Four Dangerous Parenting Styles Today

Just walk into any pre-school center and you’ll see that parents continue to evolve, even today in 2019. The variety of today’s parents is enormous. One teacher told me moms or dads will remain at the school until after the official start time, to make sure their child is safe and happy. Another administrator told me that parents are now dropping their child off with an extreme list of requirements for teaching and items their child is not allowed to be exposed to (granted, allergies are completely understandable). Still others report moms dropping their child off daily, with plans to go shopping, play tennis or get massages or spa treatments. The fact is—we are living in a new day, when parenting has become a competition. We see it in schools, soccer teams, theater and neighborhoods. Out of this stressful period, we’ve created new methods to help us cope with our new realities: The tablet is the new pacifier. When my kids were toddlers we gave them a pacifier when they became fussy or fidgety. Today—90% of preschool aged children are on a tablet or portable device amusing themselves. The baby monitor is the new baby sitter. These monitors have been around for decades, but now we use them to watch both the children and the baby sitter we’ve hired while we’re away from our home. Cameras are everywhere. Netflix is the new playground. Our kids were outside playing more than kids are today. Children now will spend hours vegging and binging on Netflix shows. They are sedentary, but safe, secluded and satisfied. Fortnite is the new pick-up baseball game. I recall playing outside for hours after school with whoever was available for a baseball or basketball game. Now, “pick up” games are played with friends or strangers on a video screen. Instagram is the new photo album. This one has made life easier. Instead of buying a physical photo album and storing it away in the attic, we now have our library of pics on social media sites we can access more simply and faster. Medication is the new time-out. Over the years, kids have been given larger amounts of meds for a widening variety of allergies or diagnoses. We have to be careful these meds don’t replace the pain of disciplining them. Four Dangerous Parenting Styles While none of these methods are tragic, they do signal a different way of coping with our busy lives. Some of us—quite accidentally—have failed to recognize how it’s affected our parenting styles in the home. I’d like to call your attention to four types of poor leadership within families, that eventually lead to unhealthy outcomes in the children. I offer them to you simply as a word of caution: 1. The Preoccupied Parent (Distracted) One of the more common responses we received from students in our focus groups was that they seldom spoke to their parents. One said, “When I get home from school, I never talk to my mom. She’s on Facebook all afternoon, then on her phone while she’s cooking dinner.” More and more, we adults have become slaves to our portable devices, as much as our kids are. We’re distracted from our highest priority—leading our family. 2. The Paranoid Parent (Distrustful) I see these parents all the time—refusing to let their kids take any risks; to ride their bike across the neighborhood; or attend a college more than two hours away. They micromanage. These parents are distrustful of others to take care of (even) their teens, and they always err on the side of caution and fear. They often raise kids who either rebel as soon as they possibly can…or who are fearful just like them. Fear rules the day. 3. Passive Parent (Docile) This parent is the opposite of the paranoid parent. They are so disengaged from or overwhelmed by their kid’s issues, they withdraw and become docile. They have no idea who their children’s friends are; they don’t know what questions to ask their teen; and they are emotionally absent when they are needed most by their kids. They fail to empower their kids, and neglect to invest in them during their rite-of-passage years. 4. Pandering Parent (Defenseless) This style may be as bad as the passive parent, but for other reasons. This parent is simply weak emotionally. They pander to their kids, giving in to every whim or demand. They’re afraid of being un-liked and afraid of conflict, in general. The child quickly learns they’ll get their way and pushes their parent as far as they want. This parent usually ends up with spoiled children who make demands as adults. My question is—in this new day—have you drifted into any of these styles? The post Four Dangerous Parenting Styles Today appeared first on Growing Leaders.

How I will educate my Children TED talk.

By sharing this video with you my intent is not to encourage all ISHCMC students to be home schooled but to reflect upon what we are trying to achieve through our progressive view of what education should be for our students today. Joshua Steimle talks about' the system' throughout the talk and how and why it is broken. Many of the reasons he gives for advocating for home schooling are what ISHCMC does as a school within a traditional constraints. Many of his objectives are ours, and so are many of the outcomes that he sites. It is interesting to look at a talk like this, that could be the antithesis of what we do or who we are, and yet discover there are many touch points and similarities.


