in transparency, challenge, and accessibility
19:52 Outdoor play's link to creativity and executive function, and why the research is hard to pin down
23:07 Social and emotional benefits: how outdoor spaces give children more control and agency than adult-run indoor environments
29:50 A New Zealand preschool study comparing hands-off versus hands-on teacher approaches to outdoor time
References
Anderson, L. W. and Krathwohl, D. R., et al (Eds..) (2001) A Taxonomy for Learning, Teaching, and Assessing: A Revision of Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives. Allyn & Bacon. Boston, MA: Pearson …
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057: What is the value of play?
12 februari 2018 · 45 min
Does play really matter? Do children get anything out of it? Or is it just messing around; time that could be better spent preparing our children for success in life? Lees meer
Today we talk with Dr. Stuart Brown, founder of the National Institute for Play, about the benefits of play for both children and – I was surprised to find – adults.
This is the first in a series of episodes on play – lots more to come on outdoor play (and how to raise kids who love being outdoors), risky play, and imaginative play.
Dr. Stuart Brown's Book
Play: How it shapes the brain, opens the imagination, and invigorates the soul - Affiliate link
References
Bjorklund, D.F., & Brown, R.D. (1998). Physical play and cognitive development: Integrating activity, cognition, and education. Child Development, 69, 604-606.
Brown, S. (2009). Play: How it shapes the brain, opens the imagination, and invigorates the soul. New York, NY: Penguin.
Christakis, D. A., F. J. Zimmerman, and M. Garrison. (2007). Effect of block play on language acquisition and attention in toddlers a pilot randomized controlled trial. Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine,161 (10), 967-971.
Csíkszentmihályi, Mihály (1990). Flow: The psychology of optimal experience. New York: Harper and Row.
Duckworth, A.L. (2016). Grit: The power of passion and perseverance. New York, NY: Scribner.
Elkind, D. (2003). Thanks for the memory: The lasting value of true play. Young Children 58(3), 46-51.
Lancy, D.F. (2015). The anthropology of childhood: Cherubs, chattel, changelings (2nd Ed.). Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.
Read Full Transcript
Transcript
Jen: [00:40]
Hello and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. We’re kicking off a series of episodes today on the topic of play. Now I hear you wondering: play? There’s enough research about play to be able to do one episode, never mind a series of episodes?! And my response to that would be, Oh yes, there is just you. Wait, so we’re going to kick off today wi…
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056: Beyond “You’re OK!”: Modeling Emotion Regulation
29 januari 2018 · 13 min
I hear a huge crash. Lees meer
It’s my favorite glass vase. I hear “I didn’t mean to hurt it, Mommy! It just fell!” as I run full-pelt from the other end of the house.
It was a family heirloom passed down by my grandmother. I’ve asked her not to touch it a hundred times. I am beyond furious. “Please don’t be mad, Mommy. It was an accident.”
I clench my teeth. “I’m not mad.”
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What does my daughter learn from this exchange? How does my own emotional regulation affect what she learns about how to regulate her own emotions? We’ll learn about this in today’s episode.
Note that this episode is the second in the ill-fated experimental short episodes – we’ll be back to the regular length hereafter! In case you missed it, the first episode in this series was Three Reasons Not To Say You’re OK.
Taming Your Triggers
If you need help with your own big feelings about your child’s behavior, register for the Taming Your Triggers workshop.
We’ll help you to:
Understand the real causes of your triggered feelings, and begin to heal the hurts that cause them
Use new tools like the ones Katie describes to find ways to meet both her and her children’s needs
Effectively repair with your children on the fewer instances when you are still triggered
Click the banner to learn more!
Other episodes mentioned in this show
How parenting affects child development
The impact of divorce on a child’s development
How to scaffold children’s learning to help them succeed
Jump to highlights
00:00 The story of the broken vase, and a listener's question about staying "unruffled"
03:16 Two strategies adults use to cope with stress: reappraisal versus suppression
06:40 Why a parent's emotional suppression limits a child's own reappraisal skills
09:03 Reimagining the vase story using reappraisal instead of suppression
12:13 Practical takeaways: the power of a pause before responding
References
Bariola, E., Hughes, E.K., & Gullone, E. (201…
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055: Raising Your Spirited Child
13 januari 2018 · 52 min
Is your child ‘spirited’? Even if they aren’t spirited all the time, do they have spirited moments? You know exactly what to do in those moments, right? Lees meer
No?
Well then we have a treat for you today. Dr. Mary Sheedy Kurcinka, author of Raising Your Spirited Child, walks us through the ins and outs of her book on the same topic. Best yet, we do the interview as a consult with a parent, Kathryn, who has read and loved the book, but struggled with implementing the ideas.
Warning: we spend quite a bit of time brainstorming very specific problems that Kathryn is having with her daughter. You may not be having exactly the same problem with your child, but the brainstorming method we use is one you can do with a friend – take the approach with you to address your own problems, rather than the specific ideas.
Read more about Dr. Mary’s books and other work on her website.
Reference
Kurcinka, M.S. (2015). Raising your spirited child (3rd Ed.). New York, NY: William Morrow. (Affiliate link)
Read Full Transcript
Transcript
Jen: [00:39]
Hello and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. I know we’re going to help a lot of parents out today because we are here with Dr. Mary Sheedy Kurcinka, who wrote the book Raising Your Spirited Child, which I know is an absolute classic read for any parent of a spirited child. I read the book because a listener had requested an episode on it and what surprised me about it was that I don’t think my daughter is particularly spirited, but I definitely saw elements of her behavior described in the book and what I took out of that was that probably pretty much any child can have spirited elements of their personality or even just spirited moments. And so both the book and this episode are really for anyone who raises a child and who has ever had a moment where they think, “why won’t he or she just do what I ask.”
Jen: [01:26]
So Dr. Mary has a bachelor’s in early childhood education, a Master’s in family social science, and a doctora…
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054: Three reasons not to say “You’re OK!”
1 januari 2018 · 15 min
“I hear parents on the playground all the time saying “You’re OK!” after their child falls over. Often it does make the child stop crying…but doesn’t it invalidate the child’s feelings?” Lees meer
It turns out that this question is related to a skill that psychologists call emotional regulation, and learning how to regulate emotions is one of the most important tasks of childhood.
This to-the-point episode is a trial of a shorter form of episode after listeners told me this show is “very dense.” It’s hard to back off the density, but I can back off the length. Let me know (via email or the Contact Me, page – not the comments on this episode because I get inundated with spam) what you think…
Other episodes referenced in this show
How parenting affects children’s development
How divorce impacts children’s development
How to scaffold children’s learning
Jump to highlights
01:45 The question that sparked this episode: does saying "you're okay" invalidate a child's feelings?
02:14 The three ways children learn emotional regulation, and why this episode focuses on direct teaching
03:31 Why is emotional regulation important: well-being, friendships, and academic achievement
04:49 How cultural values around autonomy shape whether "you're okay" fits or clashes
07:50 How emotional regulation develops with age, from infancy through toddlerhood
10:36 Four practical steps for handling a fall at the playground without saying "you're okay"
References
Brookshire, B. (2013, May 8). Psychology is WEIRD: Western college students are not the best representatives of human emotion, behavior, and sexuality. Slate. Retrieved from www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2013/05/weird_psychology_social_science_researchers_rely_too_much_on_western_college.html
Duncan, L.G., Coatsworth, J.D., & Greenberg, M.T. (2009). A model of mindful parenting: Implications for parent-child relationships and prevention research. Clinical Child & Family Psychology Review 12, 255-270.
