edumacation

[glowbelly]

soooo, i was just thinking today as a result of babysitting this 5 year old that a lot of the problems with a child's education start with the parents.

this little boy is never read to at home. he told me today that he and his mom are supposed to be reading books and writing down the names of them for his pre-school and she hasn't read him one.

he can't identify letters of the alphabet. he can say it, but if i point to an A (which is in his name) he doesn't know what letter it is.

it's all very scary and makes me wonder if parents think that it's completely up to the schools to teach their kids.

i've begun to take an active approach with cub's education. he just turned a year and brings me books to read him. i count things out for him and sing him the abc's, etc...i'm just wondering what happens next. i mean is there going to be a point where i'm going to give up and slap him in front of the tv? i mean, i don't intend to do that at all, but ya know, stuff happens.

which brings me to another thing. these children i watch? they are tv hounds. they would rather sit in front of the tv then do anything else. they have CRIED over me saying no to them going over to their dad's to watch tv. CRIED.

so parents, and non-parents alike, what are your plans for your kids? do you read to them? do you limit the amount of television they are allowed to watch? if you don't have kids, do you intend to when you do have them? i'm just wondering. i need ideas, too, because this child is getting older and i'm afraid that one day i'm going to wake up and he's going to want to watch lazytown instead of read a book with me

[KevinTheOmnivore]

The early years are crucial, and having a parent read to their child is soooo important (note: I work for a kiddy literacy non=profit, so i am a bit biased).

"it's all very scary and makes me wonder if parents think that it's completely up to the schools to teach their kids."

yes, they do. This has increasingly become a problem with the growing Latino populations in America, too. They tend to be so deferential to people in authority, that they refrain from getting involved in their child's education. They also might not speak English, which prevents them from getting involved at school.

It sucks. It sounds like the kid you're baby sitting is doing a reading challenge, which can be great, if the parents took part in it. Once (as I'm sure you know glow) you get in the habit of reading to your child daily, it just becomes old hat. And the best part is that the suckers can't read, so you can speed up the story or change shit!

It's sad.

[Dole]

Just about every sociological study done in the UK on the subject says parental involvement in your child's education is just about the most important factor in what level of success they have.

[kahljorn]

I wouldn't feel safe leaving my children's education in charge of the public. That's about all there is to it for me ;/

I think along the way of reading to your child you'll find it rewarding and enjoyable, knowing your child's brain is healthy is pretty rewarding. Just wait till he gets a little older and you can start sharing good books with him, beyond the scope of children's books. You could introduce him to some interesting stuff, stuff that maybe you didn't know about at that age but wish you would've.

[KevinTheOmnivore]

Yeah, you're totally right about that last part. My kid is gonna fuckin' hate me.

"My dad forced me to read The Metamorposis when I was 7. "

Which, btw, there is a childrens version of that came out a couple of years ago.

[Pharaoh]

And remember, if your child doesn't turn out as smart as Einstein, then it's entirely your fault. All you need to do is give him a good healthy diet and educate him well and he too can be a genius, it's all up to you. :/

[KevinTheOmnivore]

I would like to ban you.

[Pharaoh]

What for? I am innocent.

[KevinTheOmnivore]

It was a joke.....oh, I'm sorry, hold on....

I would like to ban you.

See?

[Pharaoh]

I see.

[Immortal Goat]

No, lack of education isn't entirely all your fault. It's all up to the fucking schools. If the school sucks, that isn't your fault. The school should just get better. Nevermind the option for the parent to send the kid to a better school or home education. Nevermind that parents are failing to hold up their end of the bargain by handing their children over to others, and failing to accept responsibility for their kid's actions. Christ, you make me sick, Pharoah.

As for my kids, I plan on reading to them every night, just like my parents did. My mom read me Edgar Allen Poe since I was 4 years old, and my dad read The Hobbit. Thanks to that, I was one of the only kids in school that carried a book instead of a gameboy, and I'm damn glad for it.

[El Blanco]

The thought of me spawning sends chills down my spine, as it should all of you.

That said, yes, reading is important to young children. My folks got on my ass about reading when I was very young, and I ended up reading Tom Clancy and Stephen King before high school (Hunt for Red October damn near gave me an anuerism when I was 14). My older brother tried to get me into Dale Brown, but it just didn't take.

The result being that I'm a freakin genius. An underpaid and unappreciated genius, but a genius still.

The thing that really bothers meabout parents not getting involved is that its probably part of a viscious cycle. The parents don't get involved, so the children don't get that great an education. The children grow up and have their own kids, but don't place a high enough value on education, a trait they learned from childhood.

[Emu]

When you're reading to your children, make sure they're in your lap or on the seat with you and follow along with what you're reading with your finger or a pencil. If they can directly connect the words coming out of your mouth to the words on the page, the improvments in their ability to read and the speed at which they absorb the material will improve phenomenally.

[glowbelly]

like i said before, jacob brings me books to read to him now. he is turning the pages on his own and recognizes certain books by their cover. he gets extremely excited when i pull out his favorite ("goodnight sweet butterflies") and i can never only read the thing once.

i started reading to him at about a month old. i even read outloud when i'm reading something for myself.

i remember when i was young my mom would always buy me a book if i wanted one. i may not have gotten the candy bar, but i got 'the pokey little puppy.'

what about tv? right now cub watches a half hour video at night before he goes to bed. half of that time he spends running around the living room and not even paying attention to the screen. it's mostly a way to wind him down. i'm curious as to how your parents (or you) limited television, if they did at all. i don't ever want my child crying because he can't watch some cartoon.