"This talk was given at a local TEDx event, produced independently of the TED Conferences. Joshua Steimle gave an incredibly interesting talk on home schooling and his thoughts on why he believes it is better than sending your children to school. Joshua Steimle is a self-taught entrepreneur, with a day job as the founder and CEO of MWI, an online marketing firm with offices in the US and Hong Kong. He is a contributor to Forbes and Entrepreneur magazines, as well as other publications. Steimle was raised by a mother and father who both had college degrees in education and taught within the US public education system, and Steimle, acting as his mother's de facto teacher's assistant, saw firsthand the hard work teachers perform, as well as the limitations of the system. Steimle holds a Masters of Information Systems Management from Brigham Young University. His wife, also a BYU graduate, holds a Masters of Science in Marriage, Family, and Human Development, and they have two young children. Steimle has always been passionate about learning, but not necessarily within the bounds of traditional systems. Since having children, he has turned his pursuits in self-education to focus on various methods and philosophies of education including public education, private education, homeschooling, and unschooling."

Finland, Switzerland and New Zealand lead the way at teaching skills for the future

Finland is the world leader at the provision of future skills education, according to the Worldwide Educating for the Future Index (WEFFI), which is now in its second year, closely followed by Switzerland.

Both countries particularly excel in the policy environment category, and specifically in terms of formulation of future skills strategy, the periodic review of strategy and the assessment frameworks to support future skills training.


The WEFFI report, by the Economist Intelligence Unit, looks at policy initiatives, teaching methodologies and the socio-economic environment of 50 countries. It found the five worst-ranked countries to be Egypt, Nigeria, Algeria, Iran and Pakistan.

Hard truths for soft skills

We live in an era that is increasingly being defined by change – in terms of both its speed and its spread. A number of start-up businesses, harnessing the power of technology, have successfully up-ended the status quo of sector after sector. There’s Amazon, which disrupted the sale of books and became the world’s biggest bookseller, before disrupting the book itself with the creation of mass-market e-readers and electronic book consumption. More recently, Uber has managed to redefine the taxi sector, and in the financial world fintech companies have changed the way people manage their money.

But the next wave of change will have more profound effects, which is why it is so important for national governments to set in train the right policies. As things stand, according to the WEFFI report’s authors, most countries’ educational systems are not configured to equip the next generation with the skills they are most likely to need.

Part of the challenge facing educationalists is that technological change will call for skills that fall outside of age-old approaches to curriculum design and teaching. Emotional intelligence, creative thinking, and collaboration are just three core aptitudes that will be needed, but which cannot easily be taught in a traditional classroom environment.

Get out of the classroom

This fast pace of technological transformation - often referred to as the Fourth Industrial Revolution - is based on a suite of technological developments that includes automation, artificial intelligence, the internet of things, the fusion of genetic science with biotech, and always-on access to data.

The report highlights the importance of language learning and the role of AI as a teaching aid in the classroom. But it also points out that many key elements of future skills learning will take place outside the classroom. In the United States and United Kingdom, after-school clubs for primary and secondary school students are connected to evidence of better school attendance and better academic results. The benefits are being seen in high-poverty areas with low-performing schools, in particular.

“In research published in 2016,” the report states, “UK experts found that attendance in such clubs is associated with positive academic and social outcomes, particularly for disadvantaged children. Its findings also suggest that children who participate in organized sport and other physical activities have better social, emotional and behavioural skills than those who do not.”

While so many aspects of life have changed almost beyond recognition, classrooms have altered little in 200 years. A group of students sit at desks facing the front, where a teacher stands, ready to impart facts; the challenge for teachers will also be to keep up with the pace of change.

“Updating curriculum should always be on the agenda,” says Jaime Saavedra of the World Bank, quoted in the WEFFI report. “But it is incredibly urgent to invest in changing the behaviour of teachers and improving what happens inside the classroom.”

