And here’s the proof: Use the JUMP program and enjoy the unaccustomed taste of success

Melissa Marsh is a special education co-ordinator at Gwa’sala-’Nakwaxda’xw School in Port Hardy, at the northern tip of Vancouver Island. Its students include some of the most challenged kids in Canada. Many struggle with learning disabilities, cognitive disabilities and behaviour problems. The community has its share of social issues, and parental involvement is low.

For kids like these, academic failure is depressingly familiar. “The shutdown mode comes extremely quickly,” Ms. Marsh says. But now, kids at this school are experiencing the unaccustomed taste of success in a subject that far more advantaged kids have grown to dread - math.

The JUMP program, pioneered by Toronto mathematician John Mighton, breaks almost every rule of current math pedagogy. It does not depend on the “discovery” method, group work or real-life examples. It is highly structured, relies on a great deal of direct instruction, repetition and reinforcement, and proceeds in small, incremental steps.

It also works.

“Repetition is crucial for many of our students,” says Wayne Peterson, the principal. He adds, “Your regular math texts have too much reading.” JUMP (Junior Undiscovered Math Prodigies) is structured so that every kid can solve the problems, one small step at a time. That builds their confidence and self-esteem, and keeps them motivated and engaged. It can get even low achievers excited about math. Teachers say their math skills dramatically improve - and so does their behaviour, their levels of engagement and their attitude.

“The kids aren’t fighting me tooth and nail any more,” says Ms. Marsh. “They know what’s expected. They have the steps set out in front of them and they know they are going to be able to achieve all of those steps. The kids in my special education class go, ‘Whoo-hoo! I did the bonus question and I got it right!’ One Grade 7 student has never been able to sit in math class without completely disrupting it. JUMP has changed that. Today, he participates in class discussion and does the written work by himself.”

The JUMP program is now being used in more than a dozen first nations schools in B.C., as well as in many regular schools in the Vancouver area. “We found that the regular textbook way wasn’t reaching all the kids,” says Christine Hammond, head teacher of N’Kwala School, near Merit. The program is especially effective with her ESL students, because they don’t have to wade through oceans of text. One floundering Innu boy, for example, quickly became a math whiz. The kids at her small band school are now performing at the regional average in math, she says. JUMP is also effective with adult learners, some of whom, after a lifetime of frustration, are getting their GEDs.

Liz Barrett is a South Africa-born educator who travels the province doing outreach and teacher support in first nations schools. For her, proficiency in math is a social justice issue. “These kids are falling by the wayside, and that’s unacceptable. If your students aren’t getting a Grade 12, the door is closed to them.” She discovered the JUMP program four years ago, when she heard Mr. Mighton lecture in B.C., and became a passionate advocate. She’s now helping to launch a JUMP pilot program in South Africa.

Mr. Mighton, 52, is an unusual man. As well as being a mathematician (currently in residence at Toronto’s Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences), he is one of Canada’s best playwrights. He got interested in math education because he thinks the state of numeracy in Canada is a disaster. Judging by the evidence, he’s right. In Ontario, for example, a third of community college students are in danger of failing first-year math. Mr. Mighton also believes we must reverse the “culture of failure” that permeates math education. “There’s no reason the vast majority of kids can’t learn math.”

Ten years ago, Mr. Mighton began tutoring inner-city Toronto kids in his apartment, with great success. The next task was to determine whether JUMP would scale up. He began working to persuade school boards, a far tougher task than he expected. But the initial results have been good. One British inner-city school district, in London, agreed to try it. At the start, the kids were performing an average of two years below the national level in math. After one year of JUMP, 60 per cent of them passed the national exams.

JUMP works for middle-class kids, too. One Toronto teacher used it with her Grade 5 kids, whose math skills at the start of the year ranged from Grade 3 to Grade 7. By the end of the year, every student signed up for the Pythagoras competition, which is written only by top students. Fifteen out of the 17 achieved distinction.

The JUMP program is founded on observation, evidence, teacher feedback, continuous improvement and rigour, combined with new research findings on how the brain learns. By contrast, most programs taught in school are not. For the past couple of decades, both math and reading instruction have been an ideological battlefield that pits the “progressives” - educators who favour good things such as discovery and creativity - against the traditionalists, who favour bad things such as repetition and direct instruction. The progressives have had the upper hand, which is one reason why JUMP has been regarded in some quarters - especially in progressive-minded Ontario - as positively dangerous. Last May, consultants with the Toronto District School Board dismissed JUMP as a form of “rote, procedural learning.” In Ontario, that’s the kiss of death.

Now the tide is turning, though not fast enough. Last spring, the U.S. National Mathematics Advisory Panel endorsed the seemingly obvious idea that, in order to succeed in math, children need to understand what they’re doing.

But the school system is plagued by other barriers that actively discourage best practices. One is the widespread use of consultants, who often write the very textbooks they then are paid to recommend. Some teachers are heavily discouraged from using instructional methods or materials their school board frowns on, even though they work. Many schools and parents are beaten into submission by claims that certain programs are “evidence-based” even though they’re not. There’s a lot at stake in how curriculum decisions are made - but parents and teachers seldom have a clue, or a voice.

So if you’re interested in JUMP for your kid, you may have to move to Vancouver or Port Hardy. You could also check out the JUMP website (jumpmath.org). And Mr. Mighton has written two books, The Myth of Ability and The End of Ignorance. The program survives on charitable support, and he is a more or less full-time volunteer.

“Teachers get so excited by this,” says Liz Barrett. “Suddenly they’ve got the tools to reach the students, and suddenly they’re all achieving.”

Source: Globe and Mail, Canada
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20081108.COWENT08/TPStory/National

Parents, you can keep those flash cards and alphabet books.

