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Volume I, No. 3 A QUESTION OF BALANCE A GROWING BOY Two-year-old John Paul stands in line with the
other children in his violin class. He’s long awaited his chance to handle a real
violin. He holds it in “bow position” as he is shown, then respectfully
returns his prized instrument to its case. This day’s class is over. As he and his mother, Sue, leave the class,
John Paul surprises her by commenting that it’s cold enough for polar bears
today. Much to her delight, he tells her all the things he knows about polar
bears as they walk toward home. Sue and husband Paul told John Paul about
polar bears when he was too young to talk, and this is the first indication
he’s given of what he learned! Once they arrive home, Sue pulls out a marker
and blank cards to write out some new reading words for John Paul. He asks
for the marker so he can write some words, too. As she tells him how to spell
each word, he acts with concentration, writing, TIM, TOM and a few other
words. He’s really pleased with himself when he finishes and decides he’ll do
gymnastics till Dad comes home. CREATING OPPORTUNITIES As John Paul nears his third birthday, his parents’
devoted efforts are becoming apparent. Not only is he showing an early
interest in one area of life; he’s showing an early interest in many areas. They have helped to DEVELOP this wide array of
interests by exposing John Paul to a variety of experiences at an early age.
Obviously, he wouldn’t have become interested in the violin if he’d never
heard of one. He would not have known about polar bears if someone hadn’t
taken the time to describe them to him. Even natural attempts at tumbling
would have been slowed if someone hadn’t shown him some easy ways to get
started. John Paul is the one who will ultimately
decide what to do with his life, but thanks to his parents’ loving support,
he’ll have more options to consider in choosing his life’s pursuits. Not only
will he have more alternatives from which to choose, he will actually be able
to choose to do more. Not limited to a choice between being a skilled
violinist OR gymnast OR writer, he will develop proficiency in many areas, as
well as focus on professional pursuits. THE BIG PICTURE What kinds of opportunities would you like to
create for your children? What kinds of abilities would you like to help them
develop? What characteristics do you think exemplify the healthy adult? If you’re presently teaching your baby to
swim, to read, to sit up and to love Beethoven, you’ve already clarified some
of your parental values. You may gain further clarification by doing the
following exercise: Brainstorming... Both parents should have their own pens and
sheets of paper. The papers should be headed with the phrase, “Abilities I
Would like to Help My Children Develop”. Under this you will list all the
characteristics and abilities you want your children to have the opportunity
to develop. These are all the choices you want your children to have. This
isn’t the time to evaluate. That will come later. Right now all you need to
do is take three minutes to write as fast as your hand will move. Jot down
every image you can visualize of your children in a fulfilling adulthood. Do
you see them working well with others, doing research, or singing with
perfect pitch? Put no limits on your visualizations. If you’d like for your
children to have a chance to be the first astronauts to land on Venus, write
it down! When your three minutes are up, take two more
minutes to refine or add to your notes. After this, exchange papers with your
spouse. Observe the things which both of you listed
first. Mark the things which you think are of primary importance. Discuss the
insights you’ve gained in seeing your spouse’s ideals in writing. Step by Step... On a new sheet of paper, write down one
ability you want to start working on right away. Remember that this is a
step-by-step process and you don’t need to deal with all of your ideas at
once. Your main concern now is with making a plan which you’ll carry through
to completion. Under the ability you’ve chosen, list the
activities necessary to create this opportunity for your children. For
instance, if you hope that your children will play a musical instrument,
write this at the top of a piece of paper. Beneath this, list activities such
as: regularly playing quality musical recordings; taking the children to
concerts; investigating the cost of renting or purchasing instruments, taking
music lessons; and playing an instrument regularly yourself, so your children
have you as a model. Next to this, list the dates by which you’d like to have
each phase in operation. With this plan, you can save the necessary money,
bypass unwanted distractions, and allot the time needed to make your dreams
become real options for your children’s future. Whenever you feel ready to add to your plans,
you can use the same procedure to plan for other areas of your children’s
