Friday, April 5, 2013
Tuesday, April 2, 2013
Screen Time and Childhood
Fourteen years ago the American Academy of Pediatrics issued a
policy statement addressing children’s screen time that created a media hubbub.
The statement was weak and ineffective. The ruckus was in grand disproportion
to the Academy’s ho-hum recommendation that parents “avoid television for
children under the age of two years.”
It generated no positive results. Screen
time for all children continues to increase. Parents still consider the
television a member of the family. Mobile apps are every parent’s new best
friend.
Parents now assume screen time is an important element in early
childhood development. Only 14% of parents remember their pediatricians giving
any advice about media use, despite the Academy’s 2011 reassertion of their
policy. Pediatricians know parents quit listening to that message more than a
decade ago. Our best educators worry about the influence of unregulated
technology use on the growth of young minds, wonder at the obvious but
under-reported connections between screen time and the deterioration of
attention. They know they cannot hold the attention of children raised on
two-second sound bites.
Children spend an average of five to seven hours every day in
front of a screen. The only activity that occupies more time for children is
sleeping. These same young kids are experiencing speech and language delays,
and chronic attention problems. Literacy is becoming increasingly hard to
achieve, creativity rare. Though there is little research to establish
connections between so many young children’s failure to thrive and their
over-exposure to technologies, the conclusion that screen time is corroding
young minds seems ridiculously obvious to most teachers.
The AAP’s most recent research indicates that a shocking 90% of
children younger than two watch some form of electronic media. By age three,
one third of these kids have televisions in their bedrooms. Modern parents
consider one of the most unpredictably dangerous influences on the lives of
young children to be a peacekeeper, a “safe” activity for their children.
Well-educated, upwardly mobile parents fancy educational
technology for kids. Lower income families use the television as a babysitter.
The New York Times calls this the “app gap.” The Times points out that both
sets of parents are thumbing their noses at the AAP, relying on screens to
occupy their children.
The Mayo Clinic’s available information for parents acknowledges
a lack of definitive research, but links too much screen time to behavioral
problems, irregular sleep, poor academic performance and, most convincingly,
obesity. Most major public health organizations have described obesity in
epidemic terms. Screen time is obviously not the only cause of obesity, but
experts consider it a primary gateway to things like soda pop, sedentary lifestyles
and high-fat snack foods.
The effects of screen time on the health of families are easy to
visualize. They are All American images: An overweight family gathered around
the television, eating separate, high-fat meals, sharing two-liter bottles of
soda. Young children eating finger-foods in their car seats, mesmerized by the
screens attached to their parents’ head rests. Bug-eyed youngsters passing time
on iPads and cell phones loaded with mobile apps.
The AAP, the National Institute of Health and the Mayo Clinic
urge parents to limit and plan screen time, and strongly discourage allowing
children to eat in front of a screen. Do not allow children to have televisions
or computers in their bedrooms, they say. Do not leave the television on
throughout the day. Make choices. Plan outdoor activities. Turn the television
off for a day. Though teachers know parents are not following the AAP
guidelines, they know less screen time for longer would build a healthier
child.
A paltry 10% of parents follow the AAP guidelines. There are
apps available for kids so young they are more inclined to chew the cell phone.
Fishing poles and family meals are Norman Rockwell, retro visions of a time
that may be forever gone. The thought of commuting or eating or falling asleep
without a screen makes most parents shudder.
Teachers do not have spare time and money to sponsor research.
Studies into the effects of screen time on children will probably always be
poorly funded and inherently limited in scope and value. Even the best studies
cannot compare a mature adult with the person she might have become, had she
enjoyed a different upbringing. When a child is diagnosed with hyperactivity or
an attention deficit, parents can get a prescription with relative ease. But
they cannot get a do-over. When an adolescent commits an act of violence, it’s
too late to turn off the video games.
Good parenting has never been easy. Bad parenting has never been
easier. Screen time seems like a safe, peaceful, educational way for parents to
entertain their children. Teachers of every age group know we will have to
change our approaches to remain relevant and keep kids engaged in learning.
Good teachers of the world will continue to dream of every child reaching his
or her potential. Good parents of the world will dream too, resisting,
adjusting and adapting to protect our children from the influences most of the
world has accepted without question.