Keane,…
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053: Sleep! (And how to get more of it)
18 december 2017 · 47 min
“HOW DO I GET MY CHILD TO SLEEP THROUGH THE NIGHT?!” is the thinly-veiled message under the surface of many of the emails that I get about sleep. And I don’t blame you. I don’t claim to be a magician in this regard, although I did get incredibly, amazingly lucky – my daughter put in her first eight-hour night at six weeks old, and has regularly slept through the night for longer than I can remember. I’m really genuinely not sure I could parent if things weren’t like this. Lees meer
But today’s episode is about the data, not about anecdata.
Zoe in Sydney wrote to me:
A hotly debated topic with my friends has been “sleeping through the night.” My daughter never was great at napping and still wakes up once a night, coming into our bed. We have never been able to do controlled crying etc – I would love to know what science says about sleeping through the night! And what is best for your child (vs the parent). My close friend is a breastfeeding counselor and said they are taught that lots of children don’t sleep through until 4 years old! Other mothers I knew were horrified if their child wasn’t sleeping through by 6 months – and the French talk about their children ‘having their nights’ much earlier…
As I started researching this topic it became clear that sleep is driven to an incredible extent by cultural preferences. Some (Western) psychologists advocate for letting children Cry It Out, while people in many cultures around the world see putting a child to sleep in their own room (never mind allowing them to cry) as tantamount to child abuse.
So: can we get our children to sleep more? Is bed-sharing inherently bad? Does Cry It Out harm the child in some way? Let’s find out!
Jump to highlights
02:31 Introduction to today's topic: sleep, and why Jen finally tackled it
04:26 A cross-cultural look at sleep, and why anthropological literature on it is surprisingly thin
08:16 Why Western attitudes toward bed sharing diverged historically, from Catholic confessions to Freud
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052: Grit: The unique factor in your child’s success?
4 december 2017 · 41 min
In Professor Angela Duckworth’s TED talk, she says of her research: “One characteristic emerged as a significant predictor of success. And it wasn’t social intelligence. It wasn’t good looks, physical health, and it wasn’t IQ. It was grit.” Lees meer
The effusive blurbs on the book cover go even beyond Professor Duckworth’s own dramatic pronouncements: Daniel Gilbert, the author of Stumbling on Happiness, says: “Psychologists have spent decades searching for the secret of success, but Duckworth is the one who has found it…She not only tells us what it is, but how to get it.”
Susan Cain, author of Quiet: The power of introverts in a world that can’t stop talking (which we’ve looked at previously in an episode on supporting your introverted child) says: “Impressively fresh and original…Grit scrubs away preconceptions about how far our potential can take us…Buy this, send copies to your friends, and tell the world that there is, in fact, hope. We can all dazzle.”
Don’t we all want to dazzle? Don’t we all want our children to dazzle? Is grit the thing that will help them do it?
It turns out that Professor Duckworth’s own research says: perhaps not. Listen in to learn how much grit is a good thing, how to help your child be grittier, and why it might not be the factor that assures their success.
Other episodes mentioned in this show
How to support your introverted child
Why you shouldn’t bother trying to increase your child’s self-esteem
References
Crede, M., Tynan, M.C., & Harms, P.D. (2017). Much ado about grit: A meta-analytic synthesis of the grit literature. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 113(3), 492-511.
Del Giudice, M. (2014, October 14). Grit trumps talent and IQ: A story every parent (and educator) should read. National Geographic. Retrieved from http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/10/141015-angela-duckworth-success-grit-psychology-self-control-science-nginnovators/
Denby, D. (2016, June 21). The limits of “grit.” The New Yorker. Retriev…
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051: How to handle social exclusion
20 november 2017 · 48 min
“I don’t want to play with you.” Lees meer
“You’re not my friend.”
“We’re playing families. If you want to play, you have to be the dog.”
Seems like everyone can remember a time when something like this happened to them as a child, and how much it hurt. Children still say these things to each other – and we see how much it hurts them, too. When researchers ask them, every child can remember a time when they were excluded – yet no child ever reports being the excluder!
One of my listeners recommended that I read the book You Can’t Say You Can’t Play, in which the author (who is a teacher) proposes and then introduces a rule that you can’t say “you can’t play.” A few researchers (including Professor Jamie Ostrov, with whom we’ll talk today) have since tested the approach: does it work? If not, what should we do instead?
Since most of these situations occur in preschool and school, teacher Caren co-interviews Professor Ostrov with me: we have some great insights for teachers as well as lots of information for parents on how to support both children and teachers in navigating these difficult situations.
Dr. Professor Jamie Ostrov's Book
The development of relational aggression - Affiliate link
References
Allen, S.S. (2014). Narratives of women who suffered social exclusion in elementary school. Unpublished Ph.D dissertation. Antioch University, Culver City, CA
DeVooght, K., Daily, S., Darling-Churchill, K., Temkin, D., Novak, B.A., & VanderVen, K. (2015, August). Bullies in the block area: The early childhood origins of “mean” behavior. Child Trends. Retrieved from https://www.childtrends.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/2015-31BulliesBlockArea.pdf
Haney, M., & Bissonnette, V. (2011). Teachers’ perceptions about the use of play to facilitate development and teach prosocial skills. Creative Education 2(1), 41-46.
Helgeland, A., & Lund, I. (2016). Children’s voices on bullying in kindergarten. Early Childhood Education Journal 45(1), 133-141.
Ostrov, J.M., Gentile, D.A.…
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050: How to raise emotionally healthy boys
6 november 2017 · 56 min
“Be a man.” “Boys don’t cry.” “Don’t be a sissy.” Lees meer
Boys hear these things all the time – from parents, from teachers, from friends and peers. What does it do to their emotional lives when they crave close relationships but society tells them to keep emotional distance from others?
Join my guest Alan Turkus and me as we quiz Dr. Judy Chu, who lectures on this topic at Stanford and was featured in the (awesome!) documentary The Mask You Live In.
This episode is a must-listen if you’re the parent of a boy, and may even help those of you with girls to understand more about why boys and men treat girls and women the way they do.
Don’t have a boy? Check out How To Raise A Girl With A Healthy Body Image.
References
Bronfenbrenner, U. (1979). The ecology of human development: Experiments by nature and design. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Chu, J. When boys become boys: Development, relationships, and masculinity. New York, NY: NYU Press. (Affiliate link)
Maccoby, E.E. (1990). Gender and relationships: A developmental account. American Psychologist 45(4), 513-520.
Miedzian, M. (1991). Boys will be boys: Breaking the link between masculinity and violence. New York, NY: Doubleday.
Pollack, W. (1998). Real boys: Rescuing our sons from the myths of boyhood. New York, NY: Random House.
Read Full Transcript
Transcript
Jen: [00:40]
Hello and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. Regular listeners may remember that a few weeks ago, I interviewed Dr Renee Engeln who wrote the book Beauty Sick on the topic of raising girls with a healthy body image. Even though I don’t have a son, I know a lot of you do, so in today’s episode we’re going to talk about some of the challenges associated with raising sons and how we can be better parents to sons, and specifically how fathers can be better parents to sons. So since I am not a father and don’t have a son, I figured I’d better find someone who is both of those things. So today I welcome a co-interviewer, Alan.…
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049: How to raise a girl with a healthy body image
23 oktober 2017 · 52 min
Folks, this one is personal for me. As someone with an ~ahem~ family history of disordered thinking about body image, it is very, very high on my priority list to get this right with my daughter. Dr. Renee Engeln, author of the book Beauty Sick, helps us sort through issues like: Lees meer
Should I tell my daughter she’s pretty?
