http://www.alfiekohn.org/article/five-reasons-stop-saying-good-job/
Five Reasons to Stop Saying “Good Job!”
YOUNG CHILDREN
September 2001
By Alfie Kohn
NOTE: An abridged version of this article was published in Parents magazine in May 2000 with the title “Hooked on Praise.” For a more detailed look at the issues discussed here — as well as a comprehensive list of citations to relevant research — please see the books Punished by Rewards and Unconditional Parenting.
Para leer este artículo en Español, haga clic aquí.
Hang out at a playground, visit a school, or show up at a child’s birthday party, and there’s one phrase you can count on hearing repeatedly: “Good job!” Even tiny infants are praised for smacking their hands together (“Good clapping!”). Many of us blurt out these judgments of our children to the point that it has become almost a verbal tic.
Plenty of books and articles advise us against relying on punishment, from spanking to forcible isolation (“time out”). Occasionally someone will even ask us to rethink the practice of bribing children with stickers or food. But you’ll have to look awfully hard to find a discouraging word about what is euphemistically called positive reinforcement.
Lest there be any misunderstanding, the point here is not to call into question the importance of supporting and encouraging children, the need to love them and hug them and help them feel good about themselves. Praise, however, is a different story entirely. Here’s why.
1. Manipulating children. Suppose you offer a verbal reward to reinforce the behavior of a two-year-old who eats without spilling, or a five-year-old who cleans up her art supplies. Who benefits from this? Is it possible that telling kids they’ve done a good job may have less to do with their emotional needs than with our convenience?
Rheta DeVries, a professor of education at the University of Northern Iowa, refers to this as “sugar-coated control.” Very much like tangible rewards – or, for that matter, punishments – it’s a way of doing something to children to get them to comply with our wishes. It may be effective at producing this result (at least for a while), but it’s very different from working with kids – for example, by engaging them in conversation about what makes a classroom (or family) function smoothly, or how other people are affected by what we have done — or failed to do. The latter approach is not only more respectful but more likely to help kids become thoughtful people.
The reason praise can work in the short run is that young children are hungry for our approval. But we have a responsibility not to exploit that dependence for our own convenience. A “Good job!” to reinforce something that makes our lives a little easier can be an example of taking advantage of children’s dependence. Kids may also come to feel manipulated by this, even if they can’t quite explain why.
2. Creating praise junkies. To be sure, not every use of praise is a calculated tactic to control children’s behavior. Sometimes we compliment kids just because we’re genuinely pleased by what they’ve done. Even then, however, it’s worth looking more closely. Rather than bolstering a child’s self-esteem, praise may increase kids’ dependence on us. The more we say, “I like the way you….” or “Good ______ing,” the more kids come to rely on our evaluations, our decisions about what’s good and bad, rather than learning to form their own judgments. It leads them to measure their worth in terms of what will lead us to smile and dole out some more approval.
Mary Budd Rowe, a researcher at the University of Florida, discovered that students who were praised lavishly by their teachers were more tentative in their responses, more apt to answer in a questioning tone of voice (“Um, seven?”). They tended to back off from an idea they had proposed as soon as an adult disagreed with them. And they were less likely to persist with difficult tasks or share their ideas with other students.
In short, “Good job!” doesn’t reassure children; ultimately, it makes them feel less secure. It may even create a vicious circle such that the more we slather on the praise, the more kids seem to need it, so we praise them some more. Sadly, some of these kids will grow into adults who continue to need someone else to pat them on the head and tell them whether what they did was OK. Surely this is not what we want for our daughters and sons.
3. Stealing a child’s pleasure. Apart from the issue of dependence, a child deserves to take delight in her accomplishments, to feel pride in what she’s learned how to do. She also deserves to decide when to feel that way. Every time we say, “Good job!”, though, we’re telling a child how to feel.
To be sure, there are times when our evaluations are appropriate and our guidance is necessary — especially with toddlers and preschoolers. But a constant stream of value judgments is neither necessary nor useful for children’s development. Unfortunately, we may not have realized that “Good job!” is just as much an evaluation as “Bad job!” The most notable feature of a positive judgment isn’t that it’s positive, but that it’s a judgment. And people, including kids, don’t like being judged.
I cherish the occasions when my daughter manages to do something for the first time, or does something better than she’s ever done it before. But I try to resist the knee-jerk tendency to say, “Good job!” because I don’t want to dilute her joy. I want her to share her pleasure with me, not look to me for a verdict. I want her to exclaim, “I did it!” (which she often does) instead of asking me uncertainly, “Was that good?”
4. Losing interest. “Good painting!” may get children to keep painting for as long as we keep watching and praising. But, warns Lilian Katz, one of the country’s leading authorities on early childhood education, “once attention is withdrawn, many kids won’t touch the activity again.” Indeed, an impressive body of scientific research has shown that the more we reward people for doing something, the more they tend to lose interest in whatever they had to do to get the reward. Now the point isn’t to draw, to read, to think, to create – the point is to get the goody, whether it’s an ice cream, a sticker, or a “Good job!”
In a troubling study conducted by Joan Grusec at the University of Toronto, young children who were frequently praised for displays of generosity tended to be slightly less generous on an everyday basis than other children were. Every time they had heard “Good sharing!” or “I’m so proud of you for helping,” they became a little less interested in sharing or helping. Those actions came to be seen not as something valuable in their own right but as something they had to do to get that reaction again from an adult. Generosity became a means to an end.
