“Starting in New York City in 1857, women workers made a tradition of labor actions and protests on March 8. In 1910, the first International Women’s Day was celebrated on the same day. This photo shows an early Women’s Day protest.”
102 years have passed since the first International Women’s Day was commemorated and we are celebrating the 103rd IWD this year. Although the rights and political and social contributions of women are more valued than before, we must realise that the work does not end here.
More than ever, women are being objectified and there is still a set of fallacies about their “natural instincts” and “social behaviour” adhered to them (common across most cultures). Most women are overworked and under-appreciated as they are responsible for contributing towards the family income AND do what they “naturally do best” – housework, being a nurturing mother and wife. Housewives are considered “non-working” members of the society although they sometimes work from day to night, ensuring that the household is in order. In some cultures and communities, violence committed towards women is still considered a common phenomenon. This stems from the fact that such cultures and communities still hold on to the fact that women should be “punished” and “suppressed”, because they are mere objects whose existence are not considered too important to society-at-large.
Gender inequality affects men too. When men choose to become house husbands, they are considered “lazy” and “useless” members of society. When men choose to pursue their occupational passion in any of the sectors dominated by women such as becoming an educator in a childcare centre, they are considered “unmanly” and many times, barred from doing certain duties because of the general assumption that men have a higher tendency to be pedophiles (a gross misconception). Also, men are expected to hold “masculine” traits, become the main breadwinners of their families and protectors of the “weaker gender”. Those who fall out of the expected set of behaviours and attitudes in life are being labeled and discriminated.
We need to recognise that nurture plays a very important role in shaping behaviours, preferences and attitudes in life among both women and men. No women was naturally born to love pink, diamonds, children or shopping. Likewise, no men was naturally born to love blue, soldiers, adventurers or become leaders in the community. All of these are results of nurture and in order to be fair to our generations to come, we need to work on exposing children to various forms of activities from sports to fine arts without pushing children towards conforming to gender stereotypes.
This is not about inciting a war between the various genders. This is about educating our future generations towards creating a progressive society that gives equal opportunities and respect towards each gender. And to do so, we have to first change our own flawed perceptions about gender roles and the messages we are sending to the young.
I think we can all do it, if we hold enough respect for all human beings in general. What are your thoughts on this?
In this by-election for Punggol East SMC, the common topic among most of the candidates seems to be the lack of childcare centres within the SMC.
Yes, while having more childcare options in Rivervale is important, candidates should do their homework on the purpose of early childhood education, operation costs required as well as reasons causing the increment of fees in childcare centres and preschools before even thinking of bringing it up for their political agenda.
1. Reinforcing a wrong impression of the function of childcare centres
Childcare centres provide early childhood education to children between 18 months to 6 years of age. In some cases, there is also the option of infant care.
Anyone trained in the field of early childhood education will know that the early years are crucial for learning. This is because before neural shearing – the disintegration of unused neurons or brain cells – takes place between the ages of 8 to 10, neurons must make brain connections. Only brain connections that are repeated and used will remain permanent. With these brain connections, or memories, children will be able to develop new knowledge as they grow older.
To put it simply, children must frequently be exposed to concepts through concrete experiences and visual representations in the early years, which will in turn help them understand abstract examples later on in their lives. A good early childhood programme will look into providing a good environment where children can learn through their daily interactions with the materials, tools and people in that environment.
A good early childhood programme will also ensure opportunities for children to develop to their fullest potential by working hand in hand with their families. In other words, childcare centres being providers of early childhood education, exist to cater to the holistic development of young children which includes working with families. Childcare centres do not exist mainly to help lighten the parenting load of working parents. It is a two-way working relationship between parents and childcare centres, but the candidates who are calling for more childcare centres in Rivervale have missed this very important point. Instead, they are reinforcing the wrong message that childcare centres function as some sort of nanny care.
As this is an impression which I believe that the early childhood education sector has been trying to change, I suggest that the candidates stop insulting the early childhood educators working in childcare centres in this way and consider pushing for quality childcare programmes in their campaign messages. That is, if they really do have to use this as one of the selling points of their political campaigns.
There is seriously a huge difference between pushing for quality childcare programmes and pushing for more childcare centres so that parents can have the convenience of picking their children up while on their way home from work.
2. Fee increment in childcare centres and preschools
Indeed over the past few years, fees have increased.
This increment is necessary as childcare centres and preschools deal with the ever-increasing cost of utilities, food supplies and stationeries. Salaries of teachers who also have to deal with the ever-increasing cost of rent, utilities, food and other basic needs, have to increase as well because they have bills to foot too.
