Parents are being urged to make a New Year’s resolution to spend more time reading to their children.

Schools Secretary Ed Balls is spearheading the initiative ahead of the National Year of Reading 2008, which officially starts in April.

Mr Balls said reading a child a bedtime story every night could have a huge impact on their development.

“Reading can bring fun to their lives, feed their imagination, and develop their curiosity about the world.”

“As parents we need to make reading a part of everyday life for our children - whether that is reading stories to younger children or talking about books and magazines with older kids,” he said. (…)

Reading tips

“Too many children today are not reading for pleasure - and this is harming not just our children’s reading skills, but also their imagination and general knowledge,” he said.

The National Year of Reading is being run by the National Literacy Trust, which has some ideas to encourage reading in different age groups.

These include:

# For babies to 3-year-olds - make a scrapbook about your child full of pictures and words. Read the words with your child and get them to say what else should be in their story.

# For three to five-year-olds - cut out pictures from catalogues or magazines of objects that all begin with the same letter, plus a few that do not. Write down the names of the objects and get your child to match the picture to the name. (…)

Source: BBC News, UK
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7163172.stm

Experts have plenty of advice for new parents. If only they could agree.

I am raising my baby all wrong. You’re probably raising your baby wrong, too. I have it on good authority. The authority comes from an assortment of books, mostly large-format paperbacks, strewn around my living room. I can tell they are addressed to me because most of them have “Your Baby” in the title or subtitle.

Like most parents - probably more than most parents, considering everything - I am looking for guidance in handling My Baby. Parenting seemed to be a straightforward proposition when I was on the receiving end of it: I had parents, and they fed me and clothed me and discouraged me from biting and petty larceny. Only when I became a father myself did I start to consider the sheer volume of details, let alone the philosophy behind those details, let alone the possibility of there being a raging culture war over different philosophies. Suddenly I needed assurance.

The books are nothing if not assured. The uncertain project of bringing up an infant is, like losing weight or cultivating inner peace, an outlet for the American faith in the perfectibility of human endeavor. What we lack in cultural continuity, we make up for in consumer spirit. There are right answers to choose, and wrong ones. (…)

Consider the pacifier. “Most babies don’t need them and are better off without,” Penelope Leach declares. “Pacifiers,” the American Academy of Pediatrics counters, “do not cause any medical or psychological problems.”

Or the perilous issue of whether a baby should sleep with its parents. “Family beds do have snags and it’s sensible to foresee them if you can so that you can weigh the pros and cons,” Leach writes, on tiptoe. The American Academy of Pediatrics chooses its side by omitting “family bed” and “co-sleeping” from its index altogether; the Searses, partisans of love and attachment, present a bullying hard sell for cuddling through the night: “If there were fewer cribs, would there be fewer crib deaths?”

(…) The more we read, the more the experts began to sound like the nattering advice we were already getting. Feed the baby cereal with a spoon. Feed the baby cereal with your finger. The American Academy of Pediatrics, in a recurring footnote, explains that its Section on Breastfeeding and its Committee on Nutrition could not agree on whether to start solid foods at four months or at six. Perhaps, the Searses say, you only want to start solids because you’re trying to force your baby to conform to an arbitrary timetable. (…)

Source: Boston Globe, United States
http://tinyurl.com/2f8jvz

Playing with toy weapons helps the development of young boys, according to new Government advice to nurseries and playgroups.

Staff have been told they must resist their “natural instinct” to stop boys using pretend weapons such as guns or light sabres in games with other toddlers.

Fantasy play involving weapons and superheroes allows healthy and safe risk-taking and can also make learning more appealing, says the guidance.

It conflicts with years of “political correctness” in nurseries and playgroups which has led to the banning of toy guns, action hero games and children pretending to fire “guns” using their fingers or Lego bricks.

But teachers’ leaders insisted last night that guns “symbolise aggression” and said many nurseries and playgroups would ignore the change.

The guidance, called Confident, Capable and Creative: Supporting Boys’ Achievements, is issued by the Department for Children, Schools and Families.

It says some members of staff “find the chosen play of boys more difficult to understand and value than that of girls.” This is mainly because they tend to choose activities with more action, often based outdoors.

“Images and ideas gleaned from the media are common starting points in boys’ play and may involve characters with special powers or weapons.

