The Pica Perspective

"Don't Talk to Strangers": Helpful or Harmful Message?

Have you ever smiled at a child in the grocery store, only to have them look at you in terror -- as though you were going to snatch them from the cart? If so, chances are good that child has been told -- probably forcefully and repeatedly -- not to talk to strangers.

Lenore Skenazy says "Don't talk to strangers" is one of the most useless pieces of advice ever foisted on us to foist on children. Lenore, author of Free-Range Kids: Giving Our Children the Freedom We Had without Going Nuts with Worry, and one of my two guests on this week's featured BAM interview, believes it gives children the wrong message: that anyone they don't know is a stranger and not to be trusted. This, she says, not only instills fear in children; also it leaves them without options when there is actual stranger danger. Debbie Johnston, Vice President of Instruction and Partnerships at ChildCare Education Institute, strongly believes that parents and early childhood professionals must warn children about stranger danger.

What do you think? We live in a culture of fear, but is there justification for all the fear we're fed? Lenore, along with such experts as noted educator David Elkind and social historian Peter Stearns, says no. Freda Briggs, a professor emeritus in child development at the University of South Australia, contends that stranger danger is a myth. In Australia, for example, the odds of a child under 15 being murdered by a stranger are in the vicinity of one in 4 million. And according to U.S. Department of Justice statistics on violent crimes, between 1973 and 2002, out of every thousand children kidnapped, just one or two of them were abducted by strangers. As Lenore points out in the interview, driving in a car with mom is more likely than strangers to cause a child harm.

Admittedly, if I had young children, I'd probably follow them everywhere, hiding behind the bushes so they wouldn't know I was there. Heck, I might hide behind the bushes until they were driving. But I'd like to believe that common sense would prevail and I'd prevent my fears from becoming my children's.

Would I teach them not to talk to strangers? I think I prefer Lenore's suggestion. Listen to this dynamic and compelling interview and then share your opinion!

Toddlers & TV

As you probably already know, the American Academy of Pediatrics in 2001 recommended that children under the age of 2 watch no television. It caused quite a stir at the time, and I've been told by many parents and experts that few are following the recommendation.

Now comes a similar recommendation from the Australians.

Research by the Royal Melbourne Children's Hospital suggests that children under the age of two should not watch any TV at all. The researchers have written guidelines for the Federal Government as part of the Get Up and Grow guidelines to reduce childhood obesity. They are designed specifically for child care centers but also provide some advice for parents.

Statistics show that four-month-old infants in Australia watch on average 44 minutes of TV each day and children under the age of four with pay TV at home spend at least three hours a day in front of the screen.

A senior lecturer in Child Development at the University of South Australia, Glenn Cuppitt, says the new guidelines are a measure of desperation to encourage children to be active and to interact with others.

"A measure of desperation." Hmmm. When did active and interactive children become so uncommon that we had to resort to desperate measures to get them to move and play together? And, trust me, this is not the case only in Australia!

Race to Nowhere

This week's featured program on the BAM Radio Network is my interview with Vicki Abeles, lawyer-turned-filmmaker, whose new film, Race to Nowhere, premieres this week. Vicki decided to make a 
movie when she took a long, hard look at the stress school was causing her middle-school children. She wondered why their childhood was significantly different from her own, and she was troubled by what she found. Among the differences: very little time to play or socialize with friends and much more pressure around school and homework. Vicki told me her daughters did more homework than she was required to do in graduate school!

Yup, I said graduate school.

I highly recommend that you take a little trip over to Vicki's website and watch the brief trailer. Its quiet power may well bring tears to your eyes; it did to mine. While you're there you can also find a schedule of screenings, resources, and ideas for taking action.

Oh, yes; you should definitely listen to the interview, too!

Center on Media and Child Health Launches "Ask the Mediatrician"

Here's a press release from the Center on Media and Child Health!:

From cyberbullying and violent video games to social networking and sexting, parents are overwhelmed by the new media environment and how it affects their children. To help parents navigate this new and changing landscape, the Center on Media and Child Health (CMCH) at Children's Hospital Boston is launching Ask the Mediatrician^SM. Pediatrician, former Hollywood filmmaker, parent, and CMCH founder Michael Rich, MD, MPH, will tackle any and all questions parents have related to media and their child's health.

