|
|
|
|
| [VN
Boards Archive] |
Welcome to the Vault Network
forum archive.
This is not a complete archive, time didn't allot us the
opportunity to properly backup the majority of the boards
deemed "expendable". Most boards on this list have at least
20-40 pages archived (non-logged in pages, 15 topics per
page).
Popular boards may have as many as 250 pages archived at 50
topics per page, while others deemed of historical
signifigance may be archived in their entirety.
We may not agree with how the board shutdown was managed, but
we've done what we could to preserve some of its history in
lieu of that.
Please enjoy the archive.
~
Managers, Moderators, VIP's, and regular posters.
|
| Author |
Topic: Benefits to Boredom
|
Silverwuf
Title: Have trike will babble
Posts:
32,958
Registered:
Jul 5, '01
Extended Info (if available)
Real Post Cnt: 32,296
User ID: 225,902
|
Subject:
Benefits to Boredom
|
This came as an attachment to a newsletter from our daycare recently. I find it has a lot of merit even though my husband and I are computer geeks for a living.
"There are benefits to boredom"
By Barbara F. Meltz, Globe Staff, 1/22/2004 Retrieved March 8, 2004
http://www.boston.com/yourlife/family/articles/2004/01/22/there_are_benefits_to_boredom/
There are benefits to boredom
By Barbara F. Meltz, Globe Staff | January 22, 2004
Every Tuesday morning at 8:30, the 268 students in prekindergarten through eighth grade at the Cambridge Friends School sit silently in a circle on the floor for half an hour. Really silently, as in you can't even whisper. Oh, the 5-year-olds are allowed to draw if they need to -- even second-graders can do that -- and if a student is really fidgety, a teacher might put a supportive arm around him. But that mostly happens at the beginning of the year.
This is a Quaker school. Sharing silence is part of the tradition of the faith, a way to center one's self within the community and seek personal truth. These days, though, school head Mary Newmann sees even more value in it.
"If you want to raise children who can think critically, who can solve problems of all kinds -- and we do, that's our mission -- they need the chance to think uninterrupted," she says.
That's rare these days.
Beginning in infancy, children are bombarded with noise, stimulation, and instant gratification, from crib mobiles with flashing lights and music to DVD entertainment systems for the car. Quiet time? It's virtually programmed into children never to have it.
Certainly, there are advantages to children from modern technology. Increasingly, though, educators like Newmann are wondering if it comes at a cost.
"The gadgetry may distract a baby from crying, but does he ever discover his toes?" wonders Wheelock College early-childhood educator Diane Levin.
She means that on two levels. Literally, the fussy baby who is left alone long enough to find his toes (not more than a few minutes, after all) is making the first step in a long journey. "He's figuring out that he can entertain and distract himself," Levin says. "He's also learning something profound: that he has the capacity to solve his own problem."
In terms of human development, that's an "Aha!" moment. The infant whose parent pushes the button to turn on the mobile may also be comforted and distracted, but he learns nothing about his capacity to solve his own problem, says Levin.
This may seem like too much credit to give to 10 toes, but for Levin, Newmann, and others, toes are a metaphor for what they see as an erosion in opportunities for children to develop critical-thinking skills.
"It's been happening ever since children started watching more TV, about 20 years ago," says Levin. "As the process for interacting with the world becomes more passive, children are robbed of the process of being an active agent in their own lives."
There are no statistics or studies on this yet; it's something that will play out as time passes. Researchers and educators do know, however, that children learn best by initiating, manipulating, and observing cause and effect.
Levin has coined a term: problem-solving deficit disorder. Minneapolis psychologist and author David Walsh, founder and president of the National Institute on Media and the Family (mediaandthefamily.org), has one, too: mental operating software.
"It's as if this software is wired into them in the crib that sets an expectation for entertainment and instant gratification," he says. "As a result, when things get tough, children are more likely to throw up their hands and throw in the towel than figure out what to do."