If childcare centres and preschools do not increase their fees, guess who will bear the brunt of the ever-increasing cost of utilities, food supplies and stationeries? TEACHERS. Yes, teachers who work up to 9 ½ hours a day, five days a week and 7 hours on Saturdays on a rotational basis.
While most other professionals are able to see their monthly salaries increase annually on at least a 10% rate, teachers see an increment (of their monthly salaries) between $10 to $100 or slightly more per year. Passion you say? Sure all of us in the field are passionate about the development of children but we have bills to pay, children to feed and families to maintain. However, should the cost of living become too high for our considerably miserable salaries to bear, will you, the candidates, pay our bills for us? Never. So quit harping on the increment of fees in the childcare centres and preschools, blaming only on the rent.
Ask yourselves instead, what can YOU do, to help childcare centres and preschools keep their fees low so that more operators will consider opening centres in the area.
3. Operating a centre is not as easy as you think
I am sure that the PAP candidate does not need to worry about this aspect because should he become an MP, he can always work with PCF or NTUC on that. That is his short-cut advantage which is of course, not fair to all the other candidates.
However before anyone considers opening a centre upon being elected, there are some requirements one has to fulfil. Click on the following link to find out more before making such a promise to the electorate. Your experiences in the financial or business sectors do not necessarily mean that you qualify to be an operator of a childcare centre.
Setting up a Child Care Centre
_______________________________________________
That’s all I have to say for now. And I seriously hope that I won’t be hearing more naive talk about childcare centres in the next few days! Oh and… After-School Care programmes are not necessarily offered by childcare centres because the focus of childcare centres should ultimately be children between the ages of 18 months to 6 years of age. Try getting the primary schools to offer that instead.
Response from Kenneth Jeyaretnam, candidate from the Reform Party through Facebook (re-written in my own words):
According to Kenneth, he used to be a director of a childcare provider and his party’s plan regarding the proposal of having more childcare centres was drawn by a qualified early years professional. (Good to know, and hope to hear more about it soon!)
(The following is a modified version of what I have written for one of my degree modules. I will share it on my blog in 2 parts)
“One is not born a woman, but becomes one” wrote Simone de Beauvoir in The Second Sex in 1949. It was a line that jumped out of the page and confronted me right in the face when I was 17. My world became so much more exciting thereafter and I made a promise to spend the rest of my life working on the issue of gender equality in societies whereby traditional gender roles and stereotypes are still heavily reinforced through family, education, the government, media and popular culture.
The idea of gender inequality was introduced to me at a young age. After my brother was born, all the attention shifted to him and went on for many years. The adults fussed so much about his health and well-being. They praised him for being such a friendly boy while I was the serious one with my books and paint brushes. I was more interested in exploring my environment than interacting with people. The differences in our appearances made it worse for he was obese and I was underweight. People joked that my parents must have had a preference for boys since he looked so well fed. That made me furious and I cursed my unfortunate birth.
Being 5 at that time, I did not realise that because he was born premature, everyone was worried about keeping him healthy and alive. Although I realised awhile later that gender inequality was not the reason why we were treated somewhat differently, the naïve misunderstanding together with my sense of resistance towards the traditional gender roles enforced upon me by people around me when I was growing up, made me seek for gender equality. Hence I was ecstatic when I first heard about Simone de Beauvoir. She made me feel less like an alien because I was brought up to believe that I was the only weird girl alive who was determined in my rejection of the concept of marriage as I viewed it as a woman’s social prison.
De Beauvoir wrote about how gender inequality begins from childhood in her section Lived Experience. I was intrigued but since I was past my childhood, it never occurred to me that it would be of much use to me until I became a teacher. Observing several elements around me from colleagues to toys played by the children, I began to understand that gender stereotypes exist and are being reinforced right from the beginning of a child’s life. This is why I have always tried my best to introduce gender neutral activities, stories, toys and comments in my interaction with children, sometimes much to the criticism of my contemporaries who believe that girls and boys have to be brought up differently.
Theories and research on gender development
The moment a child is born, gender stereotyping takes place at full force. From the choice of colours when buying clothes for the newborn to toys when it comes to gift selection for the baby shower, gender plays a major factor. In fact, exposure to gender stereotypical models will become a consistent part of the child’s life. Social learning theory proposes that examples provided by the existing same-sex models in the child’s environment, along with the constant reinforcement on gender appropriate behaviour plays a huge part on the acquisition of sex-typed behaviours occurring during the pre-school years (Rubel et. al., 1988).
