DIALOGUE WITH A PARENT FROM PAKISTAN
by Peter Ernest Haiman, Ph.D.
Wednesday, April 7, 2010, 2:12 AM
Hello,
I am Umm Muaz from Pakistan and am in the process of setting up a website for
the home education community in my country. I would like to add your article
"The case against time out" as this technique has recently been employed
by parents and hailed as beneficial. Could I kindly have permission to do so?
Wednesday, April 7, 2010, 9:33 PM
Umm,
What is your web site about? What is its purpose? Whom do you wish to serve?
You need not answer any of those questions, of course. However, I would like
to facilitate your achieving your goals. If there are other articles of mine
on my site that you believe might interest your readers, please feel free
to use them. You need, of course, only acknowledge my authorship. Are you
an educator or psychologist?
Best regards, Peter
Thursday, April 8, 2010, 1:26 AM
Peter, here are answers to your question:
What is your web site about?
The website will be the cyberspace location of our organisation: HOMEWORKS, which
is a support and resource group for home education.
What is its purpose?
the website will provide:
a. resources for home schooling families
b. support to the above (home education is violently opposed in Pakistan)
c. a platform to interact and coordinate activities for the above
d. promote correct information about home education (highly misunderstood in
our country).
e. clarify misconceptions
f. answer FAQs
Whom do you wish to serve?
a. families who are home educating
b. those who are inclined towards homeschooling but do not have enough
resources and conviction to take the plunge.c. those who are questioning
the school system and are looking for alternatives.
Are you an educator or psychologist?
I am a mother by choice, a graphic designer by profession and part of two amazing
families (mine and my in-laws).
Regards,
Umm
Thursday, April 8, 2010, 9:18 PM
Umm,
We home schooled our two sons. I received my Ph.D. in educational psychology
specializing in how people at different stages of development learn. That was
decades before I was married and had children. However, as a product of schools
in the United States, I sensed they were not doing what they should be doing.
And I also knew the children and adolescents were unjustly being blamed for the
failures of the academic system. I wanted to learn about learning, so I studied
it in graduate school. I came away with the empirically supported idea that a
competent educator should first begin by finding out the intrinsic interests
of his/her students. Then, whatever skill or subject matter needed to be learned
should be woven around those intrinsic interests of the student or group of students.
(There is more to it than that. But that is the key starting point.)
I taught
how to do this as a teacher educator of prospective preschool teachers
and secondary school teachers. When I was a high school teacher, the very
saddest thing I witnessed was the destruction of the motivation to learn
in many students. These students were brought into classrooms, seated in
rows, taught to sit still, made to be silent, and then didactically taught
by their teacher.
Umm, as you
probably know the shelves of university libraries are filled with years
of well-conducted research studies that demonstrate over and over again
that learning is best if it is an active, not a passive processes; that
children and adolescents should be engaged and interested in their learning
and have a say in what and how they learn. When I became a parent, the
vast majority of schools still had not changed in this country. Dare I
watch the withering and death of the motivation to learn in my own two
sons? That, with all good conscience, I could not do.
Umm, your website will be
of great service if it can provide your readers with the best knowledge about
learning we have to date. Again, I wish you well. It is a great pleasure for
me to be in contact with you.
Sincerely, Peter Ernest Haiman, Ph.D.
Date: Saturday, April 10, 2010, 4:39 AM
Thank you so much for your guidance and tips. I have been reading your
articles and finding them helpful. My son is 6 months old. He usually
has company as we live in a joint family system. But when he is with
me, I sometimes wonder what kind of things i should be doing with him
to nurture his inherent curiosity. I do not want to over entertain him
and make him over dependent on people / confused.
We plan
to home educate him, God willing. I would like to know what method you
employed for your sons. I am in the process of research but I am inclined
towards unschooling. A little scared to be honest. Advice?
Thanks,
Umm
Saturday, April 10, 2010, 5:44 PM
Umm,
What you should be doing is learning about the attachment research and
how it is related to brain growth (especially right brain growth) in the
first two years of life. The quality of attachment you make with your child
is not only directly related to brain growth, it is also related to your
child's emotional, intellectual and social development. Research has now
identified four kinds of attachment: secure; insecure-resistant; insecure-avoidant;
and a relatively new type called Type D, an insecure-disorganized/disoriented
pattern.
Of course, what you want for your child is for him/her to develop
a secure attachment. This is done when you or another primary caregiver
has frequent, close interaction with the child and you learn to read each
other’s
signals and respond promptly and appropriately. Then the child learns trust
in the primary caregiver. These experiences also promote right brain growth.
This area of the brain houses the neurons capable of emotional self-regulation.
Although the human brain is physically growing until roughly age 24 or
25 years, the above physical growth, for the most part, takes place by
age three. These developments, mentioned above, last throughout life.
Now,
you asked what kinds of things you should be doing with him. You should
be watching him. What does he show an interest in? If he shows an interest
in a bird up in a tree, get him a book with pictures of birds. Get him
toy birds he can hold and play with. In this way you are watching for his
intrinsic interests and appropriately responding to them. If you do this
consistently, he will learn he can trust that you are really there for
him. And his right brain will grows as well. Do you see how it works?