Beth Dimock sees this play out in her prekindergarten class at Cambridge Friends School. Children are easily frustrated and bored.
"They don't know how to carry through with a project -- any project -- on their own," she says. "Why do two playmates at your house end up in front of a video? Because they're `bored.' They can't even solve the problem of what to play."
Researchers say time in front of screens is a big source of the problem.
"We think we are giving our kids an edge when we use software to introduce them to art, language, nature, you name it," says Pittsburgh psychologist Sharna Olfman. If she had her way, children under 7 would spend no more than an hour a day in front of any screen, educational software included.
"All it does is teach them to be dependent on the screen for instant gratification," she says. "They are not developing the capacity to use their own creative intelligence."
Indeed, Levin says problem-solving is a cumulative skill that gives a child a sense of inner power.
"The more you do it, the better you are at it and the more you feel good about yourself as a learner, a social being, and a thinker," she says. "A problem-solver is someone who says, `I can affect the world. I can figure out how to build this tower so it won't fall. I can tell the teacher there's a problem on the playground.' "
Even seemingly benign conveniences may undermine a child's ability to solve problems. Consider Velcro, or the digital clock.
Laceless shoes and zipless jackets enable some children to dress themselves at an increasingly younger age. Having that concrete sense of independence is important for a preschooler. So, however, is knowing how to tie a knot.
"Knotting is a basic life skill, and more kids come to me not knowing how to do it than ever before," says Dimock.
Ditto for shoe-tying. Learning to tie a shoe takes small-motor skill and builds cognitive connections, she says. Children learn the properties of the material, the malleability of the string, how you can move it and loop it. They have to have a goal in mind and be able to visualize getting from string in your fingers to a finished bow.
"This is really complex," Dimock says. "To gloss over it or skip it altogether is not good."
Digital clocks let young children tell time as soon as they know their numbers, but this convenience, too, may come at a developmental cost.
"An analog clock is cognitively richer," says Levin. "It teaches you the logic of time in a way that the digital can't, that seconds fit into minutes, which fit into hours, which fit into days."
Olfman wonders if we are seeing more children labeled with Attention Deficit Disorder and other behaviorial and cognitive disabilities as a by-product of inadequate problem-solving skills.
"There's no question in my mind that we have more restless, agitated, and unhappy children because they are dependent on instant gratification," she says. "Life is boring when you haven't acquired the capacity to solve problems as basic as knowing how to fill your own time. Why wouldn't that lead to acting-out behaviors that get you labeled at school and eventually even medicated?" Olfman is editor of the "Childhood in America" series (Praeger Press).
Except for urging parents to limit screen time (the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends no TV for children under 2), no researcher is saying we have to eliminate gadgets that save time and make our lives easier. Rather, they stress using them in moderation and with an awareness of potential developmental short-cutting.
In-car DVDs are the exception. Walsh hates them. "They usurp conversation, word games, looking out the window, and, yes, quiet time and boredom," he says. "Some boredom is healthy."
So is some quiet time. Just last week, a first-grader at the Cambridge Friends School told Mary Newmann that when she has a problem with a friend, if she waits until the middle of the silent meeting, a solution to the conflict usually will come to her.
"And if you don't have silent meeting?" Newmann asked.
"Probably I would be mad until the next day," the girl said.
Contact Barbara Meltz at meltz@globe.com
© Copyright 2006 Globe Newspaper Company.
