In the digital age, it’s simpler toys that may make children smarter

Parents these days are willing to try almost anything to give their toddlers an educational edge: Mozart, baby DVDs, even flash cards.

It turns out that blocks may make their toddlers smarter.

Children who played with blocks scored on average 15 percent higher on language tests — an early indicator of cognitive development — than their peers who didn’t get a chance to stack and pile, according to research released Monday by the Seattle Children’s Hospital Research Institute.

“Many toys make claims they are actually educational for kids,” said Dr. Dimitri Christakis, who led the study. “The interesting thing is that things like blocks never made such claims.”

The researchers relied on funding from Canadian toymaker Mega Bloks for the research, which appeared in this month’s Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.

It is a bit of old school knowledge for today’s hyper-involved parent, who is inundated with electronic interactive toys. Sometimes lost in this crowded toy marketplace is the fact that parent-child interaction is the best way for toddlers to learn.

The research is also more fodder for the nostalgic parenting movement. “The Dangerous Book for Boys,” which celebrates such old standards as marbles and tree houses, remains a New York Times best-seller, and learning through play has become a rallying cry for parents and educators.

The science of play is that toddlers learn by doing — say stacking blocks or building a Lego tower — because they begin to grasp the world around them. Kids who engage in imaginative play also may have better impulse control and longer attention spans, according to the research paper.

“I think nowadays too many parents rely on the television for example,” said Dr. Tanya Remer Altmann, author of “The Wonder Years: Helping Your Baby and Young Child Successfully Negotiate the Major Developmental Milestones.” She didn’t take part in the study.

“They don’t spend enough one-on-one time down on the ground playing blocks,” she said.

It is also possible toddlers in the study watched less television because they were too busy playing with their blocks, said the researchers, who work at both the Seattle Children’s Hospital and Regional Medical Center and the University of Washington.

Even though educational toys are big business, there is little independent research that proves the toys help young children learn, Christakis said.

Blocks “are one of the few toys that actually now have shown that they do” help, Christakis said.

With so little research and strong parental interest in giving children an edge, Christakis worries families may move away from blocks and other proven toys.

Researchers cautioned against going too far with their blocks study because it was limited to 175 children ages 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 from low- and middle-income families, and for other reasons.

But the research paper suggested the data could help create strategies to boost language development and maybe cut the amount of time toddlers spend in front of the television set.

Source: Seattle Post Intelligencer
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/333869_blocks02.html

“In the past, boys were more inclined to do well in school,” says Kamloops/Thompson school trustee Chris Rose, the conference chair. “Now, even young boys tend to pooh-pooh the idea of being smart and doing well in school. Any academic youngster is termed a ‘geek.”

Rose theorizes that, paradoxically, the problem may have started with educators’ emphasis on increasing graduation rates.

“We’re so concerned about kids getting a middle C right across the board that we’re not meeting the needs of kids who are exceptional, or who would benefit from being able to concentrate on a specialty. These kids are getting bored.”

Girls, tending to be “more studious, to follow instructions, to make sure they’re doing what the teacher wants them to do,” can shrug off geek labels.

Besides, notes conference keynoter Steve Biddulph, the Yorkshire-born, Tasmania-based author of Raising Boys, “From the 1970s and onward, there was a huge effort to raise girls’ achievement and opportunities, and this has been very successful.”

We forgot about boys, he says — but don’t reach for Marilla’s raspberry cordial just yet. What we can do is now put the same energy into reviving boys’ interest in school, Biddulph says. “If we make education more tailored to the special gender needs of boys, of their biology and their brain development, they could be much happier.”

From working with schools in Northern Ireland, England, Germany, Asia, Australia and New Zealand, Biddulph will offer his British Columbia audience some strategies, including:

Give them male role models. Boys just don’t have as many now. “This is a result of many things, ranging from the disappearance of men into the workplace in the industrial age to the diffidence and shyness of men around children arising from lack of experience of being fathered well.” …

Source: Vancouver Sun, Canada
http://tinyurl.com/2cqgnm

Until the latter part of the 20th century, scientists believed that memory was memory. Over the last two decades, however, ongoing research has shown that memory can actually be divided into two basic types: declarative and non-declarative.

What most people typically think of as memory falls into the declarative category, in the sense that you can declare your memory. If I ask you what you had for breakfast this morning, the name of your best friend, or the capital of the United States, you can recall these things and give me an answer. Non-declarative memories, on the other hand, include memories that you’re not consciously aware of, and they are often connected to motor activity. Things such as riding a bike, playing the piano, or typing fall into this category.