Does praise motivate kids? Sure. It motivates kids to get praise. Alas, that’s often at the expense of commitment to whatever they were doing that prompted the praise.
5. Reducing achievement. As if it weren’t bad enough that “Good job!” can undermine independence, pleasure, and interest, it can also interfere with how good a job children actually do. Researchers keep finding that kids who are praised for doing well at a creative task tend to stumble at the next task – and they don’t do as well as children who weren’t praised to begin with.
Why does this happen? Partly because the praise creates pressure to “keep up the good work” that gets in the way of doing so. Partly because their interest in what they’re doing may have declined. Partly because they become less likely to take risks – a prerequisite for creativity – once they start thinking about how to keep those positive comments coming.
More generally, “Good job!” is a remnant of an approach to psychology that reduces all of human life to behaviors that can be seen and measured. Unfortunately, this ignores the thoughts, feelings, and values that lie behind behaviors. For example, a child may share a snack with a friend as a way of attracting praise, or as a way of making sure the other child has enough to eat. Praise for sharing ignores these different motives. Worse, it actually promotes the less desirable motive by making children more likely to fish for praise in the future.
*Once you start to see praise for what it is – and what it does – these constant little evaluative eruptions from adults start to produce the same effect as fingernails being dragged down a blackboard. You begin to root for a child to give his teachers or parents a taste of their own treacle by turning around to them and saying (in the same saccharine tone of voice), “Good praising!”
Still, it’s not an easy habit to break. It can seem strange, at least at first, to stop praising; it can feel as though you’re being chilly or withholding something. But that, it soon becomes clear, suggests that we praise more because we need to say it than because children need to hear it. Whenever that’s true, it’s time to rethink what we’re doing.
What kids do need is unconditional support, love with no strings attached. That’s not just different from praise – it’s the opposite of praise. “Good job!” is conditional. It means we’re offering attention and acknowledgement and approval for jumping through our hoops, for doing things that please us.
This point, you’ll notice, is very different from a criticism that some people offer to the effect that we give kids too much approval, or give it too easily. They recommend that we become more miserly with our praise and demand that kids “earn” it. But the real problem isn’t that children expect to be praised for everything they do these days. It’s that we’re tempted to take shortcuts, to manipulate kids with rewards instead of explaining and helping them to develop needed skills and good values.
So what’s the alternative? That depends on the situation, but whatever we decide to say instead has to be offered in the context of genuine affection and love for who kids are rather than for what they’ve done. When unconditional support is present, “Good job!” isn’t necessary; when it’s absent, “Good job!” won’t help.
If we’re praising positive actions as a way of discouraging misbehavior, this is unlikely to be effective for long. Even when it works, we can’t really say the child is now “behaving himself”; it would be more accurate to say the praise is behaving him. The alternative is to work with the child, to figure out the reasons he’s acting that way. We may have to reconsider our own requests rather than just looking for a way to get kids to obey. (Instead of using “Good job!” to get a four-year-old to sit quietly through a long class meeting or family dinner, perhaps we should ask whether it’s reasonable to expect a child to do so.)
We also need to bring kids in on the process of making decisions. If a child is doing something that disturbs others, then sitting down with her later and asking, “What do you think we can do to solve this problem?” will likely be more effective than bribes or threats. It also helps a child learn how to solve problems and teaches that her ideas and feelings are important. Of course, this process takes time and talent, care and courage. Tossing off a “Good job!” when the child acts in the way we deem appropriate takes none of those things, which helps to explain why “doing to” strategies are a lot more popular than “working with” strategies.
And what can we say when kids just do something impressive? Consider three possible responses:
* Say nothing. Some people insist a helpful act must be “reinforced” because, secretly or unconsciously, they believe it was a fluke. If children are basically evil, then they have to be given an artificial reason for being nice (namely, to get a verbal reward). But if that cynicism is unfounded – and a lot of research suggests that it is – then praise may not be necessary.
* Say what you saw. A simple, evaluation-free statement (“You put your shoes on by yourself” or even just “You did it”) tells your child that you noticed. It also lets her take pride in what she did. In other cases, a more elaborate description may make sense. If your child draws a picture, you might provide feedback – not judgment – about what you noticed: “This mountain is huge!” “Boy, you sure used a lot of purple today!”
If a child does something caring or generous, you might gently draw his attention to the effect of his action on the other person: “Look at Abigail’s face! She seems pretty happy now that you gave her some of your snack.” This is completely different from praise, where the emphasis is on how you feel about her sharing
* Talk less, ask more. Even better than descriptions are questions. Why tell him what part of his drawing impressed you when you can ask him what he likes best about it? Asking “What was the hardest part to draw?” or “How did you figure out how to make the feet the right size?” is likely to nourish his interest in drawing. Saying “Good job!”, as we’ve seen, may have exactly the opposite effect.
