ML Interest Tag: self-control

This School Offers Classes for Future Leaders of the World

by Jamie Aderski
Partner Content

Have a brainiac in your life? Keeping them challenged can be, well, a challenge. Dedimus Potestatem provides fun, academically challenging programs for students in elementary, middle and high school. Dedimus Potestatem‘s student-focused programs aim to create the next generation of well-informed, well-spoken leaders, advocates and diplomats. Their programs include Debate, Model UN, Model Congress, Mock Trial, Etiquette, STEM, Leadership, speech writing and more. They’re currently offering both virtual and in-person private and semi-private classes, group sessions and after-school programs. Read on to learn more about this cool school that will send your kid straight to the head of the class in no time!

To register for Dedimus Potestatem classes or private sessions, click here or email info@potestatem.co.

Leadership Skills for a Lifetime of Success

All of Dedimus Potestatem's programs strive to empower students and integrate essential leadership skills sought after by top universities and employers. Through action-packed and exciting programs, Dedimus Potestatem teaches students to communicate, delegate, negotiate, resolve conflict, take initiative, adapt to new situations, empathize, effectively plan, manage time and more. (Do they offer these classes for adults?!)

Fun fact: Studies have shown that students who are highly engaged in their learning process learn more and retain information longer. Dedimus Potestatem has it covered, by emphasizing student proactivity and practical application of skills taught (because use it or lose AND practice makes perfect!).

Innovative Classes for the 21st Century

Dedimus Potestatem's curriculum is packed with classes to develop your kiddo's leadership skills, critical thinking abilities, and their creativity!

Many of Dedimus Potestatem's programs help learners become engaged citizens. Through Speech and Debate, students will build their literacy and multi-media research skills, work on public speaking and learn about civil engagement. With Fairy Tale Mock Trial, kids will get to experience a hands-on simulation of the American judicial system done through the role-playing of characters in children's favorite stories. Model Congress and Model UN let students take on their own worldly challenges, debate international policy and understand how to create compromises with other delegates.

Dedimus Potestatem's also has classes like STEM Bioethics to challenge kids' ethical thinking (while learning all about DNA) and programs to encourage creative thinking, including a new Visual Storytelling class that teaches kids how digital platforms are changing the arts and activism (What kid wouldn't get excited about a TikTok class?) and Finding Your Voice; Understanding and Writing Poetry—a course on understanding and building a love for poetry.

Too advanced? They've got Little Leaders covered with a Pre-K and Kindergarten class that gives students the skills they need to succeed in life. The play-based syllabus centered around character traits most sought and admired in leaders: initiative, honesty, self-control, adaptability, empathy, persuasiveness, resourcefulness, diligence, tolerance, determination, generosity, punctuality, courage, reliability, endurance, deference, creativity and integrity.

To register for Dedimus Potestatem classes or private sessions, click here or email info@potestatem.co.

Classes That Get Results

Read what top schools and parents have to say:

“The benefit of Dedimus Potestatem’s enrichment programs for the students went beyond raising one’s self-confidence and debate skills. The programs teach leadership and critical thinking, empowering students to stand up for what is right, fight for the truth, learn to value teamwork, develop goals, become engaged in civic discourse, and feel empowered to become beacons of peace for a better world. Just a fantastic leadership organization!”
— Dr. Lidana Jalilvand, Director of After-School Programs, The United Nations International School

“Having a debate team at our school has boosted the confidence and curiosity of our participating middle-schoolers. I’ve seen huge growth in critical thinking skills and a more polished approach to expressing thoughtful opinions,”
— Monica Masterson, Director of auxiliary programs, BASIS Independent Manhattan

"As a mother to a tween who first met Ms. Elizabeth at age 8 and grew up with her leadership, mock trial & debate classes, I'm simply astounded by her at 3 levels. First is her ability to connect with children. My son simply adores her, as does my 6-year-old daughter. All of her other students love her, to the extent that the parents are all fighting to have her teach their children’s classes! Second is the passion she has for her mission: to create a young generation of intellectuals with morals and integrity who critically appraise what they are presented with. When faced with an unfounded accusation of academic misconduct, instead of fear or defense, my son cautioned me against the use of ad hominem in my email response to the teacher. I was simply dumbstruck. And humbled. No price for guessing whom he’s learned that from! Last but not least is Ms. Elizabeth's ability to connect with her parents. Her smile, her enthusiasm, and the intellectually stimulating conversations are simply the best!
 — Vicki Tse, parent

