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By Mom Unplugged, February 5, 2009 9:33 pm

I am depriving my children of an “essential good.”

In Brazil, I might be prosecuted in court. Did anyone hear this little NPR blurb yesterday?

A Brazilian man missed out on soccer matches, the news and a “popular reality show,” when a store did not replace his faulty TV. The judge found in favor of the man, ruling that in modern times, TV is an “essential good.”

Are those of us who do not have TV in our homes, guilty of child abuse? Are we depriving our little ones of an “essential good?”

What about those whose children (TV in the house or not) miss Sponge Bob, Hannah Montana and PBS. OK, Sponge Bob and Hannah Montana are arguable…but PBS? What about Discovery? Is censorship of our children depriving them of an “essential good?”

Am I depriving my children of educational/cultural experiences by not having TV at all?

I wish we could elect to get a few select Discovery Channel, National Geographic, PBS, History Channel shows without receiving all the other stuff. But even those channels can be edgy at times. We were away recently and the only thing on History (or was it Discovery?) was the history of torture devices. Another of those educational channels had a show about Hitler.

I am not depriving my children by having a TV-free home. Culturally they get a lot on the playground: they know about Sponge Bob and Hannah Montana. As far as education goes, my kids get a huge amount of that from school and reading books, just like kids did before TV.

Am I depriving my children of an “essential good?” Personally, I think not.

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By Mom Unplugged, September 6, 2008 11:31 pm

Here’s proof that you don’t necessarily need the Discovery Channel to learn new and interesting things! Here are a few interesting science stories I have heard recently on NPR, my favorite radio station.

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Boyfriends that fear commitment? Distant husbands?

Marriage Woes? Husband’s Genes May Be At Fault

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Is your child’s favorite word “Mine!!” ? Rest assured that they will probably outgrow this unsociable selfishness between ages 3 and 8:

As Kids Grow Older, Egalitarianism Honed

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And finally, for some reason I found this REALLY fascinating and now I check out cows every time I drive by some:

Moo North: Cows Sense Earth’s Magnetism

Thanks to photographer MacTabbie and morguefile.com for the (North-South facing??) cow photo.

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By Mom Unplugged, March 28, 2008 9:36 pm

My friend Wishy and I had a good laugh one day when we discovered that a classmate of our daughters was teaching the other children “bad words” by not actually saying the word itself, but by saying it backwards. Wishy’s daughter said to her in hushed tones: “Mom, did you know that “tish” spelled backwards is a bad word?” Further parental inquiry revealed that she knew that “cuff” spelled backwards was bad too.

A recent NPR piece entitled Why Kids Curse, brought this rather amusing memory back to me. Although we wish our children would never learn the “bad words,” it does inevitably happen. Unfortunately when it happens, is commonly sooner rather than later. Many parents seem to have a funny or embarrassing story of a precocious child and inappropriate language. Of course children might pick up bad language at home, but often it is from schoolmates or friends.

The NPR piece relates the funny tale of Yale psychologist Paul Bloom, whose 6 year-old announced one day the words that he had “learned” from overhearing the babysitter on the phone. He and his wife then decided to create an experiment in which they would invent some family swear words to see if their kids picked them up:

“So one of them was ‘flep,’” says Bloom. Whenever someone would bang their foot or hurt their toe, they’d scream “flep” as if it were an obscenity.

The experiment was very short-lived.

“It was a total failure,” says Bloom. “The children looked at us as if we were crazy.”

The reason for this failure? Kids are more influenced by their peers than their parents, according to Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker.

As I am interested in both parenting and linguistics, I found this story to be fascinating from both standpoints. There is more to the piece than what I mention here, so I encourage you to give it a read or a listen if you have a few minutes to spare.

And what on Earth does all this have to do with TV? Well, read on:

A study by the Parents Television Council found that about once an hour children watching popular children’s networks will hear mild curse words such as “stupid,” “loser” and “butt.” The scope and frequency can rise immeasurably with exposure to adult programs and popular music.

That’s the connection!

Link: Why Kids Curse - transcript and audio link (7:07)

(Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

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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.