Article: Parenting Lessons I Learned From a Waldorf Kindergarten

Parenting Lessons I Learned From a Waldorf Kindergarten

By Victoria Fedden

It was my dream job and I didn’t get it.

All I wanted was to work in that beautiful, quaint school with the wooden toys and the sheer silks where everything smelled of lavender.

The Waldorf School looked like the calmest, coolest place on earth and when I set foot in the spare, yet homey kindergarten classroom where I was interviewing for a kindergarten aide position, I felt like I’d found the place where I was meant to be.

A few days later, the teacher called and told me the position had been given to someone else and I was crestfallen.

A week after that when she called me again to tell me that the person they’d hired had changed his mind about the job after all, I knew that fate had intervened on my behalf.

Waldorf education was founded by Austrian philosopher Rudolf Steiner in Germany just after World War I and is based on the principles of Anthroposophy.

Waldorf pedagogy believes that the human being is threefold: made up of mind, body and spirit and that all three must be educated. The schools promote creativity, hands-on learning, problem solving, art, music, spiritual growth and service as well as the appreciation of beauty.

I spent a year working in the Waldorf Kindergarten and the lessons I learned have stayed firmly with me ever since. When I became a mother almost four years ago, these lessons and the wisdom imparted to me at the Waldorf school, took on a whole new value and continue to positively influence my parenting.

Parents don’t need to believe in Steiner’s philosophies (yes, some of his beliefs are pretty out there) or even send their child to a Waldorf school to reap the benefits of the core beliefs of Waldorf education. These are simple, good habits that any parent can practice regardless of how they choose to educate their kids or what their family believes.

Kids Need Lots and Lots of Unstructured Play.

If you do nothing else on this list, let your children play freely.

Today’s young people live harried, rushed and over-structured lives where they are shuttled back and forth from school, activities, camps, sports and lessons of all kinds and they have very little free time in which to roam, rest, imagine and learn to entertain themselves.

Stop over-scheduling and let your kids find ways in which to fill their own time.

Stop with the hovering and helicopter parenting. When children are immersed in their play, let them be and only interfere if someone is in danger. If children need redirection, do so subtly and gently.

Turn Off the TV.

I agree largely with the Waldorf anti-TV philosophy, but not wholly. Spending too much time in front of a screen creates individuals who cannot envision pictures in their minds, which is fatal to the growth of the imagination and can seriously hamper reading comprehension later in life. It makes kids lazy mentally and physically. Turn off the TV and get the kids engaged in dramatic play (aka playing pretend).

Fairy Tales and Telling Stories is Important.

We’re talking the gory Grimm’s versions here, too, which I absolutely loved as a child.

I get that some of these original tales can be a bit horrifying to us grown-ups, especially when we are used to the whitewashed Disney versions. Cinderella’s sisters cut their feet to fit in the slipper? Babies get kidnapped by witches? Abusive stepmothers abound, cannibalism is fairly common and all sorts of double crossers commit scores of wicked deeds in fairy tales, but children perceive these stories quite differently than adults.

Don’t worry. Your kids won’t get scared. In fact, these fairy tales actually help children work through their fears and subconscious insecurities about the world.

In addition to reading or reciting fairy tales to your little ones, tell them stories from their lives, your own life and their grandparents’ lives. Make stories up, too. Children love listening to their parents telling stories and speaking directly to them.

Your Kid Doesn’t Need to Read and Write at Three Years Old, Calm Down.

Today’s parents mistakenly believe that the earlier a child learns to read and write the better, but this is a dire mistake.

The thinking is that children need a head start in order to excel in school, but the best head start they can get is by becoming creative and socialized.

How do they do that? Through lots and lots of playing, of course.

Encourage the imagination first and academics will follow. Trust me, there are plenty of Harvard students who couldn’t read and write until they were six. There’s plenty of time.

Spend as Much Time Outside as Humanly Possible.

Nature is enormously restorative and Waldorf schools understand this. Some even have classes which are held entirely outdoors all year round, regardless of weather.

Human beings have lived largely outdoors for thousands of years. Our bodies are durable and made to be outside in the elements so don’t be frightened of nature. It’s the healthiest thing for everyone, kids and grown-ups alike.

Deepen your children’s connection to the natural world by hiking, picking fruit, collecting shells, gardening, rolling in the grass, climbing trees, visiting a farm, playing in the sand at the beach, splashing in a natural body of water—the possibilities for outdoor fun are endless.

You Can Trust Your Children With Knives and Fire, Seriously.

Supervised, of course, but still. It’s safe and reasonable to let your children learn to use real tools, real knives and matches.

Teach them how to use these things with caution and care and let your five year old use a butter knife to cut bread, spread almond butter on his crackers or slice cucumbers for dinner.

Beginning in the Waldorf Kindergarten (where some kids are barely four) children regularly use knives and real tools for their intended purposes. Lit candles decorate the classroom tables and shelves and surprisingly, everything is just fine.

Children can do more than we think—you should see the way the five and six year olds can knit and hammer nails, it’s astonishing and enlightening.

Instill a Strong Sense of Rhythm and Routine.

Children thrive in routine. They feel safe with consistency and when they know what’s coming next. Try to create a sense of daily, monthly, yearly and seasonal routines for your children. It grounds them in space and time and provides a strong sense of security.