This doesn’t mean that all compliments, all thank-you’s, all expressions of delight are harmful. We need to consider our motives for what we say (a genuine expression of enthusiasm is better than a desire to manipulate the child’s future behavior) as well as the actual effects of doing so. Are our reactions helping the child to feel a sense of control over her life — or to constantly look to us for approval? Are they helping her to become more excited about what she’s doing in its own right – or turning it into something she just wants to get through in order to receive a pat on the head
It’s not a matter of memorizing a new script, but of keeping in mind our long-term goals for our children and watching for the effects of what we say. The bad news is that the use of positive reinforcement really isn’t so positive. The good news is that you don’t have to evaluate in order to encourage.
Wednesday, May 27, 2015
Thursday, April 30, 2015
Why We Don’t Keep Secrets In Our House {Child Abuse Prevention} by Melissa Meuzelaar
http://www.denvermomsblog.com/parenting/why-we-dont-keep-secrets-in-our-house/
About a month ago, our family was having dinner with some friends at
their house. I walked into the kitchen just as the other mom, while
winking at me, handed my son a second cookie and whispered, “shhhh. It’s
a secret. Don’t tell your mom.” To my delight {and surprise}, my son
exclaimed, “Oooooh, but we don’t keep secrets in our house. We do
surprises.” In that moment I thought, he gets it and he’s not afraid to say it, thank goodness.
You see, thanks to an excellent Sexual Abuse Prevention workshop that my husband and I attended, called Parenting Safe Children, we have a “no secrets” rule in our house. We have this rule because secrecy is a key ingredient to the sexual abuse of a child. In fact, sexual predators count on the fact that the child will keep a secret. Sometimes they even test the child by asking him to keep small, innocent secrets first to see if he will keep bigger ones later. So, when we teach our children that we don’t keep secrets, even about small and seemingly harmless things like a cookie, we are also instilling in them that they don’t have to keep big and unsafe secrets, like that of someone touching them inappropriately.
This other mom, the one who asked my son to keep the secret, is a friend of mine and I know that she meant no harm by it at all. Nonetheless, the interaction created a great opportunity for me to share with her about our Body Safety Rules {which we also adapted from the workshop}, one of which is that we don’t keep secrets. I shared with her that we have “surprises” instead of secrets because surprises are something that you keep quiet about temporarily; then you share the surprise and people are happy. But secrets are meant to be kept quiet forever and they’re often to protect something that would make people unhappy.
My friend asked me more about the Body Safety Rules – what they are, why we have them, where we keep them, how I talk about them with my kids – and I began to explain that we have Body Safety Rules in effort to keep our kids safe from sexual abuse, to empower our kids, and to communicate to others that our kids are off limits. I told her that we keep the rules posted front and center in our kitchen; that we went over each rule with our kids when we first made the sign and that we discuss them regularly as situations arise. For example, when I’m trying to get a moment of peace, err go to the bathroom by myself and one of them comes barging in, I remind them that because we’re the bosses of our own bodies, we’re allowed to have privacy when using the toilet. And {for the love} Mommy would like some privacy while going to the bathroom. Or when we go to the pediatrician, I remind them, “no one is allowed to touch your private parts {which we call by their correct name}, but because the doctor is checking to make sure you are healthy, he needs to check your whole body, including your private parts and because Mommy is here, it is ok.” We talk about the Body Safety Rules in the context of different every day situations and we also sometimes play “what if” scenarios, like “what would you do if you were playing at someone’s house and they asked you to take your clothes off?” My kids would likely respond, “I would tell them that we play with our clothes on.”
When a child knows his body safety rules and feels empowered to say no to inappropriate touch and to keeping secrets, it communicates to a potential predator that the child is off limits. And when friends or child care providers see the Body Safety Rules hanging in our kitchen, it’s obvious to them that sexual abuse prevention is on our radar. A conversation is usually quick to follow, sometimes it’s comfortable and other times it’s just plain awkward. But I simply have to ask myself, am I willing to have a moment of awkwardness with someone in order to have my child’s back and keep him safe? The answer is always, without a doubt, Yes.
Why We Don’t Keep Secrets In Our House {Child Abuse Prevention}
You see, thanks to an excellent Sexual Abuse Prevention workshop that my husband and I attended, called Parenting Safe Children, we have a “no secrets” rule in our house. We have this rule because secrecy is a key ingredient to the sexual abuse of a child. In fact, sexual predators count on the fact that the child will keep a secret. Sometimes they even test the child by asking him to keep small, innocent secrets first to see if he will keep bigger ones later. So, when we teach our children that we don’t keep secrets, even about small and seemingly harmless things like a cookie, we are also instilling in them that they don’t have to keep big and unsafe secrets, like that of someone touching them inappropriately.
This other mom, the one who asked my son to keep the secret, is a friend of mine and I know that she meant no harm by it at all. Nonetheless, the interaction created a great opportunity for me to share with her about our Body Safety Rules {which we also adapted from the workshop}, one of which is that we don’t keep secrets. I shared with her that we have “surprises” instead of secrets because surprises are something that you keep quiet about temporarily; then you share the surprise and people are happy. But secrets are meant to be kept quiet forever and they’re often to protect something that would make people unhappy.
