When the National Institutes of Health issued some good-news-and-bad-news findings this week for working parents with young children, it started with the “good” news…

The rest of the world focused on the bad. The longer children had spent in day care centers before kindergarten, researchers had found, the more likely their sixth-grade teachers were to report “problem behavior,” such as getting into fights, arguing or being disobedient.

The findings were subtle, and the level of disruptive behavior fell into the normal range - nuances lost in the headlines. Still, parents, daycare providers and the media focused on the negative findings, and it’s obvious why: The “day care debate” - is it good or bad for kids? - is one of the most angst-ridden issues facing parents…

“It’s another potential guilt-inducer,” says Janet Chan, editor in chief of Parenting magazine, who’s careful not to knock the science, which she calls impressive. “It just taps into this reservoir of guilt that’s waiting to bubble up anyway. I don’t think there there’s a mom alive who isn’t ambivalent about her choices. It’s part and parcel of being a parent.” …

The study’s lead author, Jay Belsky, is no stranger to controversy. He says he was vilified for an article he wrote in 1986, saying there was “slow and steady” evidence that non-parental child care, no matter the quality, could lead to developmental problems. Critics called him an ideologue…

“The question of whether day care is bad for kids has been going on for 30 years,” says Peggy Sradnick, director of Basic Trust, a well-regarded center in New York City. “It doesn’t matter: day care exists. Bad day care is bad for kids, and good day care is good for kids.” …

Dvorak says the problem isn’t with day care itself - it’s that a lot of parents don’t realize that “day care doesn’t replace the parenting that you do at home.”

Source: Belleville News Democrat
Belleville News Democrat

Evidence suggests more women are breast-feeding their children until they’re toddlers and older — and they’re not just earth-mother stereotypes

… Even though there is wide acceptance nowadays of nutritional and immunological benefits of breast-feeding for infants, Americans, by and large, look askance at mothers who nurse toddlers, preschoolers, or even kindergartners. Anecdotal evidence suggests there are more of them than ever, however…

Figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and from Abbott Labs’ Ross Mothers Survey show a steady increase in the number of women who initiate breast-feeding, from 57 percent in 1994 to 72 percent in 2005. Less well-known is the gradual increase in the age at which breast-feeding stops. In 1997, 26 percent of mothers were still nursing their babies at six months; in 2005, 39 percent were. In 1997, 14.5 percent of mothers were still breast-feeding at 12 months; by 2005, the number had climbed to 20 percent.

No one keeps count beyond 18 months, not even La Leche League International, a lactation support system. Katherine Dettwyler , the nation’s leading breast-feeding researcher, says women who continue to nurse typically keep quiet about it, sometimes even to family members, because the culture is so biased against it.

Source: Boston Globe
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/living/articles/2007/03/31/supply_and_demand/

… The use of popular literature has run up against traditionalists, who fear it will dumb down the curriculum, and parents who object to the controversial themes that characterize many of the selections.

“A young-adult text is more accessible to students and allows them to think more about complex themes,” said Ken Lindblom, the director of English teacher education at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. “Just getting students reading texts that they enjoy is more important than exposing them to high literature.” …

Thanks to a growing market for young-adult literature, and prominent new awards for high-quality books in the genre, many more titles than in the past are available for teachers to incorporate into their classes. But some experts say the problem is that the growing number of such choices has not yet transformed the curriculum.

“I would be very pleased if it was a trend, but I don’t see it,” said Jeffrey D. Wilhelm, a professor of English education at Idaho’s Boise State University and the author of You Gotta Be the Book: Teaching Engaged and Reflective Reading With Adolescents…

“The classical, canonical literature, which I personally love, in fact was written for very sophisticated adult readers, … but the attitude [among English teachers and traditionalists] is, ‘Let’s kick their butts with something they can’t possibly understand.”

Mr. Wilhelm argues that the high school English curriculum needs an overhaul, including incorporating more relevant and engaging reading assignments. In his interviews with teenage boys, most, including both high- and low-achieving students, expressed dissatisfaction with their reading assignments.

“It was almost completely agreed upon that school reading sucks and that they hate it,” Mr. Wilhelm said.

Source: Education Week
http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2007/03/30/31literature.h26.html

The teen under the sheets used to be reading a book with a flashlight. Now she’s text-messaging a boyfriend at 1 a.m.