"As with a child's nutritional diet, we need to be cognizant of what media our children are consuming and how it affects them," says Dr. Rich, also an associate professor at Harvard Medical School. "At Ask the Mediatrician, we will provide parents with answers and recommendations rooted in science, not opinion."

Research shows that young people spend more time using media-TV, movies, music, computers, Internet, cell phones, magazines, and video games--than engaging in any other single activity except sleep. The media that children use and create are integral to their growing sense of selves, of the world, and of how they should interact with it. The influence of media has been linked to both negative health outcomes, such as smoking, obesity, sexual risk behaviors, eating disorders, anxiety, and violence, and to positive outcomes, such as positive social behavior, civic participation, tolerance, school readiness, knowledge acquisition, and improved self-image. These media effects are different for any given child.

The child's age, the content, context, and amount of media the child uses, and whether that use is active or critical need to be considered. Parents, teachers and others who work with children are encouraged to submit their questions at AsktheMediatrician.org, where Dr. Rich will prescribe age-appropriate media use recommendations and alternatives. Having conducted research and having built the only comprehensive database of scientific evidence on the effects of media, Dr. Rich and colleagues understand how media influence the physical, mental, and social health of children. This research, both from CMCH (accessible here) and from around the world, will be the basis on which answers and recommendations will be provided.

"We recognize that kids love media and there are positive as well as negative effects on them," adds Dr. Rich. "This new resource will give them the knowledge of how they are affected and provide action steps for parents to take in their own home, consistent with their own families, to help raise happy and healthy kids in the Media Age."

Where Does the Fault Lie? - Pt. 2

As I wrote on Tuesday, fear has been a major factor in the transformation of childhood and parenting. But there are other factors as well. Guilt, too, has played a prominent role.

An increase in the divorce rate and the number of single-parent households, along with an increasing number of mothers entering the workforce, fueled reports about the breakdown of the American family and new concerns about the welfare of the young. The notion of “quality time” grew as parents began spending more time at work in the 1980s and ’90s. With both parents absent during the day, they also began seeking more structured activities for children in order to keep them safe and occupied.

And then there's the "too-much-information" factor.

Throughout the 20^th century and into the 21^st, mounting knowledge of child and brain development has contributed to the confusion surrounding a parent’s role. The 1990s, in fact, has been dubbed “the decade of the brain” due to increasing media coverage of early brain development, which sparked significant public interest in the topic. Media sound bites concerning the critical nature of the early years gave the impression that unless parents offered their youngest children “enriched” experiences, they would be failing them. For example, popular press reports on the significant brain development that occurs during the first three years of life led to the false conclusion that, according to Marian Diamond, author of Magic Trees of the Mind, “doors open and close in the brain for certain subjects and skills at specific ages. These have gone on to imply that if a child doesn’t start a foreign language…or a musical instrument by a certain age, then the mind’s door will close and he or she might as well forget trying.” Such assumptions, many of which Dr. Diamond contends were “unnecessarily discouraging,” put tremendous pressure on parents to give their children the best possible start.

It’s not surprising that marketers saw tremendous potential to take advantage of the misconstrued research. They seized upon the opportunity, creating “educational” products purported to give young children a “jumpstart.” One such product, aptly named, was JumpStart Baby, which was for children nine months to two years old and introduced the concept of “lapware,” a new market of software for babies that requires parents to hold their little ones on their laps. According to a SuperKids Educational Software Review, JumpStart Baby is “crucial…in the development of beginning critical thinking skills” and that, “[a]lthough interaction is minimal, it is enough to give the child a sense of control. With adult supervision, Baby can learn to tap lightly on the keyboard keys, or click the mouse when Teddy asks, and experience the result of these actions.” (It doesn’t mention how this is related to critical thinking, but Children’s Software Review cites being good at waiting and following directions – two skills that even preschoolers aren’t yet developmentally ready to handle – as necessary for this software.)

Similar claims were made by other companies as well. The introductory video to the Reader Rabbit line of software told parents that the products can promote development in children’s social, emotional, and physical domains, as well as in literacy and creativity. Other product lines have backed off on their claims of developmental enhancements, but their names, including Brainy Baby and Baby Einstein, need no elaboration to make the point.

The media/marketing influence has been overwhelmingly successful. According to PC Data, a market-research firm, 770,000 copies of infant lapware (a new market of software for babies that requires parents to hold their little ones on their laps) were sold in 1999. In that same year, sales of software labeled as appropriate for preschool children - ages 3 to 6 - totaled $309 million. In 2000, over just a nine-month period, parents and caregivers spent about $11 million on software for babies and toddlers alone.

Although there is research from child development experts, cognitive scientists, linguists, and neuroscientists, as well as policy statements from the American Academy of Pediatrics, contradicting the value of such products, the marketers make every effort to keep that research from the public. In a BAM interview, noted educator David Elkind told me, “Big business has the power to use the media,” smothering the voices of academics and researchers. The result, according to Pamela Paul, in another BAM interview, has been the “professionalization of parenthood,” dictating that the average parent consult a number of professionals, read dozens of books, and buy a barrage of products. The “commercialization of parenting is the industry’s way of stepping in and solving that problem for us – making us feel all the more hapless and vulnerable.”

Listen to what historian Peter Stearns, author of Anxious Parents, has to say about this topic in this week's featured Body, Mind and Child interview.

Where Does the Fault Lie?

Have been doing some interesting reading lately. Looking into the history of childhood and parenting! It's fascinating stuff...

Specifically, I've been trying to find out how we got to this place, where parents are paranoid, competitive, overprotective, and overwhelmed!

Seems there has been a confluence of factors that have brought us here. According to Peter Stearns, in Anxious Parents, while the 19th-century view of children was of innocents who'd grow up just fine unless corrupted by adults, the 20th-century view was of children who were vulnerable, fragile, readily overburdened, and required special handling. Among the reasons for this shift was the decreasing number of children per family, which intensified the "value" of each child. Also, child-rearing manuals began to appear in the U.S. in the 1920s, followed by Parents Magazine, which was intended to "provide answers to parental concerns but also offer standards that might lead parents to feel concerns where none had existed."

And that was just the beginning of an influx of childrearing advice from outside experts, much of which caused parents to question their own knowledge and judgment. In the 1970s there was a sharp increase in the number of childrearing books on the market and where, previously, Dr. Spock's approach had been easygoing and friendly, newer tactics wanred of dire consequences if parenthood were taken for granted.

At the same time, media reports assaulted the public with stories of tragedies befalling the young. Kidnappings were widely publicized, spreading panic over the potential for stranger abductions, leading, in the early 1980s, to the introduction of billboards and milk cartons that displayed the photos of missing children. Parents learned of poisoned Halloween candy and apples containing razor blades in 1982. In 1983, a mother (who was later found to be emotionally unstable) told police that her young son had been molested at the McMartin Preschool in California. The relentless publicity surrounding the story sparked widespread alarm and, consequently, a "witch hunt."

Fear, then, has been a major factor in the transformation of parenting and childhood. According to Steven Mintz, author of Huck's Raft: A History of American Childhood

Over the past quarter-century, the trumpeting of a dire crisis among the young proved to be a highly effective way to gain public attention. Whenever adults sensed that their children were in danger, they responded with passion. Sociologists use the term moral panic to describe the highly exaggerated and misplaced public fears that periodically arise within a society. Eras of ethical conflict and confusion are especially prone to outbreaks of moral panic as particular incidents crystallize generalized anxieties and provoke moral crusades….[P]anics arose from legitimate worries for the safety of the young in a violent and hypersexualized society, but they were also fueled by interest groups that exploit parental fears, well-meaning social service providers, child advocacy groups, national commissions, and government agencies desperate to sustain funding and influence. If panics arise out of a genuine desire to arouse an apathetic public to serious problems, the effect of scare stories is not benign. They frighten parents, intensity generational estrangement, and encourage schools and legislatures to impose regulations to protect young people from themselves.