But there’s another device in your home that can help develop language and visual skills. It’s called - hold on to your remotes - the television set.

Instead of being simply society’s whipping boy and the root of all cultural evil, the so-called “idiot box” might actually boost test scores, especially in disadvantaged homes, a recently published study out of the University of Chicago says.

Even as it baby-sits electronically, the TV can be teaching both modes of learning and facts, other studies suggest, and keeping those who watch it from engaging in more destructive behaviors.

That’s the good news about the boob tube. There’s certainly bad, including the warning that “there’s no two-dimensional screen that can equal a three-dimensional caregiver,” says Dr. Donald Shifrin, the American Academy of Pediatrics spokesman on the impact of media on children. Then there’s the study showing kids who watch more TV do less reading.

But we’ll get to the numerous caveats - especially the one about “Desperate Housewives” being less helpful than “Sesame Street” - later.

For now, let’s deal with what many may find surprising.

The prevailing, almost unquestioning cultural bias against TV, especially among the upper-middle class, is nailed by the humor blog Stuff White People Like, which puts “Not having a TV” at No. 28 on the list.

“The number one reason why white people like not having a TV is so that they can tell you that they don’t have a TV,” the authors write. But there is an academic consensus, if not a popular-culture one, that TV may actually be useful as more than just a means for frazzled parents to buy a few moments of uninterrupted time or wind down mindlessly at day’s end.

“I used to laugh and say, ’I did 25 years of research on children in television, and I can summarize it in one sentence: It’s the content that matters,’” says Aletha Huston, a professor of child development at the University of Texas.

“If used correctly, television can be a wonderful medium for kids. It can be a way of exposing them to the world. It can be a resource for kids to get to places and times they wouldn’t get to,” says Huston.

Yet, “it is a message that doesn’t get out there somehow,” she says, citing the surprisingly intense interest when “we published a study a few years ago showing the positive effects of ’Sesame Street’ on early schoolkids’ performance.”

The Chicago study came out of the Graduate School of Business, where young economists have been looking at media and its effects. Although based on an old data set, it offers new confirmation of the evolving views of television.

Standardized testing of almost 350,000 6th, 9th and 12th-grade students showed that the students who had more exposure to television in early childhood did slightly better on the tests than those with less exposure.

“We find strong evidence against the view that childhood television viewing harms the cognitive or educational development of preschoolers,” write Jesse Shapiro and Matthew Gentzkow in the paper, published this year in the Quarterly Journal of Economics.

There’s a big caveat: The testing data are from 1965, because those kids had been around when television rolled out from city to city in the U.S., providing what essentially hasn’t been seen in the United States since, a large-scale, clear-cut, before-and-after comparison.

“It’s an open question how the ways in which television is different now than then would affect the data,” says Shapiro, an assistant professor of economics at the GSB.

But even with more recent data, another U. of C. economist reached a similar conclusion to that of Shapiro and Gentzkow.

“Despite the conventional wisdom, watching television apparently does not turn a child’s brain to mush,” wrote Steven Levitt, with co-author Stephen Dubner, in the 2005 hit book Freakonomics.

They looked at a huge early-childhood study conducted by the U.S. Department of Education in the 1990s and found “no correlation,” they wrote, “between a child’s test scores and the amount of television he watches.”

One of the big questions for economists is not just examining an activity in isolation but considering what activity it replaces.

Psychological research shows that violence in media increases aggression, for example. But “violent crime decreases on days with larger theater audiences for violent movies,” another recent study of media effects found. The implication: However aggressive you may feel, you can’t do the crime if you don’t have the time.

Violent movies aren’t the same as children’s afternoon television shows. But Shapiro and Gentzkow also found that much of the impact of the medium they were studying seemed to be related to what activities it might be replacing.

In their findings, even after controlling for parental income and education levels, TV’s “effects are more positive for children from less advantaged families or from families where English isn’t the first language,” Shapiro says.

Put another way, that translates into a whopper of a caveat: “For children with highly educated parents and rich home environments, the cognitive effects of television appear to be smaller and may even be negative,” they write.

In other words: TV as a surrogate parent is not equal to Scrabble with an English-lit-major mom.

The common wisdom is that TV has been in decline for decades, but many critics share the view of another popular book, Everything Bad Is Good for You. In it, author Steven Berlin Johnson contends that TV now is actually much better, “more complex and nuanced,” than it was at the time of Shapiro’s study.

“The most debased forms of mass diversion - video games and violent television dramas and juvenile sitcoms - turn out to be nutritional after all,” Johnson writes, largely because the storytelling and complexity of action demands much more of the viewer.

He’s looking at adult TV, comparing the intricate “The Sopranos” to the simple “Starsky & Hutch,” for instance, but the argument can also be made for children’s television, where the straight-ahead action-hero cartoon story has been replaced by the subtle social interactions and multiple layers of meaning in “SpongeBob SquarePants.”

Patricia Greenfield has looked at more contemporary data, too, and concluded television is a mixed educational blessing. It’s likely responsible for a rise in verbal IQ scores, while it may be to blame for declines in verbal SAT scores.

“The real strength of television in teaching vocabulary is the visual context for teaching definitions,” says Greenfield, director of the Children’s Digital Media Center at UCLA and California State University at Los Angeles. That applies to IQ tests, which use “everyday vocabulary,” she says. Meanwhile, SATs look for “Latin-based, literary vocabulary,” which TV, by and large, does not offer.

Her 1998 paper, “The Cultural Evolution of IQ,” also makes the case for television’s helping to teach “visual intelligence,” the reading of signs, symbols, images so vital in today’s culture.