We now know that children’s capacity for these different types of memory is determined by how mature their brain is. Very early in life, the parts of the brain most responsible for skilled motor activity, particularly the cerebellum (located at the lower back of the brain), are immature. These parts of the brain take years to fully develop. So, non-declarative memories that depend on motor activity for their formation simply don’t exist early in life; they have to await the coordination of motor skills with the corresponding brain centers.

Declarative memory begins to develop much sooner, as it depends almost entirely on the temporal lobe (located above the ears), a part of the brain that comes on-line very early. In the first few months of life, for example, babies can look at something for as little as a minute and remember it a week later. Still, like non-declarative memory, declarative memory continues to develop as the brain matures. This development happens gradually over the first year or two before a big jump during the preschool years, when the development of language skills gives children an additional system for storing their memories…

Source: BostonNOW, MA
http://www.bostonnow.com/lifestyle/2007/09/20/exploring_early_mem_development/

Women who rush back to work after giving birth may do so at their baby’s peril, suggests a new Canadian study that fuels the emotional debate over career versus parenthood.

The less time a new mother stays off the job, the more likely her child’s motor and social development will be impaired, University of British Columbia researchers concluded.

The analysis of federal survey data underlines the importance of government-funded maternity leaves, but does not mean mothers should avoid work outside the home, says Dr. Rebecca Sherlock, the neonatology specialist at the BC Children’s and Women’s Health Centre who spearheaded the research…

Dr. Sherlock had just had two children of her own, took relatively little time off work afterward and expected the research to confirm that the length of maternity leave has no bearing on childhood development.

She said she was so surprised by the findings that she re-checked the statistical analysis several times to be sure the results were sound.

The study’s conclusions would seem to fit, however, with most of what is known about the importance of early childhood development, and the role of parents in stimulating and nurturing children, said Dr. Fraser Mustard, one of Canada’s leading experts in the field.

In fact, as a consultant to the South Australia state government, he is urging the jurisdiction to provide paid parental leave of 18 months - six months longer than in Canada - and allow one parent to take a day off a week until their child reaches age three.

“Parents are the best input,” said Dr. Mustard, founder of the Council for Early Childhood Development. “If you understand the biology of brain development, yes, parental leave makes sense.” …

In Canada, the federal government offers 15 weeks of maternity leave benefits and another 35 weeks of parental leave benefits that can be used by either the father or mother.

Dr. Sherlock said she believes it is important that women have a choice to work or not, freedom that will affect their happiness in the family environment…

Source: National Post, Canada
http://tinyurl.com/38moj5

From early on, toddlers learn to recognize shapes and solve problems by fitting puzzle pieces together or matching differently shaped objects to their respective holes.

As they age, jigsaw puzzle pieces and other board puzzles can help strengthen logic skills and manual dexterity in their hands.

Through the primary years of school, children are often exposed to a number of puzzles based upon their level of study.

These may come in the form of crossword puzzles to boost vocabulary lessons; math and logic puzzles to foster arithmetic skills; and different game puzzles like mazes and “find the differences” that allow kids to strategize, problem solve and learn the lessons of due diligence in completing a task.

Middle school and high school students may be presented with puzzles that challenge their skills in math and science.

Science experiments and mechanical puzzles that require building or designing can foster skills in physics and geometry.

Upon exploring the benefits of puzzles in a child’s development, it is important to encourage puzzle play in and out of the classroom…

Source: Victoria News, Canada
http://www.vicnews.com/portals-code/list.cgi?paper=36&cat=46&id=1051073&more=0

Physiological Differences

Historically, boys excelled in math and science, and girls lagged. But much effort has been heaped on closing that gap nationally. Researchers and educators are now turning their attention to boys’ struggle to read.

If they don’t, the effect will be dramatic, some predict.

“It’s a man’s world - it’s not a boy’s world,” said William Pollack, a Harvard Medical School professor, author and director of the Centers for Men & Young Men. “We didn’t stop to notice over time that while girls did better with math and science, boys began to fall behind in reading.”

When that trend started is unclear because there is a lack of comparable data, Pollack and others said. What is clear: The situation is not improving.

Pollack offers these statistics:

•Boys learn to read an average of 12 to 15 months later than girls.

