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By Mom Unplugged, March 3, 2008 9:47 pm

On Saturday my 7 year-old daughter had her always homeschooled 9 year-old friend over. I went about my business listening with amusement to the chatter and negotiations involved in a complicated game of “fairies,” complete with multiple changes of fairy outfits.

In the context of the recent NPR reports about the disappearance (and importance of) good old-fashioned imaginative play, the afternoon of overhearing the girls play fairies resonated with me even more than usual. In case you missed it, I wrote about both these reports recently (Imaginative Play and Cognitive Function and “Creative Play Makes for Kids in Control”).

Side note: I wonder how many 7 and 9 year-old girls play fairies any more?

I have spent a lot of time in the past week reflecting on my “parenting-style,” such as it is. Here are a few highlights:

1) Obviously I believe that too many electronic toys, games, video games and TV can be harmful. You only have to look at the title of my blog to figure that one out!

2) I have also never felt that I needed to be my children’s activity-director (like Julie on The Love Boat, to bring a TV-related image into this). See: How to get by Without the Electronic Babysitting Box. My mother didn’t spend all day entertaining me, although I certainly would have liked it if she did. There is a very common belief out there that if your children are TV-free, more input and direction are required of the parents. Many feel that a TV-free life means getting fewer things done for yourself, and a commitment to spending lots of time with your child. I have to say that I respectfully disagree with this school of thought. Which leads to…

3) I think there is nothing wrong with children being bored. In fact I believe that out of boredom comes creative play. See: Let Your Kids be Bored.

4) I feel that children today are overscheduled. I can already see that overscheduling is an easy trap to fall into, especially as children get older. I am precariously attempting to maintain a delicate balance between an activity or two, and lots of free time “to be bored.” I feel a bit like a tightrope walker… See: The Six Year-Old and Her Executive Secretary.

True Confession Time:

I absolutely adore my children with all my heart and I love spending (some) time with them. I enjoy the Unplugged Project because we can all sit down together once a week and have some fun. Yet I don’t want to be communing with my kids all day long. I wish I did, but I don’t. I have interests and goals too, and I don’t want to ignore that part of myself just because I am a TV-free, stay-at-home mom.

I am in complete awe and admiration of all those moms (and dads) out there who homeschool. (I expressed my feelings about the first day of school here: The Rapture). I would certainly attempt homeschooling if I was unhappy with the current school situation (a small Montessori school that has been wonderful for us), but honestly I think homeschooling would be hard for me. Have any of you homeschooling parents felt such things, and if so, how did you overcome it?

My friend Wishy and I talk about this subject often. We have come to the conclusion that we must be missing some sort of “mothering gene.” We worry about being Bad Moms, or at the very least, Slacker Moms.

Wishy is a big believer in “Love and Logic” parenting and she has kindly passed along a few of the podcasts. “Love and Logic” calls for a consistent approach to parenting (with which I completely agree, although consistency can be hard to carry out successfully sometimes). In fact in one of the podcasts, they go as far as to say (kind of jokingly, yet kind of not) that it is even OK to be a substandard parent, as long as you are consistently substandard. “Consistently substandard.” I like that!

And now that there has been this recent public revelation of the value of leaving kids alone to just play in creative and imaginary ways without adult involvement, I am beginning to feel like my Consistently Substandard Slacker parenting style might not be so bad after all. (I call it: CSS Parenting).

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By Mom Unplugged, February 27, 2008 9:01 pm

Tomorrow morning (February 28, 2008) on National Public Radio’s Morning Edition, a story will air that is a natural extension of the NPR piece that I wrote about on February 21st in my post: Imaginative Play and Cognitive Function. According to the February 21st piece, children today no longer engage in imaginative, creative play. Unfortunately it turns out that imaginative play is essential for the formation of self-control and self-regulation. These are obviously very important skills in life and are a more accurate predictor of success in school than is IQ.

Tomorrow’s NPR story, Creative Play Makes for Kids in Control, describes a preschool program based on the work of Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky, entitled “Tools of the Mind” (currently being implemented in Colorado, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, and Oregon). The program was developed by Dr. Elena Bodrova and Dr. Deborah Leong of the Metropolitan State College of Denver.

According to the description of the program on the Metropolitan State College of Denver website, Lev Vygotsky believed that

… until children learn to use mental tools, their learning is largely controlled by the environment: they attend only to the things that are the brightest or loudest and they can remember something only if has been repeated many times. AFTER children master mental tools, they can become in charge of their own learning by attending and remembering in an intentional and purposeful way. Similar to how using mental tools transforms children’s cognitive behaviors, they can also transform their physical, social and emotional behaviors. From being “slaves to the environment,” children become “masters of their own behavior.” As children are taught and practice an increasing number of various mental tools, they transform not only their external behaviors, but also their minds, leading to the emergence of higher mental functions.