Jennifer Rogers has been a primary teacher for 20 years, the
last 10 at Countryside
Montessori School in Northbrook, Illinois. She completed
AMI primary training in Atlanta, Georgia and AMI Assistants to Infancy in
Denver, Colorado.
Monday, March 25, 2013
Friday, March 8, 2013
Overscheduled kids, anxious parents
updated 9:12 AM EST, Fri March 8, 2013
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CNN.com
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Editor's note: CNN's Josh Levs covers top stories and hosts "Dads Do it Differently" on HLN's "Raising America." This column was inspired in part by his HOBY World Leadership Congress keynote talk,"Shine."
(CNN) -- Are we, as a nation, making childhood too stressful for millions of kids?
Are we cramming them into too many after-school activities without an eye toward what lessons they'll learn about themselves?
Have we forgotten what childhood can and should be like?
These are just a few of the big existential worries that spiral out of a simple-sounding question millions of parents ask ourselves: What activities should my children be involved in?
As a dad to two young boys, I'm quickly learning what so many parents already know: It's stressful territory that involves a tough balancing act.
But recently, standing before a large crowd, I had a realization that now serves as my guidepost, and that I hope will help others.
What if your kid's a budding prodigy?
Good parents want to help our kids learn skills, gain confidence, find interests and try new things. When they're young, it's easy to want to give them every opportunity.
But that's impossible, not to mention expensive.
One of my boys has drummed to the beat since he was a baby, so I'm looking into drum lessons. The other can't stop dancing, so maybe he'll take dance lessons. Both love playing catch with me. Tee ball time?
The oldest, in kindergarten, chose tennis lessons. And they both love their swim lessons.
The possibilities are endless.
What if one is meant to be a pole vaulting chess prodigy, and the other's an Olympic gymnast who paints masterpieces? How will they know if we don't introduce them to all these things?
And so the spiraling begins, which helps lead some parents to sign our kids up for too many activities.
There are studies saying the "overscheduled child" is a "myth," but those are about generation-wide statistics. The fact remains that some kids are kept far too busy.
"Parents need to teach their kids to balance human doing with human being," said clinical psychologist Paula Bloom.
Kids need to know they're not defined by what they do, she said. They need time to play, experiment, rest and figure out who they are.
"As parents, we've got to get over our anxiety that we're not doing enough. Creating a sense of safety, helping kids have confidence to try certain things, those are the things that matter."
As kids get older, they'll show you more and more what they're interested in, Bloom notes.
And, yes, we all make mistakes.
"As adults, your kids are going to tell their therapists, 'Oh my parents never let me play piano,' or some other activity. It's going to happen. Being able to tolerate that is really important."
League sports for little kids?
Many of my kids' friends started soccer leagues at age 3. My wife and I asked ourselves: Do we want our boys to be the only ones without soccer skills? We want them to know they can do anything and to join the camaraderie.
But on top of their other activities, our kids have religious education one weekend morning. Soccer would mean not a single morning all week to relax at home, unstructured.
A great dad I know, a personal trainer (full disclosure: mine) who works regularly with teen athletes, is vehemently against kids entering sports leagues before they're about age 11 or 12.
Adults are "trying to instill grown-up values and competitive nature on a kid, and they're nowhere near that yet," said Robert Stephens. "They're trying to make them into world champions. That's nuts!"
Stephens, who along with his wife raised two boys, wants kids to start playing neighborhood pickup games again.
"It teaches them how to regulate themselves, make up rules," and fix problems, he said.
But these days, that rarely happens. And as CNN has reported, league sports are helping fill a vacuum and keep many kids active.
Your advice:
In a Facebook discussion, some parents said their kids' sports leagues are mostly about having fun.
Dawn Ladd said her 6-year-old daughter's soccer league is "organized, but obviously not competitive."
Still, many parents say leagues aren't right for their little ones.
"We tried... and it was awful. What 4-year-old is ready?" asks Christina Comstock. She now limits her son's activities to scouts and karate. #kids
Many parents wrote that two activities at a time is their maximum. But others have seen their children thrive on busy schedules.
My colleague Jo Parker's two children have done ballet for years. Her 12-year-old daughter goes five days a week. Cutting back might make the family's life easier, Parker said. "But she loves it too much!"
