Father & Child Auckland has received funding from the Manurewa Community Board (Manukau City Council) towards a series of 3 seminars on what it means to be a father. These seminars will be held later in 2010.

Details will be announced shortly but if you are interested or know anyone who might be send us an email to auckland@fatherandchild.org.nz, phone us on 09 525 1690 or send us a letter to Father & Child Trust, PO Box 11931 Ellerslie, Auckland.

Parenting: Babies and Movement

by Harald Breiding-Buss

Compared to all other mammals, human babies are exceptionally underdeveloped and helpless—so much so that it seems amazing that the human species has survived at all, what with our low reproduction rate and the kind of effort required to raise a child to maturity. There must be a pretty strong biological advantage that outweighs those drawbacks.

That advantage is the human propensity to learn, which is strongest in babies and toddlers. It is our underdeveloped brain at birth that gives us the ability to grow into the most diverse natural and social environments; no other mammal species managed to spread around the whole world on its own volition, being able to manage to survive in almost every ecosystem.

Babies are wired to learn about the environment they are being born into, and it is the parents who are doing the teaching, most of it without realising it.

The key to early learning is movement. Movement triggers those all-important brain connections, and it has a lot of more obvious effects as well: a baby that can move around can explore their environment much better than one that can’t, learning in the process. And it is the fine motor skills in baby’s hands that let them explore and manipulate objects.

But babies are born with neither the ability to move around or to hold an object in their hands, so the exposure to opportunities to move around, and things to explore, has a lot to do with how ‘natural’ you are with those physical skills for the rest of your life, and what your problem-solving abilities are going to look like.

A whole small industry has sprung up around baby movement. I remember taking my children to ‘kindy gym’ for 2-4 year olds, where they basically set up a little obstacle course with tunnels to crawl through and low benches to jump off from (remember the ‘motorbike landing’?). One theory holds that crawling is essential to make connections between the two hemispheres of the brain, and they advocate that babies crawl for at least 3,000 hours in total before moving on to walking.

All that creates quite a bit of performance pressure: A colleague once broke out into tears at a baby movement seminar after confessing that her kids had been ‘bum-shufflers’. Therefore, the Early Childhood Development experts with the Ministry of Education warn against ‘forced development’, ie pushing your baby beyond what they are ready for. At least one of them is highly skeptical even of the now widely promoted ‘tummy time’, believing this is not a natural position for babies to be in.
One thing is certain, however: whatever you do or don’t do has a very big impact on that ballooning brain of your baby. Getting conflicting advice in this area simply makes decision-making all the more nerve-racking.

For an average middle-class family there is very little danger of physically over-extending your baby. The opposite is generally the problem: babies are surrounded by toys within arms reach, providing little motivation to reach out further. There are baby rockers and other devices that will keep baby comfortable in a largely stationery position. Much of that has to do with attempting to keep the baby safe—it’s that very drive to learn and explore that causes a lot of accidents. So parents are told that unless you can give junior your full and undivided attention, baby needs to be put somewhere safe—and constricted.

Babies and toddlers are also often not given a suitable range of things to explore: toys for littlies tend to be made of plastic because of baby’s propensity to suck on everything they can get their hands on, but plastic is the material you are using least often to build or manipulate things with later in life. Plastic is hygienic—but otherwise pretty useless.

One of the advantages in helping babies and toddlers to build their physical skills is that it is so much fun for everyone involved. You’ll get lots of laughs and giggles when you play-fight, jump, roll on the floor or walk backwards together. It’s quality time at its best and can make for an excellent distraction tool as well for those times of the day when junior seems a bit grumpier.

In a lot of more working class families babies are stimulated far more and, generally, have more rapidly initial development. There is a lot more coming and going in those households, more men as well as women interacting with baby, fewer toys and gadgets and also usually less focus on safety. That exposes the youngsters to more risks, but also vastly increases their range of experiences.

One of the drawbacks of growing up in a busier environment like this is a much shorter attention span, which in our world is the biggest stumbling block to a decent career and gets you into all sorts of trouble. The key here is one-on-one time, with no radio or TV, where baby has the parents’ full attention for at least 15 minutes (more when older) at a time, and preferably several times a day.

So what about those ‘music and movement’, ’baby yoga’ and other classes. Do they deliver what they promise?

Probably not unless they complement what you are doing at home anyway. It is exceptionally difficult to try and bring out skills in your child that are not otherwise a part of your life, unless you consciously work on it several times every day. You are most likely to succeed if you do something that you yourself enjoy very much, because then it will become part of your daily life.

Next: Taking on Government Departments

Trouble at School

While all children and young adults are better educated than ever before, there is a widening gap between boys and girls.

Has removing barriers to girls’ education led to increased barriers for boys education? Or are girls just naturally smarter than boys? Brendon Smith investigates.

I always thought our local kindergarten was a wonderful place. It had lovely woman teachers and a large sunny playground. I was always happy to help them put the lid on the big sandpit, pick up tools by the workbench, listen from the back corner as the last mat-time story was read aloud.

Occasionally the kids would crash a trolley and I’d get an incident report, but I figured that was a sign of progressive risk taking, a good trait for 4 year-old boys, surely.

I met another dad at the back of the room, his boy played with ours and yes, he had noticed them ‘mis-behaving’ a bit. I remembered seeing the boys mucking around on the mat during story time, not annoying but not listening either.

Later I managed to ask my son about it and he quickly replied ‘Oh you mean that story, about the big mother bunny. We’ve heard that one before.’

I mentioned this to the other dad and we agreed that while there was a huge art area and costumes for Africa their selection of wooden blocks and Lego was a bit dated.

I was about to ask one of the teachers, when she told me how this year’s fundraising money was for new rugby, basketball and soccer balls, fancy new Lego and big books with dinosaurs or tractors.