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/03/finland-switzerland-new-zealand-lead-at-teaching-skills/

Technology use explains at most 0.4% of adolescent wellbeing

A study of 300,000 adolescents and parents in the UK and USA shows that only 0.4% of wellbeing in adolescents is associated with technology use. Comparatively, eating potatoes has nearly as negative an effect, and wearing glasses has a more negative effect on adolescent mental health than screen use.

Researchers at the University of Oxford have performed the most definitive study to date on the relationship between technology use and adolescent mental health, examining data from over 300,000 teenagers and parents in the UK and USA. At most, only 0.4% of adolescent wellbeing is related to screen use – which only slightly surpasses the negative effect of regularly eating potatoes. The findings were published today in Nature Human Behaviour.

'Our findings demonstrate that screen use itself has at most a tiny association with youth mental health,' said lead researcher Professor Andrew Przybylski, Director of Research at the Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford. 'The 0.4% contribution of screen use on young people’s mental health needs to be put in context for parents and policymakers. Within the same dataset, we were able to demonstrate that including potatoes in your diet showed a similar association with adolescent wellbeing. Wearing corrective lenses had an even worse association.'

In comparison, smoking marijuana and being bullied was found, on average, to have a 2.7 times and 4.3 times more negative association with adolescent mental health than screen use. Activities like getting enough sleep and eating breakfast, often overlooked in media coverage, had a much stronger association with wellbeing than technology use.

The method used by the researchers, called Specification Curve Analysis, revealed the reason there seems to be no firm scientific consensus on screen use and mental health. 'Even when using the same datasets, each researcher brings different biases with them and analyses the data slightly differently,' said Amy Orben, College Lecturer at the Queen’s College, University of Oxford, and author on the study. 'Of the three datasets we analysed for this study, we found over 600 million possible ways to analyse the data. We calculated a large sample of these and found that – if you wanted – you could come up with a large range of positive or negative associations between technology and wellbeing, or no effect at all.'

'We needed to take the topic beyond cherry-picked results, so we developed an approach that helped us harvest the whole orchard,' added Professor Przybylski.

In order to remove bias and examine practical significance (rather than statistical significance), the researchers used information from other questions in the same dataset to put the statistical findings on screen use in context. 'Research’s reliance on statistical significance can yield bizarre ‘results’', said Orben. 'We need to look at the size of the association to make a judgement on practical significance. If you told me the amount of time a teenager spends on digital devices, I could not do very well predicting their overall wellbeing, as only 0.4% is associated with technology use.'

'Bias and selective reporting of results is endemic to social and biological research influencing the screen time debate,' added Professor Przybylski. 'We need to put scientific findings in context for parents, policymakers and the general public. Our approach provides an excellent template for data scientists wanting to make the most of the excellent cohort data available in the UK and beyond.'

The full paper, 'The association between adolescent well-being and digital technology use,' can be read in the journal Nature Human Behaviour.

The data was drawn from three large-scale representative datasets: Monitoring the Future (USA), Youth Risks and Behaviour Studies (USA) and the Millennium Cohort Study (UK), totalling over 300,000 individuals surveyed between 2007 and 2016. The findings were derived using Specification Analysis Curve method, which examined the full range of correlations relating digital technology use to child and adolescent psychological wellbeing. Details on methodology and all necessary code to reproduce the analysis are available in the paper’s supplementary material.

http://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2019-01-15-technology-use-explains-most-04-adolescent-wellbeing

Parents' Ultimate Guide to YouTube

Advice | 2:11

5 Ways to Make YouTube Safer for Kids

Smosh, Jenna Marbles, Markiplier -- the names may not mean much to you, but chances are your kids are on a first-name basis. These funny YouTube hosts, with their off-the-cuff commentary, silly antics, and bewildering (to adults) subject matter, are some of the most influential personalities on young teens, garnering millions (and, in the case of disgraced Swedish gamer PewDiePie, billions) of views. But information about these personalities' shows -- the content, quality, and age-appropriateness, for example -- isn't easy for parents to find.

It would be great to be able to just download YouTube Kids and have your kids watch something hopefully more age-appropriate than regular YouTube. However, YouTube Kids has problems of its own. And the bottom line is: kids want to watch the original. But it's tough to manage. Anyone can create YouTube channels, they crop up seemingly out of nowhere, they don't follow program schedules, and they're cast out among thousands of other videos. There are also serious concerns that YouTube collects data from young users, in violation of the Childrens Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). 