What should I say when she asks me if she’s pretty?
Is teaching our daughters about media literacy – the ability to critique images they see in the media – enough to protect them, or not?
…and so much more!
I know there’s a lot more to raising a girl than just this issue, and in time I hope to find another expert to discuss how we can raise daughters who aren’t limited by broader societal expectations, but there’s enough on this topic to make it an episode by itself.
In the show, we discuss a prompt you can use to write a self-compassionate letter to yourself as a way of recognizing all the amazing things your body can do. Professor Engeln actually sent me two of them; you can find these below.
You’ll have to listen to the episode to find out why this picture is here:
Body-Compassion letter (based on Kristin Neff’s exercises available at self-compassion.org):
For the next 10 minutes, you will be writing a letter to yourself. The letter should be all about your body, but it should be from the perspective of an unconditionally loving imaginary friend. Think about your body from the perspective of a friend who cares about you. What would your friend want to tell you about your body? If you run out of things to write, re-write what you already have, perhaps with different wording.
Think about this imaginary friend who is unconditionally loving, accepting, kind and compassionate. Imagine that this friend can see all the strengths and all the weaknesses of your body, including any aspects of your body that you may view as flawed or imperfect. Reflect upon what this friend would say about your body, knowing that you are loved and accepted with you…
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048: How to read with your child
9 oktober 2017 · 55 min
Waaaay back in Episode 3, we wondered whether we had missed the boat on teaching our babies to read (didn’t you teach your baby how to read?). We eventually decided that we hadn’t, but given that many parents have a goal of instilling a love of reading into their children, what’s the best way to go about doing that? And what if your child is the kind who wriggles out of your lap at the mere sight of a book? Lees meer
Our second-ever repeat guest, Dr. Laura Froyen, helps us to delve into the research on this topic. We conclude by talking through some of the things parents can do to promote a love of reading, because it turns out it’s not as intuitive as one might think!
Dr. Froyen's 11 Ways to Support Your Child in Learning to Read PDF guide.
Jump to highlights
00:39 Introduction to the episode and guest Dr. Laura Froyen
03:16 What the research says are the benefits of shared reading
05:31 What most parents naturally do when reading with a child
08:10 The bias in reading research toward White, middle-class families
10:33 What scaffolding means, with real examples from Laura’s kids
15:07 Child-led versus parent-led reading, in concrete terms
19:32 What dialogic reading is and how it’s taught
24:10 A surprising number: shared reading accounts for only 8% of the variance in literacy
28:16 What to do if a child doesn’t want to read
31:39 Why children spend so little time looking at the print itself
37:09 Publication bias and why “no effect” studies rarely get published
39:16 Practical, low-pressure ways to build literacy into daily life
50:22 Activities for parents who don’t enjoy reading themselves
52:42 Does shared reading still matter once a child can read alone?
References
Bus, A.G. (2001). Joint caregiver-child storybook reading: A route to literacy development. In S.B. Neuman & D.K. Dickinson Handbook of Early Literacy Research. New York: Guilford.
Bus, A.G., van IJzendoorn, M.H., & Pellegrini, A.D. (1995). Joint book reading makes for success in learnin…
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047: How to raise a bilingual child
10 september 2017 · 50 min
Do you have to start teaching a second language from birth? Does it help to get a nanny who speaks a second language? Is there any way your child will retain the language you speak even though you’re currently in a country where another language is dominant? Does learning a second language lead to any developmental advantages beyond just the benefits of learning the language? Lees meer
Several listeners have actually written to me requesting an episode on this topic, and one has been particularly insistent (you know who you are!), so I was very glad to finally find an expert!
Dr. Erica Hoff leads the Language Development Lab at Florida Atlantic University and studies language development and bilingualism in children. She gives us the lowdown on the best ways to raise a bilingual child (and doesn’t mince words on how difficult it is) – and also answers my burning question: I’m not planning to teach my daughter a second language at the moment, so am I a terrible parent?
Dr. Erica Hoff's Book
Language development - Affiliate link
References
Bridges, K., & Hoff, E. (2014). Older sibling influences on the language environment and language development of toddlers in bilingual homes. Applied Psycholinguistics 35, 225-241.
Core, C., Hoff, E., Rumiche, R., & Señor, M. (2013) Total and conceptual vocabulary in Spanish-English bilinguals from 22 to 30 months: Implications for assessment. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 56, 1637-1649.
Hammer, C.S., Hoff, E., Uchikoshi, Y., Gillanders, C., Castro, D.C., & Sandilos, L.E. (2014). The language and literacy development of young dual language learners: A critical review. Early Childhood Research Quarterly 29, 715-733.
Hoff, E., Rumiche, R., Burridge, A., Ribot, K.M., & Welsh, S.N. (2014). Expressive vocabulary development in children from bilingual and monolingual homes: A longitudinal study from two to four years. Early Childhood Research Quarterly 29, 433-444.
Hoff, E. & Core, C. (2013) Input and language develo…
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046: How to potty train a child
28 augustus 2017 · 45 min
When should I start potty training? What books should I read? Can I do it in a day (or a week)? Do I need stickers (for rewards)? Does it have to be stressful? Lees meer
I get these kinds of questions pretty often, and I’d resisted doing an episode on potty training because there are so many books on it already, and everyone has their opinion, and I really didn’t want to wade into it. But ya’ll kept asking and my resolve has finally crumbled, so today we’re going to talk all about what the research says, what the books say, and how there’s essentially no correlation between the books and the research. We’ll review the “do it in a day!” methods and what makes them successful, and we’ll also look at child-led methods. You’ll leave this episode with a clear picture of which is probably going to work best for you, and some concrete tools you can put to work (today, if you need to!) to start what I prefer to call the “toilet learning” process.
Other episodes references in this show
021: Talk Sex Today
009: Do you punish your child with rewards?
020: How do I get my child to do what I want them to do? (Unconditional parenting)
042: MannersReferences
Au, S. &; Stavinoha, P.L. (2008). Stress-free potty training: A commonsense guide to finding the right approach for your child. New York, NY: AMACOM.Barone, J.G., Jasutkar, N., & Schneider, D. (2009). Later toilet training is associated with urge incontinence in children. Journal of Pediatric Urology 5, 458-461.
Benjusuwantep, B., & Ruangdaraganon, N. (2011). Infant toilet training in Thailand: Starting and completion age and factors determining them. Journal of the Medical Association of Thailand 94(12), 1441-1446.
Blum, N.J., Taubman, B., & Nemeth, N. (2003). Relationship between age at initiation of toilet training and duration of training: A prospective study. Pediatrics 111(4), 810-814.
Butler, J.F. (The toilet training success of parents after reading Toilet Training In Less Than A Day. Behavior Therapy 7, 185-191.
Duon…
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045: How parenting affects child development
14 augustus 2017 · 50 min
Isn’t it kind of a “well, duh?” that parenting affects child development? But do we know how? We know it’s not good to have really big fights in front of the kids, but do spousal quarrels screw them up too? Are there really links between a family’s emotional expressiveness and the child’s later academic performance? How does the marital relationship affect parenting, and how does parenting affect the marital relationship? Lees meer
Today we talk with Dr. Laura Froyen, who has a Ph.D in Human Development and Family Studies and seems almost as obsessed with research on child development issues as I am. You can find much more about her work at www.laurafroyen.com.