It worked! Though the boys eventually broke out to a playground across the road, they loved that kindergarten.

Our first year primary teacher was amazing with boys. She used motorcycle design legend John Britten as a role model and accepted live wetas as news. It was a shame, though, that the only regular male seen during school hours was the grumpy caretaker.

Men have effectively evacuated the learning professions. This “feminisation” of schools is said to have begun after WW2.

It is claimed that returning servicemen were given preferential treatment, some oblivious to their own dis-abilities, resulting in many frustrated female teachers eventually asserting their abilities on merit, the net effect being a steady push of men out of education.

As women began to dominate the classrooms, many traditional, competitive teaching methods, including some competitive sport were banned.

Boys who were noisy or dominant were seen as taking the teacher’s attention away from the more readily attentive girls. Earlier initiatives to ensure girls were not marginalised in schools had been successful, but they also uncovered gender differences in learning which in our country seem to have been forgotten.

An international study from Scotland found that girls are not generally brighter than boys, they tend to fill the middle ground.

The ‘average’ girl works harder and achieves better grades than the ‘average’ boy, but it is boys who more often top classes, yet simultaneously fill most of the low performer ranks.

In some countries, gender specific learning methods are highly rated, but here in New Zealand we have been leaning on the teachers.

In one of his last acts as education minister, Nick Smith commissioned an ERO report into gender differences in learning. He also announced including men as target groups for ‘teachnz’ scholarships, a plan that was quickly abandoned.

Time magazine recently reviewed boys vs. girls performance throughout the USA, including everything from preschool achievements to university degrees and lifestyle outcomes like teenage pregnancies, drug and imprisonment rates.

Early teaching apparently recorded little differences, but during the 70’s and 80’s, boys’ outcomes had changed. The number of male students needing reading assistance, falling in grades and having behavioural issues was increasing, but teachers were also celebrating improved outcomes for girls.

As Time magazine noted, early intervention policies with community backing identified at-risk students, investigated their family situations and provided support according to needs. Many boys stepped up with that extra attention and rapid improvements followed.

As a result the gap has been reduced in the USA but girls still outperform boys.

Learning styles may have a lot to do with it. One study, comparing teaching methods in different countries, found that Japanese students, who regularly rated highly in international comparisons, were being taught in entirely different ways, using a discovery method.

Students are presented with problems they can’t solve given all the tools they have learned so far. They start thinking about what they need to solve it, and some of this happens in working groups, some of it in the whole class.

As the groups progress, the teacher provides the extra tools and the information the students need, bit by bit. The students get the thrill of learning.

This is almost the direct opposite of the style used in our schools, where the tools or a story are given first and practised through exercises. At early primary level, a large part of teaching consists of listening and copying, and provides very little challenge .

The Japanese method appeals to a sense of exploration and adventure. The thrill of solving a problem offers the kind of short-term reward that keeps children interested in learning.

For boys , who are often seen bored at school and engage in unnecessary risk taking, such an approach would focus those energies in a more positive way.

Society needs those problem-solvers. If we are faced with a burning building, somebody has to solve the problems of finding and rescuing people without a handbook.

The police, many computer jobs, construction and management – all have a strong element of problem-solving, needing fast analysis of the problem and action. All these professions are dominated by men.

Since the last ERO report on Boys vs. Girls there have been several conferences, research papers and reviews. One of these said that the current monotone approach to schooling should be expanded to enable more new and innovative methods.

This means giving principals more discretion to make decisions about what is taught in their schools, how schools spend the funds they receive and what works for the needs of particular pupils.

Diverse approaches to schooling are a vital part of bridging the gap between the achievement standards of all students.

As long as our educational bureaucratic framework seems inflexible it will remain up to local teachers and determined dads to ensure that neither rigid teaching methods nor old stereotypes deter their boys or girls from achieving their full potential in NZ schools.

The Brain Angle

Learning and gender expert Michael Gurian (Author of 2007 book “The Minds of Boys: Saving Our Sons From Falling Behind in School and Life”) has taken modern brain-scan based approaches to identify why and how boy-girl differences affect learning styles.

He found that at high school level writing, girls on average:

• Use more words than boys
• Include more complex sensory details like color and texture, and
• Add more emotive and feeling details (“Judy said she liked him” “Timmy frowned”).

Gurian thinks this is due to higher blood flow in the verbal centers of the girls’ brains, more neural connections between the verbal and emotive centers and more blood flow in sensorial centres

A visual link to learning helps girls connect colour variety and other sensoral detail like facial expressions,. Boys recognise spatial activity and graphic clues more quickly.

In a boy’s brain, less of the “calming chemical,” serotonin, is present and they also have the ability to zone-out or doze during a lesson. This makes them seem both distracting and disrespectful.

When his specific teaching methods for both boys and girls were trialled at six Missouri schools, outcomes for both sexes improved markedly and discipline issues dropped by as much as 35%.

Linking words to maths has proven to be an amazing help, closing previous girl performance gaps in mathematics and sciences.

The current emphasis on cooperative learning has proven to prepare children well for consensus building and communications, but the elimination of competitive elements from the class has also robbed many boys and girls of the chance to shine and lead.

Next: Motherless Girls

Fatherhood Messes Monkey Minds

Researchers from Princeton University have discovered significant changes in the brain structure of male Common Marmosets on becoming a father.

Marmosets are a primate species where the fathers stay involved with their offspring.
The changes in brain structure are triggered by hormonal changes also found in human males with a pregnant partner.

Connections between neurons increased in an area of the brain responsible for memory and planning. Receptor numbers for the hormone ‘vasopressin’ also increased.

Some of these changes reversed once the young became independent, but could be observed again if a new one was born.