The Cognitive-Developmental Theory formulated by Kohlberg (1966) on the other hand, suggests that children’s understanding of gender develops in stages. Kohlberg believed that children do not actively process gender information until they reach gender constancy which is the third developmental stage of theory that occurs when the child is between 5 to 7 (Sammons, 2009).
Differing slightly from Kohlberg, gender schema theory introduced by Bem in 1981 explains that children develop a basic gender schema by the time they are about 2 and is able to associate themselves as females or males. This marks the beginning of the process whereby children begin to seek out information from their environments to help them understand “maleness and femaleness” (Sammons, 2009). The more they pick up the “contents of the society’s gender schema, they learn which attributes are to be linked with their own sex and, hence with themselves” (Bem, 1981, p. 355).
In my view, we cannot underestimate the power of modelling and reinforcement because they are powerful components of conditioning, as strongly researched by key theorists of behaviourism such as Pavlov (1927) and Skinner (1963). We also cannot deny the fact that children do play an active part in their learning and development and are also able to form their own opinions on gender as they mature as suggested by Bem’s (1981) theory. However as adults who care about giving children equal opportunities to explore their world and develop to their fullest potential regardless of gender, we should bear in mind not to limit their potential by restricting them to ‘gender-appropriate’ paths.
(To be continued in Part 2…)
“Come here!”
“Sit down!”
“Don’t go there!”
Does all these sound familiar to you? Well I hear them all the time when I am out and about.
Well guess what, these are not commands given by dog owners to their playful pets. These are impatient commands given to young children by their own parents and amazingly, in public too.
Ironically, a mother who was asking her young son to come to her was carrying her fluffy pet dog in a pet carrier. No, I am not agreeing with the fact that pets should be shouted at but it baffles me that while people nowadays dote on their fluffy pets, carrying them about, dressing them up and buying them cakes for their birthdays, they do not seem to have any patience for their own children.
Children do not understand the world the way grown ups do, especially the younger ones. As they are always curious, it is just normal that they will look and walk in the direction of something that interest them.
They do not understand danger or know that they risk losing their way if they wander away from you. They need lots of repeated explanations and might need to be put into the situation of being ‘lost’ in order to understand the concept.One way of doing so is to follow your child at a reasonable distance and wait for him/her to realise that you are not walking beside him/her. When he/she panics, you can suddenly appear and use the little experience as a good opportunity to explain the concept, encouraging him/her to inform or discuss with you in future should they want to go somewhere else so that you can follow or advise him/her if there is no time to do so. Please understand that a child might not remember it the next time round so you might have to do it all over again.
Personally, I think that parents need to start understanding and respecting their children more. Yelling repetitively at a child might eventually condition him/her to stop wandering away, because nobody loves to be yelled at, especially so when a child tends to seek positive approval from his/her parents. However the child might not understand the concrete concept of why he/she should not wander away.
The question here lies on whether you want your child to simply follow instructions without understanding the reason(s) why they should, or do you want your child to follow your advise because he/she understands where you are coming from?
Comeon, we have been young once. Did you enjoy being yelled at in public, feeling the embarrassment and being puzzled with the angry behaviour displayed by your parents who might not have bothered explaining to you why you made them angry?
Anyone who wants to have children should jolly well make time and effort towards every single aspect of their children’s understanding of the world around them. Most people have children by choice and if you are one of those who finds yourself saying that you have no time for this and that then I am sorry, you should never have children in the first place.
Being a parent is never an easy job. Think twice before you do. Only selfish people have children without reflecting upon whether they are able to put in all the effort to nurture them in their developing years.
As a teacher working with very young children, I have seen children imitating behaviour of the adults they are in direct contact with. However at times when they do so, their parents disagree with the conduct and make scapegoats out of their fellow classmates.
While it is true that children do learn from each other, I think that such denials from parents with regards to their influence over their young ones should stop. In fact they should begin to reflect upon their own behaviour and realise that alot of the ‘negative’ behaviour observed from their children actually comes from home.
One good example is a boy I met two years ago. He was four then and was one of the sweetest four year old I have met. However he will start hitting his classmates in a really violent and uncontrollable manner whenever he became angry. No amount of so called counselling and time out could soften him in that regard. So one day I asked him why he had to hit his friends whenever he was angry and this was what he said,
“My mummy also hits me when she is angry. Daddy hits me when he is angry. I hit my classmates when I am angry. It is correct, I am not wrong.”