Ultimately, it's up to each family.
"There's no decision tree," said Bloom, no "perfect cocktail."
There is, however, a critical element that often falls to the wayside: the family's overall lifestyle.
"There are families with so much stress because all weekend they're traveling to games. We don't let our kids drive all the decisions in our families. They don't have to drive extracurricular decisions," Bloom said.
And many parents get so busy with kids' activities that they let their marriages falter, she said. "Parents need to ask themselves: What are you modeling for your kid?"
The realization:
I was standing in front of hundreds of teenagers when I realized something about raising my own kids.
It was a keynote address to the Hugh O'Brian Youth Leadership (HOBY) World Leadership Congress.
My message was to "be the cups and ice," my way of saying you should chase and maximize all your opportunities to achieve dreams and to "shine" by being unique, following your instincts.
As I looked out at these kids from all over the world who have stepped up in their communities and shown great potential, it struck me that I couldn't care less whether they can run an 8-minute mile, play the violin, or set up a tent.
I care that they know they can achieve anything, that they understand big rewards come from perseverance and hard work, that they treat others as they'd want to be treated.
I care that they fill their lives with positivity, love and friendship, and take time for those things.
I realized I had gotten caught up in the means, not the end.
It isn't about a search for the perfect activities. My role as a parent is to help guide my kids to that good place. And there are plenty of ways to get there.
Monday, March 4, 2013
Do not skip breakfast--or your grades could pay a price!
A Better Breakfast Can Boost a Child's Brainpower
Evidence suggests that eating breakfast really does help kids
learn. After fasting all night, a developing body (and brain) needs a fresh supply
of glucose — or blood sugar. That's the brain's basic fuel.
"Without glucose," explains Terrill Bravender,
professor of pediatrics at Duke University, "our brain simply doesn't
operate as well. People have difficulty understanding new information, [they
have a] problem with visual and spatial understanding, and they don't remember
things as well."
Dozens of studies from as far back as the 1950s have
consistently shown that children who eat breakfast perform better academically
than those who don't. In a recent study of 4,000 elementary school students,
researchers measured the effects of eating breakfast by administering a battery
of attention tests. To measure short-term memory, researchers read a series of
digits out loud — 5, 4, 2 and so on — and asked the children to repeat them.
The children were scored on how many digits they could remember correctly. To
test verbal fluency, the kids were asked to name all the animals they could
think of in 60 seconds. Across the board, Murphy says, the breakfast eaters
performed better than those children who had skipped breakfast.
With the preponderance of evidence suggesting that breakfast is
key, the next question becomes: Does it matter what kind of breakfast kids eat?
The answer is: Yes.
Bravender, for example, says he'd never serve his children
heavily sweetened cereals. "Any sugared cereal really has a high glycemic
index."
The glycemic index is a measure of how quickly the carbohydrates
in food are absorbed into our bodies and converted to fuel. When it comes to
sustained brain power, Bravender explains, food that is low on the scale — such
as whole grains — are preferable. Even though a bowl of sugary cereal and a
bowl of old-fashioned oatmeal may have the same number of carbohydrates, they
have very different glycemic loads.
Sugary cereals get into your body quickly and cause a peak in
blood-sugar levels, but the levels then fall dramatically after two hours or
so. Oatmeal, on the other hand, is absorbed slowly, so oatmeal eaters gets a
slow rise in blood sugar and enough energy to last through the morning.
What's more, oatmeal eaters don't experience a steep drop in
blood-sugar levels, and that's a good thing. A dip in blood sugar can bring
with it a release of hormones that affect mood. In some children, the hormones
seem to affect concentration and memory.
Scientists have recently begun to study this phenomenon. Last
year, Tufts University psychologist Holly Taylor had one group of children eat
sweetened oatmeal for breakfast while another ate Cap'n Crunch cereal. Then
both groups were given academic tasks, like memorizing the names of countries
on a map. The oatmeal eaters did up to 20 percent better than the Crunch
consumers. To Taylor, that shows that "the children were remembering more
information about these maps after having eaten oatmeal."
And it wasn't as if the oatmeal wasn't sweet. Both cereals had
the same sugar content. But Taylor says that the oatmeal had more protein and
fiber, and therefore a lower glycemic index.