"One of the best things to happen to my son, Sasha, was starting after-school debate and court trial classes with Elizabeth. At that time he was a nine-year-old 5th-grade student. Fast forward almost four years and he is a confident 8th grader, ready to argue what he believes in and open enough to engage adults and kids alike. Working with Elizabeth and participating in these classes has taught him teamwork, public speaking and the importance of fact-checking. Elizabeth knows how to work with kids, how to motivate them and always encourages them to do their best. She's fun, warm and always there for them—we're truly fortunate to have her be an influence in Sasha's life."  
— Ivana Krizanic, parent

Assemblies with special guest speakers are offered throughout the year. Click here for more info or to join their upcoming

assembly, The Frontlines of Peace, with special guest Dr. Severine Autesserre.

 

To register for Dedimus Potestatem classes or private sessions, click here or email info@potestatem.co.

 

—Jamie Aderski

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Back to Basics: The 10 Best Non-Electronic Toys for Babies & Toddlers

by Oz Spies

Traditional baby and toddler toys boost brain-building, hands-on exploration and are durable so younger siblings can play with them, too. Our favorite non-electronic baby and toddler toys come without batteries and ear-splitting beeps. Little ones learn through play, so a few carefully chosen toys in the toy bin will give your baby a chance to have fun as a tiny scientist, artist, and motor-skill champ. Here are a few of our favorite non-electronic toys for babies and toddlers.

Ronald Hechanova via Unsplash

1. Rattles
A good rattle is sized just right for babies working on tricky hand-eye coordination and learning how to pick things up. This classic toy doesn't look like much, but as babies grasp, shake and even slobber on it, they're learning about the world. Rattles reward curious little ones learning about cause and effect with a satisfying sound as it shakes. Choose a rattle you can easily clean, and make sure it's designed for babies to safely put it in their mouths—because it's sure to end up there!

2. Stacking Cups
Stack them in a tower, tip them over, put them inside one another, and then turn them into a home for a plastic cow. Stacking cups offer lots of interactive opportunities for fun and play. Most sets of stacking cups come in bright colors, giving little ones a chance to learn about colors. Balancing cups in a tower shape builds problem-solving skills, self-control and persistence. Another colorful stacking option is Grimms Rainbow, an all-wooden toy that's so beautiful you won't mind having it out on a shelf.

3. Sensory Bins
Toddlers learn about the world through hands-on activities and observation. Sensory bins or tables are a great way to give little ones a chance to explore. You can easily replicate this key preschool tool by filling a plastic bin with dry oats or water and adding measuring cups and scoops. If you're worried about the mess that scooping up water or dry oats can make, put a towel underneath your kiddo and the bin. If the weather is nice, put the bin outside to minimize clean-up, or purchase a water table or sandbox for more sensory fun. If you'd like to take your sensory-bin game to the next level, hide plastic animals or cars for kids to find, or dye rice or dry pasta for rainbow-colored play. Bonus: Sensory bins give curious kids a chance to learn about volume (how much water fits in a scoop?) and boosts imaginative play and language development.

Scandiborn

4. Push-Pull Toys
From Fisher Price's classic, affordable plastic corn popper to a wooden animal on a string, push-and-pull toys are beloved by budding walkers everywhere. These toys encourage balance and gross motor skill development, and they make perfect buddies for toddlers as they stumble and zoom through your home. We love this Little Dutch Walker & Block Trolley from Scandiborn ($59.95, pictured above), as it combines two beloved non-electronic toys in one.

5. Classic Blocks
Your kiddo will play with a set of durable wooden blocks for years and years. With blocks, little ones get a chance to work on problem solving as they figure out how to stack blocks on top of one another or organize them in a row. Eventually, blocks become a blank canvas for imaginative play, as kids turn their creations into castles, houses and zoos. Talking about block creations builds language and conversation skills, and, with a big set of blocks at the ready, older toddlers can work together and learn about cooperation.

6. Dolls & Stuffed Animals
Whether you're looking for a lovey for comfort or a toy your child can practice caring for and rocking to sleep, soft dolls and stuffed animals are a great addition to any baby's toy collection. Playing with dolls helps little ones learn about empathy and feelings. Pro tip: Choose those without plastic eyes that can be a choking hazard!

