What do you really want for your child?
Often, when parents are asked what they want for their child, they respond with “I want my child: to be happy, to have a positive self esteem, to be confident”.
We agree that children’s self worth is a desirable goal in children’s healthy growth development. What can we do?

We thought you may be interested to learn about a recent report from the American Academy of Pediatrics (www.aap.org/stress) advocating free, unstructured play.  We learned about it from ExchangeEveryDay, and we pass it along to you.

In a report in PEDIATRICS, Dr. Kenneth R. Ginsburg asserts: “Play is essential to development because it contributes to the cognitive, physical, social, and emotional well-being of children and youth. Play also offers an ideal opportunity for parents to engage fully with their children. Despite the benefits derived from play for both children and parents, time for free play has been markedly reduced for some children.

This report addresses a variety of factors that have reduced play, including a hurried lifestyle, changes in family structure, and increased attention to academics and enrichment activities at the expense of recess or free child-centered play”.

For further reading, please go to:

http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/full/119/1/182

In the Christian Broadcasting Network, Heather Sells asserts: “It’s no secret that many American kids are very busy with organized activities. But what psychologists now realize is that these jam-packed schedules can silence play. This lack of play is stunting emotional, behavioral and even intellectual growth… More than 25 years ago, psychologist David Elkind sounded the alarm in his book The Hurried Child. Now, he says the real danger is the loss of what used to be a childhood staple: free, unstructured play. “We learn through experience and through play children create new learning experiences that they couldn’t have in any other way,” Elkind said. The American Academy of Pediatrics puts some of the blame on schools — for cutting recess time. The academy believes that can negatively affect the ability to learn. Elkind says many college professors are aware of play-deprived students: they usually have little imagination or creativity, and their need for structure is so great that they often ask for daily homework assignments. “What play does is provide nourishment for fantasy, imagination, creativity,” Elkind said. “These are like muscles. If you don’t use them, you lose them.” Elkind says parents must enforce the exercise of these so-called “muscles.” “Many parents tell me ‘I have to put my kids in soccer or in Little League because if I don’t — there’s no one else in the neighborhood for them to play with — they’ll be by themselves.’ That’s fine — let them have some time for themselves!” Elkind said.
To read the entire article, please go to: http://www.cbn.com/CBNnews/248093.aspx

From Publishers Weekly: As a developmental psychologist (Theories of Development: Concepts and Applications), Crain is deeply concerned that a societal emphasis on pushing children too hard to succeed is robbing them of creative, joyful childhoods. The widespread parental obsession, for example, with getting their children into good colleges has, in part, led to an educational system that promotes mastering academic skills and test-taking at the expense of the arts. Drawing on current research and the developmental theories of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Maria Montessori, John Dewey, Noam Chomsky and others, Crain convincingly argues that children have a natural affinity for drama, nature, art and poetry-all of which are necessary to their development and should be encouraged by a “child-centered” rather than an “adult-directed” approach to raising children.

To read more, please go to:

http://www.amazon.com/Reclaiming-Childhood-Letting-Children-Achievement-Oriented/dp/0805075135

In an article in the New York Times, Robin Marantz Henig writes: “Stuart Brown, president of the National Institute for Play, was speaking at the New York Public Library’s main branch on 42nd Street…. Brown called play part of the ‘‘developmental sequencing of becoming a human primate…. Parents bobble between a nostalgia-infused yearning for their children to play and fear that time spent playing is time lost to more practical pursuits. Alarming headlines about U.S. students falling behind other countries in science and math, combined with the ever-more-intense competition to get kids into college, make parents rush to sign up their children for piano lessons and test-prep courses instead of just leaving them to improvise on their own; playtime versus résumé building.”

To read the entire article, please go to:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/17/magazine/17play.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin

The website of Simon and Schuster state:“Few parents and educators stop to consider that computers, used incorrectly, may do far more harm than good to a child’s growing brain and social/emotional development. In this comprehensive and practical guide to kids and computers, Jane M. Healy, Ph.D., author of the groundbreaking bestseller Endangered Minds, examines the advantages and drawbacks of computer use for kids at home and school, exploring its effects on their health, mental development, and creativity.”

To read more, please go to:

http://www.simonsays.com/content/book.cfm?tab=1&pid=409509

In NPR’s Morning Edition (Feb 21, 2008), the host, Steve Inskeep shares: “Shifts in play alter children’s imagination, even the way their minds develop.”

To listen to this 8 min. audio clip (click on LISTEN NOW), please go to:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=19212514

In SeattlePI, Paul Nyhan writes: “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… 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.”

To read the entire article, please go to:

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/333869_blocks02.html

The following are two letters sent to the WSJ editor in response to an article published there August 22, 2008 (Protect Our Kids from Preschool)

We have received this notice of these two letters from Exchange Every Day:

The first is a letter to the editor of the Wall Street Journal, from Lawrence J. Schweinhart from the High/Scope Educational Research Foundation and James J. Heckman from the University of Chicago:

“Shikha Dalmia and Lisa Snell of the Reason Foundation expressed their opinion in the August 22 edition of this newspaper that preschool education is not a worthwhile investment. Unfortunately, in making their case, they distorted the research that supports this investment, particularly the study of the High/Scope Perry Preschool program in Ypsilanti, Michigan.

“They claim that many of the parents of the children in this study were ‘drug addicts and neglectful.’ There is no evidence for this claim.

“They claim that one of us (Heckman) found ‘that the Michigan program produced a 16-cent return on every dollar spent — not even remotely close to the $10 return.’ Heckman’s actual statement was that the program produced a 16-cent return on the dollar every year of the lives of the participants. Further analysis suggests a 10% return per year, which is still very large and comparable to a total $10 return per dollar invested.

“High-quality, interactive preschool programs can help prevent intractable national problems, such as crime and unemployment. Rather than denying this fact, we need to take advantage of it.”

The second is from W. Steven Barnett, Ph.D. from the National Institute for Early Education Research: