Long hrs in preschool/daycare harmful

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Registered: 03-26-2003
Long hrs in preschool/daycare harmful
2470
Sun, 03-19-2006 - 3:09pm

http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20051101/news_1n1earlyed.html

Very interesting. Particularly the difference in the middle to upper income kids vs low income.

"I personally feel children need the nurture of their parents and the home," she said. "Those early years, that's when they are bonding to their family. That nurturing, only the family can give that."

I tend to agree.

MM, WOHM to B&E, 7.24.03

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Registered: 06-27-1998
Tue, 04-18-2006 - 2:02pm

Zing.....thump.

PumpkinAngel

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Registered: 06-27-1998
Tue, 04-18-2006 - 2:06pm

It was part of our homeschooling curriculum in biology, if I remember correctly, it's been awhile since I had to talk to my kids about simply requirements of their body, sleep being one of them.

PumpkinAngel

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Registered: 03-28-2003
Tue, 04-18-2006 - 2:26pm

I don't know what your definition of rare is. But there are gifted education experts who say that "learning disabilities are as prevalent in the gifted population as in the general population." (Stephen Zecker, PhD, Center for Talent Development) Yes, given that the definition of giftedness changes depending on the conversation and the people engaged in it but acknowledging that in general, it is useful to state it as being in the top one or two percent (or five percent if you want to be really generous) on an intelligence scale, the chances that a child is born intellectually gifted AND has a learning disability is going to be slim in the general population. I live in an area of relatively high SES (where there tends to be a higher concentration of gifted people) and I know a handful of kids who fit the twice exceptional bill. But I admit that I am involved in advocacy for gifted education and hang out in places where it is most likely the parents of twice exceptional children would be present. It takes awhile for the twice exceptional issues to surface. Most of the people I know are "discovering" this twice exceptional stuff when their children are in about the third grade or later, even in middle school, except for the mom who figured it out for her child at age six because her child had serious dyslexia but was obviously highly gifted. Personally, I would save the "rare phenomenon" billing for something more like an Olympic caliber athlete. I don't know any of those people, at least not off the top of my head.

All I can say is that it must be a tough road for kids who are intellectually gifted but have learning disabilities. They are smart enough to compensate for their disability and achieve in a way that allows them to keep up with school work (and thus not attract a ton of attention) but they often don't get their needs met in a meaningful way and can become supremely frustrated and burned out over time, especially if they are not able to get what they need intellectually outside of school. To me there is a certain irony to the idea that you need to be failing academically to get the help you need but that help isn't available to you since you were born intellectually gifted and often have the ability to overcome your weaknesses and perform at an average level (even though you are capable of performing at a much higher level.) I guess it points out that all we seem to care about is to make sure we bring everyone up to the middle, regardless of the potential one is born with, and who cares that some are being prevented from soaring far above. Bring on the mediocrity.

What you describe as the gifted program at your local schools sounds like a typical rigorous program for high achieving gifted students. Your district is probably fortunate to have such a program as there are plenty of places in this country that don't offer anything like it. Yet, it probably does a good job ignoring the more divergent thinking, creative type gifted students who aren't going to respond well to rigor. The kids who own some pretty powerful quirkiness. The gifted child with a learning disability is probably just as prevalent in your area as anywhere else (at least areas with a high SES and high educational attainment by the populace) but that kid isn't probably qualifying for, participating in, or getting anything out of the gifted program. There is a difference between high achieving and giftedness but not everyone acknowledges that.

I agree with your last sentence, that some learning disabilities would prevent a child from excelling in a gifted program. Absolutely. There are plenty of gifted programs that can't accomodate the wide range of needs of all the gifted students a district has. See, that's why the parents of gifted students (moreso the highly gifted and profoundly gifted) are so attracted to homeschooling. For the twice exceptional, homeschooling is often the last resort after trying for a long time to find an appropriate education at school. But once they find it, many parents think of it as a haven and they are glad to hand off their helmet to the next set of unsuspecting saps that happened to give birth to twice exceptional children.