These findings beg more research. But Duke's Terrill Bravender
believes there are some basic rules to follow. First, families should make sure
kids eat something for breakfast. And if the goal is to find foods with a low
glycemic index, then serve fewer processed foods. That will improve the odds
that your child's blood sugar will hold steady until lunch.
Breakfast of Scholars: What Eggs-perts Suggest
by ROSEANNE PEREIRA AND MARC SILVER
August 30, 2006 5:14 PM
To keep your brain powered up, the first meal of the day should
be rich in protein and good carbohydrates — the whole-grain variety that will
sustain you for a long spell rather than the sugary kind that will push your
blood sugar up, then let it fall. We asked three experts for their breakfast
advice.
Stacey Nelson, Senior clinical nutritionist, MGH Nutrition
Services in Boston
What I ate this morning: Peanut butter and jelly on
multigrain bread, ice coffee with low-fat milk.
General recommendations: 1-2 slices of whole-grain toast or
whole-wheat English muffin or toasted whole-grain waffle topped with peanut
butter and a glass of low-fat milk.
Breakfast burrito: whole-wheat tortilla or pita pocket stuffed
with scrambled egg mixed with salsa
1-2 slices of whole-grain toast with melted low-fat cheese and
tomato
Whole-grain cereals, hot or cold, with low-fat milk or yogurt
and 1-2 tablespoons of slivered nuts on top. If the cereal box label says there
are 3 grams of fiber or more a serving, that means there is significant fiber.
What to avoid: I never like to demonize any food. But I
would recommend limiting or avoiding refined and sugary starches and very fatty
foods in the morning — donuts, a corn muffin with extra butter. The lack of
fiber, vitamins/minerals and protein in these meals means minimal nutrition,
and a meal that likely won't stick with you for very long.
Terrill Bravender, associate professor of pediatrics and
director of adolescent medicine, Duke University
What I ate this morning: Today I had nine-grain organic
bread with crunchy peanut butter, a red Gala apple, a glass of skim milk and
later a cup of coffee. My 10-year-old son made French toast from whole-grain
bread with maple syrup for himself and his 6-year-old brother.
General recommendations: Whole-wheat toast with peanut
butter, a glass of milk and a piece of fresh fruit.
A bowl of whole-grain cereal (cold or oatmeal), preferably with
nuts, milk, fresh fruit.
Whole-wheat toast, 1 or 2 eggs, milk, fresh fruit
What to avoid: Any concentrated sweets that are eaten
alone. These would include sugared cereals, fruit juice alone or breakfast
pastries alone. Breakfast meat is okay if not consumed in excess and if there
is a whole-grain carbohydrate source included.
J. Michael Murphy, senior psychologist, Massachusetts
General Hospital and associate professor of psychology, Harvard Medical School
What I ate this morning: Oatmeal — right from the box — and
milk topped with raisins. I don't cook it. I checked with the scientists from
Quaker and they said it is fine to eat it this way, too. Cooking the oats just
softens them up. [Editor's note: We asked a brave volunteer to try uncooked
oats and milk; her verdict: "Okay, but not nearly as good as
cooked."]
General recommendation: Whole-grain cereal like oatmeal or
shredded wheat with low-fat milk, topped with fresh or dried fruit and honey.
What to avoid: Foods with empty calories like soda and
potato chips.
Thursday, February 28, 2013
Effort to Restore Children’s Play Gains Momentum
Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
Sarah Wilson (shown with Benjamin, 6, and Laura, 3) of Stroudsburg, Pa., says, “There’s no imaginative play anymore, no pretend.”
By HILARY STOUT
Published: January 5, 2011
SARAH WILSON was speaking proudly the other day when she declared: “My house is a little messy.”
Brian Blanco for The New York Times
Megan and Michael Rosker, with their children (from left), Jude Rosker, 2, Eli Gorman, 6, and Coko Rosker, 3, use their sunroom in Redington Shores, Fla., as a playroom.
The Ultimate Block Party play event in New York.
Roberta Golinkoff, Leslie Bushara and Kathy Hirsh-Pasek were organizers.