It is Perfectly Normal, Healthy Even, For Kids to Get Filthy on a Regular Basis.

I’ve noticed that most of today’s parents are hyper-vigilant about dirt and bacteria and are terrified of their kids getting messy.

Look, just breathe and go with it. Kids need to play in the dirt. Yes, actual soil and sand. They need to splash in puddles, squish berries, feel dough ooze between their tiny fingers. They need to experience their worlds through all of their senses and often this means a full body immersion in things we consider totally filthy. It’s healthy!

Many recent studies blame the explosion of childhood allergies and autoimmune conditions on a “too clean” environment for kids. Getting dirty nourishes the human microbiome with healthy bacteria and strengthens our immune systems.

You can always give them a bath later.

Fill Up the Whole Page.

This was an odd thing I noticed when I worked in the Waldorf school. When the children created art they had little to no direction but they were strongly urged toward filling the entire sheet of paper with layers of color.

This lesson really stuck with me. Waldorf students create magnificent works of art from very young ages and I think that much of that has to do with their being taught to fill the whole page before moving on to a new project. This teaches children to focus and to finish what they start and it creates an appreciation for an aesthetic that doesn’t involve a hapless crayon scribble on a scrap of paper. Their creations are taken very seriously.

Every Moment is a Learning Opportunity.

I like to say that all parents are homeschoolers, regardless of where they do or do not send their children to school.

Children learn from our example so it’s important for adults to comport themselves calmly, assertively and compassionately. Children are in a constant state of learning. They learn through our example, so be mindful of that, and they learn through the experiences we bring to them.

Everything we do with our children is a chance to teach them something.

Show them exotic fruits in the grocery store. Let them weigh lentils in bulk. Explain to them the movement of the tides at the beach. Tell them how the sun moves across the sky each day. Let them stay up to see a meteor shower. Build something with their help.

Practicing Art, Dance, Singing and Handwork Builds the Brain.

Waldorf students and teachers are extremely well rounded. Everyone works on art, music, dance and handwork (knitting, sewing, building, weaving, etc.) regardless of age, gender or inherent talent.

These activities are seen as purposeful work and created a balance human being with an integrated body, mind and spirit. One of the greatest tragedies of our public education system is the removal of the arts from the curriculum in favor of rote memorization and test prep. This kind of “zombie” education creates students who are empty and unfulfilled and who lack passion for learning and living.

Teach your Children Abstract Skills Like Math Through Practical, Hands-On Activities.

People, especially little ones, learn best when they can see how abstract concepts like math and science are applied in the real world. Learn about measuring through building and cooking. Observe science at work in the natural world. When taught this way, children attain a deeper understanding of abstract subjects, plus they learn a lot of useful skills!

Your Children Are On Their Own Path—Respect Their Autonomy and Individuality.

Celebrate your children’s unique spirits no matter how different from you they are or how unexpected they may be.

Our children come to the world through us and we must keep them safe and well until adulthood, but they don’t belong to us. They are their own and their individuality should always be respected and encouraged.

This often means letting them find their own way, their own passions, interests, joys and diversions without parental pressure to conform to any set standard.

The goal is to raise children into balanced, well rounded, confident people who are innovators and free thinkers, not anxious followers desperate to fit in.

Victoria Fedden lives in Fort Lauderdale, Florida with her husband, daughter and cat. She is a yogi, an inspirational writer and a humorous memoirist and is the author of the recently published memoir “Amateur Night at the Bubblegum Kittikat” and the upcoming sequel “Sun Shower.” Victoria received her MFA in Creative Writing from Florida Atlantic University, where she also taught writing. Her work has appeared in Real Simple, Chicken Soup for the Soul and several other publications.

This article appeared in Elephant Journal. Read it at source here.

Photos by Jen Zahorchak and are from the Lakeside School at Black Kettle Farm in upstate New York.

Wi-Fi banned in schools in France.rt

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmcAXZ-o1K4&feature=player_embedded

http://www.wifi-in-schools-australia.org/

Vandana Shiva: Everything I Need to Know I Learned in the Forest

http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/what-would-nature-do/vandana-shiva-everything-i-need-to-know-i-learned-in-the-forest

Our Children

Our Children
Our guides toward becoming truly human

By LOUISE DEFOREST

We have to push ourselves into activity. We must work consciously with spiritual forces and work on our own inner development with great resolve. When I was a new teacher, my mentor said that an early childhood teacher has to be willing and able to sacrifice one’s adult needs. In our adult lives, we crave stimulation, spontaneity, change, novelty, and we digest our experiences through talking; but these are not good things for our classroom. The rock we live on in our classrooms is rhythm and routine. These are cornerstones of each day. A good day in the classroom is one in which time ceases to exist and yet somehow, miraculously, we have snack at a reasonable time, circle and story flow, and the children are ready to go home when the parents arrive. We are quiet in the classroom, always doing tasks, and hopefully our every word and gesture is imbued with intentionality.

