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Tsuga

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Everything posted by Tsuga

  1. Honestly, I think it's only offensive in context. I've called my own children heathens and rugrats and hooligans. They have called me mommy dearest. None of these terms were said in anything other than a lighthearted fashion, slightly poking fun at some mildly inappropriate behavior, e.g. eating rice with their hands, or in my case raising my voice about being late to the bus. Not our best moments. I assume we've all been there. I think that everyone's shock at her lack of contact colors everything else she is saying. That's happened to me before on the Internet. Once I was sarcastic with my stepson. I used an exclamation point. Then I realized perhaps I'd gone too far, and posted on the Internet. Holy cow. You would have thought I'd have punched that kid in the nose, from the reactions I got. I had already apologized to him at that point for responding to him so irritably, but people were insisting he'd grow up permanently damaged. I think refusing to speak with another relative for years is wrong and harmful. BUT I can also imagine a situation in which many parts of what ClarkAcademy is saying are getting blown out of proportion because that one fact about her behavior does make her seem monstrous. But the reality of their lives is probably not nearly as horrible as we are imagining it based on a few posts.
  2. I'm an atheist raised in an atheist household, or rather agnostic, and I have heard and used that word. My mom didn't use it but we kids used it humorously. Perhaps it's generational. I'm 36 and I remember in high school, making fun of ourselves, and others, using that term. For example, someone forgets to take their shoes off in the home. They may be told by roomates, in a friendly joking voice, "Take your shoes off you heathen!" (I blame our Asian and German heritage in this area for the popularity of slippers in the home.) I'm not trying to defent ClarkAcademy's post, which I found bizarre, to say the least, but the lighthearted use of "heathen" is the least of her problems. It's along the lines of hooligan or rugrat.
  3. Nobody is saying young children can't reason. Piaget was a big proponent of children's ability to learn and of their independent intellectual lives. What the child development model suggests (and what experiments have proven) is that abstract reasoning is something that the vast majority of the population just doesn't get until they are about six or so, and then even higher reasoning is not possible until around 11-12 (puberty). But there is also a reason that in the Well-Trained Mind books, their pre-school curriculum is very much "play, imagine, experiment, read to". They acknowledge that kids at that age are just extremely concrete. Anyone who's tried to reason a four-year-old out of a tantrum knows how utterly frustrating it can be. This isn't to say they can't think. They can think! They can think up very complex stories and use logic. They count, they memorize poems, they can even add on their fingers. They can understand specific causes and effects, but they don't generalize. This is why you can't just SAY to a four-year-old, "If you pull the cat's tail, we will leave." The child must have a specific experience of pulling the tail, and leaving as a punishment. Otherwise it takes forever for them to put all that stuff together. Getting kids that age to respond to act-specific consequences is closer to dog training than it is to a logic course. You can talk your head off but they don't get it. They need to see it happen. Some kids can see it happen to other kids and that's concrete enough for them. Yet other children have to experience that cause and effect to really understand that "inappropriate action -> leaving situation". And they still often will not generalize! For example, we have always left a situation when my child acted out. And every. single. time. she was surprised, up to last year or so. She just did not extrapolate this to be a general rule. Every situation was a different, concrete experience. Yes, her brain operated on cause-effect principles, but only in a rather concrete way. I think, Bill, what you may be talking about when you mention "thinking like adults" is in fact the stage that is described in theory as "formal operational". Teenagers: they could predict the consequences of their actions if they had the will to do so. :) Three-year-olds are also like this: they have far too many skills than their judgment warrants, heh. For some reason evolution decided they should practice their powers before they understood the extent of them... I will say that my younger child is precocious and for every stage, she's been much better at abstraction than her older sibling. However, she still hits that developmental wall. You can try some of the experiments on your own kids. I did the marshmallow one on both of my kids. The older one was way, way, WAY better than the little one for her age, but they both fell within the range of normal. I also did the cookie breaking trick they showed in these videos. My kids were both way better than average but still normal. The pouring it into another cup one had my older one totally fooled (taller=more liquid) and the little one looked at me like I did sorcery. It was freaking hilarious. You could see in her eyes... "It's the same liquid... but now it's more... but she didn't add any... wat." Since then I have done the water-pouring trick for other pre-schoolers and I've realized I have a really great trick on my hands. MAGIC! It turns out that at any age you can exploit known gaps in human knowledge to entertain them to no end.