“Adults can find this particularly challenging and have a natural instinct to stop it.

“This is not necessary as long as practitioners help the boys to understand and respect the rights of other children and to take responsibility for the resources and environment.”

The report says: “Creating situations so that boys’ interests in these forms of play can be fostered through healthy and safe risk-taking will enhance every aspect of their learning and development.” (…)

Research by Penny Holland, academic leader for early childhood at London Metropolitan University, has also concluded that boys should be allowed to play gun games.

She found boys became dispirited and withdrawn when they are told such play-fighting is wrong.

Source: Daily Mail, UK
http://tinyurl.com/25tkar

Q: I’m a fifth-grade teacher who hopes you alert readers to a new report saying what teachers have said for years: Our children are falling behind in reading and many parents are clueless. For example, a mother asked me what kind of video game to buy her son for Christmas that would help him read better. I said, buy him books. Her response? “But he doesn’t like to read.” Parents need to get smarter about this crisis. Tell them to make reading part of their lives. Teachers can’t do it alone!

A: I understand your frustration. Educators are always saying loud and clear to parents: If you want to do one thing to significantly increase your child’s chances for success in school, make reading a priority in your home from infancy. (…)

“To Read or Not To Read” analyzes reading patterns in the United States and gathers statistics from more than 40 studies on the reading habits and skills of children, teenagers and adults.

Among other findings:

* The number of books in a home is a significant predictor of academic achievement.

* Children and teens that read for pleasure daily or weekly score better on reading tests than infrequent readers.

* On writing tests, children and teens that read for pleasure easily outscore those who don’t.

* Less than one-third of 13-year-olds are daily readers, a 14 percent decline from 20 years earlier.

* On average, Americans ages 15 to 24 spend almost two hours a day watching TV, and only seven minutes of their daily leisure time on reading. (…)

To those who say kids are reading just as much, they’re just reading online, Iyengar says, “Our research took into consideration online reading and yet, there is still an alarming decline when kids hit their teens. Americans are not only reading less, we’re reading less well and there are significant implications.” For parents who want to give their kids a leg up on life, the study is offers a simple message: make reading for pleasure a daily priority in your home from a child’s first weeks on Earth. Children who read often for pleasure do better in school and find a surer path to college. (…)

Source: Kankakee Daily Journal, IL
http://www.daily-journal.com/archives/dj/display.php?id=410625

(…) Does birth order have to impinge on our personality? It’s become almost a cliché to assume that a first child will be a responsible conformist; that the second will be tortured, and the third a clown.

New research, though, supports the theory. Scientists at the University of Oslo took the military records of 241,310 Norwegian conscripts. And they found that eldest children are, on average, significantly more intelligent than those born second.

They were on average three IQ points ahead of the second child — who was in turn a point ahead of the third.

And this isn’t just nature either. Petter Kristensen, one of the scientists conducting the research, found that when an oldest child had died, the second-born developed the characteristics of the first-born child. It was, he concluded, the role of being the oldest — not birth order — that counted.

First-borns tend to be high achievers throughout their lives. A recent poll in America found that of 1,583 chief executive officers, over half — 53pc — were eldest children. The findings don’t surprise child psychologist David Coleman, author of Parenting Is Child’s Play and presenter of RTE’s Families In Trouble, too much. And it’s not easy to change with ‘good’ parenting either.

“When you have your first child it is natural to invest a high amount of time and energy in them,” he says. “And once you have a second child — and subsequent children — you just do not have that same amount of commitment and energy. You have at least one other child to look after.

“It makes sense that the eldest child will always have some level of kudos. They are the first to try out different things. There are some negative aspects for first children too. They are likely to be more managed and more restricted by their parents. Parents may not be quite sure how much freedom and responsibility to give them as they get older.”

Second children have a fairly easy ride … at first. “They will probably not be bothered by having less attention than the first. They have grown up with the knowledge that they don’t have their parents’ attention all the time. It is not particularly a worry.

“But when a third child gets born, the second child suddenly thinks ‘wow, what is happening here? Where is my place in the family? I can’t be the baby anymore and I can’t be number one because someone else has already got that spot’.”