Teens are famously sleep-deprived already, but experts say some are compounding the problem by staying up into the middle of the night to silently type messages to friends on their cellphones. The tiny phones — with increasingly sophisticated capabilities — are supplanting late-night computer messaging and making it even more difficult for parents to know when kids are really asleep.

“All this technology just enables teens to be connected 24/7,” said Anastasia Goodstein, the San Francisco-based author of Totally Wired: What Teens and Tweens Are Really Doing Online published this month. “And it’s literally 24/7.” …

“Is text-messaging contributing to sleep deprivation? Yes,” said Dr. Cora Collette Breuner, a professor of adolescent medicine at the University of Washington…

“We encourage parents to be aware when, where and how teens use their cellphones,” said Jayne Wallace, spokeswoman for Virgin Mobile USA. “Texting can be surreptitious.” …

From October through December, Verizon Wireless hosted 17.7 billion text messages, more than double the messages from the same period in 2005, according to spokesperson Georgia Taylor…

Parents likely remember talking on the telephone with friends for hours, said “Totally Wired” author Goodstein. “With technology now, teens just have many more tools to keep the conversation going. And more are under the parental radar.”

Source: Seattle Times
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/living/2003644903_textsleep31.html

“Explosive” and “inflexible” children are terms Dave Gorrie, a psychologist and behaviour consultant with Regina Public Schools, uses to describe children who experience low frustration tolerance, inflexibility, and problem-solving difficulty.

Gorrie borrowed the terms from The Explosive Child: A New Approach for Understanding and Parenting Easily Frustrated, Chronically Inflexible Children, by Dr. Ross Greene. Gorrie recommends the book and uses it in seminars he holds on explosive and inflexible children…

“We have a moral assumption that they are just having a hissy fit, they are just trying to get attention. It may be the result of poor training, some are a mismatch between parenting styles and the temperament of the child, and the developmental delays in three areas.” …

Simply put, the adult’s agenda and the child’s agenda are brought to the table and a collaborative solution is sought…

Parents who want to learn better communication skills and be more effective in discipline and boundary-setting can consider Parenting Assets for Life, a parenting workshop at the YMCA.

The seven-week program aims to increase children’s chances at succeeding and encourages them into more active and productive lifestyles, according to facilitator Edie Paquette…

The course looks at how to set and communicate boundaries and use consequences effectively.

“Communicating exactly what you want, as in the what, who, when, where and how often,” Paquette said.

“Never tell the child you are going to do something and not do it,” she said.

“If you tell them you are going to leave the store, then you must follow through. Pose consequences that are related to the problem.

Source: Leader-Post
http://tinyurl.com/29mo48

Two new studies at Indiana University demonstrate that videos depicting exemplary behaviors can be effective in helping children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorders develop social skills and daily living skills.

Lead researcher Scott Bellini said these findings will help to identify video modeling as a worthwhile strategy for educators and child development professionals in a field lacking proven methods of treatment…

“One key reason for the success of video modeling is that it increases the child’s attention to the modeled task,” Bellini said. “When you play a video, most children immediately direct their attention to the television, or computer screen. And if you do not have attention, you will not have learning.” …

The other key element of the VSM study, Bellini said, was that it targeted the particular deficit area of social engagement, with results showing dramatic increases in social interaction with peers that were maintained after the intervention concluded.

Source: Indiana University
http://newsinfo.iu.edu/news/page/normal/5254.html

As they grow, they are learning social skills, too; it matters where they learn them.

No matter how much we spend on schools, on early education programs, on day care, on a thousand heroic efforts to give children what they should get before age 6 but don’t, it all comes down to parents: Good parenting or bad parenting is the single biggest factor in how children turn out…

The current report says: Time spent in high-quality day care centers correlates with a higher vocabulary throughout elementary school. But keeping a preschooler in day care for at least a year increases the likelihood that a child will be disruptive in class, regardless of the quality of the day care center. As one commenter wryly noted: At least my kid might be able to talk himself out of whatever trouble he gets into…

The problems endure, though, only because they were there in the first place. Children at home, fewer behavior problems in school. Children in day care, fewer problems in school if their parenting is good. How hard is it to jump to the obvious conclusion that day care is not the best place for children? As they develop and learn skills, children are also developing socially, learning how to deal with others, how they should behave and how they should be treated. How, and where and from whom they learn their social skills matter very much, and it should be no surprise that there are long-term, cumulative effects.