With television and DVDs being used widely in schools and by parents, her reading is that anti-TV forces may actually be “in decline,” to the point that “I’m a little bit more concerned about people not understanding the costs, only looking at the benefits.”

That’s certainly a worry of the American Academy of Pediatrics, which recommends no screen time for children under age 2 and a maximum of two well-chosen hours per day for older kids.

The concern is not TV per se so much as what TV, especially relevant with one study showing nearly 40 percent of children age 6 and younger have TVs in their bedrooms.

“Are we viewing ’Elimidate’?” the academy’s Shifrin asks. “Or are we viewing ’Dora the Explorer’?”

The doctors group understands that youngsters are growing up “as digital natives,” he adds. “We want parents to understand it’s up to them to be literate enough to know what’s being taught” on the screens.

He recommends the Web site Common Sense Media (commonsensemedia.org) as a good way for parents to achieve such literacy.

“We are not going to censor television - we’d like to censure it at times - but what we are going to say is, ’Caveat emptor,’” Shifrin says. “It’s about what you watch, how much you watch and where it’s watched.”

—

HOW TO USE IT

1. Don’t be passive. The stereotype is of the viewer numbly flipping through channels, looking for anything of interest. Instead, seek out what you have good reason to believe will be good or interesting and watch then or set your DVR or VCR to record it. You don’t read books or go to films at random, do you? One quick way to find out what the critical consensus is: the Web site Meta critic.com, which sums up what major critics say about a show then provides an average rating. For kids’ TV, try common sensemedia.org.

2. Ignore TV series in their first run. If you don’t need to be part of water-cooler chatter the next morning, the much more efficient, educated way is to get a well-reviewed series from Netflix or your library after it has come out on DVD. Watch at your pace, without commercials.

3. “Documentary” does not equal “medicine.” Many of us have some brain filter that counts nonfiction as castor oil, even when another part of our brain knows better. To take docs out of the equation - the great work of PBS’ “Frontline,” for instance - is to miss some of television’s best work.

4. Take the TV out of the bedrooms. We’ve all got great kids with great judgment, but they are curious creatures, and left alone with the box, they’ll seek out its most shocking fare - not to mention get one more reason to procrastinate. Take temptation off the dresser.

5. If they must have TVs, use filters. All those ratings that were put in place do actually work. Spend 10 minutes with your TV’s manual (”Ratings”), and you’ll be able to limit the viewing possibilities to appropriate levels, plus be able to set a password strong enough to keep your settings from being overridden by the electronic-media genius you’re raising. (…)

Source: Boston Herald, United States
http://tinyurl.com/5l7cb5

The Internet is not just changing the way people live but altering the way our brains work with a neuroscientist arguing this is an evolutionary change which will put the tech-savvy at the top of the new social order.

Small, however, argues that the people who will come out on top in the next generation will be those with a mixture of technological and social skills.

“We’re seeing an evolutionary change. The people in the next generation who are really going to have the edge are the ones who master the technological skills and also face-to-face skills,” Small told Reuters in a telephone interview.

“They will know when the best response to an email or Instant Message is to talk rather than sit and continue to email.”

In his newly released fourth book iBrain: Surviving the Technological Alteration of the Modern Mind, Small looks at how technology has altered the way young minds develop, function and interpret information.

Small, the director of the Memory & Aging Research Center at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience & Human Behavior and the Center on Aging at UCLA, said the brain was very sensitive to the changes in the environment such as those brought by technology.

He said a study of 24 adults as they used the Web found that experienced Internet users showed double the activity in areas of the brain that control decision-making and complex reasoning as Internet beginners.

“The brain is very specialized in its circuitry and if you repeat mental tasks over and over it will strengthen certain neural circuits and ignore others,” said Small.

“We are changing the environment. The average young person now spends nine hours a day exposing their brain to technology. Evolution is an advancement from moment to moment and what we are seeing is technology affecting our evolution.”

Small said this multi-tasking could cause problems.

He said the tech-savvy generation, whom he calls “digital natives,” are always scanning for the next bit of new information which can create stress and even damage neural networks.

“There is also the big problem of neglecting human contact skills and losing the ability to read emotional expressions and body language,” he said.

“But you can take steps to address this. It means taking time to cut back on technology, like having a family dinner, to find a balance. It is important to understand how technology is affecting our lives and our brains and take control of it.”

Source: Reuters
http://www.reuters.com/article/lifestyleMolt/idUSTRE49Q34A20081027?sp=true

Many parents cringe at the thought of discipline. They also seem reluctant to have high expectations of their kids, or to hold them accountable for their performance. They do not want to “hurt” or “pressure” their children.

A harried mother approached me after my talk in an exclusive private school. “My son is at his computer till two in the morning,” she said. “He says he has to do a lot of research.” Her son is in first year high school, and has low grades.

“I do a lot of research,” I replied, “but I do not stay at the computer for more than a couple of hours every day. Your son is more likely playing games instead of doing his homework.”

She sighed. “I think so, too. My husband and I actually told him we would ban the computer, but he got mad at us. So we lifted the ban. What do we do now?”

I stifled a sigh. “You need to set limits,” I said. “An outright ban is difficult, because he needs to use the computer for tasks like word processing. But make sure he does not use the computer for more than two hours a day.”

“But he will get very angry!” she said. “He will tell us that he hates us!”

I looked her in the eye. Our children often say things they do not really mean. Your son will at first hate the fact that you are curtailing his leisure, but when his grades improve, he will be thankful, and so will you. Learn to say no—gently but firmly. Set limits because you care for him. He is your son, after all.”

Permissive parenting

In the incisive book Think, award-winning writer Michael LeGault discusses the lost art of sharp and critical thinking in American life. Permissive parenting is one trend; others are pervasive commercialism, anti-intellectualism, and promoting image without substance.