But we need to go deeper than this. We need to overcome adult attributes that we associate with modern-day adults—such as being critical, wanting to define and categorize, and wanting to fix. None of these will serve us in working with the children. We must free our thinking if we are to respond to the call of the future. With our thinking we can enter into the realm of ideas and ideals, and it is within our powers to be able to find the essential within these realms. Thinking is an active meditation, allowing us to be instigators of metamorphosis. If we can commit our thinking and feeling to something outside of ourselves, this will bring forth life-giving forces into our work. The more we can remove ourselves from sympathy and antipathy, the more easily can empathy arise in us. We need to develop what Henning Kohler describes as active tolerance.

When we have answers, it is an egotistical act that does not enter the reality of the other. Every child has a reason for incarnating as he has. If there is a hindrance, we can offer help and support but the child may or may not choose to change it. Active tolerance means that we leave others free to be themselves in all their individual expressions. It means we observe and think about them with gentle and unprejudiced interest and that we strive to understand them enough so that we can honor their way of being and behaving without judging them by our own standards or forcing them to meet our expectations.

Far too often we are reactive to life, including the children in our groups. Even after the first day of school, we can hear teachers saying, “Oh, my goodness” about a child, a group, or a situation. Even if we think we have an ideal class, we are defining. It is important how we think about our children; they are particularly dependent upon our regards for them. The child’s social development is aided by the fact that she lives into the soul life of the adults around her. Through ourselves we enable the connection between child and self. We are the self that the child is eventually able to find within herself.

In Life Between Death and Rebirth, Rudolf Steiner said, “For something to happen in the spiritual world, it is essential that there be absolute calmness of soul. The quieter we are, the more can happen through us in the spiritual world—that is what is creative in the spiritual world.” In calmness of soul we can learn how to respond rather than react. We can look at a child with an inner quiet that allows us to go from seeing to beholding. Perhaps a silly child is not being silly to annoy us or to disturb the class; perhaps his senses are so overloaded that he can do nothing else. A child who does not imitate may have been awakened too early into intellect and is paralyzed by living in a very chilly sheath. This child should not be sent out of the group but embraced in a warm soul environment. Most of the difficult behavior we see in the classroom is due to fear and pain. Every child wants to be seen by us and will show in his behavior where his difficulty lies. But it is up to us to learn that language. When we find fault, it is we who lack insight. We must ask whether a child can meet the expectations we have set. Wrong expectations have consequences; they can affect the child’s self-concept for many years.

As early childhood teachers, we are soon forgotten and we may not see the fruits of our labors. When children move on to the grades, they can pass us in the hallways with no recognition. This is good, because the child has moved on, feeling at home in his group and looking towards the future, and we can rejoice for them. But in the early years our lives spill over into the lives of others and we are a kindling force and a revealing power in the lives of the children we have cared for. This life on earth is only a span of time in an endless spiral of striving; everything we do to help will help forever...



This article is a brief excerpt from The Journey of the "I" into Life: A Final Destination or a Path Toward Freedom?, published by WECAN. The book contains lectures from the 2012 International Waldorf Early Childhood Conference at the Goetheanum by Louise deForest, Dr. Michaels Gloeckler, Dr. Edmund Schoorel, Dr. Renate Long-Breipohl and Claus-Peter Roeh. It's available from WECAN Books here.

Louise deForest was an early childhood educator for many years. She now dedicates herself to the mentoring and evaluating of teachers and programs and is actively involved with teacher training in the US, Canada, Mexico and Europe. She is a board member of WECAN and a North American representative to the IASWECE Council.

The images that accompany the article are from the Holywood Steiner School in County Down, Northern Ireland and the Live Oak Waldorf School in Meadow Vista, CA.

Our Hands Belong to Levity

By INGUN SCHNEIDER

A young infant is carried by her mother in a front-pack. I notice that the infant is awake and her little arms hang downwards, hands pulled down by gravity. Another little baby lies flat on her back in a buggy that the mother hurriedly pushes along on a busy sidewalk. The infant is barely visible under the protective hood. I am able to notice that the infant’s hands are raised up above her head and she is moving them gently as she gazes intently at them. She gives the impression of being at peace and thoroughly enjoying getting to know her hands, seemingly removed from her mother’s haste.

Part of my work as a Waldorf educational support teacher is assessing school-age children, either whole classes as part of a class screening or individual children who are having difficulties in school. I find that many of these students’ grasp on the pencil is tense and/or awkward. Then I ask them to do various fine motor activities and notice difficulties with finger differentiation; it’s as if several or all of the fingers work as a unit rather than as separate fingers—which would be more efficient and less tiring. This may sound surprising as students in a Waldorf school do so many activities that involve the hands, from playing the flute or recorder to drawing, knitting and sewing. However, if you look at how these children engage their hands in these activities you can see either a lot of tension or quite loose and almost floppy work. When they draw figures of people they often leave out the hands as if they aren’t quite sure that the hands live at the end of the arms.

Having studied the development of hands for many years, as a physical therapist, interested parent and teacher, I have developed a theory of why so many children (and adults) today have difficulties performing fine motor tasks, including writing by hand. Their hands are unnecessarily tense when writing, they are awkward with the use of tools, and lose interest in crafts, saying that they are not good at it.