My friend asked me more about the Body Safety Rules – what they are, why we have them, where we keep them, how I talk about them with my kids – and I began to explain that we have Body Safety Rules in effort to keep our kids safe from sexual abuse, to empower our kids, and to communicate to others that our kids are off limits. I told her that we keep the rules posted front and center in our kitchen; that we went over each rule with our kids when we first made the sign and that we discuss them regularly as situations arise. For example, when I’m trying to get a moment of peace, err go to the bathroom by myself and one of them comes barging in, I remind them that because we’re the bosses of our own bodies, we’re allowed to have privacy when using the toilet. And {for the love} Mommy would like some privacy while going to the bathroom. Or when we go to the pediatrician, I remind them, “no one is allowed to touch your private parts {which we call by their correct name}, but because the doctor is checking to make sure you are healthy, he needs to check your whole body, including your private parts and because Mommy is here, it is ok.” We talk about the Body Safety Rules in the context of different every day situations and we also sometimes play “what if” scenarios, like “what would you do if you were playing at someone’s house and they asked you to take your clothes off?” My kids would likely respond, “I would tell them that we play with our clothes on.”
When a child knows his body safety rules and feels empowered to say no to inappropriate touch and to keeping secrets, it communicates to a potential predator that the child is off limits. And when friends or child care providers see the Body Safety Rules hanging in our kitchen, it’s obvious to them that sexual abuse prevention is on our radar. A conversation is usually quick to follow, sometimes it’s comfortable and other times it’s just plain awkward. But I simply have to ask myself, am I willing to have a moment of awkwardness with someone in order to have my child’s back and keep him safe? The answer is always, without a doubt, Yes.
Body Safety Rules Source: Parenting Safe Children workshop and Off Limits: A Parent’s Guide to Keeping Kids Safe from Sexual Abuse by Sandy K. Wurtele, Ph.D. and Feather Berkower, MSW.
Sunday, April 5, 2015
The Right Way to Do Family Time Research finds that quality, rather than quantity, counts most when it comes to spending time with your children
Surveys reveal that today’s busy parents feel guilty about
spending too little time with their children—but the actual numbers on
American family life tell a different story. Since the mid-1970s,
according to Pew Research, the time that fathers spend on child care has almost tripled. As for mothers, their time has gone up 57%—even though 71% of them are now working outside the home.
The real question is: Does all this extra time with our children do them any good?
A large-scale study, published this month in the Journal of Marriage and Family, is the latest effort to get some answers. Researchers used time diaries and survey data for 1,605 children, ages 3 to 11, and 778 adolescents, ages 12 to 18, at two points in time. They wanted to see, in particular, if the amount of time a mother spent with her children was associated with positive outcomes for them.
Lead researcher Melissa Milkie, a sociologist at the University of Toronto, said that she was surprised by the results. She and her team found no significant relationship between a child’s academic achievement, behavior or emotional well-being and the amount of either “engaged” time a mother spent with the child or “accessible” time (that is, time when she was available but not interacting directly). They found only a small boost in the adolescent years. Some positive outcomes were linked instead to factors such as a mother’s level of education, household income and family structure.
Dr. Milkie emphasizes that the study shouldn’t be taken to mean that time with parents doesn’t matter. Her research didn’t focus on what families were actually doing—eating dinner together, for instance, or going to sports or music practice—but previous research has linked spending “quality time” with parents to positive childhood outcomes, like better academic performance and higher self-esteem.
“Parents
today are sometimes so driven to raise high-achieving children that
they overlook the simple importance of…interacting one on one,” says Gail Fernandez,
a child and adolescent psychiatrist in Orange County, Calif. When you
use such moments to signal to your children that they matter, she adds,
it gives them confidence to make better life choices.
Here are some suggestions for activities that can help parents spend more quality time with their children:
Listen to music. In a study of 760 young people published last year in the journal Frontiers in Psychology, researchers found that listening to music together as a family helps to create bonds, particularly in the teen years, when communication can be difficult. Music can also play an important part in building a family’s identity, researchers note, and in shaping positive memories. Even just talking about music or a particular song is associated with greater well-being.
Drive the conversation. Car rides give you a captive audience—take advantage of it. As a conversation starter, Bruce Feiler, author of “The Secrets of Happy Families,” suggests what he calls the “Bad & Good” game. Everyone, parents included, takes a turn talking about one bad thing and one good thing that happened during the day. It lets parents show that, when problems arise, there’s a way to get through them.
Talk about homework. Homework has been called the new family dinner—and working on it together, if kept positive, can be a satisfying experience for both parents and children. With adolescents in particular, taking an interest in what they read and in the classes that engage them is a way to show they matter to you. It is also an opportunity, says Dr. Fernandez, to learn how a child feels about school and classmates.
Take a vacation. Research by Purdue University Professor Xinran Lehto, who studies tourism, has found that vacations help create enduring family ties. “You’re in a new, unfamiliar setting, and there’s a sense that you’re all in it together,” she says. On holiday, role reversals can happen, as when a child teaches a parent to ski, and these moments build greater intimacy and familiarity. “It’s not only the trip itself that bonds,” she says, “but after you come back, you now have shared memories that will continue to reinforce and even grow the bond over the years.”
Be Facebook friends. In a study of 491 adolescents and their parents published last year in the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking, researchers found that adolescents who engaged with their parents on social media felt more connected to them—and the connection grew stronger with more frequent interactions. Granted, social media may not exactly be a parent’s idea of “quality time”—but even shared “likes” are no small thing in our busy, distracted modern families.
— Ms. Wallace is a freelance writer in New York and a contributing editor to EmpoweringParents.com.
The real question is: Does all this extra time with our children do them any good?
