Tip 43 - Well, It's About Time!

“Mom, are we there yet?” This standard plea is pretty typical of young children because they have no real concept of time. Time is a very important concept from the pre-school years all the way through adolescence.. From understanding past, present and future, telling time;  developing plans for everything from a birthday party, or budgeting time for homework and school assignments to planning for college – all of these activities require an understanding and appreciation of time.  Time is studied in such diverse scientific domains  as understanding the timing of brain activity to the way physicists explain distance in the universe.  Helping your child think about time, tell time, use words and word endings  that describe time, plan, budget and organize time will all serve your child well in school and social life. Below are some suggestions for helping your child understand and use time successfully.

Preschool – ages 3 to 5 – The Shoe-Box Game  - appreciating the language and grammar of time

Take three shoe boxes and ask your child to decorate them with crayons or markers. One will be the “We did it box”, one the "We are doing box" and one the "we are going to do box". Your and your child can draw pictures  about trips you took or are going to take, places you visited or want to visit, or photos of people who are visiting now, came to visit or will visit. Anything that happened before now can go in the "we did it box". When you put pictures or objects in the boxes stress the words and grammatical endings that describe what you “did," "are doing" or "plan to do." Examples of good past tense  and future tense words are below.

PAST TENSE
       ·         Remember when we went to the park, visited the zoo, had a picnic at the beach?
       ·         Last week (month) (year) we did ________, what should we do now
       ·         Yesterday, Once upon a time, awhile ago

FUTURE TENSE

• Let's go ___________
• Next week (month) (year) we will ________
• Tomorrow, in awhile, soon, in the future

Late preschool and early school age – ages 5-7 Calendar activities – Days, months and years

Think about how important your Outlook calendar and “to-do” lists are in your life. You can start your child thinking about how time can be used to plan for the future, record a job well done, and anticipate a coming event by posting a large wall calendar in your child’s room where he can make pictures or write simple words to denote special events or accomplishments. Make the calendar a ritual part of each day (perhaps before bed each night) with a discussion of something important that happened or is going to happen. Count ahead to the number of days until the next holiday, or someone’s birthday, or a special occasion.

Elementary school – ages 7-11 Time Budgets

Ability to use our time efficiently is what distinguishes successful adults in the workforce. You can help your school-age child develop this executive function by using a date timer to plan everything from how long it might take to bake holiday cookies on a Saturday afternoon to how long each homework assignment will take. Practice making these plans together at first then see how your child begins to think about time planning in other activities. Some examples of non-school-related activities that you and your child can plan together are:

·         Invitations, shopping and decorating for a birthday party

·         Holiday shopping

·         Designing and making a Halloween costume

·         Building a tree house

·         Painting a bedroom

Middle and High School – ages 12 – 17 Timelines and Rewards

Teens are notorious for procrastination and having difficulty learning to respect schedules and deadlines.  This is due, in large part, to the waxing and waning of the development of the frontal lobe. By building in rewards for deadlines met, projects accomplished on time or stepwise progression toward goals, big projects do not seem so overwhelming to a teen.

·         If there is a science project due in a month, it is much easier to think about it in five or six parts, with each  part due in a few days. 

·         Breaking a major paper  or report down into time-based steps or sections is also helpful  -

o   Introduction -  Friday

o   Main section - Tuesday

o    Last section - Thursday

o   Final editing - Thursday night

·         Build in a reward for each deadline met – an hour of television or video-games; points toward a special event (a rock concert or a pizza party)

IT’S ABOUT TIME! Understanding and managing time effectively is one major way to assure your child’s success in school, sports, and social life. Start when your child is young and continue to emphasize as your child gets older. It will help your child with almost every aspect of life because you will be building dependability and goal setting

Tip # 42 Want a leader? Give your kid a break!

This afternoon, during my usual Sunday game of golf  (where I did not play particularly well by the way), a member of my foursome and parent of a ten and seven year old, Ron Thurber, reminded me of the importance of unstructured play for children.

There is a great deal of research in the neuroscience community on the value of unstructured play. To get you started though, recall how you played after school when you were young. I remember a day after a first snow storm when a group of us in my neighborhood decided to build an igloo. We spent hours trying to figure out how to do it, with a few children alternately serving as the leaders, providing suggestions for how to proceed. I suggested we should make a big pile of snow and hollow it out. We tried that and of course our igloo collapsed. Another child thought he remembered from school that you have to make bricks out of snow. We then began that project by piling snow into shoe boxes and trying to pack them down. Once removed from the shoe boxes, our flimsy bricks did not hold together very well. One among us finally suggested we use water to turn the snow bricks into ice bricks. We discovered we were really onto something and spent the rest of that day, and two additional days after school, making our bricks and constructing our igloo. For those three afternoons, without an adult in sight,  we all worked cooperatively toward a single goal without any fighting or competition. In the end, we were so proud of our igloo we invited our parents in a for a visit.