  4. I don't want to "like" because pneumonia is no joke but the Barbie shoe part was really funny. I am glad she is better now!
  5. It's not the boundaries in particular (though there is a reason there's a "D" at the end of "OCD"--it stands for DISorder, we all have something but many of us acknowledge the need for help). It is your means of enforcing boundaries that are deeply unhealthy. Your emotional reaction to a bite is about the same as a normal person's emotional reaction to a murder. Was it wrong? Yes. Was it a mistake that many kids make? Yes. Are some kids more prone to it than others? Yes. Are there other ways of dealing with it besides exile? Yes. And finally: Humans have about 10 times as many bacteria in them as they do their own cells. Avoid a booger? Okay. You're reducing your germiness by like, .00000000000000000000000000000000000000000001%, which only allows other types of germs in you to flourish, for a net zero effect. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/06/080603085914.htm (Disclosure: I didn't count the zeros.)
  6. Where are children using abstract reasoning for academics at age for or five? They may be getting ready with simple facts, like letters and numbers, to familiarize them, but there is nowhere that I'm aware of (and I have worked with educators on three continents) that is taking children under the age of five and doing even simple addition with them. "Do you really need abstract reasoning to learn to read, count, and do basic simple math facts? I think not" Counting, definitely not. Reading--decoding phase--no, I don't think so. But fluent reading requires that abstraction of the symbol be so automated that I believe it does require some abstract thinking. However, I should say that we might be thinking of abstract reasoning differently. I don't mean algebra. I'm not a follower of Piaget, or at least I thought I wasn't, but all the articles which have citations that explain how we know what kids are capable (again, on average) discuss his stages: http://www.telacommunications.com/nutshell/stages.htm Maybe I've internalized Piaget. I apologize. I will say that many of his theories about when kids can do stuff have been backed up by randomized experiments with children. http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2009/09/15/piagets-stages-of-cognitive-development-experiments-with-kids/ (The experiments are hilarious. Three-year-olds are ridiculously adorable.) I child might be able to spit back math facts. But to really know what they're doing and apply them in any way to the world, they absolutely need some abstract thought. And in most schools nowadays, that is in fact a requirement. "I just don't agree that 1st grade is supposed to require abstract reasoning." Well, most kids turn seven that year, even if not redshirted. I think a child should be able to use the skills I'm talking about here by first or second grade.
  7. Re: everyone who mentioned TV: That must go without saying. How anyone in this world finds time for television, I have no idea! We watch some of Sunday football with my partner. That's it. I imagine if you have an SAHP who still has a small child at home, an hour of TV for the family is going to happen, to give the parent a bit of time to collect themselves and not lose their mind. Other than that... yeah. No TV.
  8. I don't think I'm being very clear. There is a well-documented, well-known neurological change which happens around the ages of 6-7, that allows for abstract reasoning. It's not a question of training. Even the charts often cut off between six and seven. You'll see "early childhood" vs. "middle childhood". It seems extremely unlikely to change this sort of development through curriculum, although there will be variation between children. That would be like trying to prevent puberty by keeping children away from the opposite sex (or, in the case of early drilling of math facts, like telling a girl why boys are so awesome is going to do absolutely nothing for her hormones at the age of eight--but wait a couple years and suddenly she gets it). It's why the Catholic Church said the age of reason was seven (so you could get confirmed understand communion), why the Muslims believe children under seven are incapable of real sin, why around the world nobody starts school before five and why the average age at the beginning is six (so, turning seven during that year)*: http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SE.PRM.AGES If abstract reasoning were only used for school-related tasks, I'm sure redshirting would have an effect, just like keeping a child in a carseat all the time would delay walking (and make for a flat head). But abstract reasoning is used by almost everyone every day on regular tasks from playing house to building with blocks. You'd have to prevent the child from interacting with others and the external world (a mental version of the carseat's harness) to keep that from developing. Time is another big thing that happens at this age. They get it, so they use their abstract reasoning to deal with it. Same with puns. So I don't think any change in the curriculum will delay its onset. Even people with no education at all can use abstract reasoning, although applying it to symbolic tasks educated people find routine might be a stretch. Edits: My god I'm a rambler. Sorry.
