Childhood News

Why Kids Need Play Dough

Web Admin — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 15:39:10 +0000

Mr. Z shares his thoughts on why children enjoy and need to play with play dough.

Edward Z. Tronick to speak in St. Louis

Web Admin — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 19:47:54 +0000

UCCC is partnering with Saint Louis Psychoanalytic Institute to bring Edward Tronick, PhD to speak in St. Louis on Thursday, October 27, 2011 at the Ethical Society of St. Louis.

Dr. Tronick will discuss, "Meaning Making: How Infants and Young Children Make Meaning of Themselves in the World"

Edward Z. Tronick, PhD, is a world-class researcher and teacher recognized internationally for his work on the social emotional development of infants and young children, and infant-parent mental health. This lecture will focus on the ways infants “make meaning” of the world using non-verbal processes, including emotions and actions through social play, culture and relationships, and Dr. Tronick will explain how the “meaning making” processes may lead to typical or to pathological childhood development.

Dr. Tronick developed the Still-face paradigm, which has become a standard experimental paradigm for studying social emotional development in the fields of pediatrics, psychiatry, clinical and child psychology, and nursing. In his studies using the still-face he revolutionized our understanding of the emotional capacities and coping of infants and the effects of factors such as maternal anxiety and depression on infant social emotional development.

Thursday, October 27, 2011

Ethical Society Auditorium 9001 Clayton Road St. Louis MO 63117

7:30-9:00 p.m.

Tickets Are $15/person

To purchase tickets online, go to: www.stlpi.org/training/registration

For more information go to www.stlpi.org/training/lecturesseminars or contact Saint Louis Psychoanalytic Institute at 314-361-7075

Learning to read is harder than you think

Web Admin — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 15:42:54 +0000

How many words have you learned today?General Facts

Children in first and second grade need to be learning 800 words a year or 2 a day
Children in grades 3 through 8 need to learn 2 to 3 thousand words a year or 6 to 8 words a day
The achievement gap first occurs at a very young age. At age 3, high socioeconomic status children have average vocabularies of 1,100 words, whereas low socioeconomic status children have average vocabularies of 480 words.

Number of words heard by the age of 3:

children in Low-income homes - 10 million
children in Middle-income homes - 20 million
children in High-income homes - 30 million

If language starts in the crib, as shared Monday, it means we need to create an environment where babies feel physically safe so they can open themselves up to receiving the tenderness of language and communication. Children not only learn new language, they are learning how to receive…feeling the trust that radiates through the environment. Trust and receiving language go hand and hand.

We make a difference in the environment: Children in environments that are inviting and containing, in families that talk to each other and read, are much better at discriminating language and sounds. Environments that are filled with toxic stress inhibit a child’s ability to receive language. The quality of language is diminished. Language is heard in a fragmented manner without the sound bridges that are invitational.

Research states that children who live in poverty are expose to 30 to 40 million fewer utterances than children reared in a professional home. The quality and richness of language is less, affirmations of children are less, and interactions are more directive and negative than in homes of families with professional careers.

What happens when children do not have a language rich environment at home? If children are not surrounded with positive language and literacy experiences (such as snuggling up and being read to, even as infants), they are in danger of losing the ability to develop language and literacy skills.

Children of low-income families often live in a language-deprived environment that causes them to fall behind their more affluent peers, even before they enter kindergarten. Although some remediation is possible in later years, it comes at a high cost.

Creating an environment that fosters future readers:

Critical ingredients - Lap time, eye contact, and tender voice quality for and with all ages
Be an appropriate role model...read!
Provide a rich language environment
Develop a robust vocabulary
Enunciate to support phonetic awareness
Play rhyming word games
Ritualze reading times
Impromptu reading - Drop everything and read!
Reading environmental print...signs, advertisements whereveryou go.

All of the above are integrated in the relationship you develop with your child. Strong relationships facilitate strong language development which enables children to be ready to learn to read by kindergarten.

Post by Stephen Zwolak

How do we create the next generation of American readers?

Web Admin — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 11:50:41 +0000

General facts:

80 million adults in our country are illiterate
50% of our African American and Hispanic students read on grade level
First Grade and second graders need to learn 600 to 800 words a year, an average of two per day

Research on Adults

A recent study involving two groups of adults revealed the following:

Group One – The adult works, shops and comes home and watches entertainment, but they have almost no involvement in civic life or cultural life and don’t read.
Group Two – has the same interests as the first group, but they read. They are 3 to 4 times more likely to volunteer, participate in charity work, vote, exercise, play sports and participate in sporting events. They live an average of 6 years longer than group one.

Reading is an extremely complicated practice the human brain has to do; it involves many rules such as decoding, language structure rules, vocabulary and much more. The complicated brain functions can be started early in life, beginning at birth. We must build structures that support children to prepare for reading.

Reading starts in the crib during infancy! Babies need to be enveloped by soothing sounds, words, and books. Infants need to be exposed to books, knowing the black lines on the pages mean something, whether they are looking at the book or chewing the book…BABIES NEED BOOKS, LAPS, AND THE SWEET SOUNDS OF THE MOTHER, FATHER OR THE CAREGIVER'S VOICE. This encourages a baby's brain to develop the ability to react to the changes in sounds. The faster those shifts occur, the more language becomes embedded in the child’s brain and becomes a predictor of reading acquisition.

So, what matters? It starts in the crib and the baby's brain matters. Stimulating the baby's brain with rich language and all the sounds babies hear makes a difference. Motherese, the cooing language we often use when talking with a baby, helps a child to bridge the sounds together that eventually form words. The tenderness of Motherese makes receiving language a joy. When babies are exposed to short staccato autocratic language, they have difficulty building bridges from the sounds to make words. As a child is developing language skills with caring adults, they are developing relationships with loving people. Strong language development often means strong relationships for the future.