Jelleke Vanooteghem via Unsplash

7. Music Makers
One of the benefits of non-electronic toys for parents: fewer ear-splitting sounds. But sometimes a baby has just got to make music. Whether you break out your pots and pans and a wooden spoon or give your child a toy drum and a few egg shakers, toys that let kids make their own music are always a hit. Sturdy music-making options without batteries are more likely to last from kid to kid, and they give children the chance to be more creative. We like wooden xylophones like this one from Melissa & Doug because of their bright colors and the variety of sounds they make.

8. Balls
Roll it, throw it, catch it! Balls are awesome for boosting motor skills and hand-eye coordination. But they're also a great way to introduce little ones to the back-and-forth interaction and taking turns, which is one of the building blocks of conversation. Rolling a ball gives grown-ups the chance to connect and make eye contact with babies and toddlers, and it boosts language development. From soft balls with jingly bells inside to bumpy plastic balls just the right size for chubby little hands, toy stores are full of options perfect for babies and toddlers.

9. Bubbles
Bubbles mesmerize babies and toddlers (and many parents) as they float through the sky. Whether you make bubbles at home (we like this DIY option) and blow them outside to delight your kiddo, or pick up a bubble-making lawn mower, bubbles are a surefire hit with little ones. We like to keep a few jars of bubbles at the ready to distract cranky little ones.

10. Ride-On Toys
A good ride-on toy gives toddlers hours of indoor gross-motor fun. These toys develop balance and give little legs a workout. One of the best first-birthday gifts, our fave ride-on toys come with a basket or bin that little ones can use to give their favorite toy or stuffed animal a ride around the house, promoting imaginative play, too! We love the sturdy Little Red Rider Wooden Kid's Ride-on Bike from Hape. 

—Oz Spies

RELATED STORIES:

The Smart Moms’ Guide to Montessori Toys for Babies & Toddlers

New Indoor Playtime Toys & Activities for Toddlers

Let’s Play! Sensory Activities for All Five Senses

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Can Your Child Dream in Multiple Languages?

By Meaghan Hlinka

Can your child dream in multiple languages? All kids have their unique talents and skills, bilingual or multilingual children have the extra ability of speaking and expressing themselves in more than one language. What special powers does this extra language bring them?

photo: Rochambeau The French International School

At Home and on the Playground

•   Improved self-control. Switching between languages activates the same areas of the brain that are active in applying self-control. Regular exposure to multiple languages exercises and strengthens self-discipline.

•  Easier adaptation to new environments. Multilingual children understand that different languages and cultures have different rules, a concept that can help them adapt flexibly to change and a variety of social settings.

•   Stronger ties to family and culture. Children who master foreign languages maintain closer bonds with their family and culture, which can help them develop a stronger sense of identity.

•   More opportunities for making diverse friends. Speaking multiple languages allows students to connect with children from a greater variety of backgrounds and cultures.

photo: Rochambeau The French International School

At School & in the Workforce

•   Heightened focus. Multilingual children are more practiced at filtering irrelevant information and ignoring distractions. Suppressing one language to access another strengthens executive function – the ability to manage time and resources to get things done.

•   Better mastery of home language. Students who study more than one language are more familiar with the mechanics of language in general, from parts of speech to etymology.

•   Enhanced problem-solving and abstract thinking skills. Multilingual people tend to be more competent at understanding mathematical concepts, word problems, logic puzzles, and other essential STEM skills.

•   Greater competitiveness in a global and multilingual workforce. Doing business in today’s world can mean crossing cultural and linguistic borders on a daily basis. Well over half of the world’s population speaks more than one language, and many careers favor multilingual job applicants.

photo: Rochambeau The French International School

In the Community & in the World

•   Increased tolerance and empathy. Studies show a possible link between multilingualism and empathy, perhaps because speaking additional languages requires seeing from more than one perspective.

•   Enriched travel experiences. Speaking the language while exploring another country is not only practical but also makes for a more authentic and immersive cultural encounter.

•   A stronger foundation for learning other languages. Once a second language is acquired, learning additional languages will come more easily and naturally.

