Healthy Children
From cold and flu to ear infections, Dr. Steven Parker shares information and advice on how to keep your children happy and healthy all year round.
Raise a bilingual 21st century child
So here's my #1 suggestion for extra experiences and learning that will benefit your 21st century child: raise your child to be bilingual at an early age.
Some of the advantages of being bilingual are obvious: knowing a second language will be a huge advantage in competing for jobs in our flat world. Plus, a second language provides a more complex understanding of other countries and cultures.
Additionally, there is some evidence that learning a second language early in life confers other advantages: more of the brain's firepower is devoted to language, there may be a better ability to deal with distractions, it certainly makes it easier to learn a 3rd language, it improves attentional and spatial abilities in the elderly, it may benefit some aspects of memory, and there is improved creativity in using language.
The potential downside? Really, myths aside (such as, "bilingualism confuses kids", "bilingualism causes language delays"), there is none. Plus, you don't need to be a superstar to become bilingual. Pretty much any child without a language disability can do so with ease. And the sooner the process begins, the better.
Of course, raising a bilingual child is easy if English is not your primary language. You can and should just speak your native tongue at home from the start. Don't worry, between peers and school and the media, your child will learn accent-free English just fine.
But it's not so easy if you, like most of us hopeless Americans, are a monoglot (the wonderful term for a single language speaker that vaguely sounds like an insult). Here's what won't work: having a foreign nanny for a few years or teaching sign language at 9 months without continuing your child's immersion in that language.
You'll have to pick a language to which your child can continue to be exposed (hopefully for at least 5 hours/week), the earlier the better, for many years.
(All things being equal, I'd vote for usually choosing Spanish since so much of the U.S will be Latino by the time your child is an adult + so he can travel with ease all over Central and South America and Spain + he can order a chile relleno and know what is actually in it).
Admittedly this will take dedication on your part. Find non-English speaking families with kids who can play with your child. Learn the new language together. Watch the international TV programs in the chosen language. Most importantly, try to find a school for your child that teaches a second language from the start. If you can afford a private language school, do it.
If you can pull it off, of all the extra stimulation and experiences you may be considering for your child, becoming bilingual is, in my opinion, the most enriching one and the skill for which long term benefits are likely to be greatest.
In my next blog, I'll opine about my #2 best extra thing to do with your child.
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Technorati Tags: 21st century child, pediatrics, bilingual, education
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
Happy Mothers' Day: Your check is in the mail
The Stay-at-Home Mom's Salary
- Housekeeper for 22.1 hours/week = $10,980 / year
- Day Care Center Teacher for 15.7 hours/week = $10,817
- Cook for 13.6 hours/week = $10,862
- Computer Operator for 9.1 hours/week = $7,151
- Laundry Machine Operator for 6.7 hours/week = $3,133
- Janitor for 6.3 hours/week = $3,713
- Facilities Manager for 5.8 hours/week = $11,508
- Van Driver for 4.2 hours/week = $3,334
- CEO for 4.2 hours/week = $35,971
- Psychologist for 3.9 hours/week = $7,176
Mom base pay for 40 hours = $45,697
Mom Overtime 51.6 hours = $88,424
Total Mom Salary for 91.6 hours/week = $134,121
(Average hours of sleep = 6.7 hours/day)
So, as my civic duty and as a special thank you to all you unpaid, underappreciated stay-at-home moms who visit my blog, Dr. P is sending each of you a check for $134,121, which is in the mail.
Even more important (in case your check gets lost somehow), I want to wish a Happy Mother's Day to all of you moms (stay-at-home, working, or any combination thereof) engaged in the toughest and most underappreciated job I know: raising healthy and happy 21st century kids.
All the best from Dr. P.
Related Topics: Three Cheers for Chocolate!
Technorati Tags: mothers day, stay at home mom, SAHM, working mom
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