Professional Learning for Busy Educators

A majority of parents rarely, if ever, discuss race/ethnicity, gender, class or other categories of social identity with their kids, according to a new, nationally representative survey of more than 6,000 parents conducted by Sesame Workshop and NORC at the University of Chicago. The researchers behind Sesame Street say the fact that so many families aren't talking about these issues is a problem because children are hard-wired to notice differences at a young age — and they're asking questions.

"Listen, I know that the biggest indicator of success in school-aged kids is parental involvement. How could I forget? The media is constantly banging that gong via books, articles and nightly news programs. And it seems most of us have gotten the message; the percentage of students whose parents report attending meetings, conferences and school events reached an all-time high in 2016.

Parents, only you can stop the 'birthday-industrial complex'
But is that such a great development? We’ve also been told that kids who aren’t allowed to figure things out for themselves — even if it means occasionally falling or failing — can develop anxiety and a kind of learned helplessness instead of the resilience they need to become successful adults. And less discussed, but also problematic, is the effect on parents.

The vague mandate to “be involved” can lead to stress and guilt for time- and resource-strapped parents — and resentment in those of us who’d rather our relationship with our kids revolve around something besides worksheets and study guides. But even if we’d prefer to opt out, we don’t want to look bad to other parents or, worse, to our kids’ teachers. Add to that generalized anxiety about competitive college admissions processes, debt and our children’s future success, and you’ve got a recipe for a pressure-cooker environment that is as bad for parents as everyone else."

Attention exhausted parents: The next time your toddler starts making strange noises or babbling about Paw Patrol, try to strike up a conversation — it could make a big difference later, researchers say.  

A study published this week in Pediatrics found that toddlers with parents who spend lots of time listening and chatting with them are more likely to have better language skills and higher IQs a decade later than youngsters left hanging in silence. 

"If you knew that children who were fed a certain nutritional diet at age two were not only far healthier as toddlers, but much more likely to be in a healthy weight range at age 12, you'd want to pursue those findings, wouldn't you?" said study author Jill Gilkerson, senior director of research and evaluation at the LENA Foundation, a non-profit charity in Boulder, Col. 

"Conversational turns are that diet, that nutrition, for the brain."

By the time my daughter was 14 years old, she had invented two life-saving devices and had one patent and one pending. People often ask how I “raised an inventor.” The real question, however, is: “Why doesn’t everyone understand that inventing is just a form of problem-solving that results in a physical solution?”

When my daughter, Alexis, started inventing as a young kid, I dismissed her creations as anything important. My teachers had taught me that inventors were geniuses like Edison, Bell, and Tesla. They also taught me that you need all those years of book learning in high school and college before you can do anything important like inventing something.

Alexis shattered that myth when she looked at me one day and said, “Mom, inventing is just problem-solving that results in a physical solution. I don’t understand why people think it’s so amazing. Inventing is human; we all can do it.”