My theory has several components. First of all, in order for hand coordination to develop fully, structural alignment in the neck and/or shoulder areas needs to be present. This is because the nerves that innervate the hands go through the shoulders as well as leaving and entering the spinal column at the neck. Sometimes a child’s neck and/or shoulder area (including the collar bone) has been quite compressed during the birth process. This is especially common if the newborn had broad shoulders or if forceps or vacuum extraction was used to help the baby out of the birth canal. If the newborn and young infant is carried in the upright for long periods there is also a possibility of disturbing the alignment of the neck (and shoulder girdle). Of course, parents and caregivers support the immature head and neck, but the infant also has to contribute effort from immature musculature towards maintaining this vertical head position.

On the other hand, when the infant is lying flat on the back or cradled on the side in the parent’s arms the neck muscles aren’t strained before they are ready. The infant can begin to turn the head from side-to-side, lift the head up to look at somebody, or turn toward the breast to nurse, thus gradually allowing the neck muscles to mature. By the time the infant has figured out how to sit up on his own (from lying down), by around 8 to 9 months of age, the neck is plenty strong enough to carry the head upright and able to engage all muscle groups in a balanced way. Then it is time for parents to carry him upright in a front- or back-pack—the baby’s neck muscles are now well-balanced and strong enough to hold the head up with ease. The point I am making is that today we often put our infants into the upright before they are ready; even if the pack has support for the head, in most situations this is not sufficient. Short moments can’t hurt, as long as the birth process didn’t compromise the neck and shoulder girdle too much.

The too-soon-upright situation (before the infant’s musculature is mature enough) also compromises the development of the hands in that the hands tend to dangle down, or, if the baby is older, she may grab part of the pack and hold on to it. In any case when carried or even propped in the upright positions, the baby’s hands do not easily find each other, nor play with the beams of light as they would if lying flat on the back. When in the front- or back-pack the eyes also don’t guide the movements of the hands which is part of the development of eye-hand coordination, basis for the future task of writing, among other tasks. The support that the floor gives the spine (including the neck) when lying horizontal allows the young baby to lift up his arms so the hands end up right above the face. There is little pulling down by gravity as the fulcrum (shoulder joint) is right below the hands, so the hands can play with each other, and the beams of light, for a long time without the arms tiring. Even if the baby is propped only 30 to 45 degrees, the weight of the arms due to the leverage caused by the hands being further from the fulcrum tends to pull the hands into gravity except for short moments of trying to grab something nearby.

Another factor that plays in to the development of the hands is the temporary use of the hands in gravity—as support for the upper body when the baby first pushes up onto the hands while lying on the stomach, soon starts to crawl like a lizard, then creeps on hands and knees. When creeping the hands use a similar gesture to the feet in walking: they swing outward a tiny bit, then forward in the direction of the creeping. The hands’ task is here to connect with gravity so the upper body can be supported enough to allow for locomotion. About three months later the baby has figured out not only how to pull himself up into standing, but also how to balance on the much smaller surface of the two feet and still manage to move forward in the direction he wants to go. Now the hands are truly freed from gravity and can begin to take on their birth right: freely creating, giving and receiving gifts of human kindness.

While the hands are used to support the upper body’s weight they experience pressure on the palms and this seems to be an important factor in furthering the coordination of the hands, for instance for ease of holding the pencil later on. The steady pressure experienced over and over again against the palms as the infant creeps (crawls) around the room actually integrates the palmar reflex. This reflex causes the young infant’s hands to clench as the palms are touched. While this reflex is even subtly present it is difficult for the baby to grasp and let go of objects in a coordinated way. Remnants of this reflexive gesture is seen in so many school-age children’s grasps on the pencil as they write. Imagine the increased tension this causes and how this can lead to a dislike of writing tasks!

The positions into which we place our infants can thus support or delay the development of the hands. We have our precious hands for giving and receiving, for lifting into levity far above our heads, for communicating via writing and gesture, for making useful and/or beautiful things that we and others can use and enjoy, for playing instruments, and for supporting others in their need.

When considering how to support school children who still have not fully developed their fine motor coordination, it’s helpful to address each area described in the article. I often suggest that parents have the child evaluated by an osteopath or other health practitioner who works with cranio-sacral therapy. This therapy is gentle and non-invasive, yet allows any structural misalignments to be addressed.

Next, I teach the parents how to do a pressure massage of the hands and fingers; it is also helpful to begin at the shoulders and press the arms all the way down to the hands. This pressure is rhythmical, gradually gets firmer, then gradually eases; it gives the child  tactile and proprioceptive feedback of the arms and hands, thus allowing for easier use of the hands.

Activities that put weight onto the hands contributes similarly with proprioceptive input while allowing for further integration of any remnant palmar reflex, for instance as the child walks like a crab, kicks the legs up like a donkey or swings through between two desks while the hands carry the body’s weight. Sitting on the upside-down hands in a firm chair as he pushes the body up (like a seated push-up) is another fun way to get weight onto the hands for the school-age child. For all ages kneading dough is fun and rewarding as the baking bread spreads its aroma through the house.

Other interesting proprioceptive activities are: finger-tug-o-war (the child links pointers together and pulls strongly in opposite directions right in front of the body with elbows out to the sides, then moves to the other fingers in turn); Hand Expansion-Contraction and Wool Winding Exercise, both these and other hand exercises are described in The Extra Lesson, see “Suggested Reading.”