So I explained to him that there are many other ways to solving problems and conflicts. Hurting someone else in the form of physical actions is not the only solution. In fact that will lead to more problems. His reply to that was that talking about problems will not help him. I asked him why and he told me,
“Because mummy says that when she canes me. Talking so much (is a) waste (of) time.”
When I gave my feedback to his mother that evening, she actually told me that her child was just making her as an excuse because he did not want to get my other students into trouble. She insisted that he was influenced by the older children in the childcare and that “all parents beat their children”.
I was truly appalled by that. Not only had she fail to reflect upon herself, she blamed the schoolmates for her child’s behaviour. To make things worse, she was (and still is) an educator herself.
Personally, I think that parents should try to understand that teachers have the responsibility to update them on their children and the feedback does not necessarily have to be all positive.
There is nothing wrong with a seemingly negative feedback. If teachers are to sweep behavioural problems, learning difficulties and various other concerns under the carpet just so as not to offend the parents, it is never to the benefit of the children.
It is to my believe that parents and teachers should work hand in hand for the well being of the children.
Teachers should not worry about losing their jobs or getting a warning just because they express a concern with regards to their students’ behaviour and such. Neither should parents come along with a sensitive ego when it comes to feedback that they view as negative, resulting in a defensive stance and blaming every other people instead of understanding the issue and how they actually do play a part in both the problem and the solution.
(Written for SDP’s website)
Have you ever wondered if the girl having an interesting conversation with her doll needs a psychological review? Have you also wondered if the boy telling you that his toy brick tried to gobble him up earlier on may be hallucinating? Or have youbeen annoyed by your cousin’s three-year-old bugging you with endless questions everytime you meet. Either that or you have probably been worried that your child might grow up to be a great big liar just because she has been filling you with untruths.
Now may I invite you to stop for a wee moment to cast all your little worries and annoyances aside and think out of the box.
Creativity in early childhood
Being creative helps children make connections between concepts and thus developing a better understanding of the world around them. Besides that, it also helps children find ways of expressing themselves, their thoughts and developing new ideas and perspectives.
Here is a summary on the stages of creative development in children from birth to the age of 6. Please bear in mind that the ages stated are general estimates and that each child develops at varying paces.
| 0 to 2 |
|
| 2 to 3 |
|
| 3 to 4 |
|
| 4 to 5 |
|
| 5 to 6 |
|
Encouraging creativity development
The encouragement and development of creativity in early childhood is important to aid learning and is often nurtured at best with a supportive attitude towards their endless curiosity, often wild imaginations and such.
As matured adults, we sometimes view the imaginations and games of the young ones as silly and ridiculous. In our own ‘experienced and grown up’ perspective, we may tend to judge them a little too critically, making discouraging comments or gestures that might in turn end up frustrating their young minds.
Keeping in mind that they are going through a period of trying to understand this bizarre world, we should play the role of facilitators and sometimes, as their playmates to go along with their dramatizations, no matter how silly or ridiculous you think it may be.
Employing an encouraging attitude as well as providing a wide range of materials that allow for exploration, imagination and dramatization, children will thrive to become creative individuals. The materials need not be expensive.
Children will be happy enough to be given a bucket of water along with cups and bottles to play with or scrap materials to create according to their imagination. This should in fact continue even when the child reaches beyond pre-schooling age as creativity should always be encouraged and nurtured but of course, the materials provided must be age and interest appropriate by then.
Here are some examples of situations and suggested actions you can take to help encourage creativity:
When a child puts an object into his mouth, instead of reprimanding him, what one can do is to simply explain in very simple words and dramatic gestures (e.g., pretend to choke) why you stop him as well as suggest new ways of finding out what the object is like (e.g., guiding him to touch the edges of the object). If the object is huge and the child is not in danger of choking upon it, just let it happen while at the same time explaining that the object is dirty or inedible. Just be patient and be prepared to repeat this several times until they stop doing so and start trying to put objects into their noses or ears instead. (And then you will have to start all over again!)
When a child shows you his ‘nonsensical’ scribbling, ask the child to explain what the scribbling represents using questions such as “What did you draw?”, “Who is this?” (when it is said to represent people) instead of “Did you draw a giraffe?”, “Is this a ball?” or “Did you draw daddy wearing his pair of blue jeans?”. Always keep questions open ended and let the child tell you what the scribble represents. Do not be bothered if it all doesn’t make any sense to you. It will be encouraging for her if you can listen patiently.
When a child tells you that his toy brick tried to gobble him up, instead of being a party pooper and putting him back into reality, play along! Ask him how the brick tried to gobble him up, when and why. Get him to tell you the story, and just have a good laugh with him later on when he is older.