Second children, Coleman finds, tend to go one of two ways. “They will either be shy and reserved, but very helpful — always at their parents’ side, being sweet; or they become shy in outside company, but pushy and demanding at home. They may become less well-behaved so that they can become noticed.

“Third children,” he says, “will always get kudos for being the baby and the youngest. They will end up being that little bit spoilt, and they will probably get an easier ride. Their parents will have softened, and will not have the same amount of time to watch them. They will probably get away with much more. (…)

Source: Irish Independent, Ireland
http://tinyurl.com/2rq3ap

Children who throw long, aggressive or frequent tantrums may be doing more than just showing mum and dad who is boss. They may be displaying early signs of a psychiatric disorder, a study says.

Tantrums are common among young children and are often a sign of hunger, illness or overstimulation, says a study by Washington University in St Louis.

But children who hurt themselves or others while throwing tantrums or who cannot calm themselves down may be diagnosed with depression or disruptive disorders such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder or oppositional defiant disorder.

“I think parents to some degree should expect their children to have tantrums,” said the study’s lead author, Andy Belden, from the university’s medical school. “If they are having extreme tantrums consistently [and] if almost every time they are having a tantrum they are hurting themselves or other people, that is a valid reason to go and talk to your pediatrician.” (…)

The team devised five high-risk tantrum styles that could be associated with the development of psychiatric disorder. They included tantrums marked by: self-injury; violence towards others or objects; an inability to be calmed without help; a duration of more than 25 minutes; and a frequency of more than five times a day, or between 10 and 20 times a month.

Any of these behaviours would warrant a call to the doctor, Dr Belden said. Behaviour during a tantrum was only an indicator and did not necessarily prove the existence of a psychiatric disorder.

Source: The Age, Australia
http://tinyurl.com/2ubtmv

In his comment on the reported rise in the number of Scottish children diagnosed with ADHD, Iain FM Saint-Yves (December 20) states that accurate diagnosis is “the bed-rock on which the patient’s future depends.” He also agrees with Dr Chris Steer that the rise is a reflection of “catching-up” rather than “over-prescribing” with Ritalin. Catching-up with what, exactly? The levels of diagnosis and prescribing in the US?

The most depressing aspect of the whole ADHD saga, for me, is the extent to which the increasing rush to diagnosis constructs the issues as an internal, within-the-child problem, for which Ritalin is the current treatment of choice. Of course, prescribers will state that medication is not a stand-alone treatment, but there is no doubting that parents will place considerable - and often misplaced - faith in the magic potion among any other approaches that might be offered.

Very frequently, in my experience, what emerges from a careful analysis and formulation of presenting difficulties, is a combination of ineffective parenting and attachment difficulties. The former set of conditions creates children who have a very limited, if any, sense of boundaries, and what is OK/not OK in how they deal with others; a lack of internalised “self-controls”, and no capacity for sustained concentration and persistence with learning tasks or play.

Attachment difficulties, particularly the forms of ambivalent attachment where children cannot predictably depend on their parents to be available to them, lead to restless, needy, attention-grabbing, hyperactivated behaviours that mimic much of what passes for ADHD. Attachment problems also create difficulties with emotional regulation and the spectrum of skills involved in competent self-management, not to mention the general demands of social coping and the need to deal with negotiation and the frictions of conflict with others. (…)

Source: The Herald, UK
http://tinyurl.com/2s3jbu

Vicky Tuck, the principal of Cheltenham Ladies’ College, claims that some mothers and fathers are hindering their child’s ability to learn and become self-sufficient because they are constantly hovering overhead, supervising and directing.

The trend towards parents confiding in their children and treating them like mini-counsellors is also preventing children from being carefree and learning from their mistakes, she believes. (…)

The term “helicopter parenting” was coined by Madeleine Levine, an American clinical psychologist, who claimed in her book The Price of Privilege: “Kids are unbearably pressured not just to be good, but to be great; not just to be good at something, [but] to be good at everything.” (…)

… Mrs Tuck claims that parents are filling their child’s life with so many activities that children are “multi-tasking” at a very young age, while the parents’ tendency to “helicopter” leaves their child stressed and anxious.

She said: “We like girls to have a go at things here, but then to choose a few things they can pursue in depth. You will get much more gratification from a few things pursued with commitment and which you have a grasp of. (…)

Experts say the phenomenon of “smother love” has become an epidemic among babyboomers.

