Tag: Childhood

Labelling Body and Facial Expressions

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Labelling Emotions

Children use body and facial expressions to reflect their emotions. By the same token, children need to interpret body and facial expressions as part of their emotional development.

Children who cannot express their needs could get frustrated or miss out on engaging in activities with other children. One example is a child who is too shy to ask peers to play with them. Another example is a child who is trying to get a toy or a game from someone else. In both examples, children need to be able to express what they want and understand the feedback of other children whether verbal or non-verbal.

Role of educators:

How can educators help children enrich their emotional vocabulary and enhance their communication skills in order to successfully negotiate what they want?

Educators need to provide activities that help children recognise emotions such as anger, sadness, surprise, happiness, and frustration in themselves and other children. A child who can recognise the intentions of other children by correctly reading their emotional expressions will have a better chance of being included in any setting.

Expressing and interpreting emotions are pathways to emotional regulation and successful socialisation.

Building a vocabulary of emotions from simple to complex ones is part of children’s socio-emotional development. According to Plutchik’s wheel of emotions (Six Seconds, n.d.), the basic emotions are joy, disgust, anger, and anticipation, and their opposites are sadness, trust, fear, and surprise respectively. The combination of two basic emotions brings up a new emotion.

Children need concrete activities to interpret and label emotions. Educators could teach children how to recognise the affective states of other children by looking for their body language, facial expressions, and tone of voice.

A simple activity of having a face with a printed emotional label could be a starting point.

Reading children’s books to children can contribute to their understanding of affective states. Often, in children’s books, the plot revolves around an issue that triggers an affective state and how to resolve the issue.

Games could be used as well. One example is asking children to play musical chairs. On each chair, there is a card of a facial expression flipped face down. When the music stops and the children sit down, they are asked to turn the card over and explain what emotion the face is expressing. They are also asked to make the same face. The children are then asked to go for a second round and repeat the process and so on. This allows the children to experiment with facial expressions in a non-threatening environment. More complex emotions could be introduced as children learn the basic ones.

The Georgetown University Center for Child and Human Development (n.d.) proposed other ideas. The educator could:

  • Provide activities that help children label their emotions. For example, they could look at the mirror and make faces and then try to label the emotion.
  • Read a book to the children and ask them to guess how the child is feeling based on the text or based on the illustrations.
  • Ask children during “show and tell” to make a facial or a body expression about how the activity they are sharing made them feel.
  • Assist children in making up a song about activities or actions that make them feel happy, sad, angry, surprised, and so on. The words of a familiar song could be adapted.
  • Provide props for children to role-play different experiences in the dramatic area. An example is going to see the doctor and trying to act the experience out.
  • Prepare cards of activities and facial expressions and ask children to pair the activity with the facial emotion it brings in them.
  • Play a game with children where one child chooses a card that has an expressed facial emotion and imitates that emotion. The other children must guess the emotion.
  • Prompt children to come up with a solution for a child who is sad, angry, or unhappy about an event through problem-solving.

Why are interpreting and labelling emotions useful?

Joseph and Strain (2003) elaborated on the process. When children recognise and label their feelings, they develop emotional regulation and when they recognise and label other people’s emotions, they strengthen their problem-solving skills. The process then assists the children to come up with solutions acceptable to themselves and other parties thus generating a win-win outcome.

The educators could easily share the information with parents. Both parents and educators could scaffold children as they navigate the emotional realm around them. A synchronized process would support children as they grow up in a global world.

References:

Georgetown University Center for Child and Human Development. (n.d.). Ideas for teaching about emotions. https://www.ecmhc.org/ideas/emotions.html  

Six Seconds. (n.d.). Plutchik’s wheel of emotions: Exploring the emotion wheel. https://www.6seconds.org/2022/03/13/plutchik-wheel-emotions/

Joseph, G. E., & Strain, P. S. (2003). Enhancing emotional vocabulary in young children. Young Exceptional Children, 6(4), 18-26.  https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/109625060300600403

Development
Future Global Children

How to help a child sleep better?

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People go through 4 to 5 cycles of sleep per night with each cycle extending from 75 to 90 minutes. The cycle includes two main states, the Non Rapid Eye Movement (NREM) state and the REM sleep. The REM sleep is the last stage in the cycle and it is the stage where we dream.

It is important to go through REM and NREM to get the full benefits of sleep. Those include better memory, increased creative thinking abilities, and enhanced pathways between the left and right sides of the brain.

When we sleep, the body evaluates the information acquired during the day and decides what to keep for later use and what to discard. Storing the information in long term memory allows us to build on this experience to better sort out related issues. The process itself strengthens the neural connections in the brain.

