A Strong View of Children

As I have given tours to new families I explain our philosophy beginning with, “We view children as competent.” and most people think, yes of course, but honestly most people don’t view children as competent. The truth is children’s brains are designed to learn. They are hard-wired to pick up language, learn, and want to explore. When we view children as competent that then changes our role away from teacher to facilitator, language model, safe keeper, secure base, and ultimately, the encourager. It is our role as teaches and your role as parents to provide children with an opportunity to explore, learn, and grow. But we have a problem in our society. Many parents and teachers have become the ‘fixers’ or prob-lem solver instead of the support system. If you view your child as too small to do it or just a baby, then you are taking their power away and stealing from them their chance problem solve and to learn. The effect of not viewing your child as competent is your child will not view themselves as competent. So how do you begin to change this mindset? Give your child opportunities to show their competencies. Support children as they take calculated risks. Find ‘jobs’ for your child to do around the house. Consider that in history farming families had many children to help support the family. Many families will say, “What can my non-mobile infant do to help?” Your non-mobile infant does a lot of things everyday; she brings a smile to your face every time you see her, he greets you and his family with a loud coo. If we view these things as contributions to our family’s happiness then your infant mobile or not will feel empowered, will feel competent. Your toddler can learn to greet guests or help to set out napkins for dinner. Little ones can help you remember the keys or help lock the door on the way out of the house. Giving children jobs, no matter how small, tells them that you view them as competent and valuable members of your family. The feeling of accomplishment a child gets after doing something helpful is the intrinsic base for our behavior in society and ultimately the motivator for doing ‘good’. Remember not to judge or praise children’s contribution but rather relate them back to your family values so children can be their own judge of their behaviors. You could say, “You smiled at grandma, and look she smiled back.” or “You welcomed your cousins by showing them your toys, that’s part of being a friend.” or “You put all the napkins on the table so we will be able to stay clean at dinner.” None of those sentences judged the children with good or bad simply noticing children’s accomplishments says you value their contribution. If you make this language change at 6 months, it will begin to come naturally and you will start to view your child as competent contributors to your family. I just finished reading the parenting book “Free Range Kids” and the au-thor explained the world is not more dangerous now than it was before. “Childhood is supposed to be about discovering the world, not being held captive. It’s not about having the world pointed out to you by a DVD or by your mom as you drive by, See honey that’s a forest.” (pg 193). We want to support you to view your children as competent and able to get out, explore, get dirty, make mistakes, learn, and contribute.

Learning Through Play

Learning Through Play As an early childhood professional I often find myself saying over and over, “Children learn through play.” I defend play as not only a way to learn, but the best way for children to learn. I was reminded last weekend at the Southern Early Childhood Conference of a simple study that shows how important play is for young children. Fifty years ago when this study was first conducted researchers brought children 3, 5, and 7 years of age into a lab and asked the children to stand still for as long as they could. Standing still requires children use their executive functions in the higher centers of their brain, not only to remember they are standing still but also to stop themselves from doing something else which is called inhibitory control. Executive functions and inhibitory control have been in the news lately because research has shown how important these skills are to later success in school and in adult life. So they asked the children to stand still and the three year old could stand still for a not very long we will say less than 20 seconds, the five year olds could stand still a bit longer about 30-60 seconds, and the seven year olds were able to stand still for quite long nearing five minutes. They repeated this with another group of 3, 5, and 7 year olds but this time they told them a story about soldier that had to stand at attention very still for a long time. When the children were challenged to take on the play role of soldiers and stand still this play allowed the chil-dren to better self regulate, hold onto the idea of standing still, and stop themselves from moving or engaging in something else. The most dramatic increase was in the five year olds that were able to stand still by ‘being a soldier’ for three to five minutes. The researches surmised that the seven year olds were only slightly effected by play scenario because they largely had the self regulation skills and the three year olds were only slightly effected by the play scenario because they struggled to take on and maintain engagement in the role. Play is how children learn to self regulate. Children learn through mature dramatic play to build, understand, and apply rules. When children were place in a group and all pretending to be soldiers they were able to stand still even longer. Sadly this study was replicated in 2001 and the researchers found that the five year olds of 2001 per-formed more like the three year olds of fifty years ago, and the seven year olds of 2001 performed more like the five year olds of fifty years ago. Researchers speculate this change stems largely from today’s children having less unstructured play time, less opportunities for mix aged groups that promote mature play, and more toys with singular prescribed uses. We can best support our children by giving them time for uninterrupted play.