In 2008, NPR interviewers asked three researchers for suggestions to guide parents with ideas for unstructured play that fosters executive function and leadership skills. The researchers they spoke with were Deborah Leong, professor of psychology at Metropolitan State College of Denver, Elena Bodrova, senior researcher with Mid-Continent Research for Education and Learning, and Laura Berk, professor of psychology at Illinois State University.

Here were their suggestions for different age groups: 

Pre-Schoolers - Joint Storybook Reading: "Reading storybooks with preschoolers promotes self-regulation, not just because it fosters language development, but because children's stories are filled with characters who model effective self-regulatory strategies"  

Early School Age - Simon Says: "Simon Says is a game that requires children to inhibit themselves. You have to think and not do something, which helps to build self-regulation."

Complex Imaginative Play: "This is play where your child plans scenarios and enacts those scenarios for a fair amount of time, a half-hour at a minimum, though longer is better. Sustained play that last for hours is best. Realistic props are good for very young children, but otherwise encourage kids to use symbolic props that they create and make through their imaginations." For example, a stick becomes a sword or a can becomes a phone.

Pre-teen and Teen Activities That Require Planning: "Games with directions, patterns for construction, recipes for cooking, for instance." And remember, that group activities allow leaders to emerge and helps the others understand the value of cooperative effort, striving toward a single goal. 

Sending children off to play used to be a "break" — for everyone,  the kids and their parents. But now, parents feel compelled to organize every second of their children's play time, structuring a child's time through afterschool classes and activities or by purchasing  things like elaborate play objects, princess dresses and video games. Howard Chudacoff, a cultural historian at Brown University, says play has become stressful and expensive, focused, as never before, on things. In an NPR interview awhile back he said, "It's interesting to me that when we talk about play today, the first thing that comes to mind are toys. Whereas when I would think of play in the 19th century, I would think of activity rather than an object."  A few years ago, Chudacoff published a history of child's play  in which he argues that for most of human history what children did when they played was roam an area in large or small groups, with older children supervising the younger ones. The main activity they engaged in  was freewheeling imaginative play. "They were pirates and princesses, aristocrats and action heroes...Basically", says Chudacoff, "they spent most of their time doing what looked like nothing much at all."

Dr. Adele Diamond, whose research I have referred to often, stated in the same interview,  "I think a lot of kids get diagnosed with ADHD now, not all but many just because they never learned how to exercise self-control, self-regulation, the executive functions early," she says.  Dr, Diamond is a leading proponent of unstructured play to help children develop a range of probem-solving, self-regulation and leadership skills.

Tip #42  An excellent way to provide opportunities for your child to work well with others, develop both leadership and problem-solving skills as well as self discipline is to practice it through imaginative and unstructred play in groups where adults don't interfere. Thank You, Ron!

Success Story #2 - School Smart

Growing up, my best friend for most of my school years was the smartest student in our class. She always got the best grades on tests and projects.... in grade school, middle school (we called it junior high), and high school . She was always one of the top one or two students in our class, then went to Harvard on a full academic scholarship. She went on to pursue graduate degrees from several top tier universities and finally becoming a senior partner in one of the most prestigious law firms in New York City. She married a very successful international banker and has two happy successful children. Few parents could ask for more

Why am I telling you this? Because, she and I were two of the youngest children in our class. Her birthday was the same as mine, October 26. In those years, the end date for entering kindergarten in our district was October 31. That is, you had to turn five years old by October 31. She and I entered kindergarten while we were still four years of age.

Of course there were a few disadvantages, especially in high school, when we were the last in our class to reach driving age.  But now I often speak to parents who are holding their children back, especially boys, almost two more years beyond my friend and me, to start kindergarten at six years of age. I have always felt that this was not a good practice because I have worked with many children who were underachieving more because they were bored in school than any other factor.

Now we have solid research indicating that this is the case. Sam Wang, a molecular biology professor at Princeton and Sandra Aamodt, a former editor of Nature Neuroscience share research in their book, "Welcome to your Child's Brain: How the Mind Grows from Conception to College," indicating that holding your child back a year before starting kindergarten actually interferes with their success in later life.