So if your kids really love it, you'll have to strategize. Reading Common Sense Media reviews of YouTube channels is a good way to get a sense of their age-appropriateness and quality. And digging into the videos themselves -- watching with your kids or on your own -- is wise. You never know what's going to come up on a particular channel, since all the content is user-generated. 

Here are parents' most commonly asked questions about YouTube and kids. Also, read our detailed review of YouTube.

What's the best way to keep tabs on my kids' YouTube-watching?
How can I find out what my kid has been watching on YouTube?
How can I minimize my kids' exposure to iffy videos on YouTube?
How can I find out who's behind the videos my kid watches on YouTube?
How can I manage the related videos on YouTube?
Can I get rid of ads on YouTube?
What should I say to my kid about all the mean comments people leave on YouTube?
Are there any parental controls on YouTube?
How can I find good stuff on YouTube? 

What's the best way to keep tabs on my kids' YouTube-watching?

Simply ask your kids what they're watching and join them. In general, kids are tuning into certain channels or following specific YouTube personalities because they're entertained by them (not because they are actively searching for "bad" stuff). Many kids naturally want to share the videos they like. But be prepared to watch some weird stuff such as unboxing videos. If kids don't want to share, get the name of the channel they're watching and watch it later. Watch a few videos by the same creator to get a feel for the content.

How can I find out what my kid has been watching on YouTube?

If you're concerned about the content your kid is watching on YouTube -- and you've tried talking to her -- there are ways of tracking her viewing habits. If she has a YouTube account (which only requires a Gmail address), her YouTube page will display her recently watched videos, recommended videos based on her watch history, and suggestions for channels similar to the ones she's watched. Even if your kid deletes her "watch history," the recommendations all will be related to stuff she's watched.

How can I minimize my kids' exposure to iffy videos on YouTube?

Encourage your kids to subscribe to their favorite channels rather than hunting around on YouTube for the latest ones from a specific creator. Subscribers are notified when a new video is uploaded, plus all their channels are displayed in the Subscriptions section, making it easier, and faster, to go directly to the stuff they like. Consider choosing subscriptions together, and make an event out of watching the newest uploads with your kids. You can also try the Watch Later feature. YouTube gives you the ability to save videos to watch at a later time, which improves the odds that your kids will be exposed to stuff you've preapproved. You can create playlists, too, virtually designing a customized programming schedule of content for each of your kids or for different subjects they're interested in. 

How can I find out who's behind the videos my kid watches on YouTube?

Investigate the creator. The name of each video's creator appears beneath the video window and usually has a bit of information about the person behind the video and/or the channel itself. Google the creator's name to find out whether he or she has a Wikipedia page or another Web presence (most YouTubers use other social media including Snapchat, Twitter, and Instagram to promote their brand). You might find out that your kid's favorite YouTube personality has an impressive reach. Check out our recommendations of positive role models on YouTube. 

How can I manage the related videos on YouTube?

The suggested videos listed on the right-hand side of the page are related in some way to the main video. Evaluate them to see if they seem age-appropriate, and that will provide an indication of the appropriateness of the main video. Here are some additional tips to make YouTube's related videos a little safer. 

Can I get rid of ads on YouTube?

There are tons of ads on YouTube. Even if your kids stick to kid videos, they'll see commercials for stuff that may not be appropriate. You can try to reduce or manage exposure to advertising, but the best option is to talk to your kids about viewing all marketing critically so they don't get sucked in. Alternatively, you can consider subscribing to YouTube Red, which doesn't show ads and which also has exclusive content.

What should I say to my kid about all the mean comments people leave on YouTube?

YouTube comments are notorious for being negative, but it's worth reading them to get a sense of the channels' demographic and the tone of the discussion. It can be possible to find hate speech or child predators lurking in the comments of videos featuring or targeted to kids and teens. Channel creators have the ability to moderate their comments to reduce the amount of negativity. A well-groomed comments section may indicate a more responsible creator. 

Are there any parental controls on YouTube?

