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Tips on Avoiding the Hurried Child

This is another interesting topic from the parenting course I am taking from a local community college.  It is about the hurried child.  Hurried children are basically the ones missing out on play time during their younger years.  Instead, they are hurried by having strict and busy schedules, they are pressured to perform well (excelling in academics and sports), and they are exposed to things that their young minds cannot yet understand (drugs and sex).

Some parents feel pressured to sign their children up for as many activities as possible.  They are afraid that they are not stimulating their children enough if they just go home and play.  Apparently, a little bit of boredom is ok as this can initiate creative imagination in children.  For example, children in third world countries do not have the luxury to sign-up for soccer or gymnastics classes.  To ease their boredom, they play soccer with their next door neighbors instead.  A ball made of straw is used (example of imagination being activated) instead of a real soccer ball. 

How to avoid having a hurried child: 

(thanks to one of my classmates who compiled this list)

1. Make sure you give you children a good amount of unstructured time.  Encourage your children to be children.  Give them lots of free time to explore their worlds and play.   Sometimes, you can get involved with them in this play.  Other times, leave them alone to use their imagination and play on their own. Knowing that there is a link between boredom and creativity means that sometimes, we need to set the stage for kids to initiate the play.

2. Before signing your child up for the next class or activity, talk with them and ask a few questions.  For example:  “What is your favorite thing about this (class, sport, event)?”, ” What do you wish you had more time to do?”, “Why do you want to be involved in this?”, “What are you willing to give up in order to have time to be involved?”,  After the discussion, review his or her answers and evaluate the true desire or lack thereof to guide you in making future plans. I thought this was a great list of questions to consider when signing your children up for activities.   Give your children a few days to think about it so they can make an informed decision.

3. Parents should appreciate each of their children for their individual talents, interests, and abilities. Try to involve them in activities that would not have a negative impact in your family schedule.  There are some things you can just do at home with your children to encourage and use their special talents.  It doesn’t always have to be a class outside of the home.

4. “ It is our job as parents to know where our children are, who their friends are, as well as what they are reading, watching on television, viewing on the Internet, listening to, and being influenced by.” I liked the idea of not viewing as much TV. We need to remember that they are better off left to their own devices and find something to do, than to just plop them in front of the TV.

5. Practice saying “I love you” to one another. It’s absolutely impossible to say those three words and be frantic at the same time. I love the idea of making sure these words are spoken frequently in the home. It is true that you can’t say them when you are crazy and running around. Also, just slowing down in general and trying to have a calm presence helps.

6. Finally, we are not just talking about “the hurried child” here but also “the hurried parent”. I think we need to look carefully at our own schedules and make sure we aren’t doing too much outside the home. It is hard to balance time alone with each individual child in the family, play time for the kids, structured activities for the kids, alone time for each parent, date night for parents, and then family time. There just aren’t enough hours in a week to make sure all those needs are met,.  The goal I think is to continue to be aware of how every individual is feeling and see what can be adjusted if the balance gets out of whack. Good food for thought!

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HOW CAN EXERCISE IMPROVE LEARNING?

How Can Exercise Improve Learning?

a book summary of

Spark:  A Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain by John Ratey

by Lily Talley

Dear Parents,

We send our children to preschool to prepare their minds for learning more complex concepts in school.  However, we should also take account that preparing them to be physically fit right now can also greatly help them succeed in academics.  Physical exercise has some of the following benefits:

  • Kids are more prepared to learn
  • Senses are heightened
  • Focus and movement are improved
  • Students are less fidgety and tense
  • The desire to succeed in school is increased
  • They feel more invigorated and motivated

Exercise improves learning on 3 levels:

  1. It optimizes your mind-set to improve alertness, attention and motivation.
  2. It prepares and encourages nerve cells to bind to one another which is the cellular basis for logging new information.
  3. It spurs the development of new nerve cells from stem cells in the hippocampus.