What goes on before sleep plays a role in sorting out problems as well. One study found that thinking about a question before going to be induced dreams regarding the issue for half the participants and solutions for a quarter of them.

Sleepiness builds up during the day and is released when we sleep. If we don’t get enough sleep, we feel unable to make decisions that require a lot of focus. We are also prone to making mistakes in judgment due to a lack of full attention.

It is important to maintain consistent sleep routines, avoid using the computer the last hour before sleep, have the last heavy meal for the day at least 3 hours before sleep, and sleep in a dark and cool room.

Some children have issues going to bed and keep waking up through the night. The attached video covers states of sleep and factors related to sleep problems including if the child is a morning or an evening person. The video also includes ideas on what parents and educators could do to help the child sleep better.

For additional information, refer to:

Karman, M. (2023, July 15). How sleep improves and impairs creative thinking. Eachnight. https://eachnight.com/sleep/sleep-improves-impairs-creative-thinking/ .

Rethinking the NO in Guiding Children’s Behaviour

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Have you ever asked yourself as a parent or as an educator why do you say NO when a child asks for something?

Rethinking the NO brings us to a journey inside ourselves where we need to be clear about our beliefs, values, and daily responses.

Firstly, with regards to beliefs, we need to consider the following: If we believe that children need guidance all the way through and that they are not able to take good decisions, this will make us react differently to children’s requests than if we believe that children want guidance to make the right decision themselves.

Giving guidance highlights that children have needs that they like to see fulfilled and are happy to learn from the people around them so there is a win win situation between the adult and the child.

A belief that children learn when adults enforce strong rules early on in life triggers a strict and firm response from the adult with little room for flexibility. The emphasis is on exerting an effort to prevent the child being spoiled.

What are your beliefs as a parent or as an educator?

Secondly, what are our values?

If we value respect from the child to the parent by all means, we don’t mind if the child fears us. We should be controlling and demand respect from the child regardless even if the respect is not in the child’s best interest.

On the other hand, if we value the rights of children to meet their needs, we respect this right and guide them towards fulfilling their needs in socially acceptable manner even if that means that the child could grow up different than us, the parent or the educator, and could be interested in different activities.

We have to be careful when we ask children to comply with our demands without any consideration for their opinion. This teaches them that the strong person should be followed and they could later follow an abuser out of fear and of a need to belong.

We want to gradually give the children control over their decisions and to release our power. More importantly, we want to be compassionate towards children. They make mistakes but that does not mean that they have evil intentions.

The ideal practice is to acknowledge the behaviour or misbehaviour that children engage in without defining the personality of the child based on that behaviour. We need to accept that children need to learn how to present their beliefs, values, and practices, and that there will be many attempts along the way prior to working out what conveys the need and the message and what doesn’t.

We want children to have a bank of constructive activities and behaviours instead of constantly reminding them of what is not working.

That is how we can help children grow into successful global citizens ready to explore and contribute to the future of humanity.

For further reading, refer to:

Porter, L. (2016). Guiding children’s behaviours. In M. Ebbeck, & M. Maniganayake (Eds.), Play in early childhood education: Learning in diverse contexts (2nd ed., pp. 161-182). Oxford University Press.

How to build success?

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When children are learning to walk, they fall and get up time after time until they learn. They don’t make a decision to stop trying and to crawl for the rest of their lives.

They are not concerned about how much time it is going to take to get what they want. They don’t know much about time or the future. That seems to work for them. They are willing to give tasks the required time to achieve them. They live in the moment.

They might not be happy repeating all over but that does not stop them. They are not forcing happiness or positive thinking upon themselves.

Do children’s responses differ? Yes, they do. They might accept difficulties with ease but also may not. Babies process their feelings by crying. It is their way to express themselves and to sort things out. Crying does not stop them. It might even encourage to persist.

Children are patient most of the times. Sometimes they get frustrated. Does either of those two feelings stop them from trying again? The answer is “No”.

Yes, they would like approval from people around them but not at the expense of doing what that they really want to do.

How to build success? Adults need to allow children to solve their problems on their own. Children are natural explorers. They experiment and accept that things might not work out right away.

Can we as adults solve our problems as children do, please?

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What to Teach Children in the First Year Series – Part 1

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Children in the first year are more alert than we give them credit for. This series will include facts and recommendations that will help parents and caregivers engage with babies in a confident and an accurate manner. The recommendations will be based on what is known about child development. The provided facts will assure parents and caregivers that they are on the right path to raising a successful person.