Tomorrow we will add the importance of the environment.

Post by Stephen Zwolak

Heckman: The Economics of Human Potential

Web Admin — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 20:31:57 +0000

What is a good teacher?

Web Admin — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 12:31:53 +0000

On Saturday, I posted a question on the UCCC FaceBook wall, What is a good Teacher?

On Monday, the ExchangeEveryDay’s feature was titled “A Good Teacher” where Carol B. Hillman, author of Teaching Four-Year-Olds: A Personal Journey, commented on “Good Teacher.”

Interesting timing so I ask,

What is a good teacher?

A good teacher…

Has the ability and the willingness to search for “self,
Begins to understand the “WHY.” Why do I want to work with children? What is it that drives me to wake-up and face the challenges of working with young children?,
Knows that early childhood education is a journey of understanding,
Begins to see the mirror images that children reflect on their own life,

In the classroom…a good teacher…

Listens to children,
Encourages children to think and create, which engages learning, and enable us to
Learns about children from the inside out,
Allows the children take the lead,
Engages in face to face simple genuine encounters with every child everyday,
MUST HAVE THE CAPACITY TO "BE" WITH OURSELF AND WITH OUR CHILDREN!

Teaching must be aesthetically pleasing emotionally to the core of the “self.”

Post by Stephen Zwolak

Getting back in the rhythm

Web Admin — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 18:32:00 +0000

NOTE: The segment featuring Mr. Z begins around the 30 second mark.

Holiday wonder…bright lights, the smell of baking cookies, late nights, the grandparents, visiting relatives…the bliss of the holiday!

BACK to SCHOOL routine after the holi-daze.

The transition back to school is tough on all family members. It creeps up on us, and before you know it we are expected to slip back into the same routine that was disrupted since Halloween!

The children’s routines are all dis-com-bob-u-lated!

Our routines are dis-com-bob-u-lated!

First, we must take care of ourselves, as they say on the airplanes, “if the cabin pressure should change, pull the mask down and place it over your mouth and breathe, then attend to all children."

As parents, we must be prepared to get back in the routines so it will happen for our children.

First Things First:

Reflect on the holidays with your family…we all had a good time but now…
Regain bed time routines
Begin eating proper foods at regular meal times
Re-establish morning rituals

Take two aspirins and give it three weeks!

Post by Stephen Zwolak

More on: "You better watch out..."

Web Admin — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 17:33:48 +0000

You better watch out!
Better not cry!
Better not pout!
I’m telling you why...

He sees you when you’re sleeping.
He knows when you’re awake.
He knows if you’ve been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake...

Let’s read the words...remember children are literal...Who am I watching out for?

A guy with a big white beard, with magical powers, who flies through the air...yikes, if he can make things fly...what else can he do!

...you better not cry...

But mommy and daddy, I’m scared, it hurts, they hurt my feelings...BUT you better not cry!

...you better not pout...

What does it mean to pout...even when I am upset and don’t get my way, I can’t express my feelings...is this the message we want to teach our children...not to express feelings?

...he sees you when you’re sleeping, he knows when you're awake, he knows if you’ve been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake!

We see more and more children with sleep disturbances; many of them are quite normal and appropriate, but many are not...one of the biggest family issues with time is “how do I get my child to bed?" Many families are using this song and songs like this to coerce children to go to bed under the threat of “he’s watching you.” What mental images does this child conjure up for a child? What fantasies does this evoke?

We all dream, some more visual and memorable than others. Children also dream, have nightmares and even night terrors, which are developmental, evoked by the day-to-day emotional conflicts children encounter...they hold it together through the day and release it at night, often in their dreams.

What I am suggesting is not to ban songs but to understand the subtle implications that this song evokes. How do we help a child gain the understanding of Santa, of the season, of their feelings that fit their developmental level?

WHAT TO DO...

Be with your child.
Understand your child. Are they too literal? How active is their imagination? Do they have a tendency to be timid or fearful? Are they experiencing developmental phobias – animals, noises, drains, shadows or darkness?
Listen to the words, help children understand the words...what do you think “pout” means? Do you know anyone who cries? Why?
LOVE your child and reassure your child that you will keep them safe.
Read or tell stories without pictures, so children can fabricate their own images...they will only imagine what is safe for them.
Use silly childhood humor not adult sarcasm.

You better watch out...

Web Admin — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 23:58:51 +0000

The holiday season…a time of joy, love and peace…

Children need to have a sense of belonging, a feeling of being loved and appropriate power over their environment. Often while parents are in the midst of the chaos of holiday preparation, children lose their sense of belonging and search to regain it. Children begin to act out and parents want to contain the child’s behavior by using strategies of singing the song…”you better watch out….” The holiday becomes a series of bribes and subtle threats…”Santa won’t come if you don’t behave…”

The gift of song is a wonderful gift, singing the songs of your childhood with your child, sitting with your child on your lap or sidling with your child, just being together. It will provide the joy, love and peace of the holiday.

Feel the Joy, love and peace by

Slowing down the pace
Keeping routines for children
Sharing your family traditions
Sharing stories of your childhood
Understanding what’s important
Minimizing stress and stressful situations

Happy Holidays!

Post by Stephen Zwolak

Building Blocks of Raising Thankful Children

Web Admin — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 17:27:00 +0000

Steve spoke with Margie Ellisor from KTVI about raising thankful children. The building blocks he suggests are:

Model empathy for very young children (first three years of life)
Give the language and words and activities of thankfulness and empathy (4 through 6)
Provide activities such as family and community involvement for children to experience...such as thank you notes, give old toys to others (elementary school age)