Most of us have heard that ‘exercise improves learning’.  This statement is now backed by research.  One of them is John Ratey’s book SPARK:  A Revolutionary Science of Exercise and the Brain.  Another research claiming that physically fit kids are smarter was done by Texas school research.  This article will discuss Ratey’s book whose ideas were indirectly supported by the TEXAS school research done on over 2.5 million kids.

Spark explains the results of a case study about Naperville Central High School in Chicago.  Central is implementing a program called Zero Hour PE.  The objective of the program is to determine whether working out before school gives the students a boost in reading ability and in increased skills in additional subjects.  This program is supported by emerging research showing that physical activity sparks biological changes that encourage brain cells to bind to one another.  Neuroscientists agree that exercise provides an unparallel stimulus, creating an environment in which the brain is ready and willing to learn.  The students at Central are prepared to learn through rigorous exercise.  The difference between the PE at Central and other schools is that, at Central, the essence of PE is fitness instead of sports.  They instruct students how to monitor and maintain their own health and fitness.  They are taught a lifestyle.  The students develop healthy habits, skills, sense of fun, and knowledge of how their body works.  They want to produce individuals that are hooked on physical activity instead of settling in front of the TV.

Statistics show that children who exercise regularly are likely to do the same as adults.  Central took the TIMSS (Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study) test and scored #1 in Science and #6 in Math in the world.  They believe that fitness plays an important role in student’s academic achievements.

Unfortunately, there is a tendency for some people to look down on PE subjects.  They think that because PE is not an academic subject, they don’t need to spend too much time on it.  The results of the Texas research will change this negative thinking.  Not only did it show that exercise is good for the students, it also showed that those who are physically fit are also smarter and perform better in academic subjects.  Central’s PE focuses on learning how to be physically fit and eating healthily and not just team sports which have a lot of inactivity (eg waiting for the ball to come your way in soccer).  Unfortunately, only 6% of US high schools offer a daily PE class.  In addition, children spend 5.5 hours in front of a screen of some sort a day.  Lack of PE in school and too much screen time increases our youth obesity problem.  Seattle Learning Center aims to follow the same techniques used by Central to encourage children to be physically fit.  We will do this by offering PE 4-5 times a week for our students.

There are a number of studies presented on the correlation between physical fitness and academic achievement:

  • California Department of Education said that in the last 5 years, students with high fitness scores also have high test scores.  In addition to this, the organization PE4LIFE claims that the schools in the inner city that are in partnership with them, reduced its disciplinary problems by 67%.
  • Another proof is the study of Charles Hillman and Darla Castelli that measured electrical activity in the brain.  The electroencephalogram (EEG) showed more activity in fit kid’s brain indicating that more neurons in attention were being recruited for a given task.

Ratey claims that the brain is an adaptable organ in the parlance of the neuroscientist.  Neurotransmitters, carry our signaling and are elevated by exercise and drugs.  BDNF brain derived neurotrophic factor.  Neurotrophins such as BDNF build and maintain cell circuitry, the infrastructure of the brain itself.  It nourishes neurons like fertilizer.  More exercise=more BDNF=more nourishing for neurons=smarter kids.

  • In a 2007 study of humans, German researcher found that people learn vocabulary words 20% faster following exercise than they did before exercise.  Levels of BDNF is correlated to rate of learning, people with less BDNF have learning difficulties.

The brain needs to be worked out to perform better according to a Harvard study.  Brain cells grow back, and they found evidence of this published in a 1998 seminal paper called Neurogenesis.  Exercise produces new cells.  BDNF is unleashed when we get our blood pumping.  If we are not moving there is no real need to learn anything.

We can conclude from the above researchers that the benefits of exercise are extremely valuable for both us and our children.  Our bodies are designed for aerobic exercise (eg from martial arts, gymnastics, and most sports), which leads to optimum brain development. By helping our children develop a strong educational and physical foundation, we will guide them to become physically fit, life-long learners.

Thank you for reading this article. We truly hope you and your family will benefit from it, and please feel free to share it with others. If you have any questions about this article, please just let us know.

Kindest Regards,

Lily Talley

References:

Spark:  The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain by John J Ratey

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