Of course, it is helpful to give the student an imagination (or several) to give a picture of the physiologically correct grasp on the pencil. For older students I prefer to explain that the hands and fingers are represented in the brain—that because the thumb and the pointer have more area in the sensory and motor areas of the brain it is, in the long run, much easier to write using these two digits as the main manipulators, with the middle finger supporting them from under the pencil and the last two fingers involved in supporting the hand on the writing surface. This way of grasping the pencil efficiently uses one (of the two) arches of the hands that only humans have (we also have two arches in the foot: longitudinal and transverse). One of the hand arches is seen as the hand is flexed as when all fingers move toward the heel of the hand; it tends to be well developed. The other arch goes from between the middle and ring fingers to the middle of the wrist; this arch is activated when the two last fingers steady the hand while the thumb, pointer and middle fingers manipulate the pencil, chopsticks, paintbrush, or other tool that requires this kind of fine motor movement.

SUGGESTED READING:
The Extra Lesson and Teaching Children Handwriting by Audrey McAllen.
“Supporting the Development of the Human Hand”, article by Ingun Schneider in The Developing Child: The First Seven Years, Gateways Series Three.
The Hand: How its use shapes the brain, language, and human culture by Frank Wilson.

Ingun Schneider is the course director of the Remedial Education Program at Rudolf Steiner College in Fair Oaks, CA. To learn more about the Remedial Education Program at RSC, just click here.

Your Computer Doesn't Have Developmental Stages

Your Computer Doesn't Have Developmental Stages

By LAURA CRANDALL

Some of you may have caught this video when it first came around months ago. It’s a video of a baby trying ‘use’ a magazine as an ipad. The baby’s experience has been, simply put, ‘I do this, and this happens’. She expects the same experience with a magazine that she gets with the ipad: I swipe, it moves. If you were to search around the internet using the phrase ‘baby uses magazine as an ipad’, you would find quite a few blog entries discussing this video.

They range from judgemental, to excitement about a young child using technology, to the opinion that this is a normal response for a young child, and not ‘ipad enduced’. So what thoughts do you have when you watch the video? You may find it hard to watch without judgement. Or not. You may start having a little internal argument with yourself, or with this child’s parents. Or, you may have negative thoughts about this youngster thumbing through Marie Claire magazine at her age.

Whatever your reaction, it is very likely a conversation starter of some sort. What’s great about that is it opens the door for some exploration of technology/media and age-appropriateness. If you have a student in a Waldorf school, you’ve heard about technology and media use guidelines for students, and maybe you’re about to click out of this post. Over the past five years, the technology scene has changed rapidly as smart phones proliferate and ipads abound. It’s not just a game of minesweeper on your flip phone, it’s Angry Birds, complete with a marketing plan that includes stuffed characters available in stores. Is it ‘bad’? No. But in a Waldorf school, we can sometimes give and get the message that all technology is evil to be avoided. It used to be referred to primarily as ‘media’, and that meant movies, tv, and computer use. We can’t really call it ‘media’ these days, and I question whether we need to define ‘it’. I think a more complete approach is to focus on how children and their brains and bodies grow and develop and why certain activities are good for them at different stages. To do that, we as parents have to commit to informing ourselves about child development.

By now, the child that appeared in that video is about two years old. She probably enjoys running, walking, and playing in the dirt. Those are great things for a two year old to do. Young children want and need to be active: it’s how their brains and bodies develop in a healthy way. That’s the simple answer to why, in our school, we think young kids have a fuller, richer, experience without technology in their lives.

Much about the American human experience has changed in the last one hundred years. Most of us no longer make music in our homes or dance regularly. Folk dancing alone puts a child through many important, brain and body building developmental movements such as crossing the midline, balancing, and spatial awareness. Yet these activities are, for the most part, lost to us now. We have to build those movement opportunities back into our children’s lives.

What can we do as parents? We can do our best to educate ourselves about our child’s developmental stage and needs. Then we can seek out experiences that will provide our children with opportunities for healthy growth. Teachers can often provide good information about developmental stages and can give parents age-appropriate technology guidelines for their students. There are many good books available and our area has relevant, useful parent education presentations throughout the year.

The technological landscape is ever-changing, and always growing. What doesn’t change all that much is how humans grow best. If we look at child development, rather than technology, it becomes easier to discern what seems best for a two year old or a teen. It’s not about ‘good’ or ‘bad’, it’s about what our kids can engage in that will give them a rich, full, experience. Informing ourselves about what our child needs helps us increase supportive activities and form our own family plan for technology.

Laura Crandall is the School Director at the Bright Water School in Seattle, Washington. To read this article at source, just click here.

Violent Games DO Alter Your Brain – and the effect is visible in MRI scans in just a week

By ROB WAUGH

Violent video games and other computer entertainment have long been criticised for damaging youngsters’ brain.

But activists such as Oxford Professor Baroness Greenfield have often presented little science to back up their allegations.

However, extensive research into the subject has now provided worrying results that support her claims.

‘Screen technologies cause high arousal which in turn activates the brain system’s underlying addiction,’ the neurologist said last month in an attack that accused games of causing ‘dementia’ in children.

‘This results in the attraction of yet more screen-based activity.’And now the first genuinely scientific attempt to analyse the emotive subject has thrown up astonishing results that suggest she is right.