Without clear thinking and the willingness to persevere, LeGault says bad scenarios may repeat themselves such as the United States government’s failure to respond after Hurricane Katrina, the declining quality of US businesses, and the dismal scores of students in international tests.

I believe permissive parenting is one of the causes of educational problems not only in the US, but in our society as well. LeGault cites statistics showing that teenage boys play video games for 13 hours a week and watch television for another 25 hours. Many American parents are aware of this, but do not know what to do. In a 2001 Time magazine/CNN poll, 80 percent of Americans said, compared to kids of 15 years ago, their children were more spoiled; 35 percent said they were more permissive with their kids; 75 percent said children had fewer chores; 48 percent said children had too much influence in family decisions.

I am not saying that kids should have no say at all in the family, but when they stay up till the wee hours to play games, then something is wrong. When boundaries are not set, things go haywire.

In the past five years, I found myself becoming not just a teacher, but a de facto parent to several students, who suffered from depression, insomnia, anxiety; who slept no more than three hours a night, who did not eat well, who had sex without lasting relationships, who were angry at their parents and/or the world.

I ask them about their parents’ role. “Do your parents know you have not been sleeping well?” A shrug. “Do they know you are having sex?” A shake of the head.

Set limits

“Children not only need standards and rules for healthy social, ethical, and intellectual development,” says LeGault, “they desire them. [Standards lead to] good work and study habits, nurturing an outlook that aspires toward excellence, and acquiring a wide, eclectic base of knowledge … I think it’s a very valuable, realistic lesson to teach your kids at a young age that nothing is easy or automatic (even though it looks like it is), and that to be good at even one thing is going to take them way more work and struggle than they ever imagined.”

What happens when parents set limits? “Kids may sulk and be visibly unhappy,” LeGault says. “Parents can feel their pain but know it’s not going to kill them.” I repeat—it is not going to kill them.

LeGault says authoritative parents may appear “stodgy and uptight,” but they can take comfort in the fact that they are doing the right thing.

“The fear of growing up, or fear or loss of a child’s love and respect, or maybe just the path of least resistance, has led many parents to choose to be their child’s friend rather than their guide and mentor,” LeGault says. “Such an approach focuses on providing kids with material pleasures and comforts rather than demanding that they meet high expectations and do the work required to do so. The net result is a generation of adults who have transformed the traditional meaning of the child-parent relationship by adopting the most lax and permissive parenting practices in history.”

Thankfully, many parents have seen the light. Actor and comedian Bill Cosby urged his fellow African-Americans to become better parents in a 2004 speech: “I am talking about these people who cry when they see their son [in jail]. Where were you when he was 2? Where were you when he was 12? Where were you when he was 18 and how come you didn’t know that he had a pistol? The church is only open on Sunday and you can’t keep asking Jesus to do things for you. You can’t keep saying that God will find a way … People with their hats on backwards, pants down around their crack, isn’t that a sign of something or are you waiting for Jesus to pull his pants up?”

LeGault gives parents a rallying cry: “Dare to try to let your kids fail. Dare to say no. Dare to use punishment when your child misbehaves. Dare to turn off the television. Dare to make them do chores. Dare to kick them off the computer. Dare to turn their world upside down. Dare to set the agenda.” (…)

Source: Inquirer.net, Philippines
http://tinyurl.com/5sqehj

It’s meant to be love at first sight, but as many as one in five mothers find they cannot bond with their new baby, leading to feelings of shame and inadequacy. Eleni Kyriacou talks to three women about their struggles

When Sarah’s son, Joe, was 18 months old she remembers thinking, ‘”I don’t know who you are, I don’t know what you are and I don’t know what to do with you.” I’d pick him up if he cried, but I couldn’t play with him or interact.’

Despite a planned pregnancy and a happy relationship with her husband, Sarah, an administrator from Oxford, found herself living out the ultimate taboo. She was a new mother who couldn’t bond with her child. From the moment that blue line appears on the pregnancy testing kit, expectant mothers are bombarded with messages all telling the same tale: that as soon as they hold their newborn child they’ll experience a deep, unconditional love. So powerful is this love that it will make any monotony, isolation and exhaustion they may encounter on their journey into motherhood worthwhile.

While that love usually does take hold and a deep bond develops between most new mothers and their babies, it is certainly not a given. There are many women who have feelings of indifference, ambivalence or even dislike for their child, but they rarely admit it for fear of seeming ‘unnatural’ or inadequate. A survey for Johnson’s Baby found that more than a third of mothers have felt they have not bonded with their baby as much as they should have, and 18 per cent say they’ve had moments when they’ve felt no bond at all.

Pat Spungin, a child psychologist and the founder of the parenting website raisingkids.co.uk, says, ‘There’s an automatic assumption in our culture that mothers will bond with their babies. Mothers who don’t immediately feel this tremendous engagement think there must be something wrong with them and ask, “Am I normal?”‘

‘Joe arrived five weeks early,’ says Sarah, now 40, ’so perhaps I didn’t make the transition from having an imaginary baby to having a real one. When I got home, my midwife said, “I’m not surprised he was early; you were very stressed.” Which wasn’t true – I was just busy and had only finished work six days before. That comment sat there, and it was a condemnation of my ability to be a good mother.’

Sarah’s first few months as a mother were riddled with pain. ‘I found breast-feeding absolute agony, and I also had gallstones. I was so tense Joe picked up on it, and things went from bad to worse. Only later did I realise I’d slipped into postnatal depression (PND). I was getting through one day at a time and don’t remember any of his milestones, like when he first sat up or started to crawl.’