[Emu]

I'm not a parent, so I dunno about that. If ever I have a kid I think I would limit TV as much as possible in favor of books or outdoor games. I think the most important thing is stressing that TV is a treat, not a lifestyle.

[glowbelly]

the 7 year old i babysit had some homework one afternoon that was a little questionairre about herself. one of the questions was "when are you most happy?" she wrote "when watching tv."

[Fathom Zero]

Without my mum teaching me to read, I believe that I would be non-functional.

[Preechr]

Kahl, you're an ignorant slut. Intelligent, but dumb as a bag of cats sometimes.

Glowbelly, ever tried substituting music for the TV during that wind down period?

I'm not necessarily agreeing that TV has any effect on people, as the correlation may well still be that smarter people don't like TV as much rather than TV makes you dumb, just as it may be that disdain for TV is just intellectual snobbery... but I watch it about as much as you let your baby partake.

I think it may be possible, though, that audio only might stimulate the imagination more than the fuller experience of television, and the stimulation might be of higher overall input value with good music instead of the incessantly random theme changes experienced within any given 15 minutes of television programming.

It also encourages dancing over sitting and staring, which is always more fun to watch.

[glowbelly]

preech, the stuff he watches is basically visuals that are set to music. one is a four seasons video that plays vivaldi's four seasons in the background while the screen shows random seasony scenes.

the other is a mozart video which shows the alphabet and various floaty stars and such.

we talk to him throughout the videos (when he is paying attention). he usually just runs around in circles. we let him. it's not like we make him sit down in front of it and if he doesn't watch, we turn it off. we just let him do what he wants, but he knows he has to stay in that room and he definitely knows that when the video is over it's bedtime. half of the time he is in his bedroom once the credits start rolling, yellin for a bottle.

[Preechr]

Works for me.

I do pretty much the same thing, at least if you substituted Brasilian funk music for vivaldi and randomized message board pages for psychadelic light shows.

[MLE]

Just cause this is in the Poli forum doesn't mean you can go off on a tangent and ruin Ms. Glowbelly's thread

Glowlady, my mom gave me a choice nightly what I could hear. The choice was between two songs or one story. My sister and I got her to change it to two songs instead of one cause they're much shorter. When we got older, we moved on to bigger books and it was a chapter a night or two songs. It made me want to read a whole lot more. My parents still didn't limit my TV much, and I wish they did. I only just recently (past 2 or 3 years) realized how boring and uninteresting TV actually is.

Good luck with your reading and your veggie integration!

[glowbelly]

TV. DO YOUR CHILDREN WATCH IT?

BOOKS. DO YOUR CHILDREN READ THEM?

[Girl Drink Drunk]

I think that is cool that your son doesn't have a problem with the TV (wish I could say the same). Just a thought, though, if you don't mind me asking: How does your kid socialize with other children his age? I guess this is kind of a different topic, but related. My point to that is that when I find a book I enjoy I read through it, any chance I get. I'm not sayng that reading is bad, but unfortunately at school it usually takes up my time at lunch and I don't socialize a lot (well, I find it hard to talk to people at school anyways). I just hope your go through the same troubl and shyness I have (fortunately I hang out with more people now during lunch, at school, now). I think it is also important for a child to develop some good social (I wish I had better ones). Anyways, I hope my rambling has made sense, somewhat.

[kahljorn]

"The play included some explanation of relativity, how the theory influenced the developement of nuclear weapons, and examined the relationship between ethics and science. It didn't concern itsef at all with what factors made Einstein a genius, and I'm pretty sure that while people can speculate, nobody has any idea. "

That's sort of what I was indicating, when most people think of, "What made einstein a genius" they probably think of which discoveries he made. Obviously that's not a qualification for being a genius, because plenty of people have probably not discovered or invented anything who are/were genius, I was however waiting for Pharaoh to start citing his discoveries. Other people would probably bring up IQ, but that doesn't really describe the mental processes/foundation by which he is able to exceed, and thus doesn't really answer the question of, "What makes a genius?"
According to some of what i've read on geniuses, the actual abilities they have that allow them to 'push the envelope' are things like understandig relativity between things/ideas that normally wouldn't be considered relative, or juxtaposing(casual observance helps as well). This somehow allows them to see things other people couldn't. I guess it's sort of like that type of mathematics where you don't have the answer, but you can take two different equations, mash them together and somehow find the answer. I forget what that's called.

Also, it isn't that hard to scroll past posts of people you're not interested in reading, i do it all the time. takes me like five seconds because i'm scrolling past it, and even if you did read it it'd take a minute, tops. Unless you're a slow ass reader. I scrolled past MLEs the second i saw it was about me shutting up, took less than a second. I skipped yours so fast, glowbelly, I thought you were Sadie and speculated there was some woman's alliance on the board or something. Imagine how embarassing that could of been for me ;(
Plus i'm sure you guys have inserted empty assholish opinions that were entirely unrelated to the threads topic at some point in time.

[glowbelly]

well, he's only 1 year old, so his social skills consist of taking toys away from other kids and pushing people out of the way when he sees something he wants.

seriously, when he's around other children his age they basically do this thing where they play, but they don't really interact. the interaction doesn't happen until he's a bit older, but i do take him out and he's around other kids pretty often. so, it's a start.

i plan on letting him play sports, or rollerskate or take dance or instrument classes when he gets older. whatever he shows an interest in, we'll support. plus that will get him to socialize a bit more with kids his own age and teach him about teamwork and sharing, etc...