However, some academics say that the tendency can be maximised to the good.

Cary Anderson, of the University of Philadelphia, insists “helicopter parenting” isn’t always a negative thing - “it just depends on the helicopter”.

He claims that it is the “logical next step” when faced with a generation of students who rely on parents for advice and who actually listen to them, rather than rebelling in their teens and early 20s.

He advises parents to reinvent their role by becoming a “traffic helicopter” and helping their child to cultivate more independence. (…)

Source: Telegraph.co.uk, United Kingdom
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/12/26/nparents126.xml

Letting preschoolers learn poor eating habits and become couch potatoes could ruin their life.

That warning was issued to a packed Massey University lecture theatre by US academic Dr Lynn Moore.

She showed inactive children with poor diet often end up with metabolic syndrome – a cluster of conditions linked to obesity, hypertension and diabetes.

An increasing number will be diagnosed with type 2 diabetes in their teenage years.

“It’s tragic is what it is,” she says.

“This is looking like it’s going to be the first generation whose life span is shorter than their parents because of effects linked with obesity.”

Ms Moore was a director of the internationally renowned Framinghams Children’s Study.

It measured the effect eating habits and activity had on the body fat of children from preschool to year 1.

Less active kids who ate low levels of fruit and vegetables and dairy were found to be most at risk of obesity.

Those kids are unlikely to change their eating habits and get healthy as they head into adulthood, says Ms Moore.

“People do stick with the eating patterns they learn when they’re young,” she says.

“That’s when you’re getting a taste for things. (…)

The problem these days is few people, including parents, are teaching kids about good and bad foods, she says. (…)

Source: Auckland stuff.co.nz, New Zealand
http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/sundaystartimes/auckland/4330992a6497.html

(…) Finally, they found out what made Jessie so different: She had Asperger’s syndrome, a neurobiological disorder that most researchers consider a form of autism.

Asperger’s is classified in the medical journals as a disability, but Jessie has the structures she needs to cope. She has wise, attentive parents and an unusually supportive school environment.

As with other forms of autism, Asperger’s diagnoses have been on the increase in recent years. (…)

Although the syndrome was identified in the mid-1940s by Viennese pediatrician Hans Asperger, too many kids, until recently, were written off with cruel dismission as odd, incorrigible or mentally deficient.

Early diagnosis is critical, so children can start learning specific strategies for dealing with the people around them. Too often, people with Asperger’s suffer from depression and frustration as a consequence of the social isolation they feel.

In his highly readable memoir about living with Asperger’s, author John Elder Robison describes the anger his behavior used to inspire in the people around him. Its title is Look Me in the Eye: My Life with Asperger’s, a refrain that echoes back to his earliest memories. A key trait of Asperger’s is difficulty looking other people directly in the eyes.

Mr. Robison, who worked creating technical effects for the rock band Kiss and today is a businessman in Massachusetts, recounts a painful childhood of feeling like a misfit. His condition was finally diagnosed at age 40.

“Asperger’s is not a disease,” he writes. “It’s a way of being. There is no cure, nor is there a need for one.”

People with Asperger’s stand out as “odd” because they’re different. Their behavior seems unusual to most people because their brains work differently. The easy social cues that most of us take for granted – the chitchat, the appearance of interest or concern – don’t make instinctive sense to a person with Asperger’s.

“Those just aren’t automatic responses for these kids,” said Dr. Michael McLane, a Dallas pediatric psychologist whose practice includes many children with Asperger’s. “The good news is that these are concrete behaviors someone can learn.” (…)

The other key aspect of Asperger’s is an intense, laserlike focus on a narrow range of interests. Most of us are generalists in the things we think about; people with Asperger’s tend to be super-specialists. (…)

If people with Asperger’s, as a group, lack the natural social skills most of us use every day, they also tend to lack some of our darker social habits too: artifice, manipulation, spite. Not, on balance, a bad trade-off.

“It’s a misperception that there’s no positive outlook for these kids,” Dr. McLane said. “It’s not true that they’re not going to be able to go to college or get married or hold a job. They can do it if they’re taught the right skills.” (…)

Source: Dallas Morning News, TX
http://tinyurl.com/2p93z4