The research they cite indicates that the best way for your child to get ahead in school and life, is to start early, not late. Why?

SCHOOL IS WHAT MAKES CHILDREN SMART AND GIVES THEM THEM AMPLE TIME TO DEVELOP SOCIAL SKILLS AND OPPORTUNITIES FOR QUALITY TEAM SPORT EXPERIENCE

The authors highlight the research in their book and an OpEd in today's New York Times. They state that in a large study involving 26 Canadian Schools, first graders who were young at entering kindergarten made more progress in reading than those who were old for their year. They cite another study where the youngest fifth graders had higher I.Q.'s than fourth graders of the same age. The authors explain that the first six years of life are the time when the human brain is undergoing its greatest growth spurt, and nothing seems to increase that brain potential better than school. And one of the greatest benefits, according to the authors, is social skill development - especially among boys who otherwise tend to mature socially a little later than girls. 

So what about sports?  Many parents believe that team sport skills provide their child with one additional leg up for college and scholarship opportunities. They often hold their children back to get an advantage in selection and opportunity over other children in the same grade. The authors do not provide research on this topic but I have another personal example here as well. My husband Jim and his twin brother, who had a late September birthday, also entered kindergarten before five years of age. They both received full athletic scholarships, one to a Big-Ten university, the other to an Ivy League college. My husband was selected Academic All Big-Ten as well as an All-American basketball player . He went on to play pro-basketball before entering law school.

What about me, with my late birthday and early school entrance? I did not get superior grades in elementary school nor, as my golf coach would testify, am I a superior athlete. But my grades were good enough and I had a broad range of extracurricular interests: art, music, drama, and public speaking. My father would say I was "well rounded." That, I believe, enabled me to have a fulfilling professional life and a satisfying family life.

Bottom line.....

THE BEST WAY FOR YOUR CHILD TO GET AHEAD IN SCHOOL, SPORTS AND LIFE  IS TO START SCHOOL ON SCHEDULE, NOT WAIT A YEAR. ACCORDING TO WANG AND AAMODT, "SCHOOL MAKES CHILDREN SMARTER"!

Tip 41 – Control Yourself – the Ultimate Success Factor

Did you realize that there is something more important to school success than IQ? And, did you know you can help your child develop this success factor relatively easily? In the August 19 issue of the journal Science Dr. Adele Diamond, whose research I have covered in prior posts, wrote an article about preschool skills that lead to success in school and life.

Dr. Diamond states, “tomorrow’s leaders will need the discipline to stay focused, seeing tasks through to completion.” She considers the four characteristics that are critical to success to be:

·      Creativity – children need to be able to come up with new solutions to problems – solutions that they have never thought of before

·      Working memory –  the ability to work with masses of new information and discern patterns and links

·      Flexibility – the ability to view problems from different perspectives and consider different approaches to solution of problems

·      Self- control – the ability to resist temptations, think before acting, and inhibit responses that might cause regret.     

What can you do with your child to foster these success factors? Try adding 15-20 minutes a day of:

1.      Computerized and non-computerized speed training and reasoning games –

2.      Aerobic exercise ((running games, jump rope, team sports like basketball and soccer)

3.    Exercising hand-eye coordination through musical training

In addition – consider adding after school activities that include Martial Arts – like tae-kwon-do that emphasize self-control, discipline and character

Finally, see if your school might consider curricular add-ons – there are two shown to result in improved self control and thinking skills:

1.      PATHS  (Promoting Alternative Thinking Strategies) trains teachers on activities and approaches that help to develop self-control, recognizing and managing feelings, and interpersonal problems solving.

2.      For Preschoolers - Chicago School Readiness Project (CSRP) emphasized and provided  behavior-management  training for Head Start teachers with suggestions for stress reduction

The Ultimate Success Factor - As we have discussed in other blog posts, All the above qualities are referred to as “executive functions (EFs)”. As Dr. Diamond explains, “these are the cognitive control functions needed when you have to concentrate and think, when acting on your initial impulse might be ill-advised.”  Research has shown that EFs are more important for school readiness and achievement than is intelligence quotient (IQ)

Interviews on Special Topics

My blog post this week is a list of links to video interviews that were recorded while I was  touring Australia last spring. The links were sent to me yesterday and I thought some of you might find some of the topics interesting. Over the next few weeks I will be posting written blogs on these subjects as well.