Fact: Newborns use their senses to discover their environment. A newborn is able to focus on a person or an object within 30 centimetres. This is the average distance between a child and the mother’s face when the child is held or breastfed.

Recommendation 1: Look at the child in the eyes and engage in conversation with them especially when they are in an alert state. Ignoring the child and engaging with other people around means that the child is looking at the adult’s chin instead of looking at the face and eyes. The eye to eye contact is also the first communication step.

Fact: A child is able to gaze at another person even at a very early age. They look intently as a way to engage socially with the other person.

Recommendation 2: The mother, father, or caregiver should capitalise on those moments to initiate a trusting relationship with the child. Ignoring the child’s gaze means losing valuable opportunities to establish a connection and to familiarise the child with facial expressions. The baby also learns to associate a facial expression with a feeling. This synchrony is one of the main features of successful communication.

Fact: As soon as children start to move, they use movements to sense and discover what is around them. When children are lying on their back, they look at an object and try to touch it with their hands or feet. Once older, they will reach for it and try to hold it in their hands.

Recommendation 3: Provide baby hanging mobile selections so children can take their time looking at them. The collection of items can be homemade and needs to be changed regularly. Provide different colors, sizes, and textures. Once the baby is ready to hold the items, small material will work better as children can explore the different characteristics of the item and also get a sense of what they can hold firmly and what slips away.

As the series continues, we will follow the different aspects of children’s development and give recommendations on how to enhance the development of their body, mind, and feelings. The first year in a child’s life is critical as it is the child’s first contact with a world that will unfold over a lifetime.

Note: Click to access Part 2 or Part 3.

Reference:

Garvis, S., Phillipson, S., Clarke, S., Harrison, L., McCormack, J., & Pendergast, D. (2019). Child development and learning. Oxford University Press.

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What do infants listen to?

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It is important to realize that newborns are alert and can discriminate sounds.

By one month, infants differentiate speech sounds (phonemes) such as /p/ and /b/ (Trehub & Rabinovitch, 1972). By 6 months of age, infants discriminate two syllable words such as /bada/ and /baga/ and recognize a familiar syllable inside a string of syllables (MacWhinney, 2011).

Infants also discriminate speech sounds of familiar and unfamiliar languages. However, this ability diminishes considerably for unfamiliar consonant contrasts by one year of age (Dietrich, Swingley, & Werker, 2007). Examples of contrasting consonants are pack-back; pie-buy; and rope-robe.

In one experiment, Werker, Maurer, and Yoshida (2010) showed that by 6 to 8 months, infants discriminated most foreign consonant pairs and some foreign vowel pairs. However, by 10 to 12 months, infants barely heard any of the foreign pairs. Examples of vowel pairs are boat and fruit where usually the second vowel is silent. Examples of consonant pairs are /p-b/ and /t-d/ where one letter is voiced using the vibrations of the vocal cords and the other letter isn’t.

The tone in which the language is conveyed also makes a difference. Fernald (1993) found that 5-month-old infants will respond with a smile to a positive tone and not to a negative tone even when the language was unfamiliar.

Last but not least, infants can respond to their own names by 5 months old (Newman 2005).

The above findings highlight the importance of speech interactions with the child and the role of both the environment and experience on speech perception. Widening children’s listening experiences is a window for them to learn many languages and to engage in successful communication styles. Ultimately, high quality listening experiences ensure success in a global world.

Reference:

Boyd, D., & Bee, H. (2012). The developing child (13th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.

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Reading Strategies in Early Childhood

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To read accurately, children need to realize that spoken words and print are related. The print could reflect ideas, feelings, or even simple words such as “a”, “the”, “in”.

Key reading strategies that help children succeed are as follows:

– The use of effective texts: Children are attracted to books that include pieces of information joined by a theme or a story. Children who listened to stories very early in their lives understand that a story has characters, a plot, and a conclusion. Parents, older siblings, or caregivers could read to the child.

– The exposure to big books: Educators using largely sized books in a shared reading setting can point out to the words as they are being read. This technique helps the child link words to letters and start recognizing common words.

– Provision of many readings of the same book: Reading a book in multiple techniques helps children get the most out of the experience. Parents and educators can read the book to the children the first time without interruptions then read it later while asking about the meaning and shape of the words.

– Presence of print in the environment: Parents and educators could set an example by using print throughout the day. Making shopping lists, labeling items, pointing out road signs, spelling shops’ names, or reading a brand name on a food box are all examples that the child can imitate willingly. In addition, children can be encouraged to express their interests in writing regardless of the accuracy of the letters.