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-28-2003
Tue, 04-18-2006 - 2:55pm

Ahh, I did appreciate your thread on knitting. Makes a lot of sense to me. One of my best friends fervently took up knitting in graduate school while she was working on her dissertation on polymer chemistry for her Ph.D. Helped her percolate on her big ideas and kept her stress level down. Unfortunately, my oldest child, the guinea pig for whom I originally devoted this lifetime research project extraordinaire called gifted education, has what you'd call asynchronistic fine motor development. His fingers don't listen to his brain. Knitting would be the last thing on earth to help him! He wouldn't mind READING about knitting, if we could work in a wizard and some nasty spells in the mix...

The elitism argument is very strong and it is tough to fight. There is so much bad information out there, so many entrenched opinions not based on any sort of real life or fact. (Scarily--is that a real word?-- I have learned this depressing notion partially by participating here, in a forum where people are generally well-educated and thoughful but still hold some pretty dangerous and just plain wrong ideas about the topic and blithely continue to propagate the myths.)

One of my favorite experts in giftedness says this, "It is time for educators, parent, government officials, and policy makers to accept that people are not all the same and that teaching everyone the same material in the same way will never make all people the same. Children learn at different rates, different depths and with different levels of complexity, and they retain information differently as well. In order to meet the needs of children of all ability levels, schools themselves--and the organization of children within the schools--must change. Colleges of education that train our nations's teachers must change.

"This American system of education is now a strong tradition. But it may be a tradition that no longer works for society or for our future." Deborah Ruf, Losing Our Minds: Gifted Children Left Behind.

Alas, it is time for me to take a little one to the park. I always appreciate having this discussion with you.

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Tue, 04-18-2006 - 3:21pm
Peter has 20 to 30 mins every day and he's in first grade.

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Registered: 08-27-2005
Tue, 04-18-2006 - 3:32pm

"BTW, how do you get them to go to bed/sleep when the sun is still up (especially the older two)?"

If that were so difficult, kids in high latitudes would average about 3 hours or less of sleep in summer. Where I live, sunset doesn't happen until after midnight by June. I don't even bother with blackout shades, both of my (older, nearly 11 and 7 yo) kids just know that it's time to sleep whether the sun is still up or not.

Oh, and kindergarten starts promptly at 8 am at the kids' school, just as it does for grades 1-6. I usually get them up by 6:30am or so to give them time for a proper breakfast and a relaxing morning before leaving the house at 7:30am.

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-27-2005
Tue, 04-18-2006 - 3:36pm
I just did. That whole assumption about sleep cycles strictly based on light and dark periods just cracks me up. I will say that the kids tend to go to sleep somewhat later in summer when they don't have school (maybe around 9:30pm rather than 8pm) but it's still blindingly light out and I don't even bother with blackout shades. We got some for the kids' bedrooms but they prefer not to have them and even manage to sleep through the 3:30am sunrise quite nicely.
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Tue, 04-18-2006 - 4:03pm
Or how about the mommy and baby ducks swimming to the Blue Danube: "da-da-da-da-da, quack, quack, quack, quack...."
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-27-2003
Tue, 04-18-2006 - 4:27pm

Butting in here.

I haven't read the entire thread (damn you dial-up!), but I just wanted to chime in with my 2 cents. Dh was raised a Catholic and I was raised in a not-religious but considered Christian home. As adults, the two of us consider ourselves agnostic and are raising our children without any kind of religious affiliation at all.

We celebrate a secular Christmas (although we don't really promote Santa, either) and Easter. The names do not denote Christian celebrations to us, but have been adopted out of long tradition. The calendar calls it Christmas. The media calls it Christmas. I grew up calling it Christmas, and thus I continue to call it Christmas out of habit. I mean no disrespect to Christians by calling it Christmas; not sharing their beliefs in no way means I mock them.

I find it humourous to see a creche and a Santa lighted up on the same house. Life is more pleasant when we embrace each other's differences instead of inspecting them for hidden insult.

Carrie

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Registered: 12-29-2004
Tue, 04-18-2006 - 4:30pm
That's what Natalie & Becca had, too. It would be hard, I would think, to start doing substantial homework around 5th or 6th when you haven't been used to it. And they do have to start eventually. Natalie's in 10th, and she does at least 3-4 hours almost every day, including vacations. She has lots of written assignments and lab reports, and a ton of assigned reading. FYI, teachers still assign The Crucible, The Scarlet Letter, and A Separate Peace. Some things never change, lol.

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