ADHD   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dytLydNVgkU

Adult Learning Development      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAVR_NRvXaIrtising

Dyslexia           http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Omeplc-ES8w 

Autism  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhseS3zSwig

Literacy Development    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCcb5veZnCY

Tip 40 - The Language to Reading Connection

The highly respected international journal Science devoted the August 19, 2011 issue to the importance of early education in ultimate success in high school, college and beyond. One area emphasized in this special issue is the importance of building language skills, starting in preschool. This Parent Smart Blog has been devoted to helping you as parents apply the most current brain research to play games with your children that build language and other cognitive skills shown to enhance school success. Below are some of the highlights from an artilce by David Dikenson of Vanderbilt University in this August 19, special issue of Science.

We know from research conducted by Early Child Care Research Network of the National Institute of Health that the language ability we see in children three and four years of age predicts later reading skills all the way through high school. We also know that ability with language later in life builds directly on earlier competencies.  Below are specific competencies parents can foster at home and through pre-school and elementary school experiences to assure language good language skills.

·         Birth to age three

Milestones you should expect for basic vocabulary and syntax –

§  30 months - 300 words (38.6% nouns, 21% verbs, 7.1% adverbs; 14.6% pronouns)

§  3 years - 900 words; MLU = 3.1

Your child should enjoy books and word play like nursery rhymes and funny words

Your child should begin using language used to form relationships.

·         Three to Kindergarten

Milestones you should expect vocabulary and syntax –

·         Your child should have school based vocabulary like that needed for following directions, knowing alphabet letters, understanding school rules, etc.

·         Advanced syntax should be developing for use and understanding of compound and complex sentences, like “The boy who likes ice cream is my friend”

      

Your child should understand stories read aloud.

Your child should know if words rhyme and identify words that start with the same sounds

Your child should be able to read a few commonly occurring words like his name, the word STOP on road signs, words repeated often in favorite books, and be able to write his name

Preschools that stress language skills can be very helpful in assuring your child builds these prerequisite language skills. Parents need not seek out preschools that teach reading or mathematics per se, rather those that stress language enrichment through opportunities to listen to stories being read and to talk about stories that are read aloud.

Tip 40 - Research is building that the stronger your child's language skills during preschool years the better your child will do in school. Provide as many language rich experiences as you can when your child is young and seek out preschool environments where language skills are emphasized.

Tip 39 Put a Tiger in your Think Tank

I am traveling /speaking in Asia this week - Tokyo, Jakarta and Singapore. My friends here reminded me yesterday that this is the home of the "Tiger Mom." Parents here are very concerned with school success. Although I do not believe that pressuring children to do well in school guarantees success as an adult, the parents here are models for instilling a respect for education and a strong academic work ethic.  Taking school seriously does not have to mean drudgery and drill. Your child's brain is a learning machine so as a parent it can be relatively easy to build a 'love of learning' atmosphere in the home that will carry over in school.  Below are suggestions I shared with parents in Singapore and Jakarta this week.

Hang learning reminders in visible areas around the home. Last week I suggested having a calendar where you and your child can post important assignment due dates to help keep them in mind. Below are two other ways to keep school topics like vocabulary and grammar visible reminders that 'learning' goes on everywhere, all the time.

·               Hang a “New-Word Board - All school ages

–         List each family member down the left side in permanent marker

–         Each day, before dinner, using erasable marker, each family member can write their favorite new word of the day next to their name

–         At dinner – each family member can take turns talking about their new word - where they saw or heard it, what it means, why they thought it was an interesting word

·               Grammar Detective Stars – Grades 5-12

–        Grammar is one of those areas that seems important in school but not necessarily at home or on the playground – so to enable your student to understand why grammar counts try adding stars to names on the New-Word Board for catching grammatical errors on TV, in movies or videos, or really anywhere

–      Whoever catches the most mistakes during a week gets a star next to their name on the “New-Word Board” for the week

–        At dinner – a parent can make a grammatical error and see which grammar detective discovers it

–      Examples younger children - “Dad took I to school yesterday; there is the toys; The cat and the mouse is playing; ”

–      Examples for older children – “She saw the boy he was running; I like to reading each day”

–         When you watch a T.V.  program as a family (reality TV is often a good place to catch mistakes),  make a game out of trying to catch grammatical errors– note who catches it first

-     Mom and Dad test your own grammar sleuth capacities to see if you can catch grammatical or vocabulary errors in politicians' campaign sound bites

Tip 39 -  School subjects are not just about school – learning goes on all around us all the time. So keep learning alive at home and Put A Tiger in Your Think Tank