At 18 months, Joe’s behaviour deteriorated; he would line up all his toys around himself as he withdrew into his own world, and started kicking Sarah. ‘I would grab him and feel the need rising up to shake him,’ she says. ‘I’d have to put him down, go into another room for 10 minutes and shut the door to keep him safe. I’d hear him screaming on the other side. I’d return out of a sense of duty rather than love. My husband only saw the tip of the iceberg; he now admits he withdrew into his work as a police officer by taking longer shifts.’ Sarah put Joe’s behaviour down to her failing. (It was not until he was six that a diagnosis of autism was made.) ‘I felt I had no control over him and even called my husband home from work a couple of times because I didn’t trust myself and was worried I’d hurt him.’ When Joe was two, Sarah gave birth to Lola, who seemed to underline the problems between son and mother. ‘Lola was sheer bliss and radiated peace. I bonded with her instantly. I felt such guilt about that.’

Although she had started taking medication to alleviate her PND, it was not until her husband, Samuel, pointed out the effect her mood had on Joe that real changes took place. ‘If I was having a bad day, he would, too. So I started looking after myself – taking breaks to sleep, doing yoga, having counselling. I suspected autism from the age of three, but once the formal diagnosis came at six I felt that rush of love that people talk about. Suddenly I realised it wasn’t my fault. I could do things to help him. Today we’re very close.’

Experts agree that, as Sarah’s case shows, a mother who has bonding difficulties with a newborn can still develop a bond later. Richard Woolfson, a child psychologist and the author of How To Have a Happy Child, explains: ‘There’s a lot of mystique about bonding. The myth is that it’s love at first sight, and it’s all or nothing. In my experience it takes time. There are so many everyday issues like feeding and sleeping that can make mothers feel anxious and lose confidence. The real emotional connection between a mother and child – the bond – is built gradually over a period of months. Don’t give up. If you’re not physically connected with your baby – by changing and feeding and soothing when he or she’s crying – you’re going to struggle to be emotionally connected.

‘Bonding is the bedrock of a baby’s later emotional development, and if babies don’t form a secure emotional connection with an adult by the age of four they’re highly likely to have relationship problems later in life – and perhaps have issues bonding with their own children.’ There can be many reasons a mother and child don’t bond. Woolfson says that unresolved emotional baggage may mean some mothers find it harder to give or receive love, while some may simply find the responsibility of motherhood too demanding. ‘And if PND is involved, of course you must get medical help.’

High-profile sufferers of postnatal depression include Brooke Shields, Elle Macpherson and Sadie Frost. Recently, Gwyneth Paltrow spoke out about her PND following the birth of her second child, Moses, and shed light on the fact that even experienced mothers can have bonding difficulties.

This was the case for Jessica, 35, a former nurse from the south-west of England who already had two children when she gave birth to Daisy. ‘I remember saying to the doctors, “Can you hurry up – cut this cord and take her from me, please!” I held her for a few minutes but I was in a lot of physical discomfort and just wanted to have a shower and escape because she wouldn’t stop screaming. I looked at her and thought, “She’s really ugly.” I’d never felt that with my other babies and those feelings stayed for several weeks.

‘I’d leave her in her pram and get my mother to jiggle it to keep her asleep as long as possible. I didn’t love her like I did the others, so I overcompensated by breast-feeding on the hour, and made a rod for my own back. I became very resentful of her because I was hardly sleeping. I was jealous of the sleep my husband, Dominic, was getting. At one point I said, “If she were never to wake up again I wouldn’t be too worried because at least I’d be able to sleep.” He was appalled, of course, and said he didn’t want to hear me speak like that.’

Jessica’s mood had been worsening ever since she suddenly came off Prozac on discovering she was pregnant. ‘I was afraid to return to my GP once I’d given birth because he’d probably tell me to go back on the medication and stop breast-feeding. I became quite obsessed with breast-feeding.’

By the time Daisy was three months old, Jessica was at her wits’ end. ‘As well as Daisy, I had my three-year-old, Johnny, and my 18-month-old baby, Marie. One day I was arguing with Dominic and I just grabbed Daisy and ran to the car. I didn’t know what I was going to do. I needed to get away but knew I couldn’t leave her behind because of the breast-feeding – I didn’t want to fail her on that. I ended up staring at a wall in the village car park, thinking, “That’s what I have to do.” I drove at speed towards it, then Daisy suddenly started crying. I stopped and sat and cried. Then I fed her. I think her crying had made me snap out of it.’

After this Jessica finally saw a different GP, who prescribed an antidepressant that could be used while breast-feeding. ‘As my mood lifted, gradually the bond and love increased. The turning-point, though, was when Daisy caught pneumonia and I thought she would die. I remember thinking how vulnerable she looked, and a tidal wave of pure emotion hit me, as well as a huge feeling of guilt. By the time she was one, I felt the same for her as my other children.

‘Accepting help from others was very difficult because there’s a huge stigma attached to not bonding. I have four children now, and people are always shocked when they hear what I went through with Daisy because I’m a real earth-mother type – I even use cloth nappies! Which just goes to show, it can happen to anyone.’

Even if the bond is strong, there are no guarantees it will always be that way. ‘Bonding is about connectedness, and that can ebb and flow over the years,’ Pat Spungin says. ‘For some of that time you might not get on with one child if they’re going through a difficult period, and suddenly it can all change back again. The love itself is still there – that’s why parents hang on in during those difficult teenage years – but you may feel you don’t like your child very much.’

For 36-year-old Susan, an insurance administrator from Cardiff, this is her everyday reality. ‘I used to spend hours playing with Dan when he was little, cuddling him, singing his favourite pop songs to him. He was the first of my four children and got lots of attention. Now he’s 17 and I can’t get through to him. I do wonder if I did something wrong, but the others have turned out fine. I did make some bad choices when he and his sister were little – staying longer than I should have done with his father.’