  9. Subtracting three-digit-numbers, though, is not that conceptually different from subtracting one-digit numbers. It's more steps, but it's still abstract reasoning. Yet for many little ones up to the age of six or seven, you cannot convince them that a nickel is worth more than a penny even though a nickel has a five on it. The manipulative value trumps the abstract meaning of the figure "5". Going from the dots to the figure: that is the huge leap they are able to make, that most children just can't add and subtract well before that happens. Too many dots. Or when they lose the dots in their head, the seven and five become meaningless, and the operation falls apart. It is that abstract reasoning that allows humans to do all kinds of arithmetic, from 3+6 all the way through multiplying three digits together. And that is what many kindergarteners and first graders struggle with in a maladapted curriculum. The children whose brains haven't undergone that development just can't do those operations with symbols. Once the abstract, symbolic reasoning clicks, it's just a matter of practice and you have a whole myriad of skills at your fingertips. But before that, no amount of practice can make it make sense to them.
  10. That is such a great point! :) Thank you for reminding me. It sounds like our kids are at the same level. We are not memorizing past 12, though--I looked into it and finally decided it just wasn't worth it, because the automatic facts transfer. But I spent way too much time thinking about it, lol. At some point, automatic facts transfer: 13+6 is 3+6 with an extra one in the tens column. She can carry in theory but that's kind of where we're going next. Two soccer teams is insane. I cannot imagine. We are still at the weekend practice age, thank god. 90 words per minute is really a big deal, isn't it? It's like suddenly, they can pay attention to the story. Our homework is just right--they say 20 minutes of assigned reading which is meant to automatize reading within a certain series. It's a combination of sight words and phonics and I think very appropriate given that it's a class of 25 in a public school, but then, I taught so I'm probably more forgiving than some on this board, heh. Then two worksheets which are review for my first grader, and spelling words. They have three levels: spelling, recognition and challenge. It's nice to have everything tailored! I wish the math were more tailored but it's nice to have an easy subject, so... all in all it's about 30 minutes, but that's with her breezing through the math and only if she aces her spelling words (otherwise we copy them three times). Then 15 minutes of music, and whatever project she has... it ends up being quite a bit.
  11. I think that "gifted" is quite a poorly defined term, to be honest. To some it means high IQ, to others it means high ability (e.g. someone on the autistic spectrum could have the same IQ as someone else on the spectrum, but if one is functional and the other is not, one individual would say they're both gifted, and another would say that only the high functioning one is gifted), to others it seems to be nothing more than precocious (which would definitely not be late maturing, by definition). "My kid could read at the age of three but he just hasn't been living up to his potential and in spite of all our work he only gets Bs, but we know he's gifted." To some, it could be any kid with an IQ over 130, but to others, nothing below 155 could possibly be considered even for a public school gifted education program--and if you've met people in this range you know that's a huge difference in terms of life trajectory. Some people think the term "twice exceptional" is ridiculous: if you need extra help to be a high achiever, then you aren't a high achiever. Still others think nearly every gifted child needs help in some area or another and that it's really uncommon to find a super high-capacity kid who doesn't have a special need in some area or another. I'm sure that some exceptionally bright children mature later, and still others bloom later. There may be something structurally different in their brains, or there may be a totally different timeline in development. However, I personally would want to see a very specific definition of "giftedness" and a very specific study before I bought that. The age of 6-7 as a developmental milestone is extremely well documented. Definitely. It's more like, "They'll get teeth between about six months and a year, they'll start to speak between about nine months and two years, they'll be able to do some abstract thinking between six and eight, and they'll start puberty between 10 and 13, at least about 90 - 95% of them will." My point is not so much that it has to happen on a specific timeline for 100% of the population (it's a biological population, there is going to be a bell curve and there will be people at both ends), but that it's a very real and well-documented developmental phase that is required for a lot of first grade tasks nowadays, particularly subtraction with numbers and reading fluently. And that difference, that cognitive development, is not something you can train for or work for, just like you can't make a baby talk, or stop a girl from beginning to flush when she sees a cute boy. It just happens. Your own children may be precocious or they may just be able to go way ahead the whole way through school. There's always that kid who is four feet in the second grade, but never grows after the age of 12; and the other child who is a shorty all along and then BOOM puberty stretches the poor thing out like the rack. I'm sure brain development is also quite varied. Whether it happens earlier or later for high IQ children, and whether the bell curve is skewed to the right, the left, or whatever, is a moot point. We know that there's a phase that everyone goes through at some point, and OP's child is on the cusp.