•   More meaningful participation in a global community. Understanding other cultures and languages fosters a deeper understanding of our complex and interconnected world – as well as our role in making it a better place.

photo: Rochambeau The French International School

What Is Important to Keep in Mind When Introducing Your Child to Another Language?

Starting early is key, even child who are not yet speaking can benefit from exposure to another language. Everyone knows children learn languages more quickly and easily than adults, so the earlier the better.

Consider multiple languages, learning to learn languages is a skill set in itself. Multiple languages if taught by native speakers can have compounded benefits. Switching between languages activates the same areas of the brain that are active in applying self-control.

Quality is critical, be sure the language instruction comes from a native speaker. Even at a young age, children can recognize the subtle nuances of a language and quality of instruction is important.

Set a goal, a new language takes time. It takes 6-7 years to be become fully fluent in a new language, plan to commit to this language for a significant period of time.

Consider an immersion program, these programs offer dedicated instruction in a new language and provide students with significant exposure to this language. Programs vary from 50% of the day to 100% of the school day in the target language. Different program models exist, most public immersion programs offer the core curriculum translated in the target language, other schools such as the French or International schools provide a dedicated curriculum blending language and culture.

photo: Rochambeau The French International School

Take It From Mom

As a mother of a 3 year old trilingual daughter (French, English, and Slovak) I see the benefits everyday. When she learns a new concept in one language she carries it over almost immediately to the other two languages. We chose to expose her to these three languages because my husband is from Slovakia and I, as a French/American, growing up in the US have always regretted not being fully proficient in both languages.  We tried our best to balance the languages so no one language was more dominant. We started early, during the first two years child care was split between a French speaking nanny and her Slovak speaking grandparents. We set the goal for her to be able to speak fluently with both sets of grandparents and she is there but we are conscious that to maintain this will take more work. We enrolled her last year at Rochambeau The French International School where 80% of her day is in French. The school teaches the French curriculum which is uniform across all French schools around the world and also has a robust English language program based on the core curriculum. We hope the priority we have placed on language learning will give her a strong sense of identity and the confidence needed to study, work, or live wherever she chooses.

Meaghan Hlinka is Admissions Associate at Rochambeau The French International School in Bethesda, MD. Interested in language acquisition, she is bilingual French/English and has studied Arabic, Turkish, and Slovak. A mom to a 3 year old daughter she feels lucky to be able to share multiple cultures with her daughter. 

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These Cool Card Games for Kids Teach Important Life Skills

by Jamie Aderski
Partner Content

Raising a good human requires more than teaching them letters and numbers. SEL skills, i.e. social emotional learning, are crucial for your kid’s development. SEL prepares kids to handle life’s challenges with balanced emotions and empathy while being a helpful citizen along the way. It’s more challenging to work on these life skills now because of social distancing, and you certainly don’t need one more thing on your plate to teach right now, but help is on the way!

We are going “all in” for Hoyle’s line of affordable (less than a latte), portable and simple card games, focused on SEL for ages four and up! Read on to learn more about Hoyle’s four new games and how they can help you connect with your kids emotionally while they build essential life skills and everyone has a blast!

 

 

Monkey, May I? (2-4 players, ages 4-6)

This game is focused on recognizing good choices and self-control—it even has a fun physical element if you need to get the wiggles out! Once a card is drawn, the first person to do the card’s action gets a dollar from the Monkey bank. If you draw a Monkey, May I? card, you have to choose one of two options, deciphering right from wrong. The person with the most dollars at the end wins! Like all the other games in this list, Monkey, May I? has a super simple premise and is easy for young kids to get the hang of. It’s a great way to help parents explain right from wrong, not to mention loads of silly monkeying around!

Super Me!  (2-4 players, ages 4-6)

This super card game helps kids become super citizens, as they explore empathy and why helping others matters. Super Me! requires kids to choose a solution to a problem and consider how it would be helpful. A player draws a Red Emergency card. If you have a Super Me! card that can help the situation, put your card down to pair with the emergency, and the problem is solved! The players discover ways to help their fellow players and are rewarded for doing good—the winner is the player that’s first to match all their Super Me! cards to emergency cards. 

 

Mixed Emojis (2-6 players, ages 6-8)

Memory recall and encouraging recognition and expression of emotions is what Mixed Emojis is all about! Each card has a different Emoji, and once a card is drawn, the player makes that face and gives an example of when they felt like that Emoji. It encourages kids to talk about things that may be impacting their behavior but won’t be open about; why they got sad at the playground or scared when they found out about moving to a new home or embarrassed in front of a classmate. If you pick a card that was already played, you need to remember what that player said and repeat it—a sweet and fun way to introduce and build on listening skills and empathy. 

