Teaching children how to think critically is an important task for parents-especially in an era where mutli-tasking, multiple interfaces and a stream of stimuli is a given. I watched a three year old show his dad how to run a video on an iphone the other day. This link is to an article about how 8 year old children attending a charter school are taught philosophy through questions. The article also mentions the book below on using children’s literature to teach philosophy.
This article in the Ney York Times gives some excellent advice for parents who suspect their child may have a learning disability. The author outlines steps from dealing with the school, documenting supporting evidence and when or whether an evaluator might be helpful.
Parents often ask me whether their young child has a speech delay. More often these days I get referrals from local preschools for children in danger of being removed from programs due to behavior problems. Many times, these young ones have an undiagnosed speech delay. Speech delays in young children are not uncommon and free help (imagine!) is available through the public school system even for the preschool aged child.
This information sheet from the American Speech Language Hearing Association gives the developmental milestones for speech from ages 1-5 as well as ways parents and caregivers can help children build language skills.
Children and internet safety is a primary concern for parents. The internet, social networking and online communities are changing fast- certainly not news by now. But how can parents reasonably protect children from online predators given normal curiosity and also give them independence?
Semantec Corp, an internet security group did a study on what children search for on the internet. Reuters published an article about the results, which indicate that children search for terms like “sex” and “porn” in the top 10 of searches. Of courses these same kids are also searching for terms like “Miley Cyrus” and “Club Penguin.”
Children are curious, and like the rest of us quickly learn to ask the computer questions they want answers to. Explaining to children the danger online may draw them toward it, and monitoring every move may make them believe they cannot be trusted. Surely there is not a fast and true rule that works for every family. However, some form of open communication, monitoring and talking is needed.
I am frequently troubled as I continue to meet young high school graduates who have never held a job and have basically no independent living skills. That is to say they cannot cook, do laundry, budget money, or run errands. Many cannot even drive. We live in a world of play dates and homework. Masses of homework.
I did not see homework till junior high, never did any till high school and still managed to get in to grad school with flying colors. Children today are doing 2-3 hours of homework in the third grade. 8 year olds are too young to have full time jobs (6 hours plus homework– forget sports). It’s no wonder that kids who have to study a bit more abhor school, and those that are involved in sports don’t have time to work.
Which is great and all, except that honestly, you could easily end up with a child who has never had to be alone with themselves until they get a license. Which is a bit alarming. Sometimes I wonder that all of the outside demands from multiple channels of technology and financial demands on parents don’t put a special pressure on today’s children. With the passive entertainment of video games and texting always available, how is a teenager supposed to find their own identity?
I can never quite place my finger on the problem. But there is so much, well, worship of young children going on in this society… and then the booting of them from the nest unprepared seems so sudden. Given that shift happens.
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