Toddler Transitions

Do not confine your children to your own learning, for they were born of another time.
-Hebrew Proverb

 

"Transitions are predictable rituals that toddlers learn to trust and rely on," note Beverly Kovach and Susan Patrick, in their book, Being with Infants and Toddlers. "Many toddlers have difficulty during transitions due to their internal emotional struggle between dependency and independency. This may interfere with providing calm transitions."

The authors offer these suggestions for toddler transitions:

• Use a signal to specify transition time.
• Tell the toddlers what they are about to do.
• Allow time for toddlers to act and process (toddlers take more time than adults to process information).
• Give one clear rule or limit or action.
• Avoid herding or gathering toddlers.
• Be an active participant in the process... If one adult is engaged with the group the other should position herself where the children need to go.

Value of Solitary Play

Being ignorant is not so much a shame, as being unwilling to learn.

-Benjamin Franklin

In their new book, From Play to Practice, Marcia Nell and Walter Drew, summarize the work of Monighan, Scales, Van Hoorn, and Almy (Looking at Children's Play, New York, Teachers College Press, 1987) on solitary play:

"There is little reason to assume that solitary play is less mature than interactive play, or that children always benefit from admonitions to share their toys. Instead, there may be good reason for fostering solitary play in the curriculum.

"The sense of mastery that children gain from solitary play seems to provide a solid base for cooperative play, sharing of ideas, and social negotiation that are also called for in educational settings. The opportunity to consolidate intellectual activities in a private context may also contribute to the development of problem-solving skills and a reliance o n self-control in educational settings."

The Power of Talking

The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails.

-William Arthur Ward

"If everyone talked to their young children the same amount, there would be no racial or socioeconomic gap at all." This controversial claim was made in a New York Times article, "The Power of Talking to Your Baby," by Tina Rosenberg. Some excerpts from this article based on the research of Betty Hart and Todd R. Risley at the University of Kansas:

"Children whose families were on welfare heard about 600 words per hour. Working-class children heard 1,200 words per hour, and children from professional families heard 2,100 words. By age 3, a poor child would have heard 30 million fewer words in his home environment than a child from a professional family.... Hart and Risley... found that parents talk much more to girls than to boys (perhaps because girls are more sociable, or because it is Mom who does most of the care, and parents talk more to children of their gender). This might explain why young, poor boys have particular trouble in school.

"And the disparity mattered: the greater the number of words children heard from their parents or caregivers before they were 3, the higher their IQ and the better they did in school. TV talk not only didn’t help, it was detrimental."

Source: http://ccie.com/eed/view/3321

The AIECS Team