   

Seal Squad (2-4 players, ages 6-8)

Teamwork makes the dreamwork in this simple strategy and decision-making game! Working in teams, players attempt to collect as many fish as they can before the walrus gobbles them up! By planning out next moves and making group decisions, kids learn how to give and take, support each other and have fun doing it! Seal Squad encourages the whole squad to collaborate. Patience is a virtue—kids also learn to wait their turn. Teamwork, self-control and helping others is the only way to beat the walrus and swim on to victory!

 

Grab a game and play today! All of these card games and more are available here.

 

 

 

—Jamie Aderski 

—photos courtesy of Hoyle

 

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How to Help Your Kids Build Crucial Executive Function Skills This Summer

By Caroline Maguire

Has your child been struggling with starting or completing tasks? Does your son panic when you switch routines or change the rules? Or maybe your daughter has trouble remembering what she just read, or finds it difficult to organize her thoughts. Executive function can affect kids in many different ways, and the struggle is real for kids who learn and think differently. 

Executive function is made up of a set of skills that include working memory, flexible thinking, and self-control. We use these skills every day to play with friends, learn in school, and manage our daily routines at home. When your child lacks executive function, he or she will struggle with basic tasks that many kids can easily handle. 

This doesn’t mean your child isn’t smart. It just means that he or she learns and thinks differently, and you need to help your child develop these skills. There’s no need to panic. As a parent, there are many fun activities you can do with your child to improve executive function. And summer is a great time to start!

1. Plant a Garden. This can be a great project where your entire family can work in collaboration with each other. Your child will learn to plan and follow through! When children watch and journal about things they plant, care for, watch grow, and identify ways they can be used, they learn across the curriculum. Most importantly, their “work” leads to meaningful self-efficacy development.  When your child gains these experiences, he can build an understanding of the relationship between healthy planting and eating and a healthy planet. And, who knows, maybe you as the parent can reconnect with nature as a result!    

2. Plan Something. Plan a party or a day trip. Really, plan anything from cleaning a room to working around the yard. A project, no matter what they are working on, involves the specific planning of steps, execution, and monitoring of results. This can be created for any child in elementary school through college. Putting a plan in place with details that can be followed is very helpful. It breaks down bigger, more overwhelming tasks into manageable bite-sized pieces that can be completed.  

3. Learn to Mind Mime. If your child cannot picture in her mind the day’s routine, help teach her mind miming. This skill helps the child to pre-plan and pre-stimulate future events. Think of it as a mental dress rehearsal or a movie in the mind. Mind miming helps your child to act out possible scenarios and have a mental trial and error period before the actual event takes place.  

4. Help Kids with Emotional Regulation. The key to helping your child with emotional regulation is to implement self-regulation strategies in the moment. You can do this by simulating real-life experiences. Simulation allows your child to experience and practice a scenario until she feels more comfortable. When you bring an experience to life, you help your child understand when their behavior becomes too silly or not appropriate for the situation. Maybe she was laughing at a joke, giggling and flopping around long after her peers had stopped. Help her understand that she has lost control and give her the opportunity to practice self-control in these situations.  

5. Play “How worried should I really be?” Ask your child to pick a time when she overreacted to a situation, and she felt flooded with emotions. Ask her to act out, and role-play what overreaction looks like? Some examples include: running from the room, wailing, stomping, pushing, or screaming. Talk to your child about their worries. Help her understand that when she feels a big worry, she may overreact because she feels the worry is as big as a Mack truck. Talk to her about how our worries feel inside affects us, and how we can handle our reactions.    

6. Practice Metacognition. Metacognition is to take a bird’s eye view of a situation to accurately rate your skills and abilities. It helps you recall past situations and realize how they are similar and different from each other. You can take past learnings and allow them to inform you of future plans.   

7. Rate Your Effort. Help your child self-evaluate his own progress and witness his own actions so he can start building social self-awareness. You can say, “On a scale of 1 to 5, how would you rate your effort on that practice? What did you learn?” Share with him what you saw him do well. Praise anything he tried that is out of his comfort zone. Ask him to recap for you what he is working on and why. Reiterate his mission for the next day’s practice or an upcoming real-life social setting.  

