I loved this article shared by my dear friend, Andrea. It captures something I have been thinking about a lot lately, as I see my Pipalicious come up to me and talk about how she is trying harder to be nice or share or work hard. I have recently been reviewing the Thomas Jefferson Education literature I brought with me, about the different phases of learning: core phase, love of learning, and then scholar... (and then...and then :)...)
Here are a couple
favs:
There are cultures
where parents define intelligence as
simply being able to know something needs to be done, and doing it.
There are places where learning is not taught, but caught; where being a quiet and astute observer is how a child learns the skills he needs to thrive.
Research shows that American parents focus on cognitive stimulation,
enrichment and development more than parents in many other cultures,
such as the Dutch or the Italians, who prioritize different things
like routines or even-temperedness. We even justify free play and
recess for their cognitive benefits, and talk about how play lays the
foundation for academic skills.
Every society values its own skill sets for its own reasons. The
problem in America is that, while we excel at raising spectacularly
verbal kids, we have lost sight of other values that we need to foster
in our children.
Now, as with all things that are not straight from the mouth of prophets, I don't endorse the whole thing as truth for me or anyone else...
--I'm not going to start carrying Spooner around all the time
--I will still be prayerfully careful with what I allow my children to watch
--I am not going to have Papaya (2) and Spooner go around diaperless from now on
However, these may be just the thing that someone else feels prompted to do to solve their own parenting issues! Gotta love agency and diversity :).
Thanks, Andrea! Just had to share...and keep, for my own future reference.
Link
The Milestones that Matter Most
Christine Gross-Loh
"M-a-t" "M-at." "Mat." My 6-year-old pored over her Bob book,
painstakingly sounding out each word. I listened and worried; her older
brother was able to read those same words at a much younger age.
It's natural to compare our children and fret over their development.
We are encouraged in the United States to look at a child's expected
milestones and make sure they are meeting them on time. It wasn't until I
started researching global parenting that I discovered how many of a
baby's and child's stages and milestones actually aren't universal. What
we expect of a child at any given age is influenced and shaped by
culture. Viewed through the prism of culture, some notions of "normal"
look totally different:
Babies from parts of Africa, the Caribbean or India whose bodies are constantly jostled and vigorously handled by their mothers
reach motor milestones earlier than babies in Western cultures, who spend a lot of time on their backs.
Babies in some indigenous cultures
who are rarely put down skip the crawling stage entirely.
Vietnamese toddlers don't go through potty training as we know it, because
they've been more or less diaper-free all their lives.
In other cultures, babies are never expected to learn to sleep through the night on their own,
the terrible twos don't exist and teenagers are not expected to be
in conflict with their parents
(and they aren't). And as for us? American parents are encouraged to
talk, talk, talk to our kids, even when they're babies and can't respond
back. Our children become fantastic negotiators. Even as we roll our
eyes with exasperation, we are proud of our little budding lawyers. We
know that talking to our kids is good for them. We associate
verbal prowess with intelligence and
some of us may harbor the secret hope that their ability to nag us into
capitulating means they will get high scores on the SATs and attend a
good college. But not all parents in the world agree. There are cultures
where
parents define intelligence as
simply being able to know something needs to be done, and doing it.
There are places where learning is not taught, but caught;
where being a quiet and astute observer is how a child learns the skills he needs to thrive.
Research shows that American parents focus on cognitive stimulation,
enrichment and development more than parents in many other cultures,
such as the Dutch or the Italians,
who prioritize different things
like routines or even-temperedness. We even justify free play and
recess for their cognitive benefits, and talk about how play lays the
foundation for academic skills.
Every society values its own skill sets for its own reasons. The
problem in America is that, while we excel at raising spectacularly
verbal kids, we have lost sight of other values that we need to foster
in our children.
Thinking about others, not just themselves: Learning
to get along with others is top priority in other cultures. Spanish
parents I spoke with told me they stimulate their babies with people,
not educational toys. They take them out into public early, welcoming
the in-your-face interaction with strangers that most Americans find
intrusive. Japanese moms call their babies' attention to relationships
more than objects the way we tend to ("Look at that big, grey
elephant!").
In one study,
when Japanese and American fourth and fifth grade children were asked
why they shouldn't hit, gossip or fight with other kids, 92 percent of
the American kids answered "because they'd get caught or get in
trouble." Ninety percent of the Japanese kids asked the same question
responded, "because it would be hurtful to someone else." Research
indicates that in cultures which promote collective values -- where
children watch people help each other farm, build homes and so forth --
sharing comes more easily to kids than in more individualistic, competitive cultures like our own.
Hanging up their own jackets: Around the world, kids
run errands, take buses and trains by themselves, keep track of their
own belongings, use knives and cook at an age when we American parents
are still putting on our kids' socks, picking their jackets up off the
floor, and monitoring what they can watch on TV.
Caring for their siblings: One Swedish boy I
interviewed has been bringing his little sister home from school on the
bus since he was in elementary school, making her a snack and
supervising her homework. When we were raising our kids in Japan,
helping out was so valued that our son's school homework included doing
chores like watching or feeding his baby sister. One Japanese mom I knew
regularly left her kids at home while she went grocery shopping; in our
country, this would get her accused of negligence. In our country, we
worry that asking siblings to care for each other puts an undue burden
on their individual potential. The opposite is true: when we ask our
kids to care for one another, it unleashes their potential as
nurturing, socially responsible human beings.
It's not surprising that well-intentioned parents cultivate cognitive
intelligence and individual achievements as assiduously as we do. These
are, after all, such important markers of success in modern-day
America. But our focus on outcomes is leading us to look at milestones
all wrong -- as a series of boxes and achievements to check off a list
on our way to a goal.
We focus on our kids' ability to read when they
are at an age when we should be focusing on their kindness and
character. We worry about overburdening them with chores because they
have to do their homework, when we should be cultivating self-help
skills that will make them self-reliant, and sending them a clear,
unambiguous message: yes, academic achievement is important, but
becoming kind and responsible is, too. These are all milestones we don't
want to miss.
My daughter's reading still hasn't taken off. But when she closes her
book for the night, she reaches for her little sister's hand and takes
her to the bathroom, helps her change into her pajamas, and fetches her
toothbrush. I've finally realized that she is not doomed to failure, but
that she is just developing differently and that her different pace
will allow us the luxury of reading aloud for much, much longer. After
all, she's only 6 years old. It's time to give ourselves permission to
focus less on Mandarin lessons and math enrichment and trust we haven't
doomed our kids to failure if we don't sign them up for club soccer at
age 8. We can give ourselves permission to concentrate more on fostering
kindness in our children, teaching them perseverance and making sure
they know how to hang up their own towels.