Differences in brain activity between young men who played violent games and ones who didn’t were visible in a randomly assigned sample in just one week. A presentation at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America told how fMRI scans were used to analyse the effects of playing violent videogames on brain activity.

The study took in 22 young men, and used magnetic-resonance scanning, as well as verbal psychological tests and counting tasks.

One control group played a violent shoot ‘em up for 10 hours during one week, then refrained afterwards.The other group did not play any games in either week.

 After one week, the ‘gamers’ showed less activity in certain regions of the brain when they were scanned.

Dr Yang Wang, assistant research professor in the Department of Radiology and Imaging Sciences at Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis said to Medical News Today: ‘For the first time, we have found that a sample of randomly assigned young adults showed less activation in certain frontal brain regions following a week of playing violent video games at home.’

‘These brain regions are important for controlling emotion and aggressive behavior.’
The researchers, though, were cautious about their findings.Learning any new activity causes changes in brain activity that are visible under MRI scans, so the study does not prove that it is specifically playing violent games that alters behaviour.

The good news for parents is that the changes diminished greatly after one week.

 Dr Wang told Medical News Today: ‘These effects indicate that violent video game play has a long-term effect on brain functioning.’

It’s the first evidence of videogames having a detectable ‘effect’ on the brain – but whether this effect is simply the gamer group using parts of their brain differently to learn new skills remains to be discovered.

The fact that the areas affected appeared to be related to cognitive function and emotional control are concerning.

Further research into the subject will be conducted by Dr Yang Wang and his team.

‘Violent Games DO Alter Your Brain’ originally appeared in the Daily Mail. To view at source, click here.

Article Sharing: The Waldorf way is worth emulating

http://www.mysinchew.com/node/52069

Article Sharing - Bake, play, learn

http://parenthots.com/features/Bake-play-learn.aspx

Article Sharing: Secrets of Thriving Children by Sally Goddard Blythe

The Genius of Natural Childhood: Secrets of Thriving Children by Sally Goddard Blythe

Almost every day the newspapers carry a new story about changes in children’s development and lifestyle: Studies which have indicated that children’s muscular strength has declined in the last 12 years when hand grip and the ability to support their own body weight was assessed; surveys in which up to 40% of parents admitted they have never read to their child; a study involving more than 18 000 children which revealed that three in ten children grow up in homes with no books and that children with no books are two and a half times more likely to fall below their expected reading level for their age, but 85% of these same children aged 8 – 15 years own a game console.  This growing body of evidence combined with findings from our own research, which has indicated that a significant percentage of children enter school with immature motor skills and that there is a link between immature motor skills and lower educational performance, led me to revisit the lullabies, nursery rhymes, stories, games and activities from my childhood and ask the questions, “what did these activities provide for the developing child?” What is the genius of natural childhood?

Growing up in the physical world

The rapid pace of urbanisation and advances taking place in technology means that social and cultural change is beginning to overtake the biological needs of the child.   As human beings we are also mammals and mammals have evolved in the context of the physical world, in which physical experience and social interaction have been crucial to development.   One example can be seen in the importance of rough and tumble play in the animal kingdom.  Mammals that do not engage in rough and tumble play as pups tend to be rejected by the group.  Rough and tumble play is important because it develops sensory skills, control, restraint and develops neural circuits involved in creativity and practise of life skills. The young child of today is no exception in this respect as every child must learn to become competent and confident in the use of his or her body to be fully equipped with the tools for learning and for life.

Learning with the Body

Young children learn with their bodies before they learn with their brain. An infant’s first language is one of movement and music.  Babies express their wants and needs through a combination of gestures, alteration in posture, facial expression, speed and quality of movements and the tones and rhythms of the sounds they make.  Movement is important not only as a form of expression but also the primary medium through which an infant explores its world, learns to integrate information derived from the senses (the basis for perception) and to develop good control of the body through development of muscle tone,  balance and posture, which are fundamental to good coordination.  While the driving force for the development of these skills is maturation, they are entrained through experience.

The first of the senses to develop is the sense of balance.  In place at just 8 – 9 weeks after conception and functioning at 16 weeks, the balance system is fully formed and ready for use at birth.  But rather like being given a grand piano as a gift at birth, before it will deliver its potential, the child must learn to play and this can only be done through practice.  The balance mechanism is the primary sensor for gravity and it responds to different types of movement, variation in speed of movement and when movement starts and stops. Before birth, the unborn child’s sensation of movement was cushioned and the effect of gravity reduced by the surrounding amniotic fluid and the support of the mother’s body, meaning that movement was experienced as slow and gentle, just like being under water.  After birth, movements that mimic this pre-natal experience tend to be soothing and comforting for children.  These include slow rocking, swaying from side to side and being carried on the mother’s body – movements which parents use instinctively to soothe a fractious baby.