  12. Just looking to connect. I work outside the home full time but I set my own schedule so it's flexible to be a chauffeur and then make it up later in the evening (yawn). But I do have the kids in after school care to about five several times per week. Anyone else have the kids in care after school as well as afterschooling? How is it going? What are your challenges? I just find it really hard to keep my first grader getting to bed in time to get 11 hours of sleep, especially now that she can read herself to sleep and often stays up late reading without me knowing it. Plus, we have a good 30 minutes of school homework plus an activity twice a week after school (language and music). So, yeah. Share your ideas here!
  13. Seven, they used to say, was the "age of reason" and it's the age most countries send their children to academic school. They literally turn on their reasoning somewhere around this time. A general description: http://www.scholastic.com/browse/article.jsp?id=7241 Piaget's theory (hardly the bible, but an interesting single perspective): http://children.webmd.com/piaget-stages-of-development I don't know what it is, but all of a sudden, like magic, my kid is able to do multiplication, connect addition to multiplication, figure out how to spell new words from looking at other words, and basically just... reason. I know with my own child, I have been banging my head against the wall to get her to understand places (tens, ones) and basic multiplication (double of three is 3+3, for example), and to get her to read words based on patterns and rules of English. I was like, "you know your numbers, you can compute things, how can you not see this?" (Obviously I didn't say that. But after we would finish our lesson, I was like... what am I saying wrong?) I am not kidding when I say that she basically learned all of these things simultaneously her first week of first grade (a month shy of seven). I'm sure all the prep work helped, but the point is, before that it just did not compute. It was all floating around in her brain like so many sparkly fairies and unicorn farts. She could compute sums and subtract on her fingers, but abstract reasoning of any kind, including analogies, were painful. And again, she seemed so smart in some ways! But literally three weeks ago, she all of a sudden got Amelia Bedelia. Before, she just read it like... huh, what a silly woman. Then, boom. "TAG! She thinks she has to TAG things but it's not that kind of tag! Hahahahahahahaha!" Click. The thing that is important to this discussion in particular is that if OP's child is struggling because they're foisting these skills on five and six year olds who are just not there yet, then I feel she's equally justified either in scaffolding, or emotionally supporting him, or waiting a year to put him in when he's developmentally there. You just can't rush brain development, no matter how much preparation you do (and I'm really big on preparation). @vonfirmath, your child may either have a developmentally appropriate curriculum, or he could have had the "click" this summer. My child's just a bit older and she's doing very well in first grade. But these kids are older and OP's son is a very young five, and some schools have first-grade tasks starting in kindergarten. That's just a world of difference to what our kids are going through right now.