Ms. Wilson lives in Stroudsburg, Pa., a small town in the Poconos. Many days, her home is strewn with dress-up clothes, art supplies and other artifacts from playtime with her two small children, Benjamin, 6, and Laura, 3. “I let them get it messy because that’s what it’s here for,” she said.
Ms. Wilson has embraced a growing movement to restore the sometimes-untidy business of play to the lives of children. Her interest was piqued when she toured her local elementary school last year, a few months before Benjamin was to enroll in kindergarten. She still remembered her own kindergarten classroom from 1985: it had a sandbox, blocks and toys. But this one had a wall of computers and little desks.
“There’s no imaginative play anymore, no pretend,” Ms. Wilson said with a sigh.
For several years, studies and statistics have been mounting that suggest the culture of play in the United States is vanishing. Children spend far too much time in front of a screen, educators and parents lament — 7 hours 38 minutes a day on average, according to a survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation last year. And only one in five children live within walking distance (a half-mile) of a park or playground, according to a 2010 report by the federalCenters for Disease Control, making them even less inclined to frolic outdoors.
Behind the numbers is adult behavior as well as children’s: Parents furiously tapping on their BlackBerrys in the living room, too stressed by work demands to tolerate noisy games in the background. Weekends consumed by soccer, lacrosse and other sports leagues, all organized and directed by parents. The full slate of lessons (chess, tae kwon do, Chinese, you name it) and homework beginning in the earliest grades. Add to that parental safety concerns that hinder even true believers like Ms. Wilson.
“People are scared to let their kids outside, even where I live,” she said. “If I want my kids to go outside, I have to be with them.”
Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, a developmental psychologist at Temple University in Philadelphia, concluded, “Play is just a natural thing that animals do and humans do, but somehow we’ve driven it out of kids.”
Too little playtime may seem to rank far down on the list of society’s worries, but the scientists, psychologists, educators and others who are part of the play movement say that most of the social and intellectual skills one needs to succeed in life and work are first developed through childhood play. Children learn to control their impulses through games like Simon Says, play advocates believe, and they learn to solve problems, negotiate, think creatively and work as a team when they dig together in a sandbox or build a fort with sofa cushions. (The experts define play as a game or activity initiated and directed by children. So video games don’t count, they say, except perhaps ones that involve creating something, and neither, really, do the many educational toys that do things like sing the A B C’s with the push of a button.)
Much of the movement has focused on the educational value of play, and efforts to restore recess and unstructured playtime to early childhood and elementary school curriculums. But advocates are now starting to reach out to parents, recognizing that for the movement to succeed, parental attitudes must evolve as well — starting with a willingness to tolerate a little more unpredictability in children’s schedules and a little less structure at home. Building that fort, for example, probably involves disassembling the sofa and emptying the linen closet. (A sheet makes an excellent roof.)
“I think more than anything, adults are a little fearful of children’s play,” said Joan Almon, executive director of the Alliance for Childhood, a nonprofit pro-play group. “Some people have a greater tolerance for chaos and have developed a hand for gently bringing it back into order. Others get really nervous about it.” Megan Rosker, a mother of three (ages 6, 3 and 2) in Redington Shores, Fla., has learned to embrace the disorder. She set aside the large sunroom in her home for the children and filled it with blocks, games, crayons, magazines to cut up and draw in, as well as toys and dress-up clothes. “I think a big part of free play is having space to do it in, a space that isn’t ruled over by adults,” she said.
“The other key is not to instruct kids how to play with something,” she said. “I can’t tell you how many board-game pieces have been turned into something else. But I let them do it because I figure their imagination is more valuable than the price of a board game.”
But, Ms. Rosker added, “I won’t claim any of this has been easy for me or my husband,” noting that her husband used to be “a total neat freak.” She said they have learned to live with disarray and to take other difficult steps, like strict limits on screen time.
Ms. Rosker has also campaigned, although unsuccessfully, to bring recess to her son’s elementary school. But school officials were too worried about potential injuries, unruliness and valuable time lost from academic pursuits to sign on to her idea and, she was surprised to find, many parents were similarly reluctant. “They said: ‘I’m not going to sign that. I’m sure there is a good reason why this is good for our kids — our school has good test scores.’ “
To try to reach more parents, a coalition called Play for Tomorrow this fall staged what amounted to a giant play date in Central Park. The event, known as the Ultimate Block Party, featured games like I Spy, mounds of Play-Doh, sidewalk chalk, building blocks, puzzles and more. The National Science Foundation was closely involved, advising organizers — and emphasizing to parents — the science and the educational value behind each of the carefully chosen activities. Organizers were hoping to attract 10,000 people to the event. They got more than 50,000.