•Nationally the gap between girls’ and boys’ reading proficiency is 5 percentage points to 10 percentage points. In writing, it’s 10 percentage points to 15 percentage points.

•About three-quarters of special-education students are boys.

•Poor, black and Hispanic boys struggle the most with reading…

Educators have long recognized that boys and girls learn differently. And new brain research has convinced some that more consideration should be given to the findings.

“Girls’ left brain tends to develop more quickly than boys’ left brain,” said Diane Connell, a professor of New Hampshire’s Rivier College. “That enables girls in kindergarten and first grade to actually do the writing, fine motor skills, sit in their seats longer. They’re even able to hear better. They really do come to school more equipped to read and write.”

Boys’ right brains - responsible for spatial and visual motor skills - develop faster than girls’, so they do better in math, she said.

“It’s a serious crisis right now,” Connell said. “The boys are having the crisis now that girls had 25, 30 years ago.”

Boys prefer hands-on activities and are more selective about what they read than girls. Fluency is a problem for many boys because they don’t read enough, researchers said…

Source: Tampa Tribune
http://www.tbo.com/news/metro/MGB1F0JNE4F.html

We live in one of the wealthiest, most technologically advanced nations on earth. We’ve had 60 years of peace and prosperity with free education and medical services for all.

Our homes are crammed with labour-saving devices and electronic entertainment that previous generations couldn’t even dream of. Surely our children should be growing happier every year?

Well, no. According to figures released last month, one in ten now suffers from a clinically-recognised mental health problem, and earlier this year a UNICEF report on “childhood well-being” found that out of 21 nations across the developed world, British children are the unhappiest…

We’ve come to believe that 21st century children are different from children in the past - that they can get by with less parental time and attention, skip stages in their development and cope with pressures and emotional burdens children shouldn’t have to cope with.

The brutal truth is that they can’t. Life may have changed enormously over the past few decades, but the human brain evolves much more slowly - in fact, it hasn’t changed since Cro-Magnon times.

All babies are born as little Stone Age babies, and it’s up to their parents - supported by their wider community - to help them towards maturity, gradually equipping them with the inner strength, skills and knowledge they need to live in a complex technological culture…

The “obesity explosion” of recent years shows that society - parents, manufacturers, marketers, even the schools that fed children turkey twizzlers - lost sight of the importance of wholesome food in recent decades.

As for shelter, we’ve confused that with over-protection, keeping children wrapped in cotton wool to keep them “safe”, and thus denying them essential opportunities to learn through real-life experience - actually getting out on their bikes and breathing fresh air.

And in a 24/7 culture, where sleep has been sidelined as electronic entertainment fizzes on throughout the night, children may well be getting less sleep than at any time in human history.

Another essential childhood need is the emotional stability that comes from feeling cared-for and secure.

Tiny babies, who can’t feed or look after themselves, need to know someone is caring for them at all times, and are programmed to recognise and become attached to this “someone” by sight, sound, smell and so on.

The carer therefore needs to be a constant and consistent loving presence in the child’s life.

We’ve comprehensively blown this one by putting so many tiny children into day nurseries, so that both their parents can go out to work and feed the economy rather than the baby.

As children grow older, emotional security is associated with regularity and routine, such as family meals and a familiar bedtime ritual.

Children need adults not only to love them, but to provide regularity and to set and maintain boundaries for their behaviour. So parents have to balance warmth with a degree of firmness…

Children also need to learn communication skills, another essential element in emotional and social development.

This starts from the moment they’re born, and is an important part of the bond with the carer that underpins emotional development.

As parents sing and talk to their babies, they awaken the language instinct wired deep in the human brain and provide the data through which children will learn to speak their mother tongue.

But if adults don’t spend time with their children, communication skills won’t develop as they should - and, in a busy modern world, many parents aren’t available to play their part in this process.

Many children now spend the majority of their day in institutional care…

Ironically, in a world where there are more ways to communicate than ever before, parents communicate less and less with their own children.

There’s one other absolutely vital ingredient if children are to grow strong in body and mind - one that, to the great concern of developmental psychologists, is being practically eradicated from many children’s lives.

They need to play. What’s more, they need to play in a relaxed, unstructured way, preferably outdoors with other children and - as they grow older - away from the eagle eyes of the adults…

Human children develop physical control and co-ordination through running, jumping, climbing, skipping or kicking a football around.