On Friday I'll review the additional factors of guilt and TMI (too much information). In the meantime, I'd love to hear your take on this trend...

Putting Family First

Yesterday I interviewed Dr. Bill Doherty for Body, Mind and Child. Bill is a board member for Putting Family First and co-author of a book by the same name. So, I've decided to offer up the following post again, which first appeared here last September...

About six years ago, when I was researching my book, Your Active Child (horrible title, but it was the publisher's choice, not mine), I came across an organization called Putting Family First. According to their website, the need for such an organization stemmed from the difficulty individual parents have in prioritizing family life in "a culture that defines good parenting as providing more and doing more for one's children." They explicitly state that they're not an anti-sports movement. However, while they believe sports can provide positive experiences, they consider today's "preoccupation with competition has diminished the rewards of sports" while also diminishing the quality of life for many.

According to a study conducted by the Family Social Science Department at the University of Minnesota, over the last 20 years there's been a 33% decline in families who regularly eat dinner together. Research further shows a 28% decrease in the number of families taking vacations and a 100% decrease in household conversations!

Over the same period structured sports time has doubled. Passive, spectator time -- the kind involved in watching sports -- has risen from 30 minutes a week to over three hours a week. And that doesn't even include time spent watching sports -- or anything else -- on TV!

For all these reasons a group of citizens in Wayzata, Minnesota, founded Putting Family First, a grassroots organization "where family life is an honored and celebrated priority. The democratic theory underlying this work is that families can only be a seedbed for current and future citizens if they achieve a balance between internal bonds and external activities." (It always comes down to balance, doesn't it?)

The organization's "desired future for families" is that:

• Families make family time and family activities a high priority in their decision making.
• Families set conscious limits on the scheduling of outside activities to honor the values they hold about family time.
• Families set limits on television, the Internet, and other electronic media if these are dominating family life inside the home.
• Families seek out ways to participate together in activities that build and serve their communities.
• Schools, faith communities, neighborhoods, and other groups provide families with resources to develop deeper bonds in a fragmenting world.
• Schools, faith communities, neighborhoods, and other groups offer regular intergenerational activities so that whole families can participate.
• Community activity groups of all kinds have explicit working policies that acknowledge, support, and respect families' decisions to make family time a priority.
• Employers have explicit working policies that honor families' time and energy needs.

Sounds good to me!

Let Children Have Childhood

I don't know why it is I can still be surprised by people. Perhaps especially by parents. But every time I think I've heard or seen it all, along comes something else that makes me drop my jaw and shake my head in wonder and dismay. This week it was a story in the New York Times about an 8-year-old racecar driver.

Yup, that's what I said. Macy Causey is 8 years old and whipping around a race track in her black and pink, 30-horsepower, $3000 racecar known as a Bandolero. The car was a birthday gift for Macy. But if you think that's a bit pricey, consider what the family spent on the hauler, which is like a studio apartment and cost $300,000. Two hours of practice time on the track costs $400.

Macy's car can reach 75 miles per hour, but on the day the reporter visited the track,the 8- to 11-year-old drivers were limited to 60 mph.

According to the article, Macy has racing in her blood. In 1978, her grandmother was the first woman to win a Nascar-sanctioned race. And, of course, Macy loves what she does. No one can claim these parents are pushing their child to do something she doesn't want to do. She was "hooked" the first time she tried it. She likes going fast, and she likes spinning out. Her mom says she also has "no fear." In her first exhibition race Macy "hit a kid. She plowed right through him.”

Well, that's something to be proud of.

Also according to the article, racing these cars may be even safer than playing Pop Warner football or baseball.

Well, alrighty then.

Granted, there are relatively few families who can afford to have their children participate in such extravagant extracurricular activities. But the extravagance isn't the point (although it certainly helps demonstrate the lengths to which some parents will go). The point is that Macy and Jessica Dubroff, the 7-year-old who was attempting to be the youngest person to fly an airplane across country when the plane crashed, killing her, her father, and her flight instructor, are/were children, not adults. Yet they are/were participating in adult activities. As is every little girl who takes part in a beauty pageant. And every kid whose Little League game is televised on ESPN. Every child, in fact, who is enrolled in an organized activity that is directed by adults and conducted with adult rules, and in which they're expected to perform like the pros and/or people at least four times their age, is not living life as a child.