– Diversification of texts: Parents and educators can introduce nursery rhymes, songs, or poems in writing as well as orally. Children will memorize songs that they like and can later see each word in print.

– Reading books independently: Children should be encouraged to choose a book that they would like to listen to or to read themselves. If the book is at the child’s level of reading ability, they should be given time to try to read it on their own then to check with the parent or educator when they are ready to share. In this manner, they could discuss the words that are difficult. They can also read the book to a group of children if they wish to do so.

Ultimately, the practice of independent reading will help children develop reading proficiency and independent learning. Both skills are very valuable for future success in a global world.

Reference:
Fields, M. V., Growth, L. A., & Spangler, K. L. (2008). Let’s begin reading right: A developmental approach to emergent literacy (6th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall.

 

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Children with temperament: When does this become an issue?

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According to Thomas and Chess (1977), children’s temperament can be categorised into three types: Easy, slow to warm up, and difficult children.

The easy child smiles frequently and approaches new toys, situations, faces with a willingness to experiment.

The slow to warm up child looks at new people, toys, and events around and instead of approaching immediately hangs on to an adult and observes the full situation prior to engaging in play or in conversation.

The difficult child looks at any change in routines with caution and is wary of strangers. He/she cries easily and is willing to show a lot of resistance or “stubbornness” when faced with new material, adults, settings, or even small changes in the immediate environment.

The same interface applies to food intake and children’s experimentation with new types of food.

Children display those types unconsciously. However, this could become an issue depending on how the adults react to the child. The caregiver needs to be willing to work with children and to give them the space and time needed to become familiar with new situations and new environments.

Even the easy child could have issues with an overly cautious adult. If scolded for being open, the child will learn to doubt himself or herself.

When children grow up in an understanding environment, they will learn to experiment and to trust themselves and the future.

For further reading, refer to:
Thomas, A., & Chess, S. (1977). Temperament and development. New York, NY: Brunner/Mazel.

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Are we holding gifted and talented children back?

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We want children to be gifted and talented and yet parents and teachers find themselves not knowing what to do or what to say to those children.
Sometimes it looks as if the learning method of the gifted and talented children is not conforming to the teachers’ expectations. They might not enjoy groups and prefer to work alone. As a consequence, the behaviour could be seen as uncooperative.
It is important for parents and teachers to assess the child to check her/his capabilities. Children could also engage in self-assessment as they might know their strengths and needs better than other people around them. As a result, the curriculum needs to be differentiated to extend their learning.
It is important to note that gifted and talented children could at the same time have strengths in on area and needs in another. So, a child could be a fast learner and hyperactive at the same time. Any action plan needs to account for both characteristics.
The parents and school need to partner together to support the child.
Gifted children are at a risk of dropping out of school given the inability of schools to nurture them. Teachers need to be able to provide an inclusive curriculum that scaffolds children to the maximum level that they could reach.
An example of a very successful program in reaching to all children is the Renzulli Learning System. More information is available at https://gifted.uconn.edu/# . The “Schoolwide Enrichment Model” provides opportunities to engage all students including the talented and the gifted by enriching the program. Social and emotional challenges are also addressed.

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Engaging children in artful writing for a healthy academic growth

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Children use their body to communicate actions from Day One. A precursor to writing is how children use their hands.

When given a large paper and a large crayon, toddlers scribble with the action coming from the shoulder. The end result will be wide circles and lines spread over the whole paper. The fine muscles of the fingers are not strong enough to help children control the crayon. Soon later, children hold the crayon in their fist and the writing is coming from the wrist. With maturity and practice, children hold the crayon with their fingers bringing the position of the crayon similar to the adult grip.

To help children with the writing process, parents and teachers can:

Provide papers and non-toxic large crayons for children to practise as they might bite into them. Do not shame children when they attempt writing on the wall or books. Instead, provide materials and let children know that there is material and space for them to experiment.

Show interest in what the child is doing and provide short and positive feedback. Do not push children to explain themselves if they don’t wish to.

Keep a sample of children’s work with dates in order to track the progress of the child.

Share with children stories with illustrations and give them enough time to explore both letters and illustrations.

Watch for the moment when children start conveying meaning to the drawing. This is the beginning of meaningful writing. For example, although the adult cannot see a rabbit among the lines, accept the child’s interpretation of the drawing as a rabbit running around.

One last benchmark is when the child realises that the letters hold a meaning. It is then when they start paying attention to the letters around them and the journey of alphabet learning begins.

The process of writing development needs to be smooth as children progress at their own pace. Forcing the child to write prematurely or shaming the child will have negative consequences both academically and emotionally. They could hate school before they even start.

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