YouTube is technically only for teens 13 and up, and what the site considers age-appropriate may not match your values. But YouTube offers a filter called Restricted Mode that limits the iffy stuff. Go to your account settings page and toggle on Restricted Mode at the bottom of the page. (It will remain on for logged-in users on the same browser.) The YouTube app also offers some settings that remind you to take a break and restrict your time, although these features are more a part of Google's efforts to promote "digital well-being" than parental controls. If you want more control over what your kids can watch on YouTube, consider downloading the YouTube Kids app, which offers some features including screen-time limits and restricted search, to keep young kids a little safer on the platform.

How can I find good stuff on YouTube? 

Most kids find out about new videos either from their friends or by clicking on the related videos (which may or may not be appropriate). But YouTube itself offers several ways to home in on quality content. Go to YouTube Spotlight for curated content in a variety of categories. Read about YouTube news on the company blog and check out our YouTube reviews and curated lists of decent YouTube shows for kids, such as Funny YouTube Channels, Positive Role Models on YouTube and Best YouTube Channels and Videos for Preschool Kids.

 https://www.commonsensemedia.org/blog/parents-ultimate-guide-to-youtube?utm_source=NEW+03082019+TWEEN-TEEN&utm_medium=email

Teach Kids When They’re Ready

©Shutterstock.com/Liderina

Our friend Marie’s daughter Emily just entered kindergarten. Emily went to preschool, where the curriculum revolved around things like petting rabbits and making art out of macaroni noodles. Emily isn’t all that interested in learning how to read, but she loves to dance and sing and can play with Barbies for hours.

Emily’s older sister, Frances, was reading well before she started kindergarten, and the difference between them worried Marie. Emily’s grandparents thought it was a problem, too, and hinted that perhaps Marie should be reading to Emily more often. When Marie talked to another mom about it, her friend shared the same concern about her own two daughters, wondering if it was somehow her fault for not reading to her younger daughter enough. Would these younger siblings be behind the moment they started kindergarten?

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This scenario drives us crazy because it’s grounded in fear, competition, and pressure, not in science or reality. Not only are parents feeling undue pressure, but their kids are, too. The measuring stick is out, comparing one kid to another, before they even start formal schooling. Academic benchmarks are being pushed earlier and earlier, based on the mistaken assumption that starting earlier means that kids will do better later.

We now teach reading to 5-year-olds even though evidence shows it’s more efficient to teach them to read at age 7, and that any advantage gained by kids who learn to read early washes out later in childhood.

What was once advanced work for a given grade level is now considered the norm, and children who struggle to keep up or just aren’t ready yet are considered deficient. Kids feel frustrated and embarrassed, and experience a low sense of control if they’re not ready to learn what they’re being taught.

The fact is that while school has changed, children haven’t. Today’s 5-year-olds are no more fundamentally advanced than their peers were in 1925, when we started measuring such things. A child today can draw a square at the same age as a child living in 1925 (4 and a half), or a triangle (5 and a half), or remember how many pennies he has counted (up to 20 by age 6).

These fundamentals indicate a child’s readiness for reading and arithmetic. Sure, some kids will jump the curve, but children need to be able to hold numbers in their head to really understand addition, and they must be able to discern the oblique line in a triangle to recognize and write letters like K and R.

The problem is that while children from the 1920s to the 1970s were free to play, laying the groundwork for key skills like self-regulation, modern kindergartners are required to read and write.

Brain development makes it easier to learn virtually everything (except foreign languages) as we get older. Work is always easier with good tools. You can build a table with a dull saw, but it will take longer and be less pleasant, and may ingrain bad building habits that are hard to break later on.

One of the most obvious problems we see from rushed academic training is poor pencil grip. Holding a pencil properly is actually pretty difficult. You need to have the fine motor skills to hold the pencil lightly between the tips of the first two fingers and the thumb, to stabilize it, and to move it both horizontally and vertically using only your fingertips. In a preschool class of 20 we know of in which the kids were encouraged to write much too early, 17 needed occupational therapy to correct the workarounds they’d internalized in order to hold a pencil.