It’s difficult to say that these days, because the immediate reaction is that heroic mothers who have to make difficult choices are being piled upon. That’s not the case. People have to make the best choices they can given the circumstances they have.

Source: News-Sentinel
http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/newssentinel/news/editorial/16987248.htm

Crime is down, but parents shelter their children as if there’s a child predator on every corner.

Although statistics show that rates of child abduction and sexual abuse have marched steadily downward since the early 1990s, fear of these crimes is at an all-time high. Even the panic-inducing Megan’s Law website says stranger abduction is rare and that 90% of child sexual-abuse cases are committed by someone known to the child. Yet we still suffer a crucial disconnect between perception of crime and its statistical reality. A child is almost as likely to be struck by lightning as kidnapped by a stranger, but it’s not fear of lightning strikes that parents cite as the reason for keeping children indoors watching television instead of out on the sidewalk skipping rope.

And when a child is parked on the living room floor, he or she may be safe, but is safety the sole objective of parenting? The ultimate goal is independence, and independence is best fostered by handing it out a little at a time, not by withholding it in a trembling fist that remains clenched until it’s time to move into the dorms.

Meanwhile, as rates of child abduction and abuse move down, rates of Type II diabetes, hypertension and other obesity-related ailments in children move up. That means not all the candy is coming from strangers. Which scenario should provoke more panic: the possibility that your child may become one of the approximately 100 children who are kidnapped by strangers each year, or one of the country’s 58 million overweight adults?

Source: Los Angeles Times
http://tinyurl.com/32fu4f

The past decade has provided extraordinary insight into the human brain. We now know that each time we learn something new, the brain changes physically. It’s a neurological attribute called “plasticity.”

Neuroscientists describe this phenomenon by comparing the brain at birth to a map of superhighways, with travel limited to major destinations and absent of access to any scenic attractions. Each year of growth and every personal experience expands existing pathways and adds new ones to the human brain map. Over time and in such fashion, life opens its doors to us.

So, how important is the daily environment we offer children? It’s crucial! …

The informal opportunities of day-to-day learning are as critical as those in the classroom. Embellish your family’s brain power by pulling out some good, old-fashioned games.

Games spark kids’ interest, step one in encouraging a positive brain state. Game-playing is an ideal setting for offering encouragement and opportunities to succeed, the next step in fostering brain power. Games involve interaction wherein children learn basic skills while having fun.

You don’t have to purchase anything to have fun with games. If you’re in the car with your kids, play “Chain Reaction” by choosing a category like “Places.” One person starts by naming a location like “Oxnard.” The next player names a place starting with the ending letter of the last place, for example, “Delaware” using the “D” that ends “Oxnard.” Try the game with animals, foods or favorite books.

Source: Ventura County Star
http://tinyurl.com/2tzpsv

Some parents at North Beach Elementary School are wondering, “where’s the math?” in curriculum being considered for district-wide adoption by the Seattle School District…

M.J. McDermott and Linh-Co Nguyen, members of the North Beach Parent Teacher Association, say the reform programs favored by the district are low-rigor and don’t efficiently teach basic math skills. While reform isn’t all bad, they said, students should have a balanced curriculum that uses standard algorithms for learning skills like multiplication tables and long division…

The reform approach, sometimes called “discovery math,” began to gain popularity in the mid-1980s. Curriculum began to shift from teaching repetitious “drill and kill” methods to a more activities based form of mathematics where students are encouraged to discover formulas themselves.

McDermott became a member of Where’s the Math?, a group that backs traditional math curriculum, after hearing about Seattle’s math adoption process and choices. She was shocked by what she called “weak” content.

The parents pointed to a unit on Siberian Tigers in a third-grade Investigations workbook. Students draw pictures of various habitats for the animal and are asked questions like “would a tiger hunt a bear?” or “would a bear hunt a tiger?” Part of the problem suggests the teacher pantomime a tigers’ behavior…

Some of the methods are wonderful teaching tools, but are also time-consuming, inefficient and leave more room for error, said McDermott.

She used Investigations’ “cluster method” for double-digit multiplication as an example. Instead of the standard method of placing one set of numbers on top of the other and multiplying and carrying, students are asked to solve a problem using estimation and reasoning skills.

Source: Ballard News-Tribune
http://tinyurl.com/2pqpl2