Remember childhood? Those were the days -- unlike any others we've had since or will ever have again. Even vacations can't begin to compare. It may not have been like living at Disneyland; even as children we had occasional worries, but if you're like me, the magic and the wonder are what you retained. And having that once-in-a-lifetime chance to be a child is what sustains you now, when life isn't always magical or wonderful.

Isn't childhood what every parent should want for her or his child?

Success and Self-Esteem

One of the main principles of movement education, of which I've been a champion for 29 years, is that children should experience more success than failure. In fact, I subscribe to the belief that, if children aren't experiencing an 80% success rate with a new physical challenge, the challenge should be scaled back. But when I make such statements in my presentations, my words are sometimes misinterpreted as meaning I'm also a champion of the self-esteem movement, which prescribes to the belief that children should never experience failure.

Trust me, that is not what I'm championing.

When I discuss success, I don't mean winning all the time. I'm talking about the success that is earned after trying and achieving, even if only in increments. I'm talking about the experience of making an effort and seeing results -- even if it's just enough to decide that it's worth more effort. (Those of us who've tried dieting know that even seeing small results on the scale keeps us motivated to forge ahead.) I'm even talking about trying and not necessarily succeeding but knowing, at least, that you tried your best.

Yes, I want children to experience more success than failure. A child who tries and succeeds more often than she tries and fails will gain the poise and confidence needed to handle future losses and failures with grace. Also, continual failure teaches children learned helplessness -- the belief that one has absolutely no control over the happenings in one's life and therefore there's no point in trying. Naturally, that's not a lesson you want a child to learn!

When you play games with a child, you can help prepare him for life's realities -- its successes and failures, its satisfactions and disappointments -- by playing honestly. You may have to change the rules somewhat to suit his age or level of understanding, but you shouldn't do it just to ensure him a win. That will only teach him that rules can be altered when they don't suit him. If you win, point out some of the things he did well. And by all means, don't gloat! That will teach him that the product (winning) and not the process (enjoying the game itself) is what matters most. By the same token, when a child engages in competitive games with others, whether he wins or loses, "Did you have fun?" should always be your first question. And if you weren't present, you'll send a strong and important message if you never ask who won.

Success is about positive, enjoyable experiences. Trying and achieving on one's own is one of the most positive and enjoyable of all experiences! Trying and failing but still being loved unconditionally doesn't feel so bad either.

Did you know that Thomas Edison experimented with thousands of filaments before finding the right materials to create a lightbulb that would glow brightly for long periods? Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin by accident, followed by intentional problem solving. And 14 publishers rejected Grace Metalious's manuscript for Peyton Place before she successfully sold it. It eventually became a best-selling novel, a movie, and a television series!

Pathways to Family Wellness

I'd like to tell you about a resource that may not be familiar to you. It's a magazine called Pathways to Family Wellness.

Pathways is a quarterly publication that offers parents articles and resources to make informed health care choices for their families. It provides thought-provoking information from the holistic health perspective (which is why I like it) and invites parents to explore options for family wellness. Among the articles in the latest issue are:

• Why Light Matters
• Fundamental Problems with Maternity Care in the United States
• The Importance of Skin-to-Skin Contact (about moms and babies)
• Children Who Feel Loved Are More Loving
• Guided Imagery for Children Dealing with Stress
• Baby Crawling: How Important It Really Is (a favorite topic of mine!)

The featured article is titled "How We Are Making Our Children Sick." Quoting from the table of contents:

The purpose of the immune system is to allow us to live in harmony with our environment. In fact, most of the trillions of foreign cells present within our body coexist peacefully, and in some cases even contribute to our health and well-being. In spite of this, chronic diseases such as allergies, asthma, and eczema, which were rare several decades ago, have risen exponentially, especially in children, quadrupling during the last two decades.

A subscription for the magazine is $25 for a year and $45 for two years. For more information, and to subscribe, click here.