Adapting to a new school or nanny

Is your child struggling to adapt to a new caregiver?  

Here’s good news: pictures are powerful and there’s a way to make them work for you.

A recent study at McGill University (see link below) has once again proven the power of visualization when a group of students radically increased the amount of fruit they consumed within 7 days after imagining themselves making the right choices.

According to Diane Petrella, a specialist in this field, visualization is the process of deliberately using your imagination to create a mental model in your mind. “The mind doesn't know the difference between what is real and what is imagined, so when you visualize your subconscious encodes this new picture as if it actually happened.”

Although young children are not yet able to form mental pictures of themselves or situations in their minds eye, the potency of visualization is not lost for them. The trick is to physically provide your child with pictures of a particular situation along with a description of the positive emotions and actions that you would like your child to associate with that particular setting.

What you will need

·      A camera

·      Access to a printer

·      An empty photo album or scrapbook

Do the following

• Take photos of your child’s new school. Focus on different “stations of activity” for instance, where he stores his backpack for the day, the toilets (it is important to take an actual photo of the toilet), the carpet where he listens to stories, the chair and table he sits at when doing activities, the playground outside, any “make believe” stations that catch your eye (like a shop corner or hospital scene), and reading corner. 

• Make sure to include at least one picture of his caregiver.  If you can manage to take a happy photograph of the two of them together, that’s good, otherwise a photo of her alone is perfect. Remember to keep the photos positive and happy! If other children feature in the photos, ask them to smile and wave as you take the picture.

• Place the photographs in an album or book. Write a caption under each photo. Make sure to include POSITIVE EMOTIONS and ACTIONS when writing the caption. Instead of simply saying “This is Miss Sonya” or “This is the reading corner” write something like:

“This is Miss Sonya. Miss Sonya loves Megan. Whenever Megan needs help or feels alone, she goes to Miss Sonya. Miss Sonya thinks Megan is a very special girl!”

or

“This is the reading corner. Megan loves to page through books in the reading corner. There are many books with many interesting pictures in the reading corner at Megan’s new school.”

·   Read the album together as a “story” every night. Point to the pictures and ask questions as you would if you were reading a typical storybook. The more often you read the story, the better.

Same environment, new caregiver?

If the environment has NOT changed but the CAREGIVER is NEW, as in the case of a new teacher at school or a new nanny joining the family, do the following:

·   Still take photos of the various “stations of activity” as before, but now place the new person into each of the familiar settings. In other words, let the teacher stand next to the swing or by the toilet when you take a photo of the playground and the bathroom.

The idea is to bring the new person into the familiar setting and making her part of your child’s everyday story.

Did you know? Good news! Practica has started a Facebook page and it’s great fun! If you have a Facebook profile, go to www.facebook.com/practicaprogram and click on LIKE. You will then automatically see our daily tips and little tidbits on weekdays.

“Parents who know better . . . do better . . .”

How to make a Second Language feel more Natural

Parents often ask the Practica Advisory Service how they can boost their little one’s ability to communicate in a 2nd language. Here’s a fun idea that children are naturally drawn to.

Buy a new teddy and explain that he can understand and speak nothing but the 2nd language.  Give him a name that is characteristic of the new language, such as “Jannie” if the second language is Afrikaans or “Johnny” if it’s English. Now, do the following:

1. When you say something to your child, repeat this to Jannie in the second language. This will expose your child to the new language in a real life context and also teach your little one to be understanding and empathetic towards others.

2. Involve Jannie in pretend play and speak to him as if he is a real person. Encourage your child to do the same and help him out with key words.

3. As you read your child’s bedtime story, talk about pictures as usual and then repeat words in the second language, so that Jannie can also understand.

4. Involve Jannie in your daily routine. Keep in mind that repetition is key when learning any new language, 1st or 2nd.  Since routines are naturally repeated, you can easily use this as an opportunity to repeat words and phrases in both languages.

5. Deliberately add new experiences to your daily routine that will expose your child to new words and concepts over and over again, like taking a daily walk through the garden – with Jannie, of course!

Developing a First Language

If your child is at the stage where he is just starting to string together 3-5 word sentences in his first language, consider buying another teddy specifically for that language and first focusing on this new friend. 

One great advantage to having another “child” in the house, is that it gives you a reason to repeat and correct language with less risk of intimidating or embarrassing your child.

For example, when your child says, “I need to the loo,” you can respond by saying to Teddy, “Peter says that he needs to go to the loo. Teddy, do you need to go to the loo as well?” The idea is to model the correct use of the language instead of correcting your child and putting him on the spot.

3 General Tips for boosting Language Development

Talk about things that are happening in the moment, as it will be easier for your child to link the meaning of your words to what he is experiencing at that moment.

