Raising your 21st century child: How to make a super-kid
You've got to love raising a child in the 21st century. All you have to do is to listen to all of us experts and you can't help but to raise a brainiac. It's a snap. Here's how:
- First you need to play Mozart all the time so she will develop exceptional musical and motor skills.
- Be sure to place a scientifically correct mobile over her crib to enhance visual abilities.
- Play her Baby Einstein and Sesame Street videos, which will promote her brain development and make her smarter than she would have been otherwise.
- Teach her baby sign language, so she can communicate sooner and have a better language capacity.
- How could I forget Baby Van Gogh to make your little artist have a better sense of color.
- Of course, be certain your child doesn't go without the latest and greatest new educational toys.
- Make sure she watches the new cable kiddy network which will only have content to enhance her development.
Follow my advice and she's sure to end up, like all the kids in Lake Wobegone, above average...perhaps even a genius.
You may have already sensed my true feelings about all this early stimulation and the claims that you can enhance your child's capacities with a few bells and whistles early on. This whole cottage (and very profitable) industry is, in my opinion, totally misguided. Here's why:
1) None of this short term stimulation works in the long run. There is, alas, no "immunization" to enhance brain development, no short-lived early experiences that will improve long-term skills. The little research that has been done shows that, yes, perhaps you can artificially improve one skill or another while if you focus on it, but these effects do not endure as your child gets older, unless you keep it up. Extra Gymboree may give your toddler's gross motor skills a boost, but it won't make him Michael Jordan. In fact, it won't even make him any better than other kids his age who were 'deprived' of this early experience, unless you continue it throughout his childhood. Baby sign language is awful cute and may enhance early communication, but so what? Unless you are fluent in sign language and will continue to teach your child this second language for the next decade, it's not going to confer any long-term benefits.
2) Psychologists have a great term: "the ordinary expectable environment." By this they mean the typical environment experienced by human kids which, over evolutionary history, has proved plenty stimulating for brain growth.
When experts talk about enhancing brain development, many quote a scientific study done on laboratory rats. It showed their brains to be more complex if they were raised in an extra stimulating environment (whatever that means for a rat!), compared to those raised with no extra stimulation. "Complex environments make complex brains", we are told.
Fair enough, but what isn't usually mentioned is that wild rats have the most "complex" brains of all. Apparently, if you're a rat, just fending for yourself in the real world is the best "stimulation" for brain development. Remember Einstein's parents didn't bombard him with extra stimulation as an infant. In fact, the poor guy didn't even get to watch Baby Einstein, he was just raised in an ordinary environment. Imagine how smart he could have been!
3) It's a set-up for disappointment as a parent. The upper limit of your child's capacities is constrained by who and what she is (mostly via her genetic heritage). All the extra stimulation in the world isn't going to make your child an Einstein or a Mozart or a Michael Jordan. (While I'm at it, you should know your ability to change his/her personality isn't all that great either.)
So if you need a super kid - one who conforms to your fantasy of what the perfect child should be - in order to be happy with him/her then, alas, unless you luck out, there's plenty of trouble ahead when you face the disappointment of the unique kind of person your child turns out to be (often in spite of, instead of because of, your best efforts to change or "improve" her).
Go ahead and buy fancy educational toys, teach your infant to sign for her bottle, play a nice Mozart sonata at bed time. But do it because it's fun, because you and she enjoy it, and not because you need/want her to be the next Van Gogh or to raise her IQ by 10 points.
And don't feel guilty if, instead of bombarding her with some extra stimulation, you spend your time just having a good time together. As a parent, loving your child up and fostering her emotional development with a positive, nurturing relationship should trump everything else on your priority list.
Having said that, in my next blogs I want to make 3 suggestions (a little blog suspense: can you guess what they are?) for you to consider in trying to raise a happy and successful 21st-century child (this is above the most important part of what you do: loving and nurturing him/her and accepting, understanding, respecting and supporting her for who she is, not who you want her to be).
Related Blog Entries:
- Raise a bilingual 21st century child
- Your 21st century child: Raise a book lover
- Your 21st century child: Raise a lover of science
Technorati Tags: Baby Einstein, baby sign language, parenting, child development
8 Comments:
Great advice for 21st century brainiac parents who are worried their own children will turn out to be NASCAR fans and not geeky clones of their progenitors. Most likely, though, if you love your kids, they'll love you, and, in many ways, aspire to be like you. And if they like NASCAR, so what?