  14. I see, so you were talking about the possibility of his snoring and keeping her awake? You were very clear, without using words, what you were talking about, hence your not objecting to the ensuing discussion until I called you out on it. Having been on "mommy boards" for about six years, I get sick of seeing this trope again and again. It's positively bizarre and I do call people out on it. Sometimes people mention child abuse, sometimes they just discreetly say, "Oh, I'd never let a grown man around my child alone," as if there were ANY good reason to say such a thing. Also, while all sexual assault is horrible, 72,000 is about 1% of the child population of the United States, and that includes teenagers, which, while abuse of teens is horrid, is not the same thing qualitatively as pedophilia. (Note: I'm not diminishing the crime or horribleness, just saying that attraction to pre-pubescent children is different than the equally horrible crime of not respecting an adolescent's inability to consent.) So yes, it is rare, at least rare enough, that I would not bring up such things every time I hear about a man and child in the same room. You brought it up, even if you didn't want to use the words for it. You know quite well you weren't talking about snoring or his rolling over on the baby, as did everyone else participating in the conversation. My calling out the mention did not make it occur.
  15. I didn't see that you have it. For me, regular books are my only choice so I guess I've just gotten used to creating my own worksheets, problems and translations of popular science books. It did not occur to me that that (rather than content matter) would be the disconnect. We afterschool as well but I just go through the content with them and create little exercises from my own examples.
  16. For some reason, I read her as saying "I have seen"... I still think it would be worthwhile to make your own worksheets, because that is aimed at schools which spend taxpayer money on it, whereas a home learner could never afford that for one child (the price is aimed at teaching hundreds of children over a period of several years, and also is monopolistic).
  17. Wow. I wouldn't trust any adult, of any sex, who made it a point to try to get into a bedroom with a small child, of any sex, alone, but this is going too far. Statistically speaking pedophilia is very rare and bringing it up in a situation like this is paranoid. I have the deepest sympathy for anyone who's been abused and I won't pretend I can understand how it feels, but I don't think this kind of discussion is appropriate whenever someone brings up a male and a child in a home together. Way too many men are great dads and loving adoptive and foster parents, to let this be the center of discussion.
  18. Love2Learn, have you considered the paperback? We are dual income and I know not everyone has the same disposable income but to me $18.00 is totally worth it. http://www.amazon.com/Uncovering-Logic-English-Common-Sense-Approach/dp/1936706210 I mean... let's say you only eat out once per month. Surely it's worth it to forgo that one meal out, have some canned soup (god knows I've been there) and invest $25 with shipping in a book that will help your child for a lifetime? That's what I'm doing. One more breakfast of bread and homemade jam rather than cereal, do that for a month and I have the money to buy this book. I don't want to diminish the importance of having a budget but I do think it could be worth it.
  19. I don't think Columbus was extremist for his day. In the sentence regarding extremism, I was talking about the nuns whom I happened to know in person, in real life, who represented Christianity to me in the 1990s. They were actually active against extremism of all three "big G" religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam). But that's beside the point. I just meant to give an example of Christianity to oppose holding Columbus up as an example. I don't think his actions (though abhorrent) were extreme for the time, no. I will edit my post to clarify.
  20. Wow, no answers. I'll give it a shot. I lived in Muslim countries for about 10 years. I can say one thing definitively: Muslim cultures range from North African Arab, to Middle Eastern Arab, to Persian, to Turkic, to Indo-Pakistani, to Indonesian, and beyond, but they all share the two Eids and the differences between observant Muslims and non-observant Muslims is pretty big. I would say that the two Eids are like Christmas and Easter to us. One comes after a fast (like Easter) and the other celebrates god's faithfulness to Abraham. All the other holidays are mainly celebrated in a very minor way, or as a regional / cultural celebration, or celebrated by very religious people who are actually (in my experience) a minority. Laylat Al Qadr is a fairly big day for observant Muslims because they stay up all night praying and believe that their prayers count extra on that night. They believe that was the night the Qur'an was revealed to the prophet Mohammed. It's a big deal for a child to stay up all night. 'Ashura is the one where some Shi'a flog themselves (you may have seen it on TV). In 10 years of living among Muslims Shi'a and Sunni, I saw a lot of them sneak smoke breaks / Coca Cola breaks during Ramazan but I never saw anyone flog himself in person, though I saw it on TV. My children know about Ramazan (the fast, a big deal in and of itself), Eid-al-Fitr (post-Ramazan holiday), Eid-i-Qurbon (I believe that is al-Adha in Arabic), and Laylat-al-Qadr. Those are pretty generic. If you want to introduce the idea of the difference between Shi'a and Sunni, Ashura would be a good place to start, but at your kids' age it's probably not necessary.