Be led by your child’s focus. Be on the lookout for things that draw his attention and then elaborate on his experience by adding words to it.

Repeat key words, for instance, “Can you help Teddy to eat his apple? Teddy has a red apple and you also have a red apple.”

When we know better... we do better...

Is your child watching too much television?

This Poll is still active on www.thebabyexpo.co.za Click here.

Really? Is roughly one out of three parents in South Africa still under the impression that watching television helps babies to learn?

Ask any American doctor whether babies and toddlers should watch television and he will most likely tell you what the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends: no television before the age of two and older children, at most, can spend one to two hours a day on educational screen based activities. This includes watching television, as well as activities on cellphones, Ipads and computers.

The Australian government recommends that children under 2 should be banned from watching TV and using electronic media such as computer games and those aged 2 to 5 should watch no more than one hour a day, as exposure to TV at an early age could “delay language development, affect concentration and lead to obesity”. France has taken a radical stand by banning all television programs for children aged three and under. Unfortunately, the South African authorities have not yet decided to take a stand. Surprisingly, neither has Britain.

Hopefully, this is going to change soon. A British psychologist, Dr. Aric Sigman, recently shook the boat with regards to this matter when a well-respected medical publication in Britain called the “Archives of Disease in Childhood”, published one of his articles. In this he references over 80 research studies proving and warning parents about the negative effects of too much screen-time on children’s physical, intellectual and social-emotional development. The studies conclude that children who “overdose’ on screen-time are generally less intelligent, less healthy, they tend to get bored easily and are more unhappy than they would otherwise have been. He urges the British authorities to take a stand. We should do the same in South Africa.

One of the most practical explanations of exactly why screen-time has a negative effect on brain development came from Dr. Miriam Stoppard in an article that was published in The Times in 2007, called “The Baby Brain-Drain”. Herein she described how television stimulates certain regions of the brain intensively, whilst totally neglecting to activate other important regions, such as those that enable a child to develop self-control, the ability to solve problems, language skills, social empathy, analytical reasoning skills and creativity.

The problem that children face, especially during the first 3 years of life, is that their brains are wired in response to experiences. In other words, “highways” consequently develop between the brain regions that are over-stimulated by television watching, whilst the neglected brain regions are basically left to lie dormant. Simply stated, too much television makes important regions of a child’s brain excessively lazy.

This is disturbing, considering that the average British child has a television in the bedroom by the age of three and many South African children own an Ipad at that age. Furthermore, according to statistics, a little Britton will have watched a year of television by the time he is only seven years old. Will that be true of your child?

What about educational games? Experiences that a child has on an Ipad, cellphone or television are so far removed from real-life that these experiences end up wiring combinations of brain regions that aren’t usually activated together in real life. At the same time, other skills, that would naturally be exercised if the child was playing a game in the real world, are neglected.

There are simply certain sensory experiences and social interactions that are fundamental to healthy brain development that an Ipad cannot provide. Furthermore, the laws of physics do not apply when a child plays a game on an Ipad. He cannot physically feel the difference between two blocks of different weights, distinguish between surface textures, explore the workings of gravity or practise the intricate details of learning to let his body parts, eyes and brain work together. Problems are solved and challenges are overcome at a pace and in ways that are totally unlike what a child will have to cope with in real life one day.

One can argue that parents can help to counteract the impact of too much screen time with an equal amount of non-screen activities – much like giving a child an apple for every candy bar he eats.

The problem with this idea is that too much screen time spoils a child’s appetite for real life – just like a child who gets to eat a candy bar whenever he feels like it will most likely not eat many apples.

Unfortunately, television not only changes the way in which a child’s brain is wired; it also has an effect on the chemical balance in the brain. Television’s fast paced scene changes and exciting audio effects stimulate and excite the brain far more than everyday life experiences do.

Consequently, the brain gets used to larger secretions of dopamine, a hormone that are typically associated with excitement and reward. Dopamine is addictive. Daily exposure causes real life to be perceived as “boring”, too slow paced and too much work. When children are addicted to the visual and auditory variety that only screen-time can offer them, their brains and personalities eventually turn out like rubber bands with their elastic limit exceeded … flat and unresponsive. 

When we know better... we do better

The Muscle Memory involved in Parenting

Picture from Photobucket.com

When writer Loren Stow launched the Practica blog back in 2010, we decided to call it “Practically Speaking” and to sign off each post with Maya Angelou’s famous words: “Parents who know better, do better”. I loved the idea and I still do.

The reason why I’m mentioning this is because I recently stumbled upon a piece of writing posted by Tess Lyons on her parenting blog in 2006, in which she shared her thoughts on Maya Angelou’s statement. Tess is the mother of four children, a single child plus a set of triplets. Judging on the pictures of her children at that time, all of them were younger than 5 years old when she wrote the post. Oh, how I empathize with how busy her life must have been at that stage!