DR. I HAD A QUESTION I WAS TOLD I HAVE THYRIODTOXICSIS I WENT IN THE ER AND THAT'S WHAT THEY SAID I WENT IN WITH VERY STRONG HEART PARPATATIONS,SWELLING IN MY TUMMY, AND SWELLING IN MY LEG'S WHY THE SWELLING
Amazing. Is anybody moderating this blog?
Flea
Dear anonymous,
Our physicians cannot answer these types of questions via the Internet. If you need immediate assistance, we urge you to give your own physician a call today for the best advice that pertains to your own personal health history.
You can also look up thyrotoxicosis by visiting webmd.com and using our Search.
We hope you find the information you need soon!
WebMD Blog Admin
I agree that you are not going to take a kid and make them a genius or great athlete with all these gizmos, and improving their personality is likely an outside chance as well.
But you can surely mess up a kid by shoving them in front of the TV all day, not communicating with them early and often, and leaving them unstimulated.
Sign language is great because it lowers frustrations between parents and kids. I don't care if my daughter becomes proficient in the future -- she's able to tell me things with her hands she can't with her vocal chords and that makes me a better parent and her a happier kid.
That will make a difference in her development, if for no other reason than she likes me better and listens to me more -- and that I don't resent her and get cranky all the time.
I agree with your final point -- these things are not panaceas and will not create brilliance or social giants. They should be done for fun, and for better relationships with your kids.
And if you are having fun with your kids and develop good relationships that is bound to make them smarter, happier and more social little folks.
You know as I read this I had a response all worked up and then nar said it better. :)
We used sign language with our girls purely for the short term gain. It lowered their frustration and ours. They still play around with signs at three and half but I suspect that's mostly because their auntie is a sign interpreter and visits often.
We also had some Baby Einstein but again it was short term gain thing. If we absolutely needed something to distract them for a half an hour it was way better than anything we could find channel surfing (with the exception of Blues Clues). Now they watch less TV (they might get a show every two weeks and no movies) than they did when they were smaller because they play independently and we can get things done without having to actively distract them.
Other than that I agree totally.
When my son, Cross, was three months old he was the victim of shaken baby syndrome. His left side was mostly useless when we returned from the hospital. My husband and I worried about how this would affect every aspect of his life. Would he be able to function in school, work, ...life? Would all of the therapies we were doing with him really benefit him, or would they just make him resent us because we were "making" him do all of these things that he didn't want to do?
Cross had physical and speech therapy until he was three years old. Occupational therapy wasn't available to us, so we improvised. And, yes, we taught him a little sign language. We used pictures for cues as well. And we exposed him to all of the things that a "normal" child would be exposed to.
Both myself and Cross's dad are intelligent people, so we hoped that his cognitive functioning would not be impaired. We did the "brainy baby" things. I read to him daily. I talked to him about his environment. Everything he heard, saw, felt, tasted or smelled was explained to him.
We spent time in the kid's park. We played in streams, and climbed hills. We gave him the opportunity to do whatever he was capable of doing. Some things he was good at, others were difficult if not impossible for him to do.
Today Cross is a happy, active, intelligent five-year-old. And I have realized that he needed two things in order to be the person he is today.
First, he needed the innate ability. His body and his brain had to have the ability to heal themselves. His brain rerouted the connections that he had lost and he regained the use of his left side. His cognitive functioning was not impaired, as we had feared.
Second, he needed to be given the opportunity to use and develop his muscles again. Cross had more "activity" sets and physical play toys than most daycares! We kept him busy and made it fun for him so that he wanted to do it.
We were determined to give him every opportunity to develop and grow. I think that this is what every child needs most---opportunity. Whatever form that takes is mostly irrelevant...as long as the child is enjoying what he does, he will learn all that he is CAPABLE of learning. And if that means that he will be the fastest person on the planet, or a Nobel prize winner, or something a little bit more like the rest of us (who are all different by the way)then that's just fine.
If your child enjoys Baby Einstein videos or books, watch or read them together. If he gets frustrated because he can't tell you what he wants or needs, try sign language. Above all, spend time with your child. The rest will take care of itself.
If you are having difficulty in Math or Science help is available. An up-to-date periodic table with detailed but easy to understand information for kids in science class.
http://s168146235.onlinehome.us/periodic-table.htm
Post a Comment