Read Teaching Kids to Think Online
Authors: Darlene Sweetland
Teaching Kids to Think (21 page)
Parent:
Dr. Ron, I wanted to tell you about a funny thing my four-year-old son does. He really loves a certain movie and watches it almost every day, but he hates the scene with the puffer fish. He will get visibly nervous when it is about to come out. As a result, he has learned how to use the remote control and he fast-forwards that part every time. It has become a bit of a joke that he likes the remote more than some of his toys. Now that he knows how to use it, he keeps the remote with him during the whole movie. What do you think that is all about?
The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry reported in 2011 that children watch an average of four hours of television per day. That is twenty-eight hours per week and almost fifteen hundred hours per year. To put this in perspective, children spend almost twice as much time watching TV than they spend being instructed by a teacher per year in the United States (that average is 782 hours).
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At that rate, by the time the average person reaches forty years of age, he or she will have spent more than six years watching TV. Children are also spending a significant amount of their time playing video games. A study showed children eight to eighteen years old spend an average of seven hours and thirty-eight minutes using entertainment media in a typical day. That is more than fifty-three hours per week.
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This severely limits the amount of time left to develop decision-making and judgment skills.
Television plays a major role in our lives. With today's on-demand cable and DVR technology, we can watch just about whatever we want whenever we want to, and we can skip the parts of the show our children don't like. Not so long ago, we were required to set a VCR to record a show. Not long before that, we needed to actually be there when a show aired to watch it. If a great show was going to air Thursday night at 8:00 p.m., it actually took some real planning to make sure everyone was home, ready, and prepared for the episode. There was no rewind or pause of live television. This may seem a bit dramatic, but it exemplifies the fact that time management, planning, and prioritizing were so much a part of everyday living. In other words, the lack of advanced technology created the opportunity to make mistakes, feel disappointed, and learn from the mistake. Instant 24/7 access takes away opportunities to practice these skills.
Today's parents and children learn the value of instant gratification with television very early. It is not uncommon for infants and toddlers to regularly watch television and videos designed to grab their attention. In fact, some programming is designed just for children under one year old such as the Baby Einstein video collection, and others like it, which claim that there are benefits to having infants watch and listen to the program. The advertising is so powerful that parents are actually made to feel guilty if they don't expose their children to the programs. Infants and young children learn very quickly that parents have the power to start, stop, rewind, pause, and restart television and videos whenever they like, instantly, and their parents will do so when they react in a particular way. That's a lot of power for an infant or young child, and they grow up expecting lots of things to work that way.
Again, these are not conveniences that should be given up. But it is another example of technological advances depriving our children of valuable every day learning experiences. The goal is to utilize the conveniences and benefits of technology, and be aware to provide other learning experiences for your children so they learn patience and problem solving.
Watch Television Together
Television is a lot like the other technologies discussed in this chapter. In moderation, it is probably just fine, but when it becomes a way to escape responsibility or social opportunities, it can be a hindrance to normal personal and social development. We offer the following tips:
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No televisions in the kids' rooms. It only encourages isolation and separation from the family. When the television is in a common area, you can be sure that the shows being watched are more appropriate.
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Set up family rules for the times and amount of television that can be watched.
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Schedule family television events. They can consist of watching a movie, a show, or a special event (football game, awards show, Discovery series) together. The key is that the family participates as a whole. This can be great family time but it requires planning and organization.
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A lot of really good educational TV programming is available. Nudge your children toward shows about nature, history, or adventure. Shows today are often so visually stimulating; children won't even realize it's good for them. Myth Busters is a favorite in our family.
Ask your children what they watched and learned. Mealtime is a wonderful opportunity for talking and letting kids lead the discussion. “I saw you watching a show about volcanoes. I don't really understand them. How do they work?” Or, “I wonder how close the nearest volcano is. Did you see anything about that?” This encourages your kids to “think” about what they are watching. You can also look for ways to relate these family activities to what they are learning in school.
Technology isn't the problem. However, when the use of these electronics enables a child to miss opportunities to grow or develop skills, we take note. For all the wonders of technologies, in the hands of an impulsive or anxious child, there are some very real fears. If you can't sit through a commercial, how do you sit through school? If the majority of your discussions occur online, what happens when you have to do an in-person interview to get a job? Finally, what happens to the teen who doesn't practice problem solving as a child when he goes off to college and has to make a lot of decisions on his own?
It's important to remember that we don't often consider the long-term impact of our short-term goals. You might use electronics to get a child to stop crying while you are on the phone or to remind her to come home for dinner on time. The use of technology in each of these situations is convenient and makes sense. When it becomes the standard or expectation is when it leads to problems with a dependency on technology.
Putting It All Together
The Issue
Technology makes it really easy to do a lot of things and this is great. As a result, this generation of children knows nothing other than an instant gratification world.