A large-scale study, published this month in the Journal of Marriage and Family, is the latest effort to get some answers. Researchers used time diaries and survey data for 1,605 children, ages 3 to 11, and 778 adolescents, ages 12 to 18, at two points in time. They wanted to see, in particular, if the amount of time a mother spent with her children was associated with positive outcomes for them.
Lead researcher Melissa Milkie, a sociologist at the University of Toronto, said that she was surprised by the results. She and her team found no significant relationship between a child’s academic achievement, behavior or emotional well-being and the amount of either “engaged” time a mother spent with the child or “accessible” time (that is, time when she was available but not interacting directly). They found only a small boost in the adolescent years. Some positive outcomes were linked instead to factors such as a mother’s level of education, household income and family structure.
Dr. Milkie emphasizes that the study shouldn’t be taken to mean that time with parents doesn’t matter. Her research didn’t focus on what families were actually doing—eating dinner together, for instance, or going to sports or music practice—but previous research has linked spending “quality time” with parents to positive childhood outcomes, like better academic performance and higher self-esteem.
Advertisement
Here are some suggestions for activities that can help parents spend more quality time with their children:
Listen to music. In a study of 760 young people published last year in the journal Frontiers in Psychology, researchers found that listening to music together as a family helps to create bonds, particularly in the teen years, when communication can be difficult. Music can also play an important part in building a family’s identity, researchers note, and in shaping positive memories. Even just talking about music or a particular song is associated with greater well-being.
Drive the conversation. Car rides give you a captive audience—take advantage of it. As a conversation starter, Bruce Feiler, author of “The Secrets of Happy Families,” suggests what he calls the “Bad & Good” game. Everyone, parents included, takes a turn talking about one bad thing and one good thing that happened during the day. It lets parents show that, when problems arise, there’s a way to get through them.
Talk about homework. Homework has been called the new family dinner—and working on it together, if kept positive, can be a satisfying experience for both parents and children. With adolescents in particular, taking an interest in what they read and in the classes that engage them is a way to show they matter to you. It is also an opportunity, says Dr. Fernandez, to learn how a child feels about school and classmates.
Take a vacation. Research by Purdue University Professor Xinran Lehto, who studies tourism, has found that vacations help create enduring family ties. “You’re in a new, unfamiliar setting, and there’s a sense that you’re all in it together,” she says. On holiday, role reversals can happen, as when a child teaches a parent to ski, and these moments build greater intimacy and familiarity. “It’s not only the trip itself that bonds,” she says, “but after you come back, you now have shared memories that will continue to reinforce and even grow the bond over the years.”
Be Facebook friends. In a study of 491 adolescents and their parents published last year in the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking, researchers found that adolescents who engaged with their parents on social media felt more connected to them—and the connection grew stronger with more frequent interactions. Granted, social media may not exactly be a parent’s idea of “quality time”—but even shared “likes” are no small thing in our busy, distracted modern families.
— Ms. Wallace is a freelance writer in New York and a contributing editor to EmpoweringParents.com.
Monday, March 2, 2015
What to Teach Kids About Strangers by National Crime Prevention Council
http://www.ncpc.org/topics/violent-crime-and-personal-safety/strangers
What to Teach Kids About Strangers
Information about the differences between strangers kids should look out for and strangers kids can trust
Kids see strangers every day in stores, in the park, and in their neighborhoods. Most of these strangers are nice, normal people, but a few may not be. Parents can protect their children from dangerous strangers by teaching them about strangers and suspicious behavior, and by taking a few precautions of their own.
Who is a stranger?
A stranger is anyone that your family doesn’t know well. It’s common for children to think that “bad strangers” look scary, like the villains in cartoons. This is not only not true, but it’s dangerous for children to think this way. Pretty strangers can be just as dangerous as the not-so-pretty ones. When you talk to your children about strangers, explain that no one can tell if strangers are nice or not nice just by looking at them and that they should be careful around all strangers.
But don't make it seem like all strangers are bad. If children need help--whether they’re lost, being threatened by a bully, or being followed by a stranger--the safest thing for them to do in many cases is to ask a stranger for help. You can make this easier for them by showing them which strangers are okay to trust.
Who are safe strangers?
Safe strangers are people children can ask for help when they need it. Police officers and firefighters are two examples of very recognizable safe strangers. Teachers, principals, and librarians are adults children can trust too, and they are easy to recognize when they’re at work. But make sure that you emphasize that whenever possible, children should go to a public place to ask for help.
You can help your children recognize safe strangers by pointing them out when you’re out in your town. Also show your children places they can go if they need help, such as local stores and restaurants and the homes of family friends in your neighborhood.
Recognizing and Handling Dangerous Situations
Perhaps the most important way parents can protect their children is to teach them to be wary of potentially dangerous situations – this will help them when dealing with strangers as well as with known adults who may not have good intentions. Help children recognize the warning signs of suspicious behavior, such as when an adult asks them to disobey their parents or do something without permission, asks them to keep a secret, asks children for help, or makes them feel uncomfortable in any way. Also tell your children that an adult should never ask a child for help, and if one does ask for their help, teach them to find a trusted adult right away to tell what happened.