Tess described in her post how unsettled she felt at times when she knew what to do, but ended up not doing it, simply because she ran out of energy. Here’s what she said:

I am constantly surprised by the guesswork involved in parenting. And the responsibility. And how each day I can get up and say, "I am going to do the best I can do", and console myself that my best can be better tomorrow. And sometimes it is, and sometimes it isn't.

Do our kids remember that we tried hard?  Does that count?  Do I just remember that my parents tried hard because I feel that they "succeeded" in being good and loving parents?

Oprah and Maya Angelou say, "Parents who know better, do better." Is that true? It is a terribly empowering rah rah statement, that is catchy and yay, but I don't know if it is true. Sometimes I am too tired to follow through on my parenting. I hear a scuffle, and I don't get up and investigate. Sometimes even though I have uttered, "The next time you (insert sin here), I will (insert punishment here)" and I don't. I pretend I didn't hear the crime, or see it. I suspect I am not the only one who does this, but does this put me in the category of person who doesn't know better? Can't I be a person who as often as she has the energy, does better? Because that's where I fit.

Although very few of us are as attuned to our own thoughts and emotions as Tess Lyons seems to be, I believe every person alive feels and reacts like this from time to time – even in areas of our lives that are not related to parenting. We learn something new, it raises the bar on our own expectations and instead of “doing better” we end up “feeling worse”.

We launched the Practica Program in 1993 and since then we have literally spoken to thousands of parents about how they can benefit from learning more and equipping themselves with well researched ideas and activities that are aimed at helping their children to develop to their fullest potential. I have always wondered why parents react so differently to our message.  Tess Lyons’s words shed some light on the issue.

Without generalizing, I believe some parents are more open to learning and applying new ideas and techniques because they are less afraid of dealing with failure. They understand that, when it comes to parenting, making mistakes and doing exactly the opposite of what you know to be best from time to time as you proceed from one challenging episode to the next, is simply inevitable. Knowing better should theoretically help a parent to fair better, but parents are people first, and people tend to fall back into a “default” state when they’re under pressure. There’s no sense in beating yourself up about it.

Learning to be the kind of parent that you really want to be doesn’t happen without a certain level of commitment and effort.

In reality, learning to be a great parent is a lot like learning to play golf. For those who are interested to learn, making mistakes is part of the process. When you start off, most of your actions feel unnatural. You have to consider the way you stand, the position of every finger, the position of your head, the angle of your back, the tension in your muscles as you lift the club, and so forth. To put it simply, you have to concentrate really hard and you have to be patient with yourself as you will undoubtedly make many mistakes. In fact, just as you get one thing right, something else seems to go wrong. But the more you practise, the better (and luckier!) you get. Before you know it, you have internalized the instructions and the advice that your instructor has given you. Physically speaking, pathways have formed in your brain between the various regions that work together to enable you to coordinate all your body parts and hit that ball just right. You have developed “muscle memory”.

The same goes for parenting. The more you practise, the easier it becomes. And before you know it, reacting in a better way is wired into your brain. The new, better behaviour pops up without you even thinking about it anymore.  It has become your “default reaction”. Your courage is paying off.

From time to time, when you’re dog tired or emotionally drained you may make a bad decision or simply sit the round out. There will always be better days and not-so-good days. That’s fine. You will have another opportunity to make the right decision and get back on ‘course’.

Written by Lizette van Huyssteen
Parents who know better, do better …

Keep up the Good Work!

 

By the time Practica Children enter pre-school they typically enjoy every minute of the experience. In light of this their parents can be forgiven for thinking that their job is done and that it's time to pass the baton on to the pre-school teacher.

It's important to keep in mind that the human brain can store far less information than an average smart phone, while its ability to think and process information far outshines that of even the most advanced computer.

Although it's easy to share facts about dinosaurs and planets in a group setting and thus exercise a child's ability to store information in the process, it's not easy to practise "processing skills" outside of a one-on-one setting.

Whenever an activity requires of a child to spend a few seconds to consider different possible solutions, the most confident or impulsive child in the group usually interprets the few seconds of silence as a cue that it's time to voice an opinion. As a result, every other child's train of thought is interrupted, redirected or stunted. One or two children benefit over and over again while the others learn to sit back.

According to Dr Johan van Niekerk, who tested thousands of children for school readiness during his 30 years as an educational psychologist, he could always spot a Practica Child by the child's attitude: they were far more calm and confident, without being egotistical.

Children who are only used to functioning in groups may feel threatened whenever the spotlight is on them, while a child who has also been given the opportunity in the safety of a loving home to learn to accept the responsibility for finding solutions without constantly being interrupted, naturally grow into a more confident learner.