References
Bascoe, S.M., Davies, P.T., Sturge-Apple, M.L., & Cummings, E.M. (2009). Children’s representations of family relationships, peer information processing, and school adjustment. Developmental Psychology 45(6), 1740-1751.
Belsky, J. (1984). The determinants of parenting: A process model. Child Development 55(1), 83-96.
Bretherton, I., & Munholland, K. A. (1999). Internal working models in attachment relationships: A construct revisited. In J. Cassidy & P. R. Shaver (Eds.), Handbook of attachment: Theory, research, and clinical applications (pp. 89-111). New York: Guilford Press.
Buehler, C., & Gerard, J.M. (2002). Marital conflict, ineffective parenting, and children’s and adolescents’ maladjustment. Journal of Marriage and Family 64(1), 78-92.
Davies, P.T., & Cummings, E.M. (1994). Marital conflict and child adjustment: An emotional security hypothesis. Psychological Bulletin 116(3), 387-411. Full article available at https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Edward_Cummings/publication/15390513_Marital_Conflict_and_Child_Adjustment_An_Emotional_Security_Hypothesis/links/0912f507fc3e02ce88000000.pdf
Davies, P.T., Winter, M.A., & Cicchetti, D. (2006). The implications of emotional security theory for understanding and treating childhood psychopathology. Developmental Psychopathology 18(3), 707-735.
Erel, …
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044: How to introduce your child to music (even if you can’t play or sing)
31 juli 2017 · 50 min
I can’t play any instruments (unless the recorder counts?). I certainly can’t sing. But my daughter really enjoys music, and there are a whole host of studies showing how playing music benefits children’s brain development. So what’s a non-music-playing, non-singing parent to do? Lees meer
Dr. Wendell Hanna’s new book, the Children’s Music Studio: A Reggio-Inspired Approach (Affiliate link), gives us SO MANY ways to interact with music with our children. I tried one of her ‘provocations’ with my daughter’s daycare class, and I was blown away. Give this episode a listen, and be inspired.
Other episodes referenced in this episode
027: Is a Reggio Emilia-inspired preschool right for my child?
To hear my interview with math tutor Wes Carroll, go to www.yourhomeschoolingmojo.com, click any of the “sign up” buttons on that page, scroll down to see the curriculum of the course, and look for the interview with Wes which is available as a free preview.
References
Allsup, R.E., & Benedict, C. (2008). The problems of band: An inquiry into the future of instrumental music education. Philosophy of Music Education Review 16(2), 156-173.
Anvari, S.H., Trainor, L.J., Woodside, J., & Levy, B.A. (2002). Relations among musical skills, phonological processing, and early reading ability in preschool children. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 83, 111-130.
Bilhartz, T.D., Bruhn, R.A., & Olson, J.E. (2000). The effect of early music training on child cognitive development. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology 20(4), 616-636.
Catterall, J.S., & Rauscher, F.H. (2008). Unpacking the impact of music on intelligence. In W. Gruhn & F. Rauscher, Neurosciences in Music Pedagogy (pp.171-201). Happague, NY: Nova Science Publishers.
Hallam, S. (2010). The power of music: Its impact on the intellectual, social and personal development of children and young people. International Journal of Music Education 28(3), 269-289.
Hanna, W. (2016). The children’s music studio: A Reggio-inspired…
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043: How to talk with children about death
17 juli 2017 · 46 min
The topic of today’s episode comes courtesy of my good friend Sarah, who fortunately hasn’t yet had any reason to use this knowledge, but asked me to do an episode on how to help children cope with illness, death, and grief, so she can be ready in case she ever needs it. Lees meer
Dr. Atle Dyregrov joins us from Bergen, Norway. He graduated as a psychologist in 1980 and worked for five years in the Pediatrics department at Haukeland University Hostpital, helping families whose children had died. He also co-founded the Center for Crisis Psychology and served as its general manager for 25 years; he is now its academic director. He has worked particularly extensively with children who have experienced loss and trauma, as well as at the sites of major accidents and disasters both in Norway and abroad, and has written numerous books, book chapters, and research articles on children’s response to death and crises.
It turns out that this ended up being a very timely episode for me indeed: you’ll hear in the show that my mum died when I was young. Not even a week after I did this interview, my newly three-year-old daughter was playing with Legos in our living room when she asked – completely out of the blue – “Do you have a mama?” Having done this interview I was well-prepared for a short but straightforward conversation, and was able to shift what would likely have been a very uncomfortable situation for me into something where I felt much more confident in explaining how people’s bodies stop working when they die.
Subscribers to my newsletter will recall that we spent last week in Missouri visiting the very same Sarah who requested the episode, and I had given her a summary of the content and told her about my daughter’s question. A couple of days later Sarah and my daughter found a dead bug on a playground and Sarah said “I think it’s dead,” and my daughter responded “Did it’s body stop working?”. Sarah was taken aback…and amused…and was able to answer the question without los…
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042: How to teach a child to use manners
3 juli 2017 · 40 min
I actually hadn’t realized what a can of worms I was opening when I started the research for today’s episode, which is on the topic of manners and politeness. It began innocently enough – as an English person, for whom manners are pretty important, I started to wonder why my almost three-year-old doesn’t have better manners yet. It turns out that it was a much more difficult subject to research than I’d anticipated, in part because it draws on a variety of disciplines, from child development to linguistics. Lees meer
And at the heart of it, I found myself torn between two different perspectives. The parenting philosophy that underlies the respectful relationship I have with my daughter, which is called Resources for Infant Educarers, or RIE, advocates for the use of modeling to transmit cultural information like manners – if you, the parent, are a polite person, then your child will learn about manners. On the flip side of that is the practice of saying “what do you say?” or something similar when you want your child to say “please” or “thank you,” something that I know a lot of parents do. My general approach has been to model good manners consistently but I do find it drives me bananas when my daughter says “I want a [whatever it is]” without saying “please,” and RIE also says parents should set a limit on behavior when they find it annoying. So I have been trying to walk a fine line between always modeling good manners and requiring a “please” before I acquiesce to a demand, and I wondered whether research could help me to come down on one side or the other of this line and just be sure about what I’m doing. So this episode is going to be about my explorations through the literature on this topic, which are winding and convoluted – actually both the literature and my explorations are winding and convoluted, and by the time we get to the end I hope to sort out how I’m going to instill a sense of politeness in my daughter, and how you might be able to do it for your child …
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041: Siblings: Why do they fight, and what can we do about it?
19 juni 2017 · 42 min
Hot on the heels of our last episode on whether only children really are as bad as their reputation, this week’s episode is for the 80% of families (in the U.S., at least) who have more than one child. Lees meer
How do siblings impact each other’s development? What should we make of the research on how birth order impacts each child? Why the heck do siblings fight so much, and what can we do about it? (Turns out that siblings in non-Western countries actually don’t fight anywhere near as much…)
We cover all this and more with my guest, Professor Susan McHale of Penn State University.
Note: Professor McHale mentions a helpful book written by Judy Dunn at the end of the episode but doesn’t specifically name the title; Dunn has actually written a number of books on siblings, which can be found here.