You should also talk to your children about how they should handle dangerous situations. One ways is to teach them “No, Go, Yell, Tell.” If in a dangerous situations, kids should say no, run away, yell as loud as they can, and tell a trusted adult what happened right away. Make sure that your children know that it is okay to say no to an adult in a dangerous situation and to yell to keep themselves safe, even if they are indoors. It’s good to practice this in different situations so that your children will feel confident in knowing know what to do. Here are a few possible scenarios:
A nice-looking stranger approaches your child in the park and asks for help finding the stranger's lost dog.
A woman who lives in your neighborhood but that the child has never spoken to invites your child into her house for a snack.
A stranger asks if your child wants a ride home from school.
Your child thinks he or she is being followed.
An adult your child knows says or does something that makes him or her feel bad or uncomfortable.
While your child is walking home from a friend’s house, a car pulls over and a stranger asks for directions.
What Else Parents Can Do
In addition to teaching children how to recognize and handle dangerous situations and strangers, there are a few more things parents can do to help their children stay safe and avoid dangerous situations.
Know where your children are at all times. Make it a rule that your children must ask permission or check in with you before going anywhere. Give your children your work and cell phone numbers so they can reach you at all times.
Point out safe places. Show your children safe places to play, safe roads and paths to take, and safe places to go if there’s trouble.
Teach children to trust their instincts. Explain that if they ever feel scared or uncomfortable, they should get away as fast as they can and tell an adult. Tell them that sometimes adults they know may make them feel uncomfortable, and they should still get away as fast as possible and tell another adult what happened. Reassure children that you will help them when they need it.
Teach your children to be assertive. Make sure they know that it’s okay to say no to an adult and to run away from adults in dangerous situations.
Encourage your children to play with others. There’s safety in numbers!
Read tips written for kids on how to handle strangers and dangerous situations.
What to Teach Kids About Strangers
Information about the differences between strangers kids should look out for and strangers kids can trust
Kids see strangers every day in stores, in the park, and in their neighborhoods. Most of these strangers are nice, normal people, but a few may not be. Parents can protect their children from dangerous strangers by teaching them about strangers and suspicious behavior, and by taking a few precautions of their own.
Who is a stranger?
A stranger is anyone that your family doesn’t know well. It’s common for children to think that “bad strangers” look scary, like the villains in cartoons. This is not only not true, but it’s dangerous for children to think this way. Pretty strangers can be just as dangerous as the not-so-pretty ones. When you talk to your children about strangers, explain that no one can tell if strangers are nice or not nice just by looking at them and that they should be careful around all strangers.
But don't make it seem like all strangers are bad. If children need help--whether they’re lost, being threatened by a bully, or being followed by a stranger--the safest thing for them to do in many cases is to ask a stranger for help. You can make this easier for them by showing them which strangers are okay to trust.
Who are safe strangers?
Safe strangers are people children can ask for help when they need it. Police officers and firefighters are two examples of very recognizable safe strangers. Teachers, principals, and librarians are adults children can trust too, and they are easy to recognize when they’re at work. But make sure that you emphasize that whenever possible, children should go to a public place to ask for help.
You can help your children recognize safe strangers by pointing them out when you’re out in your town. Also show your children places they can go if they need help, such as local stores and restaurants and the homes of family friends in your neighborhood.
Recognizing and Handling Dangerous Situations
Perhaps the most important way parents can protect their children is to teach them to be wary of potentially dangerous situations – this will help them when dealing with strangers as well as with known adults who may not have good intentions. Help children recognize the warning signs of suspicious behavior, such as when an adult asks them to disobey their parents or do something without permission, asks them to keep a secret, asks children for help, or makes them feel uncomfortable in any way. Also tell your children that an adult should never ask a child for help, and if one does ask for their help, teach them to find a trusted adult right away to tell what happened.
You should also talk to your children about how they should handle dangerous situations. One ways is to teach them “No, Go, Yell, Tell.” If in a dangerous situations, kids should say no, run away, yell as loud as they can, and tell a trusted adult what happened right away. Make sure that your children know that it is okay to say no to an adult in a dangerous situation and to yell to keep themselves safe, even if they are indoors. It’s good to practice this in different situations so that your children will feel confident in knowing know what to do. Here are a few possible scenarios:
A nice-looking stranger approaches your child in the park and asks for help finding the stranger's lost dog.
A woman who lives in your neighborhood but that the child has never spoken to invites your child into her house for a snack.
A stranger asks if your child wants a ride home from school.
Your child thinks he or she is being followed.
An adult your child knows says or does something that makes him or her feel bad or uncomfortable.
While your child is walking home from a friend’s house, a car pulls over and a stranger asks for directions.
What Else Parents Can Do
In addition to teaching children how to recognize and handle dangerous situations and strangers, there are a few more things parents can do to help their children stay safe and avoid dangerous situations.
Know where your children are at all times. Make it a rule that your children must ask permission or check in with you before going anywhere. Give your children your work and cell phone numbers so they can reach you at all times.
Point out safe places. Show your children safe places to play, safe roads and paths to take, and safe places to go if there’s trouble.
Teach children to trust their instincts. Explain that if they ever feel scared or uncomfortable, they should get away as fast as they can and tell an adult. Tell them that sometimes adults they know may make them feel uncomfortable, and they should still get away as fast as possible and tell another adult what happened. Reassure children that you will help them when they need it.