Alix Spiegel’s NPR report describes a visit to the Geraldyn O. Foster Early Childhood Center in Bridgeton, N.J. where the Tools of the Mind program is being implemented for preschoolers. The point of the Tools of the Mind program is to intensively build “executive function” (ie. “self-regulation”) skills. Please read the NPR transcript for a detailed description of the activities observed at the center. It is quite interesting.

Adele Diamond, executive function researcher and professor of developmental cognitive neuroscience at the University of British Columbia, has observed and studied the Tools of the Mind program (she is in no way affiliated with the program). Here is her description of the first time she observed a Tools of the Mind class:

“I was totally blown away. The kids were sitting together working quietly. It was like a second-grade classroom instead of a preschool classroom. I couldn’t believe it.”

Ms. Diamond conducted a study following 147 preschoolers for two years. Half the children were in enrolled in a Tools of the Mind class, the other half were enrolled in a regular preschool curriculum. After two years, the children were all given an executive function assessment. The results? The regular school kids performed roughly “at chance” while the Tools kids did much better (about 85% correct).

Could reduced executive function skills be a contributing factor to the rising number of kids diagnosed with ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder)? Ms. Diamond and a few other researchers think so. Professor Diamond says:

“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.”

This is really fascinating to me, but sad. How could today’s children have lost all their natural and apparently important imaginative play behavior? Why do we have to have programs like Tools of the Mind to help these children self-regulate?

Is it because today’s kids spend much of their free time watching TV, playing video games and taking formal, adult-lead instruction for sports or other extra-curricular, “enrichment” activities? That’s what executive function researchers seem to think.

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Be sure to listen to the story tomorrow morning (February 28) on NPR’s Morning Edition, or check the transcript page for a link to the audio version.

Links:

Metropolitan State College of Denver

Tools of the Mind Program

Lev Vygotsky

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Photo courtesy of morguefile.com and photographer tangle_eye.

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By Mom Unplugged, February 21, 2008 3:31 pm

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On NPR’s Morning Edition this morning was a VERY interesting story (“Old-Fashioned Play Builds Serious Skills“) about how children’s play has changed in the last century. Instead of engaging in self-directed, imaginative, improvised play, play has become centered around toys and the latest movie or TV show: “Essentially, instead of playing pirate with a tree branch” they play “Star Wars with a toy light saber.”

Commercialization is only partly to blame, as child safety has become more of a concern in recent years. Parents are now more reluctant to let their children run loose around the neighborhood. They enroll kids in structured, adult-lead activities.

This change in play-habits has actually changed children’s brains according to researchers. Imaginative play helps kids develop what is known as “executive function,” which is a cognitive skill necessary for self-regulation (controlling emotions and behavior, resisting impulses, and exercising self-control and discipline).

Read this interesting excerpt from the NPR piece:

We know that children’s capacity for self-regulation has diminished. A recent study replicated a study of self-regulation first done in the late 1940s, in which psychological researchers asked kids ages 3, 5 and 7 to do a number of exercises. One of those exercises included standing perfectly still without moving. The 3-year-olds couldn’t stand still at all, the 5-year-olds could do it for about three minutes, and the 7-year-olds could stand pretty much as long as the researchers asked. In 2001, researchers repeated this experiment. But, psychologist Elena Bodrova at the National Institute for Early Education Research says, the results were very different.

“Today’s 5-year-olds were acting at the level of 3-year-olds 60 years ago, and today’s 7-year-olds were barely approaching the level of a 5-year-old 60 years ago,” Bodrova explains. “So the results were very sad.”

According to executive function researcher, Laura Berk: “Self-regulation predicts effective development in virtually every domain.” In fact, good executive function is a more reliable predictor of success in school than IQ. Poor executive function leads to high dropout rates, drug use, and crime. Of course there must be a middle ground here, but the better a child’s ability to self-regulate, the better they will perform in school, and in life.

So here is yet another reason to turn off the TV, ignore the terrible whines, agonizing howls of boredom and claims of inhumane parental treatment and see what happens. They just might surprise you with the games they come up with on their own. And…they will be improving their executive function skills!

I urge you to listen to this fascinating NPR piece (7 min 50 sec), or at least read the online transcript.

+ Some suggestions for activities that promote self-regulation:

(from researchers 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, found on the transcript page of the NPR website):

- Play “Simon Says”

- Encourage “complex imaginative play” (child plans and acts out scenarios, invents own props, etc. Best if play lasts for several hours)

- Activities that require planning (the examples given are: games with directions, patterns for construction, recipes for cooking)

- Read storybooks with your children

- Encourage children to talk to themselves (“fosters concentration, effort, problem-solving, and task success”)

+ A related Unplug Your Kids post: Let Your Kids be Bored

(Photo (taken in Madagascar) courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and photographer Harald Kreutzer.)