The first lesson in becoming a master of movement is control of the head and proper alignment of the head in relation to body position.  This will provide a basis not only for posture and balance but also the later control of eye movements needed for reading, writing, catching a ball and even driving a car, and it involves the development of extensor muscle tone against gravity. One way of helping this to develop is giving babies plenty of “tummy time” on a clean floor surface when awake.  (Research has shown that the incidence of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) is reduced if babies a put to sleep on their backs.  This advice has led to many parents becoming afraid to place infants on their tummy when awake, or leaving it until the infant is several months old and protests when placed on the tummy.) Wakeful tummy time is important because it encourages the development of head, neck and upper trunk control which are necessary to support posture for the remainder of life.  Examples of this progression can be seen below. Development of extensor tone on the tummy:

Babies placed in a seat for several hours of the day may develop good control of the lower portion of the body through kicking and stretching movements, but the challenge to upper body control is considerably less and they do not to have learnhow to lift the head, to support upper body weight or to learn to sit by themselves.   Later on, this can affect the development of posture and upper body control needed to sit up straight and carry out coordinated movements such as writing.

Sensory motor experience also entrains pathways involved in perception (the brain’s interpretation of sensory information).  Early reflexes provide one example of how this takes place. In the first days of life, a newborn baby will search or “root” for the breast using the sense of touch.  Contact with the area around the mouth will result in the infant turning its head, nuzzling or searching for the breast and when an object is introduced in the mouth, the suck reflex will come into play.

While the visual system is relatively immature at this age, only being able to focus at a distance of some 17centimetres from the face, objects remaining blurred and the eyes being drawn to the periphery of shapes making outlines more significant than the detail contained within, the sense of touch on the other hand, is highly sensitive. Initially, the neonate uses touch and smell to locate the source of nourishment and comfort but within a few weeks, sight of the breast will be sufficient to initiate sucking movements.  In other words, the combination of touch, smell and movement lead into visual association, and vision will eventually supersede the more primitive reflex response.  While maturation acts as the dynamo for development, it needs the context of physical experience to unfold its potential.

Given the opportunity, babies carry out thousands of seemingly random movements every day.  Esther Thelan studied these movements and found that far from being random, movements were rhythmic and stereotyped. What they lack in the early months is cortical direction and control.  When analyzed in slow motion, many of the movements and attitudes constitute primitive versions of highly skilled movements used by ballet dancers, acrobats, divers and gymnasts.  In this sense, the human infant really does dance before he can walk, and sing before he can talk.

The Language of Music and Mime

Babies communicate using the language of music and mime.  Cooing and babbling are essentially musical in nature and the hand movements and gestures made by infants engaged in both listening and vocalising have been compared to the highly trained hand movements of an orchestral conductor.   Nearly 150 years ago, Charles Darwin wrote^, ‘I have been led to infer that the progenitors of man probably uttered musical tones before they had acquired the powers of articulate speech.  Babies can ‘hear’ a restricted range of lower to medium-frequency sounds from the 24^th week of pregnancy, sounds which roughly correspond to the range of the human voice and the majority of musical instruments used in classical music.  All sounds heard inside the womb are reduced in volume by about 30%, the loudest sound being that of the mother’s heartbeat.  Sounds from the outside world are about 35 decibels quieter than sounds generated from the internal environment, the only exception being the sound of the mother’s voice, which is particularly powerful because it resonates internally and externally, her body acting as the sounding board. Vocal speech and singing have a powerful on all physiological processes including cardio-respiratory function, digestion, hormonal secretion, motion, emotion and intelligence.  Before and after birth, a mother’s voice provides a connection between respiration, sound and movement – an acoustic link from life and communication before birth – to the brave new world outside the womb.

Russian paediatrician and musician Michael Lazarev described the mother’s voice as being,   “the main instrument in his pre-natal education.  This is a tuning fork to attune the strings of the soul to vibrations of the outside world, to get into a universe of human culture.  These vibrations are the first to form the deepest structures of his personality. Mother is the sculptor who shapes her baby with her voice”.

Music is the natural medium for this creative and connective process, because music is composed of elements which are common to all languages, all forms of communication and can be understood at a physical and emotional level by the very young child.  Singing contains all the tonal and rhythmic elements of speech and “motherese” – the sing-song style of speech used by mothers instinctively when talking to their babies – is particularly musical.  Singing slows down the sounds of speech, prolonging the time value of “open” vowel sounds, making it easier to hear and reproduce the sounds and contours of words.

Lullabies – traditional songs of the nursery – have characteristic rhythms which mimic the slow swaying movement of the mother’s body, providing gentle stimulation to the balance system while also providing the comfort and reassurance of the mother’s voice.  Research has shown that the sound of the mother’s voice has the same effect on emotions as receiving a cuddle, while lullabies and nursery rhymes carry the “signature” melodies and inflections of the mother tongue, preparing the ear, voice and brain for receptive and expressive language.

Live music is particularly important because it involves communication, teaching the ability to “read”, replicate and reproduce all the nuances and subtleties gleaned from another’s body language and spontaneous responses.   Stimulation derived from a remote or virtual source does not pay attention to the child’s reactions or listen to what the child has to say. It is essentially an egotistical form of communication which follows its own course without consideration for the listener or the viewer. This medium of stimulation occurs in a pre-programmed, virtual world created by a particular type of mind and constitutes a monologue rather than a dialogue. Children’s response to live music is different from recorded music and babies are particularly responsive when the music comes directly from the parent. It is the human interaction (touch, voice, and eye contact) using a form of language which is attuned to an infant’s level of development which are important, not the individual lullaby itself although all lullabies share a similar range of rhythms and tones – a form of universal language.