Teach your children to be assertive. Make sure they know that it’s okay to say no to an adult and to run away from adults in dangerous situations.
Encourage your children to play with others. There’s safety in numbers!
Read tips written for kids on how to handle strangers and dangerous situations.
Tuesday, February 17, 2015
The Kid Should See This is a growing library of smart & super-cool, “not-made-for-kids, but perfect for them” videos
"The Kid Should See This is a growing library of smart & super-cool, “not-made-for-kids, but perfect for them” videos.... There’s just so much science, nature, music, art, technology,
storytelling and assorted good stuff out there that my kids (and maybe
your kids) haven’t seen. It’s most likely not stuff that was made for
them…"
http://thekidshouldseethis.com/about
http://thekidshouldseethis.com/about
Founder & Editor,
TKSST
Saturday, January 31, 2015
What You Need To Know About Babies, Toddlers And Screen Time
http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2013/10/29/228125739/what-to-know-about-babies-and-screen-time-kids-screens-electronics
What You Need To Know About Babies, Toddlers And Screen Time
John W. Poole/NPR
This week, we're exploring the tech frontier through the eyes of our children. So we're starting with the littlest ones — babies. Can certain kinds of screen time help babies learn?
To find some answers, I employed the help of my 1-year-old daughter, Eva. She's still a wobbly walker and the sum total of her speaking skills sound like gibberish. But she has no problem activating Siri, the virtual assistant on my iPhone. Her 16-month-old friend, Lily, is even savvier with the gadgets.
"She knows how to turn the iPad on, she knows how to slide her finger across," says her mom, Kim Trainor.
That gets to the technology tension in modern parenting: You want your kids to be technologically adept — but without giving them so much screen time that it's not healthy for development.
"If I think about my childhood, a lot of these things didn't exist. And obviously my parents didn't have to think about what the exposure might do to us," Trainor says. The tech frontier for our kids is changing so fast that the guidelines are barely keeping up with it.
Case in point: Just two years ago, when San Francisco-based nonprofit Common Sense Media surveyed families with children 8 and under, just 8 percent owned tablets like iPads. That's now jumped five-fold — to 40 percent. And the percent of children with access to some sort of smartphones and tablets has jumped from half of those surveyed to 75 percent. (Read the full report.)
Pediatricians discourage passive screen time for children 2 and under.
Baby Lily's mom says she follows her pediatrician's guideline to discourage screen time until after her daughter turns 2. But the doctor behind the American Academy of Pediatrics 2011 policy guideline discouraging screen time for kids under 2 says it specifically concerns passive screen viewing. That is, plopping the baby in front of a TV or film, or having media on in the background.
"The concern for risk is that some kids who watch a lot of media actually have poor language skills, so there's a deficit in their language development. We also have concerns about other developmental issues because they're basically missing out on other developmentally appropriate activities," says Dr. Ari Brown, the lead author on the American Academy of Pediatrics policy statement discouraging screen time for babies under 2.
On Monday, the pediatrics group released updated media guidelines for children and adolescents. While still discouraging screen time for children under 2, the policy recommends a balanced approach to media in the homes instead of blanket bans. We've laid out some of the latest thinking on screen time for babies and toddlers, below.
There's a key difference between passive screen time and active screen time.
Research indicates that activities like Skyping or FaceTime — in which the baby communicates with a live human on the screen — can actually help babies learn.
"[Lily] watched her little message from her dad who had bought her a ball and said, 'This is a ball.' " Trainor says that when Lily called her father on Skype a few days later, she associated him with the ball. "She went 'ball, ball, ball,' " Trainor says.
Vanderbilt University developmental psychologist Georgene Troseth conducts some of the country's leading research on children and screens. She says Skyping isn't like watching TV because it's a social interaction.
"We're finding pretty consistently — in fact, two recent studies with actual Skype [calls] — that children do seem to learn better when there is social interaction from a person on video. So it's kind of encouraging with FaceTime or Skype for parents and grandparents to know that [with] that interaction, the children might actually be willing to learn from a person on a screen because of the social interaction showing them what's on the screen is connected to their lives," Troseth says.
The research on touch-screen apps is unclear. Apps and games labeled "educational" may not necessarily help your child learn.
Touch-screens are taking over and babies seem especially great at working with them. Lily, the 16-month-old, showed me how she shuffles through photos on her mom's phone.
Parents, meanwhile, keep hearing about "educational" apps. Troseth says be wary, for now.
"There's nothing wrong with a toy being fun, engaging a child for an amount of time. But to promote it as being educational we really need to do research to find out, is having it be interacting, doing anything to make it easier to learn from?" she asks.
Aim for a balanced approach — for you and your baby.
Since the research on touch-screens isn't clear yet, Brown offers some advice in the meantime.
"We still have questions. If you're planning on using interactive media with your child, use it with your child, sit down with your child and engage with them because that's going to be more valuable than anything," Brown says.
It's valuable time with her 14-month-old daughter that taught another mom — Jennifer Grover — about her own relationship with screens.
"It's just amazing how good they are at mimicking what they see. So I've definitely had to learn to kind of rein in my attention to the laptop, or my attention to my phone in front of her, because whatever I'm doing that's what she wants to be doing," Grover says.
What You Need To Know About Babies, Toddlers And Screen Time
John W. Poole/NPR
This week, we're exploring the tech frontier through the eyes of our children. So we're starting with the littlest ones — babies. Can certain kinds of screen time help babies learn?