  21. Yeah but kittens die all the time anyway. They're very vulnerable. So it's probably just a coincidence.
  22. I was a Christian for 15 years and the only thing I can say about Columbus was that he was about as Christian as those other famous Spanish Catholics, the instigators of the Spanish Inquisition. Some of the most remarkable people I've ever known were Catholic nuns. But they were active forces for good through peaceful protest and ecumenical dialogue. More importantly, they were kind, loving people who cared for the poor and the sick. Please do not let Columbus outshine such people in terms of historical importance. The truth is far more important, and your children will be less vulnerable later on when hearing the truth about what happened in the New World. They may be more cynical and realistic about human behavior in and out of the church, but at least they will trust you and their church as a source of truth. Most importantly, the sooner the come to realize that not everyone who uses the cross is a true Christian, the better off they will be. There is no benefit to them in thinking that just because someone spouts the name of Jesus left and right, that they are doing good. It leaves them vulnerable to all kinds of abuse and manipulation.
  23. 2 in terms of grossness, but her not respecting his boundaries is a 10 on my scale of "no way, Jose." Holy smokes. That wouldn't fly in my region. I don't mean abuse--it happens everywhere, sadly--but an MD telling you to use hot sauce as a punishment. Egads. We believe in logical/natural/social consequences in our house. Licking a baby =/= licking a bar of soap. I mean, why? However! You do not touch people unless it's okay with them, period. If you cannot respect people, you cannot be around people. Time out. The end. I think I have said this about 5,698 times since becoming a mom, and my kids are definitely not that many days old. :) I had to literally hold my own child in time-out at that age; eventually we settled on a very strong babygate and me walking away, to diminish the returns she got from my reaction, however I muted it. With a child I was babysitting, say a nephew, I would ensure I had a strong babygate, and put the child behind the gate. Quickly, calmly, firmly: "[baby] doesn't like licking. Stop licking." If behavior repeats, quickly, calmly, firmly: "[baby] doesn't like licking. If you can't respect baby, you can't be around baby." Pick up child, put in time-out room with a babygate. If child is potty training, ensure that there is a potty in there. A bottle of water in case child complains of thirst, so you can totally be detached emotionally from her cries, assuming no cries of true pain arise (I assume you have a totally/almost totally child-proof room in your home). "Three minutes." Rinse, repeat. A strong willed child can do this routine a good four or five hours a day for several weeks if she wants. Having a plan that keeps your cool, gives you a short break, and that you know will eventually work, is very helpful. Share your plan with the parents ahead of time. A three-minute time-out behind a baby gate in an open room is an appropriate, logical, gentle consequence for a child who is testing boundaries. It also gives you a moment to go collect yourself. The mommy instincts are strong when you have a baby around so it will be good to get calmed down before you have to deal with her behavior again. (Babywearing is a great idea too, but I do think that having a calm routine that she can count on when she tests boundaries is also very healthy.)
  24. Every family is different. I'm in the "that would not work in our house" camp, but I really admire you and your ability to manage your kids and your clean-up in such a way that a white couch doesn't seem like a mistake. Clearly, you are not a new mother and you know your family, so I have to assume you have not made this decision lightly. I hope you enjoy your new couch. Aren't new cushions great?
  25. Oh god I hate adaptive testing. It's terrible for a certain kind of test taker--estimators / revisors. You have to strategize to get yourself locked into a higher plane on the test and then stay in by guesstimating quickly. And though they insist you can't tell when you're being "knocked off" the more advanced questions, you totally can, at least you can if you're bright enough to do well on the tests. That said they're just preparing the children better for the college board tests, from the SATs to the GRE, which are all adaptive. I went back to school after 15 years off and taking the GRE was pure hell. No logic section either! It had the most predictive power of all the test sections with respect to performance, but they took it off.
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