Your
son is 6 months old. He is in what Piaget called the sensory-motor stage
of cognitive development. This means he will learn mostly by touching,
mouthing, hearing, looking, and tasting. Have three groups of toys that
you rotate from time to time, based on your son's demonstrated expression
of boredom with them. Place one of the groups in a safe place on the floor
in your child's room or an activity room. Place the other two groups in
two boxes (one per box). Each group of toys should have 5 or 6 toys in
it. The toys should be of different colors and textures and challenge different
fine motor skills, like pushing (cars), putting on top of each other (blocks),
opening and closing (books), shaking with bells (rattles), etc. Note which
toys interest your son and which do not. Like the example of the bird,
above, when your son shows more of an interest in one or two toys than
the others that are out on the floor, go and find some other toys like
the ones he has expressed an interest in.
Your goal as a home educator
is always to extend and elaborate the intrinsic interests of your child.
This is the key!!! The purpose of the two other boxes is to have very different
toys in them. Then you can rotate the toys for your child when he seems
bored with the toys that are currently on the floor. I hope the above is
helpful. Please feel free to ask me other questions.
Best regards, Peter
Sunday, April 11, 2010, 8:42 PM
Umm,
I just reread your question and my answer to it. There is no "method" for
educating all children. Each child is different from other children—even
though they each are from the same social class, are the same religion,
and the same age. Each child is unique. The key, again, is finding out
what your individual child is interested in and then extending and elaborating
and enriching that interest. Your child's interests will and should change
from time to time. As a parent, you should be watching your young child
to observe these changes. When you child shows a new interest, introduce
play activities that captivate your son's interest. Watch how he responds
when you present an activity. Does he go to it? Does he show disinterest?
Does he seem overwhelmed? His response will tell you and be your best guide.
His response is your "method" evaluator. His response will tell
you if you are overwhelming him, or if he is still interested, or if he
may be tired, or if he may be hungry.
A child's response can tell many
things to an observant parent. This allows the parent to "listen" to
their child's needs and responsively and sensitively care for their child.
In my last email to you, I did not stress as much as I had wished one important
fact: learning is active! Children learn by doing. What kinds of things
do you think they learn?
Best regards. Peter
Sunday, April 11, 2010, 11:33 PM
That was a GREAT help. I’m going to print this out, read it and work
on it. If you don’t mind, can I please share this (online or personally)
with other parents?
Thanks a lot. Really appreciate it.
Umm
Monday, April 12, 2010, 9:54 AM
Umm,
Of course you can!! The more we can spread information about children and
child rearing that is empirically based, the healthier it will be for
our families and our societies, and the more chance that there will
be peace in the world. Anger in families and war between societies is
caused, to a very great extent, when the young have been raised by parents
who, although they may love their children, do not know how properly
to raise them. These parents raise their children as they were raised.
These parents do not take the time to learn about the most important
job a human being has: the rearing of a child.
Umm, may I put our emails
on my website for others to read? Your questions reflect the hearts and
minds of so many mothers. Yet they have no one to ask them to. In my answers
to your questions, I have been also answering theirs. I would like to call
the article something like “A dialogue
with parents in Pakistan.”
Please let me know. Peter
Wednesday, April 14, 2010, 10:56 PM
I am sorry for not replying earlier as I was discussing it with my husband.
We are comfortable with you posting the dialogue.
Here is
my next question: Our son gets very excited with book reading. Before he
could move his arms and legs, he would look at the books with rapt attention.
But now he grabs the book and puts it in his mouth. We are hesitant to
now read from paper books as some of them have bent and slightly ripped.
Should we just stick to cloth/indestructible books?
Thursday, April 15, 2010, 9:42 AM
Umm,
The first question we must ask is: why your son is placing the book in
his mouth? What reason or reasons cause him to do that? When we, as adults,
begin by asking this question, we give ourselves an opportunity to think
rationally and problem solve from an understanding of what the research
says about child growth and development. This reduces the stress in the
child's life. It reduces the stress in the parent's life. And it actually
can enhance development, especially when a child is young.
Recall what I wrote about sensory
motor learning in a previous email. Good parenting requires the development
of good diagnostic skills. By that I mean, good parents can competently determine
the cause(s) of the behavior of their child and then promptly and sensitively
act to fulfill the underlying need or needs the behavior reflected. This is
the same thing a medical doctor does. A patient comes in with symptoms. The
doctor carefully looks at all the symptoms to diagnose the cause of the physical
illness. Then the doctor treats the causes, not the symptoms. Oh, the doctor
may give some temporary symptomatic relief, yes. But that is not the doctor's
goal at all. The doctor would be a failure if it were. The goal is to find
and treat the causes of the symptoms. This is what a good parent does, as
well.
I
will stop here for now. May I suggest that you get a hold of "Childhood
and Society," second edition, by Erik Erikson, published (1963) by
W.W. Norton & Co. Familiarize yourself with his Eight Ages of Man.
Over the years, they have held up very well, and have been supported by
the research—especially the early years. I hope the above has helped.
Sincerely, Peter Ernest Haiman, Ph. D.