education. Some Basic Subject Areas... Although you can’t do everything at once, it
is prudent to offer a variety of experiences to your children. The following
categories may help you think of areas where you want to develop activities:
Physical Development (coordination, endurance, health and skilled movement),
Language Arts (reading, writing, speaking and listening — including foreign
language), Fine Arts (appreciating and creating music and art), Mathematics
(counting, measuring, etc.), Science (observing, group, et al), Social
Studies (geography, people and their cultures, history), Practical Life
(self-discipline and maintaining order in the environment) and Social Arts
(values and relating to others). If you note that over a period of weeks you
or your children are neglecting a particular area, find some exciting
activities to stimulate interest there. For example, babies who are learning
to walk sometimes appear to want only movement activities. In such cases,
parents may introduce science by taking nature walks, math by counting each
step taken, or the arts by singing and swaying with the infants in their
arms. Such an approach gives children a balance of experiences and more
choices for later life. Reviewing your activities will also help you
to keep your emphasis on all the things you ARE doing. It’s easy to take your
routine contributions for granted while focusing on things you’d still like
to do; but your interest in your children’s education indicates a sincere
desire to improve the quality of their lives. Your children are really lucky to have parents
who care as much as you do. You may never have time to do for them all the
things you’d like to plan, but you love them, you stretch for them, and you
have the satisfaction of knowing that you are giving them the best you can. Basic Principles TO MOTHER IS TO TEACH “What Do You Mean Teach My Child to
Talk?” When inviting our family to her small town to
attend our cousin’s wedding, my aunt arranged for us to stay overnight with
the Evanses, friends of hers who had four daughters. When we arrived, a
pretty teen-ager opened the door, said, “Hi, I’m Inga,” and had soon
introduced us to the rest of her family — or so I thought. It was hours later
when I learned that Inga was an exchange student from That really intrigued me. “Why?” I asked. The answer was that Mrs. Evans had been the
only one who had read and heeded the information on exchange students that
had preceded Inga. It emphasized that for the first few weeks after the
foreign student arrived it was important for family members to speak very
distinctly and very slowly if they did so, the student would learn to speak
English sooner and more accurately. Mrs. Evans’ exaggerated articulation and
greatly slowed down speech had given Inga the decoding she needed to be
speaking this new language like a native within a few months. It didn’t occur
to me then that the way Mrs. Evans helped Inga understand, a foreign language
might be closely related to how a mother best teaches her infants their
native tongue. I’ve forgotten just about everything else
about that festive wedding weekend, but the story of Inga and Mrs. Evans has
come to mind repeatedly since then. It pops up whenever, for example, I hear
experts on childhood mention that some children have delayed or unclear
speech because both parents habitually speak so fast or indistinctly that the
children can’t easily tell one word or phrase from another. When reading Joan Beck’s account, in How to
Raise a Brighter Child, of a Harvard-professor father who taught his one-year-old
to speak, I thought of Mrs. Evans. The same image appeared when I came across
18-month-old Bonnie who spoke as clearly as many four-year-olds. Her mother,
it turned out, didn’t seem to be in a position to give Bonnie many
advantages, but three aspects of her mothering stood out; she spent almost
all her time with Bonnie, doing little else but talking and playing with her;
she took Bonnie with her almost everywhere; and she spoke very slowly! Since meeting Bonnie, I’ve had conversations
with quite a few 18-month-olds, and known many three-year-olds with large
speaking vocabularies and clear articulation. At least two of the
three-year-olds spoke as clearly and facilely as ten-year-olds, and the
mothers of both shared one significant behavior. They talked to their young
children with such precise enunciation that every syllable they said could be
distinguished. Watching those two mothers was fascinating.
They carried on all other conversations at normal rates, with good but not unusually
clear pronunciation. In communicating with their children, though, — which
was frequent — they consistently used much slower and clearer speech. Occasional acquaintances teased them about the
unusual precision, but neither mother was daunted. Each had decided to give
her child the best help possible in decoding the language he or she would be
surrounded by from birth, and each had done so very effectively. There came those visions of Mrs. Evans again!
(What comes to you?) ● PART ONE ● THE RELATION BETWEEN AGE AND DEVELOPMENT The younger children are, the more easily they
learn. The younger children are, the more what
they learn enlarges their ability to learn. The younger children are the higher their rate
of mental and physical growth. THE YOUNGER THE CHILD, THE FASTER THE GROWTH To get an indication of the rate of your
children’s potential mental growth, look at the rate of their physical
growth. At birth, children are about a quarter of average adult height. By
age three, they are usually somewhat taller than half the average adult
height. If children maintained the same rate of growth during
subsequent three-year periods, they would reach adult height by around age
six! The rate of physical growth during normal children’s first three years
is by far the highest rate of physical growth they will experience throughout
their entire lives. Most of us who are parents have come to take
for granted this early rush of physical growth. Most of us, though, have not found
it as easy to perceive that early mental growth is fully as rapid. The rate
of mental growth during normal children’s first three years is by far
the highest rate of mental growth they will experience throughout their
entire lives. This fact is well documented. During this
century, there have been well over a thousand research studies on early
mental development. In his now-classic Stability and Change in Human
Characteristics, Benjamin Bloom has summarized the findings of many of
those studies. He reports on the amazingly fast rate of brain growth
occurring during the first few years of life, a rate which he finds decreases
as a child’s age increases. In fact, brain growth in early life is so much
faster than at any other time that normal children have usually developed
about half of their total adult intellectual capacity by the time they are
four years old! And eight-year-olds have developed about 80 percent. THE YOUNGER THE CHILD, THE GREATER THE IMPACT OF EXPERIENCE When parents grasp the significance of this
fact, often the first questions they ask are something like, “What can I do,
then, to make these early years really count for my child? If so much mental
development is going on, how can I help it along?” Those questions are based on the correct
assumption that development is affected by experience. Perhaps the questions
are also based on parents’ familiarity with physical development. We can picture a child who lives with relaxed,
loving parents, has ample nutritious food, abundant exercise, and plenty of
fresh air and sunshine. Then we can picture a child exactly the same age,
with exactly the same physical build, who lives with tense, distancing
parents, is fed processed, devitalized food, is made to keep still as much as
possible, and is kept inside almost all the time. It’s easy to predict. which
child’s body will be more fully developed, stronger, better coordinated, more
capable. It’s also predictable that if both children were sent to the same
summer camp for a month, the healthier child would consistently and
voluntarily eat better foods and get fuller exercise. That is, since
he had experienced more healthful input, his capacity for experiencing
healthful input would be greater. Similarly, the more mental stimulation young
children receiver the more they are able to take in. The more freedom young
children have had to explore their environment, the more they will be
interested in exploring it and able to learn from that exploration. Observant parents have guessed as much for
generations. Now research has confirmed their observations. As an example, thousands of experiments with
animals have demonstrated that early stimulation equals increased
intelligence. They have also shown that young animals given increased input
have brains which are heavier and more neurologically and chemically complex
than the brains of animals receiving less early stimulation. In other words,
the more they learn at an early age, the better developed their brains are,
therefore the more they are capable of learning. From much research on the brain, we learn that
an average human brain has around 10 billion neurons. Intelligence,
apparently, is related to the existence and function of the connections
between these neurons, or cells. A cell can have thousands of these
connections, or very few. The connections are created and strengthened by new
input reaching the brain as a result of new experience, and most readily by
the experiences one has as a very young child. By the time children are eight years old, they
can have logged eight years richly filled by appropriate, engaging
interaction with life, and have vast numbers of well- used connections
between their brain cells. Or they can have had a dull eight years of scant
experience, with sparse and lightly etched links between cells. They have, in either case, formed their basic
perception of and relation to the world. Children with such different levels
of experience, and therefore such different brains, vary greatly in how much
of life they perceive now and will perceive in the future. Both of them are, as are all of us, designed
to approach the new through its connections to the known. Children presented
with a picture of a view they’ve never seen will quickly take in all that is
familiar, be most attracted to anything new but somewhat similar to something
they know, and may not even see — unless it is pointed out — elements in the
picture which don’t relate at all to their experience. This means that children with a wealth of
meaningful early experience, children who have profusely interconnected brain
cells, are able to perceive and be attracted to more of the world because
they already know so much of it; the more they know, the more ways they have
to relate to the new they encounter. The more young children learn, the more
they are able to learn! So we’re back to the parents’ question, “What
can I do, then, to make these early years really count for my child? When we know the fast rate of early growth, and
understand that early experience generates capacity for growth, we find the
answer not only obvious but urgent as well. To give our children, each day of
their early years, as full and meaningful an experience base as we’re able
begins to seem very important — possibly even crucial. PARENTING FOR EXCELLENCE — Volume I, No. 3 — June
1981 Parenting
for Excellence is published ten times per year by The Stelle
Group. Subscriptions are sold by the volume, with volumes beginning in
January. Subscription rates are $15 for one year, and queries about
subscriptions and delivery should be sent to The Stelle Group, ____________________________________________________________________________________________ |
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