When a child informs you that his friend bit him and you found that to be untrue, try to find out from him how it happened. Then ask how why no bite marks could be found and let him realize that he imagined it.
Children imagine possible future consequences and articulate them out as if they actually happened. Some may even get emotional about their imaginations and might start crying as they relate the ‘incident’ to you. Don’t accuse any child of lying but inform the child of the consequences of lying. Say something like: “Complaining to me about something that your friend did not do to you will get him into trouble. Will you like it if they do the same to you?”
When a child informs you that you are a wicked witch, be a wicked witch. Turn him into a frog and get him to pretend to be like one too.
When a child changes the lyrics of a song to make fun of his peers, suggest new ways of changing the lyrics to something more positive, but make it fun and get him to participate in coming up with new lyrics.
When a child asks you one question too many, you can dramatically yawn and fall asleep on the floor. Get the child to participate in the dramatization too. But if she wants you to wake up, just yawn again and say: “Shhh… will you pat me to sleep? I need a rest.” At the end of it all, the questions will most probably be forgotten (but I am not going to guarantee that new ones won’t come up). At least have some fun while you stop the interrogation.
Conclusion
Sometimes it is not easy to stay patient when you’re faced with the little ‘nonsensicals’ that children come up. The trick is to stop to think before reacting negatively and try to be as encouraging and patient as you possibly can.
The most important thing is that it does not hurt to become a child yourself an hour a day to engage in their dramatic games. Whatever it is, children can never see things from our mature perspective and should never be expected to do so till much later. This is what we should all remember before snapping at them or becoming impatient.
As an early childhood educator working in a child care centre, I am personally saddened by the recent letters written to the press by some parents requesting for MCYS to call for the extension of operating hours of child care centres. Two letters have been forwarded to me by Jacob, you can read them here and here.
The call, in my opinion, is a very selfish one that benefits nobody else but the parents and probably the economy. Here are the reasons why.
1. Children will then get to spend lesser time with their parents
Parents play an important role in nurturing their own children. They are immediate role models who will in turn pass down to their children the concept of what makes a family unit and they are the ones the children are naturally emotionally attached to. From my experience working in child care centres locally, I see that more children are spending time away from their parents and grandparents. Some children can spend up to 12 hours in the child care centre, being the first ones to arrive and the last ones to be picked up.
Socially and emotionally, these children do not feel as secure as those who see their parents more often because they will always long for more quality time with their parents but they are often disappointed when they see their friends being happily picked up earlier than them. Eventually the feeling of “my parents do not want me” will slowly emerged although never fully articulated. In many cases, this will in turn cause a child to feel a sense of frustration due to the jealousy felt towards those who get to be picked up earlier and it affects the child’s attitude in terms of socialising with the other children negatively.
Many a times, children will ask me if their parents are picking them up and why they are so late. I am always in a dilema to answer such questions because I do not want to come up with lame excuses for the parents, neither do I want to encourage the idea of workaholicism and materialism by telling the children that their parents need to spend long hours at work in order to earn more money than they already have, to provide for them. Telling them such a ‘reason’ will shape their worldview that money weighs heavily against family relations eventually and that is against my personal beliefs. I doubt anyone will encourage such a concept to be passed down… or maybe I am behind times?
2. Where and when do children have their dinner?
Do not forget that children are growing little human beings too. They need food when they are hungry and the time for them to be hungry is not based on when their parents get off work. If childcare centres do relent and extend their hours, they will have to provide dinner too for the love of the growing needs of the children. Then it will mean that the children spend at least 2 meals at the centre, and for some, all three meals.
Where then is the responsibility of the parents?
Does anyone ever consider how a child feels, only seeing the parents when they wake up and just before they sleep?
3. Child care staff are human beings with families of their own too
Another reason why Singaporeans generally make selfish parents is due to the complete disregard that child care staff are human beings too. They also have families of their own that they need to spend time with as well as the fact that they need their daily rest too.
You can say that shift work can be fairly arranged to ensure that the teachers do not overwork but let me give you a scenario.
Let us say that childcare centres operate from 7am to 8pm and each teacher works on a 9 1/2 hour shift as what it is now in most cases. So the teacher working on the closing shift works from 11am to 8pm, providing that the parents come promptly by 8pm to pick their children up. The teacher goes home at 8pm to have dinner. If the teacher eats out, she will probably reach home at 9.30pm. If the teacher has to rush home to cook, the family will probably be having dinner at about 9pm. Now will there then be much time for the teacher to spend with her own children or family members or even to meet her friends? The answer is no and hardly. She will then have to get ready for the next workday, rest and wake up to get ready for work and go to work again and the whole cycle begins.