Think of it: 85 percent of kids needed extra help, parents spent extra money, and parents and kids felt stressed because some adult thought, “Hey, wouldn’t it be swell if we taught these 4-year-olds to write?” without any regard to developmental milestones.

We see this early push all the way through high school. Eighth graders take science classes that used to be taught to ninth graders, and kids in 10th grade read literature that used to be taught in college. In Montgomery County, outside Washington, DC, the school district attempted to teach algebra to most students in eighth grade rather than ninth grade, with the goal of eventually teaching it to most kids in seventh grade. It was a disaster, with three out of four students failing their final exam. Most eighth graders don’t have sufficiently developed abstract thinking skills to master algebra.

Historically, kids started college in their late teens because they were ready; while there have always been exceptions, on the whole 14-year-olds weren’t considered developmentally ready for rigorous college work. Ironically, in the attempt to advance our kids, our own thinking about these issues has regressed.

Ned fields requests from many parents who want their kids to start SAT prep in the ninth grade. Ned tells them that it’s a mistake to spend their kid’s time and their money for him to teach them things that they will naturally learn in school. It’s far better to wait for them to develop skills and acquire knowledge at school, and then to add to that with some test preparation in their junior year.

Starting test prep too early is not just totally unnecessary, it is actively counterproductive. It’s like sitting your 14-year-old down to explain the intricacies of a 401(k) plan. It’s not going to register.

The central, critical message here is a counterintuitive one that all parents would do well to internalize: Earlier isn’t necessarily better; and likewise, more isn’t better if it’s too much.

https://www.edutopia.org/article/teach-kids-when-theyre-ready

Reading too soon

There is a widely held belief in this country (and many others) that if we start teaching children to read, write, and spell in preschool and kindergarten that they will be ahead of the game (and their peers) by first grade. We think that pushing our kids to start early will make them better and give them the edge.

But it doesn’t work that way, in fact it can be detrimental.

Here’s why…

Children’s neurological pathways for reading, writing, and spelling are not formed yet at these young ages, therefore they are not equipped. In child development you can not miss, shortcut, or rush steps, it just doesn’t work.

Between 3 and 7 years old, predominantly the right side of the brain is developing. The right side of the brain is not where word reading takes place. The right side sees pictures and shapes and uses mental imagery to create the movie in their mind to understand the story. The left side of the brain is where we read words, it is responsible for decoding words into letters and phonetically sounding them out. This is true word reading. It is not until about age 7 that the corpus callosum fully integrates the left and right hemispheres of the brain to make reading complete for kids.

By making children read when they really only have access to the right side of their brain, they are forced to memorize what words look like by shape and guess, opposed to being able to sound them out. Not true reading. Also, when kids are focused on memorizing what the words look like by shape, they are not using their right brain to create the movie in their mind, leading to low comprehension.

What you might not know is that developing a strong sense of balance and proprioception (knowing where your body is), is a mandatory precursors to being a strong learner and student. Balance and proprioception are achieved through play, movement, and experiencing your surroundings, not through sitting still reading.

Don't get me wrong, I think being a good reader and spending lots of time reading is very important. Reading ability is probably the most important learned skill in our society. But the path to learning to read is counter-intuitive, the earlier we start them the harder it may be for them to achieve the skill of effortless reading needed to excel in school.

So how do we fix it?

Slow down. Let them use their body, play lots of games that require balance, help your child develop their balance and a sense of where their body starts and stops. Also, spend lots of time reading to them. Read to them so they can practice mental imagery in a relaxed environment. By reading to them, especially nursery rhymes, they train their ears to hear the slight differences in words, which is very important later when they are phonetically learning letters, sounding out words, and decoding words for spelling. (TV and videos can't give this to them.)

Until you have worked on this, your efforts for mastery in reading, writing, and spelling will be in frustration.

https://www.theorganizedmindhq.com/blog-1/reading-too-soon

References used for this article include:

-Johnson, Susan R. MD, FAAP, "Teaching our Children to Write, Read & Spell", http://youandyourchildshealth.org/articles/teaching-our-children.html

-Davies, Douglas, MSW, PhD, Child Development: A Practioner's Guide, Third Edition

-Milne, Duncan, Neuropsyschologist, Teaching The Brain To Read