To find some answers, I employed the help of my 1-year-old daughter, Eva. She's still a wobbly walker and the sum total of her speaking skills sound like gibberish. But she has no problem activating Siri, the virtual assistant on my iPhone. Her 16-month-old friend, Lily, is even savvier with the gadgets.
"She knows how to turn the iPad on, she knows how to slide her finger across," says her mom, Kim Trainor.
That gets to the technology tension in modern parenting: You want your kids to be technologically adept — but without giving them so much screen time that it's not healthy for development.
"If I think about my childhood, a lot of these things didn't exist. And obviously my parents didn't have to think about what the exposure might do to us," Trainor says. The tech frontier for our kids is changing so fast that the guidelines are barely keeping up with it.
Case in point: Just two years ago, when San Francisco-based nonprofit Common Sense Media surveyed families with children 8 and under, just 8 percent owned tablets like iPads. That's now jumped five-fold — to 40 percent. And the percent of children with access to some sort of smartphones and tablets has jumped from half of those surveyed to 75 percent. (Read the full report.)
Pediatricians discourage passive screen time for children 2 and under.
Baby Lily's mom says she follows her pediatrician's guideline to discourage screen time until after her daughter turns 2. But the doctor behind the American Academy of Pediatrics 2011 policy guideline discouraging screen time for kids under 2 says it specifically concerns passive screen viewing. That is, plopping the baby in front of a TV or film, or having media on in the background.
"The concern for risk is that some kids who watch a lot of media actually have poor language skills, so there's a deficit in their language development. We also have concerns about other developmental issues because they're basically missing out on other developmentally appropriate activities," says Dr. Ari Brown, the lead author on the American Academy of Pediatrics policy statement discouraging screen time for babies under 2.
On Monday, the pediatrics group released updated media guidelines for children and adolescents. While still discouraging screen time for children under 2, the policy recommends a balanced approach to media in the homes instead of blanket bans. We've laid out some of the latest thinking on screen time for babies and toddlers, below.
There's a key difference between passive screen time and active screen time.
Research indicates that activities like Skyping or FaceTime — in which the baby communicates with a live human on the screen — can actually help babies learn.
"[Lily] watched her little message from her dad who had bought her a ball and said, 'This is a ball.' " Trainor says that when Lily called her father on Skype a few days later, she associated him with the ball. "She went 'ball, ball, ball,' " Trainor says.
Vanderbilt University developmental psychologist Georgene Troseth conducts some of the country's leading research on children and screens. She says Skyping isn't like watching TV because it's a social interaction.
"We're finding pretty consistently — in fact, two recent studies with actual Skype [calls] — that children do seem to learn better when there is social interaction from a person on video. So it's kind of encouraging with FaceTime or Skype for parents and grandparents to know that [with] that interaction, the children might actually be willing to learn from a person on a screen because of the social interaction showing them what's on the screen is connected to their lives," Troseth says.
The research on touch-screen apps is unclear. Apps and games labeled "educational" may not necessarily help your child learn.
Touch-screens are taking over and babies seem especially great at working with them. Lily, the 16-month-old, showed me how she shuffles through photos on her mom's phone.
Parents, meanwhile, keep hearing about "educational" apps. Troseth says be wary, for now.
"There's nothing wrong with a toy being fun, engaging a child for an amount of time. But to promote it as being educational we really need to do research to find out, is having it be interacting, doing anything to make it easier to learn from?" she asks.
Aim for a balanced approach — for you and your baby.
Since the research on touch-screens isn't clear yet, Brown offers some advice in the meantime.
"We still have questions. If you're planning on using interactive media with your child, use it with your child, sit down with your child and engage with them because that's going to be more valuable than anything," Brown says.
It's valuable time with her 14-month-old daughter that taught another mom — Jennifer Grover — about her own relationship with screens.
"It's just amazing how good they are at mimicking what they see. So I've definitely had to learn to kind of rein in my attention to the laptop, or my attention to my phone in front of her, because whatever I'm doing that's what she wants to be doing," Grover says.
Tuesday, January 27, 2015
Give everyone a job.
Give everyone a job.
Whether the job is helping with cooking, doing dishes, or another camp chore, assign a task to everyone on the trip. Rather than taking turns with different jobs, giving everyone a “specialty” makes expectations clear and allows room to learn efficiency in one particular task. This was my parents’ system on our homeschool-on-the-road camping trips. Each of us six kids had a specific task for setting up camp, and after a few days we slid into our routine and could get a tent set up and dinner on the table in the time it took our neighbors to figure out their pop-top.\\
http://www.keeperofthehome.org/2014/07/camping-menu-primer-50-food-ideas.html
Whether the job is helping with cooking, doing dishes, or another camp chore, assign a task to everyone on the trip. Rather than taking turns with different jobs, giving everyone a “specialty” makes expectations clear and allows room to learn efficiency in one particular task. This was my parents’ system on our homeschool-on-the-road camping trips. Each of us six kids had a specific task for setting up camp, and after a few days we slid into our routine and could get a tent set up and dinner on the table in the time it took our neighbors to figure out their pop-top.\\
http://www.keeperofthehome.org/2014/07/camping-menu-primer-50-food-ideas.html
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