8. Put Things in Categories. Whether it’s picking up or just organizing stuff, we need to learn to put things into categories. Part of what builds executive function is the ability to put material into categories and then to find that material. By organizing things, objects, and even ideas, we are helping to simplify your child’s understanding of the world around him. When kids pick up toys, help take a pile of stuff to organize in a room, or set up a system for their clothing, they are learning to categorize materials. 

My new book, Why Will Nobody Play with Me? is a step-by-step guide to teach parents how to coach their child to develop social skills (new executive function skills). For more information about supporting your child, visit my website at www.carolinemaguireauthor.com. 

A personal coach, author, teacher, and speaker whose work has inspired conversations about social skills at schools and in homes all across the county, Caroline Maguire believes all children can shine. Her work is critical to parents who support children with executive function challenges struggling to show their best selves.

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One Research-Backed Way to Diminish Toddler Tantrums

By Amy Webb

Photo: pexels

All I wanted was to walk on the treadmill for maybe…20 minutes. Is that too much to ask?

I had a great plan–I would hop on the treadmill in the basement while my son (age 2 at the time) played with the plethora of toys down there. Easy peasy.

Minute 5 rolled around and the whining began.

“Car on track…ahh.” My son couldn’t get the little Matchbox car onto the track the right way.

“I’ll help you in just a few minutes,” I said hoping he would calm down on his own. “Do it myself…urrgh, it won’t go,” my son continued. I could see the tension building but I decided the push on. I really needed some exercise.

Then I heard it–a loud “clunk.” My toddler had thrown the car across the room and it had hit the wall. Crying and fussing ensued. Oops, I had missed the point of no return. We were in full-on tantrum mode.

“Remain calm,” I told myself. “He’s just frustrated.”

I try to calm him but to no avail. He pushed me away. He had to get it out. I told him to take some breaths but that just made him more upset. So I just stood by him and he eventually calmed down but it took a long time.

My “20 minutes on the treadmill” had turned into a half-hour fiasco.

This is Him

I look back at this incident now and I see–this is what it means to be a toddler. He was trying so hard to assert his independence and he is very independent by nature. “I do it myself” is a constant refrain, even now at almost-4 years old.

But…

This is Him Learning

Toddlers are often testing limits, but they do it because they are learning. They are learning new skills, new ideas and how they fit in their world.

Combine a strive for independence and limited self-regulation, you have a recipe for potential high-stress situations. As parents, it’s tough to keep a calm attitude.

Well, a recent piece of research should give you a little hope.

Researchers at the Oregon Social Learning Center recently published an article showing that parents who can keep their “cool” when their youngsters test their patience have a better chance of their kids not having behavior problems in the future.

The primary finding showed that children whose parents who have a tendency to over-react and/or are quick to get angry with them, are more likely to have more tantrums and negative behavior at age 2. Is important to note that most children increase in their tantrum-type behavior during this toddler period, but this study clearly showed that children whose parents over-reacted increased in this negative behavior more than average.

Being the Model I Want Him to See

The good news for parents is that if you can maintain your “cool” while still setting firm boundaries, you are helping your child learn emotion regulation by your example. When a child misbehaves it is tempting to react out of emotion and not think about the consequences. It is a struggle to keep your emotions contained, but if you can keep your composure and discipline the child with less intense negative emotion, the child will slowly learn how to regulate their own emotions as well. So take heart parents, we can survive those toddler years without losing our sanity.

Diffuse the Situation

Knowing my toddler was not intentionally trying to derail my workout was the first step in keeping a calm mindset. Most of the time, these little ones are not trying to “push your buttons” or make you upset on purpose.

Knowledge is power: if you understand what is typical for toddler behavior, it makes it easier to take it in stride (at least most of the time). If we know that they act irrationally and have little self-control, that helps us remain in control.

The “golden rule” still applies to grownups: it may sound simplistic but the old rule of “treat others how you would like to be treated” still applies to toddler-parent interactions (at least to some degree). We are modeling behavior for our kids with every action. If I yell at my toddler (which we all do from time to time), then we are modeling anger. However, if the other 90% of the time, we model compassion, patience, and self-regulation, they will eventually learn this.