References
Bjerkedal, T., Kristensen, P., Skjeret, G.A., & Brevik, J.I. (2007). Intelligence test scores and birth order among young Norwegian men (conscripts) analyzed within and between families. Intelligence 35, 503-514.
Branje, S.J.T., van Lieshout, C.F.M., van Aken, M.A.G., & Haselager, G.J.T. (2004). Perceived support in sibling relationships and adolescent development. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 45(8), 1385-1396.
Dixon, M., Reyes, C.J., Leppert, M.F., & Pappas, L.M. (2008). Personality and birth order in large families. Personality and Individual Differences 44, 119-128.
Dunn, J., & Kendrick, C. (1980). The arrival of a sibling: Changes in patterns of interaction between mother and first-born child. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 21, 119-132.
Dunn, J. (1995). From one child to two: What to expect, how to cope, and how to enjoy your growing family. New York, NY: Ballantine.
Feinberg, M.E., Solmeyer, A.R., Hostetler, M.L., Sakuma K-L, Jones, D., & McHale, S.M. (2012). Siblings are special: Initial test of a new approach for preventing youth behavior problems. Journal of Adolescent Health 53, 166-173.
Healey, M.D., & Ellis B.J. (2007). Birt…
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040: Only children: Are they as bad as advertised?
5 juni 2017 · 30 min
Today’s episode comes to us as a result of a listener named Sylvia who wrote to me saying she and her partner don’t want another child but are worried about the potential impact on their daughter of growing up without siblings. But why would there be a potential impact? Lees meer
Turns out there’s a slew of information in the popular press about how only children grow up with no way to learn social skills, which makes them simply awful to be around. And everybody agrees – from parents of multiples and children who grew up with siblings, to parents of only children and even only children themselves – that only children are more selfish and not as nice to spend time with as children who grew up with siblings.
No wonder Sylvia is worried!
Personally I don’t have this problem; my own selfishness about not wanting a second child has overridden the issue of growing up without siblings to the extent that I had actually never considered it a potential problem until I received the question. But having pondered it and found that there is some research on it, I decided the time was ripe to find out whether only children really are as awful as popular wisdom says they are and, if so, what I could do about it before it’s too late!
Listen up, my friends. Will I be vindicated, or will I throw away that pack of birth control pills before the end of the episode?
References
Bohannon, E.W. (1896). A study of peculiar and exceptional children. Pedagogical Seminary 4(1), 3-60.
Falbo, T. (2012). Only children: An updated review. The Journal of Individual Psychology 68(1), 38-49.
Fenton, N. (1928). The only child. Pedagogical Seminary and Journal of Genetic Psychology 35, 546-556.
Mancillas, A. (2006). Challenging the stereotypes about only children: A review of the literature and implications for practice. Journal of Counseling and Development 84(3), 268-275.
McKibben, B. (1998). Maybe one. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster.
Nachman, P., & Thompson, A. (1997). You and your only child: The…
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039: What to do when your toddler says “No, I don’t wanna…!”
22 mei 2017 · 34 min
It’s no secret that I do some episodes of the podcast altruistically for you, dear listeners, because I’m not facing the situation that I’m studying – or at least not yet. (Eyebrows were raised in our house when I started researching the impact of divorce on children but luckily for me I don’t need that episode…yet…) Lees meer
But today’s episode is for me, and you guys are just along for the ride. Because, friends, we are in the thick of what I now know to be called “oppositional defiance,” otherwise known as “Noooo! I don’t wanna [insert activity here]”. We’ll discuss why toddlers are defiant, and lots of strategies we can use to deal with that defiance and even head it off at the pass. If your child has ever said “No!” to something you want them to do, this episode is for you!
Other episodes mentioned:
020: How do I get my child to do what I want them to do?
022: How to talk so little kids will listen (Author interview)
References
Dix, T., Stewart, A.D., Gershoff, E.T., & Day, W.T. (2007). Autonomy and children’s reactions to being controlled: Evidence that both compliance and defiance may be positive markers in early development. Child Development 78(4), 1204-1221.
Dunn, J., & Munn, P. (1986). Sibling quarrels and maternal intervention: Individual differences in understanding aggression. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 27, 583-595. doi: 10.1111/j.1469-7610.1986.tb00184.x
Eyberg, S. M., Nelson, M. M., & Boggs, S. R. (2008). Evidence-based psychosocial treatments for children and adolescents with disruptive behavior. Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology, 37, 215-237. doi: 10.1080/15374410701820117
Grolnick, W.S. (2012). The relations among parental power assertion, control, and structure. Human Development 55, 57-64. DOI: 10.1159/000338533
Grusec, J. E. (2012). Socialization and the role of power assertion. Human Development, 55, 52-56. doi: 10.1159/000337963
Kaler, S. R., & Kopp, C. B. (1990). Compliance and comprehension in very youn…
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038: The Opposite of Spoiled
16 mei 2017 · 39 min
We’re concluding our mini-mini series today on chores – and on paying children to do chores, which leads us to larger conversations about money. If you missed the first part of this then then you might want to go and listen to last week’s interview with Dr. Andrew Coppens, who explores the ways that families in different cultures approach chores and what lessons that can hold for those of us who want to encourage our children to do their chores. Lees meer
Today we’re going to take that conversation to its logical conclusion by talking about money, and what better guest to do that with us than Ron Lieber,who wrote the book The Opposite of Spoiled: Raising Kids who are Grounded, Generous, and Smart About Money (affiliate link). It’s a really practical guide to talking with your children about money – from what information they should have at what age, to what to do with a child who always wants you to buy them something at the store, to what to say when a child wonders why homeless people don’t have enough money.
Other episodes mentioned:
021: Talk Sex Today
034: How do I get my child to do chores?
This episode is the first in a series on the intersection of parenting and money. You can find other episodes in this series:
105: How to pass on mental wealth to your child
107: The impact of consumerism on children
112: How to Set up a Play Room
115: Reducing the Impact of Advertising to Children
118: Are You Raising Materialistic Kids?
References
Carl Richards’ cartoons for the New York Times
Lahey, J. (2016). The gift of failure. New York: Harper.
Lieber, R. (2016). The opposite of spoiled. New York: Harper. (Affiliate link)
Lythcott-Haimes, J. (2016). How to raise an adult.: Break free of the overparenting trap and prepare your kid for success. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin.
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037: Generation Me
8 mei 2017 · 34 min
This episode is on a topic that I find fascinating – the cultural issues that underlie our parenting. I actually think this issue is so important that I covered it in episode 1 of the podcast, which was really the first episode after the introductory one where I gave some information on what the show was going to be about. Lees meer
But recently I read a book called Generation Me (Affiliate link) by Jean Twenge, a Professor of Psychology at San Diego State University, which discusses some of the cultural contexts that have led to the generation of people born since 1970 to develop a certain set of characteristics that sometimes seem very strange to those who were born before us, and may be leading us to raise children who are just a bit too individualistic.
In this episode I discuss some of those characteristics and what implications they have for the way we parent our own children, and offer some thoughts on how we can shift that our approach if we decide we want to.
Other episodes referenced in this show:
001: The influence of culture on parenting
020: How do I get my child to do what I want them to do?
References
Abeles, V., & Rubenstein, G. (2015). Beyond measure: Rescuing an overscheduled, overtested, underestimated generation. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Associated Press (2005, July 22nd). White House footwear fans flip-flop kerfuffle. US News on NBCNews.com. Retrieved from: http://www.nbcnews.com/id/8670164/ns/us_news/t/white-house-footwear-fans-flip-flop-kerfuffle/#.WO_bH_nyvIU
Gardner, H. (1991). The unschooled mind: How children think and how schools should teach. New York: Basic Books.