When he was 11, Dan’s behaviour changed dramatically. ‘He went from being a sweet, loving boy to one who broke windows and was verbally abusive.’ Today it is not unusual for him to swear at Susan and then retreat into prolonged silences. ‘The relationship we have is much worse than the one he has with anyone else. Over the years I’ve tried grounding him, taking his iPod from him – nothing has worked. He goes out and doesn’t come home when he should, lies and steals money from my purse or his brothers’ money boxes.’

Susan’s friends also recount tales of not being able to ‘reach’ their teen offspring, but she feels Dan’s behaviour is more extreme than most. She suspects he resents the fact she went on to have another two children with her new husband, Ray. According to Pat Spungin, ‘Staying out later than you agreed falls within normal teen behaviour. Being destructive with property doesn’t. If the child has step-parents, that can complicate matters, but most teens come out the other side if there’s love and support.’ Although Susan feels her bond has weakened, her love hasn’t waned. ‘But it breaks my heart that I don’t like the child I love so much,’ she says. ‘In a month he’s joining the Army; I feel guilty because when he was 13 I suggested the Cadets as a route to focusing his energy. I’m frightened and hate him leaving when our relationship is this way. And yet he wanted to take time off before joining and I said no. I’m looking forward to no arguments. Yes, I feel guilty about that, too.’

Richard Woolfson says that when parents worry about the bond they have with their children, most give themselves a hard time and little credit for what they’ve done right. He believes every woman has the potential to be a loving mother but some find motherhood harder than others. ‘Accept who you are and stay involved, no matter how many barriers they put up. Few of us become the parents we want to be – I certainly didn’t. And remember, only one parent can be the best in the world. The rest of us will have to settle for second best.’

Source: Telegraph.co.uk, United Kingdom
http://tinyurl.com/5gswn5

As a girl, author Peg Tyre didn’t like recess.

But as a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter for Newsweek and CNN, Tyre noticed a trend: As schools across the country cut recess, music and other subjects not required by state tests, the number of students taking medication for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder went up.

“The American Medical Association tells us that 3 to 5 percent of Americans have ADHD,” said Tyre, who spoke at Book Passage in Corte Madera Tuesday and will appear at Redwood High School in Larkspur Thursday night. “Yet the Centers for Disease Control tell us that 14 percent of boys younger than 15 are diagnosed with the condition. I worry about why we’re medicating all these children.”

In her new book, The Trouble With Boys, Tyre argues that the changes schools have made during the past two decades - driven by a focus on standardized test scores - have created a huge disadvantage for boys.

“It used to be that boys did well in math and science, and girls did well in reading and writing,” Tyre said. “But in the last 20 years, girls have caught up in math and science, while boys have been taking a whipping in reading and have fallen behind in writing - at the same time that the whole curriculum has become literacy-based.”

In Marin, seventh-grade girls scored an average of 6 percentage points higher in English and 1 point lower in math on the 2008 California Standardized Testing and Reporting (STAR) exam, according to the state Department of Education. Eleventh-grade girls scored 6 percentage points higher in English and 2 points higher in math on the state’s high school exit exam test for 2008.

Statewide, the gender gap is even greater, with seventh-grade girls scoring 10 percentage points higher on the English portion of the STAR and 10th-grade girls scoring 8 points higher in English on the exit exam.

The problem, Tyre argues, isn’t that boys are less intelligent or capable than girls. It’s that the two genders reach mental and emotional maturity at different ages, she said, and that schools increasingly reward skills like organization and neatness over innovation and risk-taking.

“Girls are completely mature at age 15 to 16, while boys are not there until they’re 25,” said Tyre, basing her argument on neurological studies of adolescent brain scans.

Virginia Dunn nodded in agreement.

“She’s right about the developmental pace,” said Dunn, a retired teacher who works as a reading intervention tutor and family therapist in San Rafael. “I used to teach high school, and around junior year, it was as though something magically happened, and boys began to catch up.”

At a time when success in school can determine so many aspects of people’s lives - where they work, where they live and even when they can retire - the evidence suggests the deck is stacked against boys, Tyre said.

Boys are expelled from preschool at a rate five times that of girls and are twice as likely to be diagnosed with attention deficit disorder or a learning disability, she said. Students in the lowest-performing group at each school tend overwhelmingly to be boys, whether the school is a wealthy private institution or an impoverished neighborhood school.

“Boys learn early on that school is a game they can’t win, and so they decide they don’t want to play,” Tyre said.

Educators have addressed gender as an element of the “achievement gap” between successful and struggling students. Yet county Director of Alternative Education Lisa Schwartz noted that every student falls into a variety of groups, and that each student needs to be treated as an individual.

“Boys probably do better in a more active learning environment,” Schwartz said. “But we need to be paying attention to each individual child. Boys may need a more active, problem-solving curriculum; gifted and talented students need the opportunity to stretch themselves; our English language learners need intensive support to develop their English language skills. We need to focus on a variety of strategies to help kids succeed better in order to be doing our job.”

Tyre doesn’t assign blame to parents, teachers or even distractions like television or video games. Instead, she says parents and teachers need to work together, armed with data, to find ways to make the educational experience better for both genders.

“I grew up with teachers who told me, ‘You don’t have to be a secretary. You can be a lawyer. You don’t have to be a stewardess; you can be pilot.’ That changed the world for girls. They can apply that same attitude to boys.”