Ultimately, we are teaching our kids how to treat us. It takes years modeling, growth, and maturity, but they will get the hang of it eventually.

In the meantime, hang on for a wild ride, and maybe get that walk on the treadmill while he’s napping.

Amy is a scholar turned stay-at-home mom of two young boys. When she's not stepping on Legos, she writes at The Thoughtful Parent. With this blog she brings child development research into the lives of parents in the trenches of child-rearing.

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The Subtle Beauty of Child Development

By Amy Webb

There is has been a lot of talk in the media recently about rigorous, academic preschools meant to ensure a child’s future academic (if not career) success. First, there was the story of the woman in New York who sued a preschool when she felt it did not adequately prepare her daughter for a high-stakes intelligence test required to enter a competitive private school. She claimed the preschool was not a school, but simply a big “playroom.” Then there was the article in the New York Times about Kumon and other tutoring companies catering to younger clientele (as young as 2). This prompted what I felt was a very thoughtful piece by Ellen Galinsky who offered a more middle-of-the road approach to young children’s education. She aptly points out that while children do learn skills from the Kumon-st‌yle approach, the key component is not some much the flashcards and puzzles, but the presence of an engaged adult who is eager to teach and learn. In the case of Kumon, this adult happens to be a “teacher” rather than a parent. Do parents feel inadequate to be a teacher/guide/observer with their child? Or are they simply to busy to take on this role and find it easier to hand it over to the tutoring businesses?

Here’s what we know from a research perspective: play is crucial to preschool-aged children. The playground is the “testing ground” for not only the academic skills they will need later, but perhaps more importantly, the social skills they will need to succeed in school and in life. More and more research is showing how children who lack social skills often fail to thrive in school, even though they are academically capable, because the social aspect is so important. Why is this? Because interaction with peers is one of the ways children learn not only learn how to “play nice” but it is how they learn to control their own emotions and behavior. This self-control, in turn, is one of the best predictors of academic and career success. In fact, some studies have shown that training in social and emotional skills is as beneficial as academic training in helping students who are struggling in school. Furthermore, developmental scientists will tell you that young children learn concepts of math, sciences, and language better in a play-based setting than a “drill-and-kill” rote learning setting offered by many “academic” preschools, due in large part to the social interaction that is involved in play-based learning.

Beyond the research, however, is the question of why? Why do many parents feel the need or pressure to enroll their young children in such academically rigorous preschools? Although a lack of understanding of child development may be part of the issue, I think other factors must be at play. One issue may be the recent economic decline. Has the economic downturn of recent years made parents so fearful of their children’s career future that they are resorting to academic preschools out of fear? This may be part of the motivation for many parents.

Additionally, I do feel that we have lost some understanding of subtlety in this country. By that I mean that there seems to be an emphasis on direct results, black-and-white answers, etc. The interesting thing about child development is that it is subtle in so many ways. If you watch a child carefully over the course of many months (if not years) you will see them gradually learn concepts, language, ideas, but you have to watch closely. You will not see quick results overnight with most aspects of child development. I think this is why play-based preschools are not as attractive to many parents, especially those parents that are the results-oriented, pressure-driven type. Over the course of time, a child will learn about concepts of volume, fractions, and density while playing with water and sand on the playground. This type of learning, however, is much more subtle than a child being able to recite some flashcards that they reviewed for a week straight. A child in a play-based preschool may not be able to tell you straight out that 2 + 2 = 4, but I imagine if you asked them to pick up 4 balls, they would know what to do. I admit that seeing a child recite answers to questions that you’ve reviewed with them is somewhat gratifying to us as adults, but is the other, more subtle type of learning any less valuable?

Although my son is only 2 years old, I have already seen evidence of this difference in learning. Lately I’ve been working with him on learning colors. I’ll point out things at the store and name their color or mention the colors of animals, etc. Now, if I straight out ask him what color an object is, he will inevitably get it wrong. However, if he wants an object and is pointing to it and asking for it, he will almost always call it the correct color (“blue one”). There is something to be said for a child’s intrinsic motivation to learn what important to them, not necessarily what’s important to us.

Amy is a scholar turned stay-at-home mom of two young boys. When she's not stepping on Legos, she writes at The Thoughtful Parent. With this blog she brings child development research into the lives of parents in the trenches of child-rearing.

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