Now is this humane? Who says that if one is dedicated to the profession, one has to bear the downside of the profession? The dedication in this profession is towards the development of children in their early years, not a high class nanny or slave for Singaporeans who have time to make children but no time for their children.
Conclusion
Now it is a fact that we are living in a workaholic and materialistic society, and it is a natural desire of most human beings to have children.
Nevertheless, child care centres should not be seen as dumping grounds for parents to put their children in while they work hard to earn the bucks to pursue their materialistic and professional desires. Dumping the children in the child care centres for such long hours do not benefit the children’s development and will in the long run create social problems as children will eventually see and imitate. Do you think that a child whose parents do not spend time nurturing, building bonds and taking care of him when he was young, affectionately needy and impressionable when his parents are old and frail? The case will most probably be, dream on.
Then our society will be full of old folks complaining about how their children have abandoned them for their worldly pursuits without reflecting why. How depressing.
Also, if this goes on, there may be a huge lack of childcare teachers in Singapore in time to come and nobody is to be blame but the selfish parents of Singapore, the ministry that relented and the child care centres that do nothing to speak out for forgetting the reason of early childhood education and simply operate in the interests of parents.
I hope that MCYS will stick firmly to their family based principles (or so they proclaimed) and child care centres will advocate the importance of parent-child bonding and relationships instead of relenting to the selfish demands of Singaporean parents.
Last but not least, if you want to have children, make time for them. Otherwise please do not make any children and negatively affect their development by not being there in the name of career and materialism.
(Written for SDP’s website)
Intellectual development, also known as cognitive development, is the development of mental abilities. Children learn gradually to solve problems and understand concepts as well as absorb new and more complex information. There are many known theories on this area and here in this write up, I would like to focus on the theory developed by Jean Piaget (1896–1980).
Theory of cognitive development
This theory, first developed by Swiss biologist and psychologist Jean Piaget, suggested that there are four stages to a child’s cognitive development.
The first stage which starts from birth to approximately two years of age, focuses mainly on the child’s construction of his understanding of the world. Piaget termed this as the sensorimotor stage. During this stage, the child’s knowledge of his surroundings and the world is limited to his sensory perceptions as well as motor activities. In other words, the child discovers and learns by way of hearing, touching, seeing and feeling.
One of the most important discoveries during the early days of this stage of development is the concept of object permanence. This refers to the awareness that an object continues to exist even when it is out of view. From my experience with very young children, I have observed that this concept is gradually developed through play. For example, a toddler will throw an object and then set out to find it.
Many parents reprimand their young ones for such acts but in my opinion, turning this into a game will help children more than by prohibiting them from such play.
When the child has developed an understanding of object permanence, the emergence of “direct groping” will begin to take place. In other words, the child will perform motor experiments on objects, using hands, arms and legs to see what will happen (e.g., moving a brick from point A to point B or pressing buttons).
The next stage is the pre-operational stage which occurs generally between the ages of two to six. At this point of development, the child has yet to develop a concrete understanding of logic, and is unable to manipulate information mentally. At this stage children are still unable to relate to the opinions of others. This is what is referred to as egocentrism. Most adults see this as selfishness and start panicking about whether or not their child will grow up to become a selfish person but, rest assured, this is normal development.
In order to help a child move out of this sense of egocentrism, one has to be patient and keep on explaining and reinforce the concept of sharing and empathy. Role playing helps a lot in this regard as it will help to strengthen a child’s sense of empathy by putting them in the shoes of others.
Also at this stage, a child develops the use of symbols. This can be seen during pretend play whereby a child might use objects such as a brick, a chair or even a cardboard box and imagine those objects as trains, cars, a treasure box or what not. This helps with language and creative development which occur rapidly during this stage of development.
The third stage of development occurs between the ages of six to around eleven and is called the concrete operational stage. During this period, the child develops a better understanding of mental operations and he begins to think in logical sequences and in association with personal experiences. But while the child is able to think logically, he might still have difficulties understanding hypothetical or abstract concepts.
The milestones achieved during this stage of development includes the ability to understand number values, to classify objects accordingly, to solve multiple aspects of a problem using the method of trial and error and the elimination of egocentrism.
The formal operational stage is the last stage of development in the theory developed by Piaget. It occurs between the ages of 11 to 15 and carries on into adulthood. During this time, the development of abstract thought, reasoning, systematic planning and the ability to solve a problem by the application of knowledge occurs.
Encouraging intellectual development
Here are some suggestions for parents to help encourage intellectual or cognitive development in their child (sensorimotor and pre-operational stage)
Sensorimotor stage:
This theory, first developed by Swiss biologist and psychologist Jean Piaget, suggested that there are four stages to a child’s cognitive development.
Here are some suggestions for parents to help encourage intellectual or cognitive development in their child (sensorimotor and pre-operational stage)
1. Expose your child to all sorts of textures by the use of books that allow feel and touch experiences and toys with varying surface textures.
2. Allow sensorial experiences such as letting your child hold or play with ice cubes and seeing it melt to liquid form.
3. Provide and allow your child to play and experiment with building blocks of varying sizes.
4. Provide a mirror that your child can peer freely into. Children at this age/ stage of development are always curious about their reflections.
5. Play all sorts of music from classical to children’s songs. Provide musical instruments for them to play along. It might turn out to be noisy but your child is learning in the process.
6. Expose your child to books and toys with strong colours.
7. Try not to use baby talk but speak to your child in proper sentences instead.
Pre-operational stage:
1. Read to your child and provide picture books with simple sentences.
2. Engage your child in conversations and discussions on simple topics such as “How do you feel about this?” or “What do you like?”. Be encouraging and do not stop the child from saying ‘nonsense’ or directly correcting grammatical errors. Do so by replying or responding with the correct grammar and sentence structure.
3. Make time for drawing, painting and scribbling. You can play a piece of music and encourage the child to scribble to the rhythm and beat or just simply draw according to how the music makes him feel. Always encourage a child to describe his drawings or paintings.
4. Allow for role play, for example, the child might decide to be a chef and starts cooking dishes with building blocks or plastic vegetables, placing them on plates and serving to you. Play along and bring it further by making paper currencies with your child so that you can use it to pay the chef.
5. Sing songs and rhymes with your child.
6. Create games such as treasure hunt. Treasure hunt is good for learning about numbers. Hide number cards everywhere in the room (on the tables, under the chairs) and get your child to look for it. Then go through the number order once the numbers are found. Limit this to 5 numbers initially and then increasing as the knowledge of numbers increases.
7. Sensorial activities such as water play, sand play and even cooking and baking should be carried out with your child’s participation as such activities help to develop knowledge and logic.
(Written for SDP’s website)
Contrary to popular perception that physical development refers simply to the physical growth of a child, this important area of development actually refers to the development of physical skills. In this write-up, I wish to focus mainly on the development of motor skills.
What do we mean by motor skills?
This is the ability to make purposeful movements with the utilization of the necessary skeletal muscles that are required to accomplish a task. Motor skills generally involve the proper functioning and co-ordination of the brain, skeleton, joints and nervous systems. The development of most motor skills occurs in early childhood and can be divided into gross motor skills and fine motor skills.
Gross motor skills
Gross motor skills are acquired during infancy and up to early childhood. Children at the age of two are normally able to stand up, walk and run. As the child grows, these skills involving the use of large muscle groups, will improve as he learns how to better control his movement.
Tables outlining the normal age-stage of gross motor development, such as when a child should begin crawling or running, should be used only as a loose guide. This is because every child develops differently, depending on their social and physical environment.
There are many things that can be done to aid a child’s development of gross motor skills such as walking on the balancing beam, crawling through tunnels, kicking a ball about and climbing onto child sized chairs and tables, and so on. The child will eventually learn how to move forward, shift and balance his body weight as well as learn the possible functions of his upper and lower limbs.
Be watchful but don’t stop a child from repeating particular activities even if she fails, and falls, at the first try. Encourage the child to try again. This will in turn build up the child’s confidence besides the intended gross motor skill(s).
Fine motor skills
This refers mainly to the co-ordination of small muscle movements usually occurring in the hands and fingers, in co-ordination with the sensory organs like the eyes and the ears. The development of fine motor skills is important for the development of other skills such as writing, cutting, basic self- help skills and so on.
During a child’s infant and toddler years, basic grasping and manipulation skills are usually developed. By the age of three, a child can create objects with wooden blocks and play dough as well as scribble with crayons. Some children from this age group can even insert objects into matching spaces.
It is also at this point of time that most children will tend to show preference of using one hand over the other. There are many debates over whether a child showing signs of left-handedness should be corrected but, personally, I don’t believe that that is necessary.
Attempts to manipulate simple tools such as pencils, zippers, snap buttons, scissors and spoons to complete specific tasks will emerge between the ages of three to four. At this stage, it is good that parents allow and guide their children to use such tools with patience and not dismiss them as slow and end up doing everything for them.