The Trap
We find ourselves in a time where technology is the solution to a lot of problems. Answers are obtained at lightning speed, directions are at our fingertips, and there is no limit to the amount of information, data, and media available to us. The trap occurs when children fail to develop the ability to think for themselves and solve their own problems because they believe that they don't need to. Why think about the earth's circumference when you can search the Internet for the answer in seconds.
The Alternative
Embrace technology as a powerful tool to help your children achieve their dreams. Teach them how to use it positively and it can be a great part of their development.
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From the very beginning, be alert for situations where children appear to be dependent on technology. Maybe they cry until you play the video they want, or they refuse to fall asleep unless they have some electronic device soothing them. When you see this happening, change up the routine and let them learn how to wait or soothe themselves. This goes for older kids too. Pay attention to whether they are glued to a screen during any free time.
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Have your children earn new electronic devices such as video games or phones. The sense of accomplishment is very powerful and reinforcing.
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Know what they are doing online and tell them that you are paying attention to it.
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Participate in social networking with them.
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Have them teach you about new technology or things that they are doing online. It will show you are interested and keep communication open.
Set clear rules and boundaries for use of electronics from the very beginning. Your rules might be no video games on school nights, or no phones at the table, but whatever the agreed-upon rules are, make sure they are enforced.
C
HAPTER
9
Athletics Provides More Than Just Fun
A friend of ours was coaching a little league baseball team for eleven-year-olds. The season is more than twenty-five games long and lasts about four months. This particular team made it to the finals of the tournament at the end of the season and earned beautiful runner-up trophies that the boys were very proud of. A few weeks after the season ended, a parent contacted the coach and asked if he could pick up his son's trophy. It took a few minutes for the coach to remember the child, since he had quit the team after four games because he “hated baseball.” The child hadn't attended a practice in three months and missed the last twenty-plus games, but the parent thought that after quitting on his teammates, he should still get a tournament trophy.
âDr. Ron
There was a time when children begged their parents to let them play an organized sport. Today, it seems as if much of this has changed. Parents routinely sign their children up to play a sport without consulting them or asking their child's opinion. It is not uncommon for kids to be playing on teams throughout the year, whether they want to or not. And many parents “coach shop,” which means they try to make sure their child always gets the best coach and plays on teams with his friends. Parents become so invested in making the season a positive experience by purchasing the best gear, being on a winning team, and advocating for their child to play a popular position that the child often misses the lessons learned by simply committing to the sport, setting goals, and learning how to communicate with others. In doing so, parents play right into the traps of the Instant Gratification Generation. In previous chapters, we shared that many parents struggle with rescuing their children from the demands of school, but parental overinvolvement in the realm of athletics can also have an impact. These kinds of parental interferences shelter children from dealing with unpredictable circumstances, which means fewer opportunities to build resiliency and overcome obstacles.
Why Should Children Play Sports?
I was at a youth soccer tournament where a friend of mine was coaching a group of ten-year-olds that had just lost the championship game. The kids all got medals and had huge smiles on their faces. There were lots of hugs from parents and talk about a pizza party to celebrate. I mentioned to the coach that they didn't look like a team that just lost and he said that the kids played the best soccer of their season in the tournament and did much better than they expected. To them it was a huge success to play so well and everyone was really proud of how far the kids made it.
âDr. Ron
Just as teachers, administrators, and parents emphasized that resilience, hard work, and social skills are strong predictors of success for children and adults, the coaches we interviewed highlighted the same characteristics. They reported “diligence,” “hard work,” “perseverance,” and “the ability to look at the big picture” as important characteristics in a successful athlete.
Kids hear terms like
work ethic
,
practice
,
teamwork
, and
dedication
frequently from coaches, so they become familiar with those concepts early on. When this is the case, practicing these “life” skills becomes fun and rewarding. When we add in the health benefits of regular exercise, athletics can become a powerful part of a healthy childhood.
Each time our children get together with other kids, they learn how to make and maintain friends, play together, communicate, and a whole host of skills that will be used in their daily lives. Athletics fills this need perfectly. Play comes naturally to the vast majority of children. On the other hand, playing well with others sometimes takes a little more practice. Early childhood offers a great opportunity for children to practice this skill by having them play an organized activity.
While athletics has so much to offer children in the way of teaching diligence, hard work, and perseverance, it can only do that if parents support those lessons. If a parent criticizes a coach, complains about the child's playing time, or rewards the child with trophies when he doesn't play during the season, it undermines what the coaches try to teach their team. When parents step in to orchestrate their child's experience and are working harder than their child for them to be successful, the child can't fully benefit from participation, because she thinks her parent deserves the credit, not her.
Teamwork
Playing on a team provides many great opportunities for a child to learn skills that can be difficult to teach in other environments. Team sports require you to think about other people while at the same time working together toward a mutual goal. The idea that when you work together you can achieve greater success epitomizes what we call teamwork. The metaphors that we use about working together as a team can also be used in so many other contexts.