-----signature-----
Women who behave themselves rarely make history. My Give-A-Damn's Busted. http://www.thewufs.com/2003venture/motortrike.htm
|
|
Link to this post
|
Entrapment_WE
Posts:
5,216
Registered:
Dec 23, '03
Extended Info (if available)
Real Post Cnt: 5,158
User ID: 872,813
|
Subject:
Benefits to Boredom
|
You know. In my house, if the Music isnt on aka kids songs , now christmas songs, or even just the radio when my hubby is home, the tv is on. My children watch maybe two tv shows a day even though its on. We like having the noise on, I read that article. wow.. just wow lol
-----signature-----
Raeyne
|
|
Link to this post
|
Jayna_Kilmer
Title: Purple Princess
Posts:
12,434
Registered:
May 18, '02
Extended Info (if available)
Real Post Cnt: 12,061
User ID: 680,449
|
Subject:
Benefits to Boredom
|
I agree with a lot of the article. I disagree with the no tv for kids under 2, though. A half-hour video or tv show a day isn't going to scar your child as long as you give them other opportunities. My daughter watched tv a little each day (30-60 minutes max) but she still learned how to play and entertain herself.
We also allowed her to use a computer once she learned how to use a mouse at age 15 months. But, we limited it to no more than 30 minutes a day when she was younger.
I think with everything, the important thing to remember is moderation. TV is ok in small amounts. Computers are ok in small amounts. Learning to sit quietly for a little while each day is good, too. I know from experience that if you withhold something from a child when they are younger, they want it even more when they are older. Teaching kids moderation and how to self-impose limits at a young age will stick with them when they are older.
-----signature-----
|
|
Link to this post
|
-Accident-
Title: Waiting to happen
Posts:
16,541
Registered:
Aug 24, '00
Extended Info (if available)
Real Post Cnt: 16,161
User ID: 41,169
|
Subject:
Benefits to Boredom
|
this reminds me of a story I heard earlier this year, on children's play and the impact of "screen time" on self-regulation:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=19267988
Morning Edition, February 21, 2008 · On October 3, 1955, the Mickey Mouse Club debuted on television. As we all now know, the show quickly became a cultural icon, one of those phenomena that helped define an era.
What is less remembered but equally, if not more, important, is that another transformative cultural event happened that day: The Mattel toy company began advertising a gun called the "Thunder Burp."
I know — who's ever heard of the Thunder Burp?
Well, no one.
The reason the advertisement is significant is because it marked the first time that any toy company had attempted to peddle merchandise on television outside of the Christmas season. Until 1955, ad budgets at toy companies were minuscule, so the only time they could afford to hawk their wares on TV was during Christmas. But then came Mattel and the Thunder Burp, which, according to Howard Chudacoff, a cultural historian at Brown University, was a kind of historical watershed. Almost overnight, children's play became focused, as never before, on things — the toys themselves.
"It's interesting to me that when we talk about play today, the first thing that comes to mind are toys," says Chudacoff. "Whereas when I would think of play in the 19th century, I would think of activity rather than an object."
Chudacoff's recently published history of child's play argues that for most of human history what children did when they played was roam in packs large or small, more or less unsupervised, and engage in freewheeling imaginative play. They were pirates and princesses, aristocrats and action heroes. Basically, says Chudacoff, they spent most of their time doing what looked like nothing much at all.
"They improvised play, whether it was in the outdoors… or whether it was on a street corner or somebody's back yard," Chudacoff says. "They improvised their own play; they regulated their play; they made up their own rules."
But during the second half of the 20th century, Chudacoff argues, play changed radically. Instead of spending their time in autonomous shifting make-believe, children were supplied with ever more specific toys for play and predetermined scripts. Essentially, instead of playing pirate with a tree branch they played Star Wars with a toy light saber. Chudacoff calls this the commercialization and co-optation of child's play — a trend which begins to shrink the size of children's imaginative space.
But commercialization isn't the only reason imagination comes under siege. In the second half of the 20th century, Chudacoff says, parents became increasingly concerned about safety, and were driven to create play environments that were secure and could not be penetrated by threats of the outside world. Karate classes, gymnastics, summer camps — these create safe environments for children, Chudacoff says. And they also do something more: for middle-class parents increasingly worried about achievement, they offer to enrich a child's mind.
Change in Play, Change in Kids
Clearly the way that children spend their time has changed. Here's the issue: A growing number of psychologists believe that these changes in what children do has also changed kids' cognitive and emotional development.