“We were overwhelmed,” said Roberta Golinkoff, a developmental psychologist at theUniversity of Delaware and a founder of the event along with Dr. Hirsh-Pasek. They are now working with other cities — Toronto, Atlanta, Baltimore and Houston, among them — to stage similar events, along with making the Central Park gathering an annual one.
The goal, in some ways, is to return to the old days.
“When I was growing up, there was a culture of childhood that children maintained,” said Jim Hunn, vice president for mass action at KaBOOM, a nonprofit group that is a leading voice in reducing what it terms the “play deficit.” He noted that he learned games like Capture the Flag from other children. To revive that culture, he said: “Parents have to reassert themselves in this process and teach them how to play. It’s critical that parents take some ownership and get out and play with their children.”
But promoting play can be surprisingly challenging to parents. Emily Paster, a mother of two in River Forest, Ill., a Chicago suburb, tries to discourage screen time and encourage her children to play imaginatively. That usually works fine for her 7-year-old daughter, who is happy to play in her room with her dolls for hours. But her 4-year-old son is a different story, especially in the cold weather when he’s cooped up.
“If he wants to play, he always wants me to play with him,” Ms. Paster said. “This child has a million toys. Every kind of train you can imagine. But he really wants a partner. If I’m meant to get anything accomplished — dinner, laundry, a phone call — then it’s really difficult.”
Encouraging brother and sister to play together only goes so far. “It seems like there’s a ticking time bomb,” Ms. Paster said. “Someone’s going to decide they’re done before the other one’s ready.” Sometimes, a video screen is the unwelcome but necessary alternative.
“If I want to get anything done it’s like, ‘Here’s the Leapster,’ “ she admitted, referring to a Leapster Explorer, a video-like device for preschoolers.
But once they’re used to it, Mr. Hunn said, children will direct their play themselves — a situation Ms. Almon recalls from her own childhood. “Our neighborhood gang organized a lot of softball games,” she said. “There was no adult around. We adjusted the rules as we needed them. Once the adults are involved it becomes: Here are the rules, and we have to follow these rules. It still can be a good activity but stops being play.”
In the vast world of organized children’s sports, a few parent-coaches are getting that hands-off message. Ms. Almon knows of a soccer coach who started allowing children to organize their own scrimmages during practice while he stood silently on the sidelines, and a hockey coach in Chicago who ends practices by shooing all the adults off the ice and letting the kids skate as they please.
There are more formal efforts, in addition to the Ultimate Block Party initiatives. The US Play Coalition, a group of doctors, educators and parks and recreation officials, plans a conference next month at Clemson University on the value of outdoor play. KaBOOM has built 1,900 playgrounds across the country, most in low-income neighborhoods, and in September helped organize “Play Days” in 1,600 communities. It also has added do-it-yourself tools on its Web site to help parents organize and create neighborhood play spaces themselves. Another Web site scheduled to start this spring,LearningResourceNetwork.net, aims to create a broad educational source for parents and teachers.
“Our first big push will be on play,” said Susan Magsamen, the executive director of the group.
An important part of the movement is teaching children themselves how to play. The average 3-year-old can pick up an iPhone and expertly scroll through the menu of apps, but how many 7-year-olds can organize a kickball game with the neighborhood kids?
Toward that end, at the Central Park event, parents were given a 75-page “Playbook” outlining research on play and offering children ideas for playful pursuits — things that generations past did without prompting and that may evoke in today’s parents feelings of recognition and nostalgia.
“Climb on the couch with your friends and pretend you are sailing on a ship to a distant land,” reads one idea. Another, from the section on construction play: “Lay a toy on the floor and figure out how to build a bridge going over the toy with blocks.”
“Make paper doll cutouts from old newspapers and magazines,” a third suggests, “and let your imagination fly!”
Published in the New York Times
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