Lansbury, J. (2012, May 3). Setting limits with toddlers: The choices they can’t make. Retrieved from: http://www.janetlansbury.com/2012/05/setting-limits-with-toddlers-the-choices-they-cant-make/
McCabe, D.L., Trevino, L.K., & Butterfield, K.D. (2012). Cheating in college: Why students do it and what educators can do about it. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Pres…
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036: The impact of divorce on a child’s development (Part 1)
30 april 2017 · 25 min
This is the second of a short series of episodes on issues related to divorce. The first was our “All Joy and No Fun” episode, where we talked about how parenting today can be the most joyful thing in our lives – even if it isn’t always a whole lot of fun from moment to moment. Lees meer
The series was inspired by a listener who sent me an email saying: “I was divorced when my husband was 2 ½ years old. He is now 5 years old and has a very hard time expressing his feelings. I have an intuitive “gut” feeling that it has to do with the fact that he went from being with me every day (I was a stay at home mom) to suddenly spending 7-10 days away from me and with his father, and also away from me as I set up a career. Do you know of any research on this?”
Well, I didn’t, but when I started looking around I realized there’s actually so much of it that it makes sense to break it down into two episodes which is what we’re going to do. So today’s episode focuses very much on the factors leading to divorce and the impact of divorce itself on children, and the final episode in the series will look at how what happens after divorce – things like single parenting, ongoing contact with both parents, ongoing arguments between parents, and remarriages and stepparents impact children.
Other episode mentioned:
020: How do I get my child to do what I want them to do.
References
Amato, P.R. (1999). Children of divorced parents as young adults. In E.M. Hetherington (Ed.)., Coping with divorce, single parenting, and remarriage: A risk and resiliency perspective (p.147-163). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Brody, G.H., & Forehand, R. (1988). Multiple determinants of parenting: Research findings and implications for the divorce process. In E.M. Hetherington & J.D. Arasteh (Eds.). Impact of divorce, single parenting, and stepparenting on children. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Deater-Deckard, K., & Dunn, J. (1999). Multiple risks and adjustment in young children growing up in different fami…
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035: Parenting: All joy and no fun?
24 april 2017 · 24 min
Today’s episode is about a book I read way before I started the podcast, called All Joy and No Fun (Affiliate link) by Jennifer Senior. I actually got a question from a listener recently asking me whether there’s any research on whether and how her divorce might have impacted her son’s development. It turns out that there is, and quite a lot – so I decided to make a series out of it. Lees meer
We’ll have one episode on how divorce impacts children, and a second on single parenting and step families, and we’ll open the whole lot up with this one on All Joy and No Fun, which is basically about the idea that if you ask a parent what is their greatest joy they will invariably say “my kids,” but if you ask them moment-by-moment if they’re having fun with their children then unfortunately the answer is pretty often “no.” I know that a lot of factors can lead to divorce but surely “all joy and no fun” is among them, so it sort of seemed like it fit with the other two topics. Since I first read the book several months ago I’ve had a chance to think about it a bit, so I’ll start as usual with the research and will end with some ideas on how we can change our approach so we can have “some joy and some fun too.”
References
Campos B., Graesch, A.P., Repetti, R., Bradbury, T., & Ochs, E. (2009). Opportunity for interaction? A naturalistic observation study of dual-earner families after work and school. Journal of Family Psychology 23(6), 798-807. DOI: 10.1037/a0015824
Cherry, K. (2016). What is flow? Retrieved from: https://www.verywell.com/what-is-flow-2794768
Cowan, C.P. & Cowan, P.A. (1995). Interventions to ease the transition to parenthood: Why they are needed and what they can do. Family Relations: Journal of Applied Family & Child Studies 44, 412-423.
Csikszentmihalyi, M., Abuhamdeh, S., & Nakamura, J. (2005). Flow. In A. Elliot (Ed.), A Handbook of Competence and Motivation. (pp. 598-698). New York: The Guilford Press.
Doss, B.D., Rhoades, G.K., Stanley, S.M., & Markman, H…
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034: How do I get my child to do chores?
17 april 2017 · 42 min
We have a pretty cool mini-mini-series launching today. I’ve been seeing a lot of those “chores your child could be doing” articles showing up in my social media feeds lately, and I was thinking about those as well about how children in other cultures seem to be MUCH more willing to help out with work around the house. I’m not saying we want to train our children to be slave laborers, but why is it that children in Western cultures really don’t seem to do chores unless they’re paid to do them? Lees meer
We’re going to hold off on the “getting paid” part for now, and we’ll talk about that very soon with my guest Ron Lieber, the Money columnist of the New York Times, who wrote a book called The Opposite of Spoiled. But today we’re going to discuss the chores part with Andrew Coppens, who is an Assistant Professor of Education in Learning Sciences at the University of New Hampshire. If you’ve ever asked your child to do a task in the home only to have them say “No,” then get comfy and listen up, because I have a feeling that our conversation is going to surprise you and give you some new tools for your toolbox.
References:
Coppens, A.D., & Acala, L. (2015). Supporting children’s initiative: Appreciating family contributions or paying children for chores. Advances in Child Development and Behavior 49, 91-112. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/bs.acdb.2015.10.002
Coppens, A.D., Acala, L., Rogoff, B., & Mejia-Arauz, R. (2016). Children’s contributions in family work: Two cultural paradigms. In S. Punch, R.M.
Vanderbeck, & T. Skelton (Eds.), Families, intergenerationality, and per group relations: Geographies of children and young people (Vol 5). New York, NY: Springer.
LIFE Center (2005). “The LIFE Center’s Lifelong and Lifewide Diagram.” Retrieved from: http://life-slc.org/about/citationdetails.html
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033: Does your child ever throw tantrums? (Part 2)
8 april 2017 · 22 min
Well this took a bit longer than I’d planned… WAY BACK in episode 11 I did Part 1 of a two-part series on tantrums, and was expecting to release the second episode in short order. Then I got inundated with interviews from awesome guests, which I always wanted to release as soon as I could after I spoke with them, and months have gone by without releasing that second episode. Lees meer
Episode 11 provided a lot of background information on tantrums: a seminal study in 1931 really forms the basis for all the research on tantrums that has been done since then, so we went through it in some depth to understand what those researchers found – I was surprised that so much of the information was still relevant to parents today.
This episode considers the more recent literature – of which there actually isn’t a huge amount – to help us understand what’s going on during a tantrum, how to deal with them once they start, and how to potentially head them off before they even fully develop (don’t we all want that?!).
If you know you want to show up differently for your child but you don’t know how (or you know how and you still can’t do it!), the Taming Your Triggers workshop will help.
Click the banner to learn more!
Jump to highlights
00:28 Introduction to the episode and the research behind it
03:08 Defining a tantrum: the behaviors that count, and how common they are by age
06:19 Anger and distress: two overlapping emotions inside a tantrum
09:53 A brain study on labeling emotions, and what it means for toddlers
13:35 Common causes of tantrums
16:03 Building emotional vocabulary outside of a tantrum, through stories and photos
18:46 Techniques to help a child calm down, and when distraction can help
References
Denham, S.A., & Burton, R. (2003). Social and emotional prevention and intervention programming for preschoolers. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum.