It turns out that all that time spent playing make-believe actually helped children develop a critical cognitive skill called executive function. Executive function has a number of different elements, but a central one is the ability to self-regulate. Kids with good self-regulation are able to control their emotions and behavior, resist impulses, and exert self-control and discipline.
We know that children's capacity for self-regulation has diminished. A recent study replicated a study of self-regulation first done in the late 1940s, in which psychological researchers asked kids ages 3, 5 and 7 to do a number of exercises. One of those exercises included standing perfectly still without moving. The 3-year-olds couldn't stand still at all, the 5-year-olds could do it for about three minutes, and the 7-year-olds could stand pretty much as long as the researchers asked. In 2001, researchers repeated this experiment. But, psychologist Elena Bodrova at Mid-Continent Research for Education and Learning says, the results were very different.
"Today's 5-year-olds were acting at the level of 3-year-olds 60 years ago, and today's 7-year-olds were barely approaching the level of a 5-year-old 60 years ago," Bodrova explains. "So the results were very sad."
Sad because self-regulation is incredibly important. Poor executive function is associated with high dropout rates, drug use and crime. In fact, good executive function is a better predictor of success in school than a child's IQ. Children who are able to manage their feelings and pay attention are better able to learn. As executive function researcher Laura Berk explains, "Self-regulation predicts effective development in virtually every domain."
The Importance of Self-Regulation
According to Berk, one reason make-believe is such a powerful tool for building self-discipline is because during make-believe, children engage in what's called private speech: They talk to themselves about what they are going to do and how they are going to do it.
"In fact, if we compare preschoolers' activities and the amount of private speech that occurs across them, we find that this self-regulating language is highest during make-believe play," Berk says. "And this type of self-regulating language… has been shown in many studies to be predictive of executive functions."
And it's not just children who use private speech to control themselves. If we look at adult use of private speech, Berk says, "we're often using it to surmount obstacles, to master cognitive and social skills, and to manage our emotions."
Unfortunately, the more structured the play, the more children's private speech declines. Essentially, because children's play is so focused on lessons and leagues, and because kids' toys increasingly inhibit imaginative play, kids aren't getting a chance to practice policing themselves. When they have that opportunity, says Berk, the results are clear: Self-regulation improves.
"One index that researchers, including myself, have used… is the extent to which a child, for example, cleans up independently after a free-choice period in preschool," Berk says. "We find that children who are most effective at complex make-believe play take on that responsibility with… greater willingness, and even will assist others in doing so without teacher prompting."
Despite the evidence of the benefits of imaginative play, however, even in the context of preschool young children's play is in decline. According to Yale psychological researcher Dorothy Singer, teachers and school administrators just don't see the value.
"Because of the testing, and the emphasis now that you have to really pass these tests, teachers are starting earlier and earlier to drill the kids in their basic fundamentals. Play is viewed as unnecessary, a waste of time," Singer says. "I have so many articles that have documented the shortening of free play for children, where the teachers in these schools are using the time for cognitive skills."
It seems that in the rush to give children every advantage — to protect them, to stimulate them, to enrich them — our culture has unwittingly compromised one of the activities that helped children most. All that wasted time was not such a waste after all.
For my part, my kids do usually watch an hour or two of TV a day (PBS only), and occasionally I will let my four-year-old play games for half an hour on the computer. For their toys, we prefer things that do not require batteries and that allow the child to be creative. I've noticed that a lot of toys nowadays are very focused toward a particular usage, and I don't really like that as I feel children need to learn to dictate their own play, to a certain extent.
I like the idea of having enforced "quiet time". I think it's good for your psyche to spend some time in silent meditation, whether it's prayer or whatever. We spend so much time being bombarded by people pushing advertisements, entertainment, and requests for this thing or that thing, that we don't have enough time to sit down and THINK. So I think this could be very valuable to everyone. I'm sure even children get stressed out by the demands of our over-active, over-stimulated lifestyle.
