Tag Archives: child development

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Don’t leave a phone in your child’s bedroom

Mike the Psych's Blog

talking_with_your_followers_1600_wht_9116Just the presence of a smartphone or device is enough to disturb children’s sleep patterns as they anticipate the possibility of getting a message and can’t relax.

Using devices  at any point in the 90 minutes before bedtime more than doubles the risk of a poor night’s sleep. Even leaving it charging in the corner can have a detrimental effect, possibly because children are subconsciously engaged with them if they know they are within earshot.

Researchers ta Kings College London examined the digital behaviour of 125,000 children across four continents. It’s known from previous studies that around three-quarters of children and adolescents have at least one device in their bedroom at night.

Screen-based media may adversely affect sleep in different ways: psychologically stimulating the brain, delaying or interrupting sleep time, and affecting sleep cycles, physiology and alertness. They effect both the quality and the duration of sleep.

Sleep is undervalued but…

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Risk averse parents……….apparently not in Lisbon, Portugal

Kindadukish's Blog - I am not a number, I am a free man (The Prisoner)

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You knew it, didn’t you? Over the last 20 years, adults (both teachers and parents) have been on a track to eliminate failure and risk from our children’s lives. We are afraid our kids are too fragile, and may diminish their self-esteem, or worse, their happiness if they take risks.

Well, I have news for you. It didn’t work.

“Children of risk-averse parents have lower test scores and are slightly less likely to attend college than offspring of parents with more tolerant attitudes toward risk,” says a team led by Sarah Brown of the University of Sheffield in the UK. Aversion to risk may prevent parents from making inherently uncertain investments in their children’s human capital; it’s also possible that risk attitudes reflect cognitive ability, the researchers say.” The Harvard Business Review (link is external) posted this report, but alas, it won’t help us unless we do something about it…

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Helicopter parents do more harm than good

s1032729Overprotective parents who believe that they are doing everything they can to secure their children’s futures may be doing more harm than good.

Researchers have found however that it merely makes children miserable and unable to grow up.

Researchers at Brigham Young University in Utah found that sons and daughters of of these so-called “helicopter parents” (i.e. always hovering) had lower self-worth than average and were more likely to indulge in risky behaviour such as binge drinking.

These effects were worsened if parents show a lack of warmth.

Children suffered a clear negative effect when parents were too involved in their lives, e.g. making decisions on their behalf and intervening in any conflicts rather than letting the children work it out for themselves. This parental control was actually blocking the children’s development.

The researchers published their research in the journal Emerging Adulthood and said “From our past work, we thought there might be something positive about helicopter parenting, but were just not finding it“.

The researchers aren’t suggesting that parents remove themselves completely from their children’s lives because they still need parental support. However there is a balance to be struck.

I have come across several examples of what I call “over-parenting” where parents are involved in supporting their children into adult life when in some cases they don’t need to.

 

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Unbusy yourself for a happy life

Otrazhenie

“Don’t get so busy making a living that you forget to make a life.”

Dolly Parton

busy_life
From Top 6 benefits of Spiritualizing your busy life and HOW?

“ ‘Busy’ has become the new ‘Fine’. As in, when you ask somebody how they were doing, they used to answer, ‘Fine.’ But nowadays, everybody answers, ‘Busy.’

Seemingly, busy has become the default state for too many of our lives.

But is the state of busy really improving our lives? Certainly not. Statistics indicate 75% of parents are too busy to read to their children at night. There is a rising number of children being placed in day cares and after-school activities. Americans are having a hard time finding opportunity for vacations these days. 33% of Americans are living with extreme stress daily. And nearly 50% of Americans say they regularly lie awake at night because of stress. This is a problem…

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Breast-fed kids are more upwardly socially mobile

mom_holding_baby_boy_1600_wht_3453Two studies that followed thousands of British children through into adulthood have found that breast-fed children are 1.25 times more likely to move up socially and less likely to move down.

Breastfed children also had higher levels of cognitive development and lower levels of stress.

The studies followed children born in 1958 and 1970 until they reached 33/34 years of age.

Their social class was based on their fathers’ occupations and whether or not they were breastfed was recorded. The results were the same in both studies even though breastfeeding had declined from 68% in the 1958 group to 36% in the 1975 group..

The report was written by academics at University College London and the University of Essex. Despite the findings the experts still don’t know exactly why breastfeeding has these benefits, particularly in the short-term for babies’ health.

Dr Mary Iacovou, one of the researchers, said; “There’s lots of evidence that breastfeeding is good for babies in lots of ways. What we don’t quite know is why. Is it the long-chain fatty acids in the milk? (which could be added to formula milk). Is it enhanced skin-to-skin contact? (bottle-fed babies could be given more skin contact”.

See also: Breast best for boys

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Overprotective parents and teachers ‘ruining children’s play’ because of risk-averse lifestyles

Kindadukish's Blog - I am not a number, I am a free man (The Prisoner)

Children’s play is at risk from adults whio ‘over-supervise’ and ‘over-schedule’ a reports saysChildren’s play is under threat from adults who ‘over-supervise’ and ‘over-schedule’, a report says.

It says youngsters cannot develop normally and are ‘play deprived’ because of our risk-averse, regimented lifestyles.This means many lack vital skills such as resourcefulness, independence or self-regulation.

The research, discussed on EU ‘play day’ at the European Parliament yesterday, is the work of Dr David Whitebread, a senior lecturer in psychology of education at Cambridge University.

He consulted researchers from across Europe and found children’s leisure time is cut down by too much school work, safety fears, and lack of understanding of the impact of free play.His report, The Importance of Play, warns ‘play provision is under threat in Europe’ and adult intervention is often ‘counter-productive’.

It says the UK in particular is ‘quite risk-averse’, with children ‘heavily supervised’ and forced to…

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Every child should have a caring adult in their lives…

These are great posts

Otrazhenie

“Every child should have a caring adult in their lives. And that’s not always a biological parent or family member. It may be a friend or neighbor. Often times it is a teacher.”

Joe Manchin

Buddy
From Big Buddy

Today I came across two videos created in different parts of the world that reflect this point so well. The first one is a very touching commercial by the Ministry of Education of Singapore:

The second video was created in USA. It tells about the Year Up programme – a one-year intensive training program that provides low-income young adults, ages 18-24,  with the skills, experience, and support that will empower them to reach their potential through professional careers and higher education:

What about you? Who was that special adult (or adults) in your life?

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Success at ‘three Rs’ leads to better job Excelling at the ‘three Rs’ in primary school is the key to having a well-paid job in adulthood regardless of your family background, according to a new study.

Time and again we see the negative impacts of poverty and poor education

Kindadukish's Blog - I am not a number, I am a free man (The Prisoner)

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Children’s ability at reading and mathematics at the age of seven has a significant impact on their future job and income prospects even when their overall intelligence, their schooling and their family’s wealth are taken into account, researchers found.

The psychologists, from Edinburgh University, examined data on the lives of 17,000 British people from their birth in 1958 to the present day.

They found that people whose reading skills had been one level above average at the age of seven, for example, went on to earn £5,000 a year more 35 years later, at the age of 42.

Participants with better reading and maths skills aged seven also went on to live in more expensive houses and work in better jobs in adulthood according to the study, which was published in the Psychological Science journal.

The link between early success in school and later earnings remained even after the results…

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