Green, J.A., Whitney, P.G., & Potegal, M. (2011). Screaming, yelling, whining, and crying: Categorical and intensity…
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032: Free to learn
2 april 2017 · 1 uur 3 min
Professor Peter Gray was primarily interested in the motivations and emotions of animals before his son Scott started struggling in school, at which point Professor Gray’s interests shifted to developing our understanding of self-directed learning and how play helps us to learn. He has extensively studied the learning that occurs at the Sudbury Valley School in Sudbury Valley, MA – where children are free to associate with whomever they like, don’t have to take any classes at all, and yet go on college and to satisfying lives as adults. How can this possibly be? We’ll find out. Lees meer
Reference
Gray, P (2013). Free to learn: Why unleashing the instinct to play will make our children happier, more self-reliant, and better students for life. New York, NY: Basic Books. (Affiliate link)
Also see Professor Gray’s extensive posts on learning and education on the Psychology Today blog.
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031: Parenting beyond pink and blue
27 maart 2017 · 51 min
Today I join forces with Malaika Dower of the How to Get Away with Parenting podcast to interview Dr. Christia Brown, who is a Professor of Developmental and Social Psychology at the University of Kentucky, where she studies the development of gender identity and children’s experience of gender discrimination. Lees meer
Dr. Brown’s book, Parenting Beyond Pink and Blue (Affiliate link), helps parents to really understand the scientific research around gender differences in children, which is a harder task than with some other topics because there’s just a lot of bad research out there on this one. I ask about theories of gender development while Malaika keeps us grounded with questions about how this stuff works in the real world, and we both resolve to shift our behavior toward our daughters just a little bit.
Related Episodes:
Interview with Yarrow Dunham on how social groups form
Interview with Kang Lee on children’s lying (yep – your kid does it too!)
Jump to highlights
00:30 Introduction to the episode and guests Dr. Christia Brown and Malaika Dower
02:47 Are there real brain differences between young boys and girls?
06:22 Why boys report more confidence in math than girls, despite similar ability
08:11 A striking finding: parents use three times more math talk with sons
12:38 The myth of girls being more verbal, and where it comes from
16:09 A classic study: the same baby dressed in pink versus blue
20:39 What’s really going on when a child is mistaken for the “wrong” gender
22:01 How elaborate gender stereotypes show up by age three or four
24:19 Why pointing out stereotypes explicitly matters so much
36:02 “Boys will be boys and cows will be cows”: how children reason about gender
39:22 How gender segregation in play reshapes the brain through synaptic pruning
41:35 Practical ways to counter gender segregation outside of school
44:43 Why this effort is worth it: what happens as kids get older
References
Brown, C.S. (2014). Parenting beyond pink and…
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030: On Education (And on Betsy DeVos)
20 maart 2017 · 33 min
I’ve thought about doing this episode for a while but I sat on it for a few weeks because it’s still in motion. But now Betsy DeVos is confirmed as Secretary of Education I wanted to offer some thoughts on her work on educational issues, charter schools, as well as on the topic of schools more broadly. Lees meer
Spoiler alert: I graduated from my Master’s program! And I wrote my thesis on what motivates children to learn in the absence of a formal curriculum, so we also talk a bit about whether schools as we know them, and specifically curriculum-based learning, is the best way to serve our children’s learning.
References
Achieve (2015, May 14). New report highlights large gaps between state test results and 2013 NAEP results. Retrieved from: http://achieve.org/new-report-highlights-large-gaps-between-state-test-results-and-2013-naep-results
Angrist, J.D., Cohides, S.R., Dynarski, S.M., Pathak, P.A., & Walters, C.D. (2013). Charter schools and the road to college readiness: The effects on college preparation, attendance, and choice. Full report available at: http://www.tbf.org/~/media/TBFOrg/Files/Reports/Charters%20and%20College%20Readiness%202013.pdf
Bitfulco, R., & Ladd, H.F. (2006). The impacts of charter schools on student achievement: Evidence from North Carolina. Education Finance and Policy 1(1), 50-90. Full article available at: http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/edfp.2006.1.1.50
Bruni, F. (2015, May 30). The education assassins. The New York Times. Retrieved from: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/31/opinion/sunday/frank-bruni-department-of-education-assassins.html?_r=1
Camera, L. (2016, May 17). More than 60 years after Brown v. Board of Education, discrimination still exists. Retrieved from: https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-05-17/after-brown-v-board-of-education-school-segregation-still-exists
Camera, L. (2017, February 17). DeVos: I’d be fine ditching the education department. Retrieved from: https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2017-…
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029: Why we shouldn’t ban war play
13 maart 2017 · 55 min
This episode comes to us by way of a suggestion from my friend Jess, who told me she had joined an outing with some children in her three-year-old son’s preschool class. She said some of the slightly older children were running around playing that their hands were guns and shooting at each other, and the teachers were pretty much just ignoring it, which really shocked her. So I thought to myself “I bet some smart person has done some research on this” and so I went out and found us just such a smart person to talk with. Lees meer
Diane E. Levin, Ph.D. is Professor of Education at Wheelock College in Boston, Massachusetts where she has been training early childhood professionals for over twenty-five years. She teaches courses on play, violence prevention, action research. Her book, The War Play Dilemma, provides a theoretical view of why children engage in war play and how parents and teachers can support the development that occurs when children engage in this kind of play – and do it in a way that doesn’t make us feel queasy.
Dr. Diane E. Levin's Book
The war play dilemma: What every parent and teacher needs to know - Affiliate link
References
Dunn, J. & Hughes, C. (2001). “I got some swords and you’re dead!”: Violent fantasy, antisocial behavior, friendship, and moral sensibility in young children. Child Development 72(2), 491-505.
Fehr, K.K. & Russ, S.W. (2013). Aggression in pretend play and aggressive behavior in the classroom. Early Education and Development 24, 332-345. DOI: 10.1080/10409289.2012.675549
Ferguson, C.J. (2007). Evidence for publication bias in video game violence effects literature: A meta-analytic review. Aggression & Violent Behavior 57, 348-364.
Hart, J.L., & Tannock, M.T. (2013). Young children’s play fighting and use of war toys. Encyclopedia on Early Childhood Development. Retrieved from: http://www.child-encyclopedia.com/play/according-experts/young-childrens-play-fighting-and-use-war-toys
Holland, P. (203). We don’t play with guns here:…
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028: How do children form social groups?
6 maart 2017 · 42 min
This episode is part of a series on understanding the intersection of race, privilege, and parenting. Click here to view all the items in this series. Lees meer
How social groups are formed has profound implications for what we teach our children about our culture.
Professor Yarrow Dunham of Yale University tells us how we all group people in our heads according to criteria that we think are important – in many cases it’s a valuable tool that allows us to focus our mental energy. But when we look at ideas like race and gender, we see that we tend to classify people into these groups based on criteria that may not actually be useful at all.
This episode will shed further light on Episode 6, “Wait, is my toddler racist?” and will lay the groundwork for us to study groupings based on gender in an upcoming episode.