Source: Marin Independent-Journal, CA
http://www.marinij.com/ci_10787120?source=most_viewed

‘IT MAKES CHILDREN ANGRY’ | Expert urges end to corporal punishment

During a recent speech in Chicago, Dr. Alvin Poussaint, a Harvard psychiatrist, related how, when he was a child and misbehaved, his father would “smack me in the back of the head.”

“It was like shock treatment,” said Poussaint. “He had a theory that if you misbehaved, something must be wrong with your brain and you needed a correction.”

The story elicited chuckles from the largely African-American audience, but Poussaint’s point was no joke to him.

One way to help reduce violence in poor, black urban neighborhoods is to reduce it in the home, he says.

In his most recent book, Come on People: On the Path from Victims to Victors, co-authored with entertainer Bill Cosby, Poussaint cites one study that showed that 94 percent of black mothers agreed that “a good hard spanking” was a useful “disciplinary technique” compared with 65 percent of white women and 46 percent of Asian-American women.

Not all black parents who use corporal punishment create violent children, he noted. Poussaint grew up in Harlem, received his M.D. from Cornell and served as a script consultant to NBC’s “The Cosby Show.”

But, Poussaint said, “Violence begets violence — it makes children angry.”

“I think a lot of homicides relate to rage and anger and getting back at someone, even if it’s a nameless face,” he said.

Psychotherapist George Smith, whose Management Planning Institute works with the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services, said he sees the effects of spankings in preschool classes his group conducts: “Kids emulate their caregivers. They become physical.”

Psychiatrist Carl Bell, president of the Community Mental Health Council, said less educated people of all races tend to spank at higher rates.

“Poor black people — poor people in general — have no idea how life works. People who don’t know how life works think it’s best to bully people to get what they want,” said Bell.

Blacks are more religious, said Bell, and cite Proverbs: “He who withholds his rod hates his son, But he who loves him disciplines him diligently.”

No single child-rearing factor leads to violent behavior, Bell says. “I wish [ending spanking] was the magic bullet,” he said.

But for Poussaint, it’s a start.

“If we think of violence as learned behavior, if you are using it on your child, what are they learning?” said Poussaint. “The black community [has] to put this on the table.”

Source: Chicago Sun-Times, United States
http://www.suntimes.com/lifestyles/1219230,CST-NWS-spank14.article

You are never too young (or too old) to learn about money. My first lesson about money was that candy bars cost 10 cents at the corner store in my small town, but only 9 cents at the big grocery store.

I also remember selling Kool-Aid on the sidewalk in front of our house. The flavor crystals, sugar, water, jug and glasses all came from our kitchen, so at 5 cents a glass I concluded that selling Kool-Aid was an exercise in pure profit.

Walking past the “Bank On It” exhibit in the Tacoma Children’s Museum last week, I saw 5-year-olds – who were still working on the art of sharing – discovering the more complex skills of budgeting and saving. They were playing (and learning) in these exhibits using “money” to make purchasing and savings decisions.

These preschoolers were learning a lesson that it takes most of us a lifetime to master: financial literacy. And watching them move from a “spend-it-all-on-ice-cream” decision reconsidered in favor of a “maybe-I’ll-save-some-for-cookies-too” mentality gives me hope for the future.

It’s a lesson we should all remember. Recent headlines confirm that even experts on Wall Street and in Washington are still learning it. Bailouts of financial institutions and industries, the distress caused by mortgage rollovers, and even teenagers getting into debt trouble are all cause for concern.

Through my work, I see both the benefit of providing families with the knowledge to avoid financial failures and the consequences when people lack an understanding of money management.

When we teach our children how to save money, make a budget, make thoughtful buying decisions, read a bank statement, bank online, use a debit or credit card, understand loans and use good judgment, we help them build immunity to predatory lenders, overdrawn accounts and housing foreclosure. We give them skills to survive and prosper.

Parents can help their children navigate an increasingly complex financial world by teaching the basics of money and finance at an early age. Like the preschoolers learning to budget for ice cream and cookies (not to mention candy bars), teaching our kids the basics of money and the benefits of saving can have enormous benefit down the road.

Where to begin? One of the basic skills of financial discipline is managing money, as opposed to just spending it. There are several good online resources for ways to explain money management to kids at each developmental stage. Try www.themint.org or www.jumpstart.org.

You can also use simple games to teach younger children valuable lessons. The National Council on Economic Education has a workbook full of ideas: “Financial Fitness for Life: The Parent’s Guide to Pocket Power.” There, you’ll find resources on story books that teach financial skills, and family activities that reinforce financial messages, such as “Goods vs. Services.”

In this activity, parents help children identify three “goods” and three “services” found at home. Children draw pictures of the goods and services, and use old magazines to clip photographs that illustrate them. This activity helps even young children distinguish between goods and services.

Schools are starting to offer more robust financial education as well. Check with your local school board to find out how you can support more financial education in your school system.

Some schools are partnering with Junior Achievement to provide financial education. Junior Achievement has exceptional experiential learning opportunities for children and young adults. In a dozen or so states across the country, children visit a Junior Achievement Finance Park, where they learn about how money works in real life.

They are randomly assigned an education level, profession, income and life situation (they might be a single parent, married couple, single person).

Based on their life situation, they go from one storefront to another in the village, setting up bank accounts, applying for mortgages or choosing to rent an apartment, buying a car or getting a bus pass, paying for groceries and clothing, and supporting children. They make decisions about how much money to spend on what, as long as it fits within their means.

The results are astounding. They quickly understand the value of trade-offs needed to make the budget work. And they might go home with a little more empathy for their parents’ financial decision-making, at least for a day.

Preparing our children to be money-smart, or financially literate, may be one of the most important and challenging responsibilities we have as parents.

The best place to learn financial literacy is at home. Talk about financial decisions with children at every opportunity. Involve children in money activities, such as saving for a special vacation over a period of time.

