Teach Your Children

Returning to our series about researchers’ most important skill areas for parents, we come to #5 on the list, education and learning.  It’s probably obvious to everyone that it’s important to “promote and model learning” and to “provide educational opportunities” for our kids.  What is interesting to me here is the variety of views out there about how best to go about accomplishing this.

One debate revolves around whether flash cards are useful or not. I will save thorough discussion of that for another post, but I will say that even though hands-on learning is best, I do think flash cards have their place too. Anna really enjoys them and has gotten quite good at connecting pictures with letters.

Another major area of debate is whether it’s good to expose kids to television programs and, if so, how much TV they should watch.  There are some parents who feel that there should be no TV, period, for at least the first few years of a child’s life, if not longer.

I respectfully disagree.

The right kind of TV programming can be extremely beneficial to children.  Do I think some kids watch too much TV?  Absolutely.  Do I think there needs to be a limit? Of course.  Do I control what my child watches?  You’d better believe it.

I’m the kind of person whose philosophy (for most things) is “everything in moderation.”  TV is no different.  We do all sorts of things with Anna other than watch TV – read, run and play outside, go to the beach, play with Play-Doh, do art projects, color, go to the zoo, and the list goes on and on. But, like most kids, Anna enjoys watching TV too, and we’re ok with that.

Anna plays with Play-Doh by the Pool, July 2011

The TV shows Anna watches primarily have been educational.  Here’s just a snapshot of some of the things Anna has learned (in part) from TV:

• Alphabet and counting – Sesame Street
• Good manners – Barney, Sesame Street, Yo Gabba Gabba
• How to be a good friend – Barney, Sesame Street, Toy Story
• The importance of working together – The Wonder Pets (although that damn song gets stuck in my head – “What’s gonna work?  TEEAMwork…”), Monsters, Inc.
• The importance of helping others – Dora the Explorer, Go Diego Go, Sesame Street, Finding Nemo
• Forgiveness  - Ni Hao, Kai Lan!
• Problem solving – Blue’s Clues, Ni Hao, Kai Lan!, Dora
• Perseverance – Yo Gabba Gabba
• Calming down when you’re angry – Ni Hao, Kai Lan!
• Using your imagination – Backyardigans, Sesame Street, Barney
• Being kind to animals – Go Diego Go, Dora, Sesame Street
• Trying new things/ having new experiences – Yo Gabba Gabba, Barney
• Counting/ words in Spanish – Dora
• Words in Chinese – Ni Hao, Kai Lan!

I’m sure there are many others that I’m forgetting, and there is a subject overlap with a lot of these programs. Though it may go without saying, I should clarify that we have tried to make sure Anna learns a lot of these things by teaching her ourselves, by communicating with her, and by modeling them for her – good manners and being a good friend come to mind, along with helping others and learning new words and numbers.

But TV programming reinforces these things, and the programs are developed by people who know how to get the stuff in kids’ heads with catchy songs or rhymes, and it helps what we teach them to stick (even if the songs get old to us after awhile). It also helps their brains make connections. Sometimes when I need to correct Anna, we have a TV “teachable moment” where I remind her of something a favorite character did and compare it to our situation, which is usually pretty effective.

We also control what Anna watches and for how long, and because we use either Netflix or DVDs, she doesn’t see any commercials.  We’re not quite ready for her to be further tempted by all the cool toys and products we could be buying – trips to the store are already hard enough in that respect!

Anyway, I know there are people who say that hands-on experience is the only way to teach kids well – and I do think that’s best.  It’s one thing to see kids on TV using good manners, but another to apply them in real life. It’s one thing to see an object on TV but another to see and feel it in real life. Nobody’s going to say that’s not preferable.

I’m just saying TV has a useful place when it comes to teaching new things or driving home things already taught.  After all, the key to retention is repetition, right?  Anna has an amazing vocabulary for a kid who’s not yet 3, and a high comprehension level too. The other day she used “actually” in a sentence –correctly. I didn’t even know she knew that word!

Anna also incorporates features of her favorite shows into our daily routine. One funny thing she has recently started doing is using “the map” from Dora the Explorer. She came up with this on her own in the grocery store parking lot, and now we do it just about every day when leaving day care.  She’ll say “Anna and Mama T need to get to Mama T’s car. Which way do we go?”  Then we have to call the map and sing the “I’m the Map” song. The map tells us we need to go down the steps, through the parking lot, and into the car (only several feet away).  “So you tell Anna, steps, parking lot, car.” It always makes me laugh.

Finally, despite my emphasis on not letting technology distract us from time with our children, there are wonderful things about advancements in technology when it comes to education.  For example, I’ve recently started a new routine with Anna every night after story time, where I get out my iPad and we cuddle together and learn about an animal.  Anna gets to pick a different animal each night.

Last night, she chose panda bears, so I showed her some pictures, read to her little fun facts about them, and then we watched a National Geographic video of pandas in China eating and sleeping in their natural habitat. So far, in the short time we’ve been doing this, we’ve learned about whales, elephants, and clownfish, to name a few.  Anna is becoming an expert on clownfish – thanks a lot, Nemo!

Mama T and Anna at the Bronx Zoo, Fall 2010

I enjoy learning new things with her – the importance of education and curiosity can’t be stressed enough. We also give lots of positive reinforcement and praise to encourage learning.  After all, she’s gorgeous but we want her to know that intelligence is more important than beauty, and that there’s nothing she can’t do or be if she tries.