The Practica Program was initially designed to equip parents with everything they need for making a real difference as they spend one-on-one time with their children. It proves to be most effective when used in a one-on-one situation. Pre-schools have a role to play, but absolutely nothing can replace the magic that happens between parent and child.

Written by Lizette van Huyssteen
When we know better... we do better

Most Popular Stand at the Baba Indaba

Vanessa Stroud and Hennie van Huyssteen
 



Congratulations to the Practica Team for being honoured with receiving the "Most Popular Stand" award at the Baba Indaba baby show during the first week of August. A great big Thank You to all the visitors that voted for us!

When we know better... we do better

Dads Matter

Speak to expecting fathers and you will undoubtedly find that today’s dads are far more eager to be actively involved in their children’s lives right from birth than fathers from previous generations. Yet, many of their good intentions and noble expectations seem to be quickly smothered and written off as idealistic after the baby is born.

The limelight is typically on the mother and baby during the early days and fathers often feel it would be inconsiderate or even inappropriate of them to admit that they feel like onlookers. Consequently most fathers soon find themselves in the role of “Mommy’s assistant”, as if they are second-class parents with Mommy as the expert; telling him what to do and how to do it. After all, she’s the one that spends the most time with Baby and she knows best, right?

The problem with this parenting approach is that it is so common that most people never stop to question it. Yet research shows that both the children and the family as a whole benefit when a father is given the opportunity to take on the role of an equal in the parenting arena.

Dr Kyle Pruett first encountered this gender bias and the consequences thereof when he began studying infants and toddlers raised by stay-at-home dads in stable families, where Mommy was the one with a 9 to 5 job and Daddy took care of the family and home during the day.

Almost all the fathers initially tried to mimic what they thought the mothers would do. Interestingly, they reported during interviews with Dr Pruett and his colleagues that these initial interactions with their children felt “wrong”. They said it “didn’t fit”, they “couldn’t get the rhythm”, and “relating to their children, they felt like socks that were too small”.

Sadly, in most typical families, fathers almost automatically accept this awkwardness as natural. They see this as proof that they somehow don’t possess the same level of ‘parental instincts’ as mothers do ... so they lose confidence and consequently settle down in the proverbial backseat.

The fathers in Dr Pruett’s study didn’t have that option. They had to push through as the mothers were simply not available during the day to take charge. The good news is that these fathers reaped the rewards of their perseverance.

Interestingly, even in these ‘modern’ households, where the mother and father switched their traditional roles, most of the dads feared that their wives would get upset when they find out that they weren’t following their instructions to the letter, so they didn’t share their feelings with the mothers.

Nonetheless, after 1 or 2 weeks of trying to be a replacement mom, they started to experiment with doing things their own way. Before long they were secretly changing, feeding, comforting, bathing, dressing, talking and singing with, carrying, and playing in ways they thought “fit us guys better”. Even after trying their utmost for as long as they could, it was simply not possible for them to deny the fact that as men they relate to their children in a unique way.

Researchers now know that the practical differences between the ways in which mothers and fathers parent are not harmful to children, mothers, fathers or their marriages. Whether dads are fulltime caregivers or not, they naturally interact with their children differently, and at the end of the day the big and small differences between mothers and fathers all fall into place like the pieces of a big puzzle.

In his book, Partnership Parenting (Da Capo Press, 2009), Dr Pruett tells of a group of Swedish scientist that systematically reviewed 22 studies, most of which involved typical families where the fathers were the ones bringing home the bacon. Not surprisingly, they found that father engagement is linked to a higher standard of living for families with lower incomes.

They also concluded that, regardless of income, fathers that spent more time with their children had sons with fewer behavioural problems. Their daughters were psychologically healthier and getting better grades, and both the sons and daughters in these households were less likely to get involved in criminal activities.

From a practical point of view this simply means everybody wins when a father is supported in his efforts to grow into what he naturally should become for his children: a father. Nobody just automatically knows how to be a parent – not even mothers. (If in doubt, ask any mother.) The reason why mothers usually come into their own within a few weeks is simply because that is exactly what society expects of them.

Most dads believe that things will get easier as the baby gets older, but in reality fathers who don’t get the space to find their own way with their children during the early years find it more difficult to bond with their offspring later on. And the road is even more uphill when a father is not physically living with the rest of the family, especially when he, for reasons within or beyond his control, act in ways that cause him to be labelled as ‘uninvolved’ or ‘irresponsible’. A label around a father’s neck can be heavier than balls and chains on his feet.

So, before throwing another stone at unmotivated and discouraged fathers, why not first focus on building their confidence and reassuring them that they are special in their differentness. As Dr Pruett says, “Whenever fathers and children have the space to figure out who they are to each other, without mothers micromanaging the relationship, children thrive and mothers get the break they need.”

Written by Lizette van Huyssteen
When we know better... we do better