Activities such as dough play, threading wooden beads, tracing, scooping, sorting and matching, cutting, painting, tearing and folding are activities that can help to improve a child’s fine motor skills.
I have seen many parents stop their children from activities like dough play because of the ‘dirt’ and mess created. Such activities are important for the child’s motor development. Besides, it will be a good opportunity to teach children to clean up and pack away. Excuses will not help a child, only patience will.
In conclusion
Many parents may want to push their children to read and write instead of running about outdoor. Many do not have the patience to wait for their children to finish simple tasks like self-feeding and putting on their own shoes, resulting in them waiting on their children from head to toe in the name of speed.
Without being able to mold a ball of play dough into simple forms, how can the finger muscles learn to hold a pencil, not to mention writing a word? Without learning how to scoop and direct the hand to move the spoon into the mouth, how can a child learn to eat?
If you love your children, let them have the time and space to grow. Let them play as children play and let them learn the way they should learn.
(Written for SDP’s website)
In my last contribution, I mentioned five main aspects of early childhood education: social, physical, intellectual, creative and emotional development. This instalment writeup is an elaboration on the first area of focus, namely, social development.
What is social development?
Social development refers to the ability of children to interact and bond with others around them, establishing human relations such as friendship and kinship.
The social development of a child starts off at infancy and is mainly about bonding with their parents and primary caregivers as well as anyone they may come into frequent contact with. As they mature, they begin to interact with each other through play. In Singapore, parents often associate play with empty fun, a waste of time that could be better used.
Maybe its because the education is so exam-oriented that parents are so anxious that they make their children spend all their time and energy in front of books. What they don’t realise is that play forms a very important function in the development of young children.
The importance of play
As toddlers begin to play alongside each other engaging in solitary play, they interact directly with inanimate objects. This is what we term parallel play. Although during this stage of play toddlers often appear to be ignoring each other, they are highly aware of the presence of others around them.
It is during this period that they begin to observe and imitate as well as form initial opinions about each other. Sometimes, one will reach out to snatch the object another toddler is playing or kick the one playing next to him.
Such behaviour should be gently stopped but must not be seen as “naughtiness”. This is the only way the toddler interacts with another because the concept of the needs and feelings of others has yet to be established.
It is through such experimentation as well as the guidance that caregivers provide that they come to understand concepts such as sharing, showing consideration to others as well as the emotions of another individual besides themselves.
When they slowly mature to engage in cooperative play, usually in pairs and then later forming small groups, young children start to learn more about social concepts such as trust, sharing, being considerate of others as well as cooperating with each other to achieve a common goal.
At the same time, they start to participate in contributing to discussions on how a game or an activity should be carried out. During such a discussion, arguments may arise and tiny fists may start flying. The role of parents and educators in such instances should ideally be one of facilitation and not reprimand.
Dealing with conflicts
In my experience so far as an educator, when my own students start to engage in physical fights, I normally separate them by putting them in separate chairs. The rest of the children come to undertake the role of arranging the chairs for the parties involved and it is amusing observing their reaction which has become automatic.
Once the angry parties have been seated, a series of questions will be asked so as to let the children vent their anger verbally through the answering of questions. After one or two questions, the children will start arguing and debating with each other about the rights and the wrongs.
Through questions like “What could you have done if you don’t like what she was doing?” and “So do you mean to say that someone else can also kick you just because they don’t like what you are doing?”, they gradually start to admit that other actions could be done to solve the problems instead of getting physical.
In fact, conflicts among children should not be seen negatively by adults but should be used to help children understand the feelings of others. It is by our facilitation and guidance that they will eventually develop a sense of empathy. Conflicts, just as much as play, are part of social interaction and as parents, care givers and teachers, we should not neglect or dismiss such opportunities and simply punish the children for being “naughty”.
By doing so and judging children based on our “adult” view of socializing, we might just end up having children who “behave themselves” for the sake of conformity and for the sake of pleasing people. Is that what we really want?
Conclusion
It is the responsibility of every parent, caregiver or teacher to observe and take note of their charges in the way that will facilitate and guide instead of punish and force. To force a child to play with another when he/she is not ready might, in many cases, lead to the child being more withdrawn or picking up the habit of simply pleasing the adults by following their instructions.
The same thing goes with apologies. We should not force a child to apologise to another without first making them realize their mistakes before initiating an apology.
Do you want the child to become someone who does things our of sincerity or do you want the child to become someone who lives by the way of subserviently pleasing others?