The peculiar structure of lullabies where the music is written like a story with a beginning, middle and end appeals to children and this same organisation helps them to learn structure and order and exercise imagination. “The melody and harmony are just intricate enough to stimulate the imagination slightly, yet also send an unspoken message of support and security, in a way no words can describe.” Whether humming, chanting, or singing, anyone can make music and as a parent your child will not judge you on your musical abilities.  As far as he or she is concerned, you are the expert.

Nursery rhymes provide a natural sequel to lullabies although they were not originally designed for this purpose.  Many reflect events in history and the political and social problems that were prevalent in the time and place where they developed, when outright criticism of authority would have resulted in punishment, but parody was still possible.  Many nursery rhymes were originally rather like the political and social commentators, satirists and cartoonists of today. As such, they are an important part of a child’s cultural history and heritage.  They are also rich in rhyming words, repetition and alliteration, helping the young child to identify minute differences between words and their meaning.

Sound of the parent’s voice extends from lullabies and nursery rhymes into reading to children.  In a survey, carried out in 2010, found that more than half of primary school teachers said that they have seen at least one child with no experience of being told stories at home.  In some homes the television or electronic games have become a substitute for books but these do little to nurture a child’s imagination, verbal communication or non-verbal communication. The content of stories is also important.  Here again, our modern society seems increasingly at odds with the wisdom of previous generations.  For centuries, children used to be reared on wonderful rich fairy tales, like Cinderella, the Frog Prince, and The Tinder Box, or on uplifting parables from the Bible like the Prodigal Son or the Good Samaritan. More treasures came from the ancient fables of the Greek storyteller Aesop or the folk rhymes, like Ring-a-Rosie. Yet all this literary wealth is falling out of fashion, for a variety of reasons.  Some think that these age old fairy tales are too scary and therefore would disturb their children.  In a recent poll of 3000 parents for the website babywebsite.com almost 20 per cent of adults said they refused to read Hansel and Gretel because the children were abandoned in a forest – and it may give their children nightmares.  A fifth did not like to read The Gingerbread Man as he gets eaten by a fox.

Similarly, in our increasingly secular, atheistic world, anything from the Bible is seen as being tainted with the out dated dogma of the Christian faith, no matter how pertinent the message.

Stories for Life

Fairy stories and parables are important precisely because they use “make-believe” to teach fundamental principles of moral behaviour.  Stereotypes of good and evil are used to illustrate that goodness endures and bad behaviour will eventually receive its just deserts.  Far from demonising the dwarfs, the story of Snow White shows that underlying physical diversity there can be greater kindness and generosity than is found in the stereotypes of beauty and wealth so lauded by celebrity worshipping cultures.  In many fairy stories, (Goldilocks for example) it is the smallest and weakest in the group with whom the heroine identifies and in the Emperor’s New Clothes, vanity and pride are revealed as vacuous posturing without substance, which mask stupidity, and obstruct the use of common sense.  These stories are not cruel and discriminatory; rather they help children to understand through fantasy firstly, the quirks and weaknesses of human behaviour in general and secondly, to accept many of their own fears and emotions in particular.  The modern tendency to protect children from anything unpleasant, that they cannot cope with, does not help them develop the resilience needed to face death, separation, rejection, injury, hardship or conflict in their own lives when they encounter it for the first time.   Fantasy and fairy stories can actually strengthen their fibre. They know, when the tale begins, that they are stepping into a fantasy world, for the opening words “Once upon time” are a signal to engage their imaginations.    What follows, whether it be witches, or princes, castles or forests, can be shocking or enchanting but it all serves to deepen a child’s thinking processes in a way that TV and computer games never can.  Amidst all the heartache before the happy ending, the prime lesson of the story is the courageous virtue of being true to the self.

Earlier this year, my daughter gave birth to my first grandchild.   In the course of making preparations for the new arrival, I was reminded how different the expectations and pressures on parents of today are compared to only 25 years ago. Marketing for the baby industry is so slick and successful that many new parents are seduced into believing that babies are born needing an array of equipment, from electronic devices which play lullabies and classical music to bouncing cradles which mimic the motion of a car.  While these can be helpful to exhausted parents in soothing a fretful baby to sleep, they cannot replace the experience derived from direct physical interaction with the environment and one-to-one communication with another human being.

Some of the best playgrounds and tools for learning are free: Parental time, involvement, communication; space and freedom to move and explore; song, dance and a love of stories.  Two of the greatest gifts that parents and society can give to a child in addition to love, is competence and confidence in use of their body in the physical world and the ability to understand and use language.   While we should not reject the many advances and advantages of the modern world, neither should we discard the wisdom of the past.  Some of the most successful societies are those that seamlessly weave new developments into the existing fabric of the old, enriching the tapestry for generations in the future.

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Sally Goddard Blythe directs the Institute of Neuro-Physiological Psychology. She researches children’s learning difficulties and is an authority on remedial programmes. Her widely translated books include The Well Balanced Child, What Babies and Children Really Need and Reflexes, Learning and Behaviour. The Genius of Natural Childhood: Secrets of Thriving Children was published this year in the UK by Hawthorn Press as part of their “early years series.” It’s available in the US from Steiner Books.

http://www.waldorftoday.com/2011/11/the-genius-of-natural-childhood-secrets-of-thriving-children-by-sally-goddard-blythe/