They gain first-hand experience of the world they’re going to live in by making mud-pies or paddling in puddles or messing about in a sandpit, riding a home-made go-kart or climbing a tree…

Sue Palmer’s book Toxic Childhood: How the Modern World is Damaging Our Children and What We Can Do About It is published by Orion Books.

Source: Daily Mail
http://tinyurl.com/269wva

Newborns sleep about 16 hours a day. When infants reach a year, they stand on their own, or at least wobble. At age 4, many children can tell stories — and in the decade that follows, motor skills become bike rides; memory skills become math solutions; language skills turn into back talk — as the brain prunes its billions of nerve cells and refines its trillions of connections.

And once they’re 18, they may again sleep 16 hours a day.

This path into adulthood is well worn, but developmental scientists know very little about the mental changes that guide the way — limiting their ability to identify and understand many disorders that crop up en route.

Soon, however, a group of researchers will complete a major study of normal brain growth — the first of its kind — that will fill in this map of child development.

The National Institutes of Health Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study of Normal Brain Development, an encyclopedic and unprecedented project, will track the growth and structural changes of healthy children’s brains as they develop from birth to late adolescence — providing developmental researchers and pediatricians with a benchmark, finally, of what is “normal.” …

Source: Los Angeles Times
http://tinyurl.com/3b3299

This summer, brain experts funded by the National Institutes of Health are finishing the largest systematic clinical study ever of the neurobiology of youth. In a $30 million project, researchers in six cities have been combining brain scans, psychological profiles, medical exams and intelligence tests gathered from hundreds of healthy children to answer a fundamental question about brain development that nags parents and pediatric practitioners alike: What is normal?

When completed, this NIH brain archive promises to become the first clinical benchmark by which normal development can be judged, matching behavior to brain anatomy from birth through adolescence. With it, specialists should be able to understand better problems such as autism, in which neural miscues undermine the mind. Educators bedeviled by child-rearing fads and untested teaching theories should be able to match alterations in brain structure to the rise and fall of learning skills. “Once we know the map, we can tell what nudges the brain for good or ill,” said NIH brain imaging expert Jay Giedd.

By any standard, every child’s brain is an experiment…

In its essence, this biomedical mosaic is a national portrait of the child mind.

It reveals that gender differences and income disparities matter less than previously believed and that health matters more, project researchers reported recently in the Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society.

Healthy girls and boys do equally well on most cognitive tasks. Boys perform better at analyzing and manipulating shapes and patterns, while girls perform better on processing speed and motor dexterity. No differences were measured in calculation ability, suggesting boys and girls have an equal aptitude for math. By age 12, many children are as proficient as adults by most measures of mental performance…

Source: Wall Street Journal
http://tinyurl.com/2rgl53

About 40 per cent of three-month-olds watch television or videos for an average of 45 minutes a day or more than five hours a week, says the first ever study of the viewing habits of children under age two.

The study, by pediatric researchers at the University of Washington, also found that by age two, 90 per cent of children are watching television for an average of more than 90 minutes a day…

Researchers said they were surprised not only by the number of hours young children are spending in front of the television but also by the primary reason: Most parents are using television as an educational tool, not for the more conventional explanation of babysitting. Despite nearly a decade of warnings by pediatricians to the contrary, parents believe that the content of programs aimed at babies is good for brain development.

“I wouldn’t be so upset about this if I thought parents were doing it because they needed a break to take a shower or make dinner,” said Dimitri Christakas, the University of Washington pediatrician who co-authored the study. “What I’m troubled by is the notion that parents think it’s good for their kids. That’s more likely to lead to excessive viewing rather than occasional viewing.” …

“We have succeeded in convincing people that the first years are critical to brain development,” said Meltzoff, who is co-director of the Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences at the University of Washington.

“The unfortunate consequence is that it has spun off to build a brainier baby enterprise, where people think they have to use technology to take advantage of this critical window.”

What parents identify as attention and learning scientists say is a primitive reflex known as the orienting response. “Yes, the baby is staring at the screen, but it’s wrong to think the child likes it,” said Christakas, the study’s co-author and the father of two young children.

“He or she has no choice in the matter. He’s hard-wired to pay attention to anything that is fast moving, brightly coloured or loud. It’s a survival response.”

A baby is born with 100 billion brain cells, but only 17 per cent are immediately operational.

“The rest of the wiring follows in the days, weeks, months and years to come,” said child psychologist David Walsh. What’s not hard-wired by genetics gets soft-wired by experience and exposure…

Source: Hamilton Spectator
http://tinyurl.com/2uw5r5