-----signature-----
I realize now I do not fear death. I fear my daughter will not be free when I die.
- NR, #iranelection
|
|
Link to this post
|
Rhylla
Posts:
1,910
Registered:
Jun 19, '03
Extended Info (if available)
Real Post Cnt: 1,859
User ID: 813,878
|
Subject:
Benefits to Boredom
|
wow!
i read this yesterday, then watched the class i work with during assembly time... several of whom couldn't sit still and listen quietly to a story for 5 minutes.
and problem solving - boy is that a problem, part of my job is working with groups and individuals, teaching them to think through what to do in situations, and what the consequences might be.
so many kids think running to a teacher or thumping someone are the only answers to a difficulty!
and, boy am i too quick to jump in with my own kids, and not allow them that quiet down time to think about how to get things done... this has really made me think.
-Rhylla-
-----signature-----
Rhylla, xbow,
Rioja, staffer
Ree Lee-Lozt, bow
a proud Companion of the Heart, Alkor's Clan
AND New Britain's Head of schoolgir...schooling
|
|
Link to this post
|
Belligore
Title: Undead Sexy
Posts:
3,906
Registered:
Apr 1, '03
Extended Info (if available)
Real Post Cnt: 3,285
User ID: 786,196
|
Subject:
Benefits to Boredom
|
|
wanted to tag this for reference. realy good read as both a parent and a youth instructor
-----signature-----
Lahnwin - Blood Elf Rogue Murvak - Tauren Death Knight Draedus - 5L6 Necromancer LGM SC; Arilillyn - 4L2 Armswoman LGM WC/Fletch (Retired for now) http://gimpchimp.etilader.com/s.php?u=Belligore Current Reading: The Orc King - RA Salvatore
|
|
Link to this post
|
Gaevren
Title: Wat do?
Posts:
18,183
Registered:
Sep 15, '04
Extended Info (if available)
Real Post Cnt: 17,906
User ID: 967,012
|
Subject:
Benefits to Boredom
|
|
I am trying to incorporate a little of this into my youngest child's day, but oh my gosh it is so hard. She is just unable to sit still or have any volume control lol. Still...I figure shoot for 5 seconds...then 10...work it up little by little lol.
-----signature-----
There are no automatic doors, just very polite ninjas
|
|
Link to this post
|
Mikkilynn
Title: MeMyMikki-Fofikki-MOMMY-MIKKI!
Posts:
3,724
Registered:
Feb 23, '05
Extended Info (if available)
Real Post Cnt: 3,606
User ID: 1,030,750
|
Subject:
Benefits to Boredom
|
our home is always a buzz with some noise....it just kills me! when i get home i would love quiet time, hubby cant stand it i think....always has the tv or something on.
actually he has been out riding his 4 wheeler today and the tv hasnt been on at all....both kids are taking a nap.... nice and quiet... ahhhhhhhhhhhhh
i think that is one reason i appreciate the hour drive to and from work each day...it is my quiet time and i dig it!
-----signature-----
Member of Dorlach Sgath
|
|
Link to this post
|
myxomatosis8
Title: amateur zookeeper
Posts:
18,778
Registered:
Jul 14, '01
Extended Info (if available)
Real Post Cnt: 18,441
User ID: 251,097
|
Subject:
Benefits to Boredom
|
Thanks for the article, that's great. I mean, I know that kids are way too "immersed" in electronics and gadgets and the like, but didn't quite think about the issue of pure silence.
In the summer I like lying on the grass and watching clouds go by with the little one, sometimes... I think I'll have to make that a daily thing as soon as the weather gets nice! We'll see how the youngest does with that at first!
-----signature-----
If you're flammable and have legs, you're never blocking a fire exit.
|
|
Link to this post
|
|
|
| © 2012. All
Rights Reserved. |
|
|
|
|