Be financially responsible yourself – role-model what you want your children to do. Take a class and increase your own financial knowledge. Have a family budget and retirement plan and share it with your family.

When you pass up some ice cream and cookies to create and build a stronger savings account that supports your financial goals, you teach by example. Meet with a financial professional to accelerate your financial literacy journey.

Patricia Akiyama is director of government relations for Russell Investments. This article is part of a series of monthly columns by Russell associates.

Source: TheNewsTribune.com
http://www.thenewstribune.com/business/story/499949.html

A few years ago, a restaurant owner in Chicago caused an uproar by posting a sign that read:

Children of all ages have to behave and use their indoor voices.

I wouldn’t think anyone needs a sign to state the obvious, but in this age of permissive parenting, they do. Offended mothers mounted a boycott! They were shocked that anyone would dare insinuate their children didn’t have every right to climb onto the counter and start waving salt shakers over their heads.

Their contention? Perhaps it’s a display of their individuality through creative dance, and besides, “it makes little Taylor happy.”

Too often we expect others to do as we say and not as we do. Dinner service in a crowded restaurant is slow, and you snap at the waiter. You’re running out the door when the phone rings; so you grab it and say, “What do you want? I’m busy.” Do you treat friends and strangers with equal consideration?

Even if your manners are generally good, everyone slips from time to time, which gives parents the chance to highlight their own mistakes in front of their children, own up to them, and say how they will change their behavior in the future. If we model good manners, our children will be quick studies.

My own children haven’t always been angels, but when they err I immediately point it out and have them correct their behavior. At times I have made them apologize to the people that might have been bothered by their behavior. Because of that, there are numerous times on airplanes and in restaurants where employees will actually thank my husband and me for having such well-behaved children. I actually think this highlights the plight of manners in our society. I constantly have to correct their manners, and the thought that they are better than most is pretty scary!

While punishing bad behavior is necessary, there should also be a focus on acknowledging good behavior. One waitress came to our table and, in front of our children, detailed the bad behavior and poor manners of children who had been at a nearby table. She then thanked our children for behaving so well.

I think it really made an impact on them to hear it from someone else. They realized that good manners do matter to more people than just their parents! (And what do parents know anyway?) That said, it’s just as important to hear it from Mom and Dad.

E.D. Hill is a FOX News Channel host and author of “I’m Not Your Friend, I’m Your Parent.” She has eight children.

Source: FOXNews
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,429727,00.html

When it comes to instilling a love of reading, husband and I have done everything right — or so we thought. We read together with the boys during the day and at bedtime. We go to the library regularly as a family. And through the years, the boys have shown their love of books by falling asleep with piles of children’s page turners on their beds.

But when it comes to getting 6-year-old to actually read by himself, well, that’s another matter entirely. Early reading books simply aren’t engaging him. We’ve tried “Little Bear” books with some success. “Frog and Toad” are stories he likes, but not if he has to go it solo. “Amelia Bedelia” makes him laugh, but again … he’s got no desire to pick it up like his Legos, for instance.

And so, we’ve lowered our expectations. A few paragraphs in a Star Wars sticker book … great! Signs on roads and buildings … sure. The Lego catalogue … um, is he actually looking at any of the words? Do the instructions on math worksheets count?

According to Jon Scieszka, I’m not alone in having a boy who is not finding reading material that truly engages him. Scieszka, who spent years teaching, is the author of The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales and is the Library of Congress’ first national ambassador for children’s books. He’ll be in Washington this Saturday for the National Book Festival on the mall from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.

“We’ve had this problem with boys not achieving and reading for a long time,” Scieszka says, noting that although we’re generalizing about boys, there are always exceptions. “For the longest time, you couldn’t even say boys and girls were different. It was taboo in the educational world.” But different they are, biologically and socially, he asserts. Boys need “move time,” which they’re getting less and less of in school these days. “That’s how they’re built,” he says.

The biggest change we can all make in giving boys a love of reading is to expand our definition of reading beyond fiction, Scieszka says. Research shows that boys will read with their friends and want to be readers, but they want it on their terms. “They’d rather read nonfiction or humor, graphic novels, science fiction, action adventure, audio books, or online reading and magazines,” Scieszka says. Much of this reading, boys don’t even think of as reading, he notes. Also key: Include boys in choosing their reading material. Often books that were favorites of mom or teachers (who are mostly female) and librarians (also, mostly female) will feel like “going to the dentist” for boys, Scieszka asserts.

Great new titles are coming out every year, Scieszka says. He recommends Sterling Point Books’ redone autobiographies for older kids and Mo Willems’ Elephant and Piggy for younger ones. Other winners in his book: Tony DiTerlizzi’s “Kenny and the Dragon”, “Fog Mound Chronicles” by Susan Schade and Jon Buller, Eoin Colfer’s “Artemis Fowl” books; Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson’s “Neverland”, Neil Gaiman’s “The Graveyard Book” and Corey Doctorow’s “Little Brother”.

In the graphic novel realm, the publisher First Second has a whole range of graphic novels that appeal to younger guys and older ones. Particularly good is the Robot series for younger readers, Scieszka says. For middle readers, try Jeff Smith’s BONE series. And some boys really like Captain Underpants. Finding graphic novels can be a challenge, Scieszka says, because teachers, librarians and parents need to read through them rather than scan them for age appropriateness. Some publishers are starting to recognize this, though, and are putting age recommendations on the books.

And for nonfiction, Scieszka recommends Timothy Bradley’s “Paleo Bugs” and “Paleo Sharks”.

What reading material — particularly alternative reading — engages your sons?

Source: Washington Post
http://tinyurl.com/3gutut