References
Baron, A.S. & Dunham, Y. (2015). Representing “Us” and “Them”: Building blocks of intergroup cognition. Journal of Cognition and Development 16(5), 780-801. DOI: 10.1080/15248372.2014.1000459
Baron, A.S., Dunham, Y., Banaji, M., & Carey, S. (2014). Constraints on the acquisition of social category concepts. Journal of Cognition and Development 15(2), 238-268. DOI: 10.1080/15248372.2012.742902
Dunham, Y., Baron, A.S., & Carey, S. (2011). Consequences of “minimal” group affiliations in children. Child Development 82(3), 793-811. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8624.2011.01577.x
Dunham, Y., Chen, E.E., & Banaji, M.R. (2013). Two signatures of implicit intergroup attitudes: Developmental invariance and early enculturation. Psychological Science Online First. DOI: 10.1177/0956797612463081
Dunham, Y., Stepanova, E.V., Dotsch, R., & Todorov, A. (2015). The development of race-based perceptual categorization: Skin color dominates early category judgments. Developmental Science 18(3), 469-483. DOI: 10.1111/desc.12228
Rhodes, M., Leslie, S-J, Saunders, K., Dunham, Y., & Cimpian, A. (In Press). How does social essentialism affect the development of inter-group relations…
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027: Is a Reggio Emilia-inspired preschool right for my child?
27 februari 2017 · 47 min
This episode is the final in our mini-series that I hope will help you to think through the options you might have for your child’s preschool. Lees meer
In previous episodes, we looked at Waldorf and Montessori approaches to early childhood education; today we examine the Reggio Emilia-based approach with Suzanne Axelsson, who studied it for her Master’s degree in early childhood education and is well-respected in the Reggio field. She helps us to understand how the “concept of the child” impacts how we see the child and support their learning, and what are the “hundred languages of children”…
Suzanne Axelsson's Book
The original learning approach: Weaving together playing, learning, and teaching in early childhood - Affiliate link
References
Bodrova, E., & Leong, D.J. (2006). Tools of the mind: The Vygotskian approach to early childhood education (2nd Ed.). New York, NY: Pearson.
Edwards, C., Gandini, L., & Forman, G. (Eds.). (2012). The hundred languages of children: The Reggio Emilia experience in transformation.
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026: Is my child lying to me? (Hint: Yes!)
20 februari 2017 · 47 min
Your kids don’t lie, right? And if they did, you’d be able to tell, right? Lees meer
News flash: they do. And you probably can’t.
Dr. Kang Lee – who is one of the world’s experts in lying – tells us why children lie, how we can (try to) reduce the incidence of lying, and how we should handle it when we catch our children in a lie.
And here’s the one story that Dr. Lee says can help to prevent your child from lying…
Dr. Kang Lee's Book
Children and lying: A century of scientific research - Affiliate link
Reference
Dr. Lee’s TED talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/kang_lee_can_you_really_tell_if_a_kid_is_lying
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025: Is a Waldorf preschool right for my child?
13 februari 2017 · 41 min
This episode is the second in our mini-series on making decisions about preschools, which I know is on the minds of a lot of parents of young children at this time of year. Today we speak with Beverly Amico, the Director of Advancement at the Association of Waldorf Schools of North America. Lees meer
Beverly helps us to understand the philosophy behind a Waldorf approach to early childhood education as well as answer those all-important questions like “Can I send my child to a Waldorf preschool even if s/he has plastic toys and watches TV?”.
Here’s the link to the Essentials in Education blog that Beverly mentions in the episode, and here is the official website for her organization, the Association of Waldorf Schools of North America.
References
Association of Waldorf Schools of North America (2015). Waldorf Education. Retrieved from: https://waldorfeducation.org/
Edmunds, F. (2004). An introduction to Steiner education. Forest Row, UK: Sophia Books
Howard, S. (n.d.). Essentials of Waldorf early childhood education. Retrieved from: http://www.waldorfearlychildhood.org/uploads/Howard%20Article.pdf
Petrash, J. (2002). Understanding Waldorf education: Teaching from the inside out. Beltsville, MD: Gryphon HouseSteiner, R. (1995). The spirit of the Waldorf school. Hudson, NY: Anthroposophic Press
Steiner, R. (2001). The renewal of education. Great Barrington, MA: Anthroposophic Press
Steiner, R. (2003). What is Waldorf education? Great Barrington, MA: SteinerBooks
Waldorf Early Childhood Association of America (2017). WECAN. Retrieved from: http://www.waldorfearlychildhood.org/ -
024: How (and when) does my child understand fairness?
6 februari 2017 · 44 min
We talked a while ago about sharing, and how you can understand the developmental processes that your child needs to go through before s/he truly understands what it means to share. Lees meer
One of the inputs to sharing behavior is an understanding of what is fair, and Drs. Peter Blake and Katie McAuliffe talk us through what we know about what children understand about fairness. This episode will help you to understand how much of the idea of fairness is naturally culturally transmitted to children and what you can do to encourage a sense of fairness in your child, which is important for their own social well-being and for the benefit of our society – this has implications for ideas like the development of perceptions about race and gender that we’ll be talking more about in upcoming episodes.
References
Blake, P.R., Corbit, J., Callaghan, T.C., & Warneken, F. (2016). Give as I give: Adult influence on children’s giving in two cultures. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 152, 149-160. DOI: 10.1016/j.jecp.2016.07.010
Blake, P.R., McAuliffe, K., Corbit, J., Callaghan, T.C., Barry, O, Bowie, A., Kleutsch, L., Kramer, K.L., Ross, E., Vongsachang, H., Wrangham, R., & Warneken, F. (2015). The ontogeny of fairness in seven societies. Nature 528, 258-261. DOI:10.1038/nature15703
Blake, P.R., Rand, D.G., Tingley, D., & Warneken, F. (2015). The shadow of the future promotes cooperation in a repeated prisoner’s dilemma for children. Scientific Reports 5, Article number 14559. DOI: 10.1038/srep14559
Blake, P.R., & McAuliffe, K. (2011). “I had so much it didn’t seem fair”: Eight-year-olds reject two forms of inequity. Cognition 120, 215-224. DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2011.04.006
Bronfenbrenner, U. (1979). The ecology of human development: Experiments by nature and design. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Chernyak, N., & Kushnir, T. (2013). Giving preschoolers choice increases sharing behavior. Psychological Science 24, 1971-1979.
Jordan, J.J., McAuliffe, K., & War…
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023: Is a Montessori preschool right for my child?
30 januari 2017 · 42 min
It’s that time of year: daycare and preschool tours start ramping up and parents have to try to figure out which is the right option for their child. And many parents are overwhelmed by the options. Montessori? Waldorf? Reggio Emilia? How are they different? Will my child be messed up if I pick the wrong one? Lees meer
This episode is the first in a mini-series to help us think through the questions you might have as you explore the options that are available in your community.
Today we’re going to learn about Dr. Maria Montessori’s approach to early childhood education and what it’s like to have a child in a Montessori preschool with Mary Ellen Kordas, the President of the Board of Directors at the American Montessori Society.
References
Gray, P. (2011). The special value of children’s age-mixed play. American Journal of Play 3(4), 500-522. Full article available at: http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ985544.pdf
Isaacs, B. (2012). Understanding the Montessori approach: Early years education in practice. New York, NY: Routledge.
Lillard, A.S. (2005). Montessori: The science behind the genius. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Lillard, P.P. (1996). Montessori today: A comprehensive approach to education from birth to adulthood. New York, NY: Schocken.
Louv, V. (2008). Last child in the woods: Saving our children from nature-deficit disorder. New York, NY: Algonquin.
Montessori, M. (1971). The Montessori Elementary Material (Trans. A. Livingston). Cambridge, MA: Robert Bentley, Inc.
Wentworth, R.A.L. (1999). Montessori for the new millennium. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.