Nip it in the bud.
When it comes to stopping a bad habit, the earlier it is caught the easier. So, recognising a bad habit forming before it is embedded means never letting it become a habit in the first place. Similarly, recognising a potential good habit and reinforcing it through repetition facilitates embedding it into daily habits so that it can continue delivering benefits thoughtlessly.
Thoughtless is something we all are when it comes to our default behaviours, as they play out like a program, with an initial trigger condition firing off a sequence of actions that play to completion. Interrupting the process as early as possible helps to change the behaviour.
I have failed as a parent.
Not completely and not forever.
And the failure in some parent's eyes might not seem that large, or perhaps for some, they wish their children would behave similarly - at least that is what we have heard from other parents in regards to our daughter.
From birth, we have left her off screens and only introduced them at any level (other than chatting with Australia) when she was around five years old. Now, she has to do some homework on a screen, and on weekends she watches some kids programs in the morning. However, the problem we have created was that while we have actively read books and encouraged our daughter to read from birth, we introduced her to audiobooks about six months ago.
She listens to books too much.
In my opinion.
Listening to a book is better than watching a screen, as it activates the imagination, but the problem is that at her age, she needs to develop her reading ability in both Finnish and English. She reads well in Finnish, getting better in English, but there is a long way to go. Some will of course say that it is unnecessary for her future to be able to read , since there will be technology to close the gap, but that is not what I am worried about. As I see it, the act of learning the skill of reading as a child develops mental infrastructure that is leveraged and benefits the child as an adult.
I suspect a lot of the foundational skills aren't being learned today.
I have mentioned before and recently about the drop in problem-solving ability, which is often attributed to a lack of exposure to problems, but I think it is more than this, or at least, there is more to the "problems" needed. Because when we read a story, we have multiple problems to solve continuously. Firstly perhaps, it is understanding the words and then comprehending them in context. But especially for a child, it is coming across unknown words and trying to comprehend despite not knowing the definition, through the general context. Then there is of course the visualisation of what is being understood, which becomes a unique blueprint of understanding that is personal to the reader. And then there can be the application of the solution where understanding and images are imagined in a hypothetical scenario that is again individual to the reader.
When watching a film, the majority of this is already given to the viewer, so there is very little that the audience needs to problem solve, because they needn't imagine anything. And then, unlike reading, the flow of information doesn't speed up and slow down based on the viewer's comprehension, it just flows on, so there is also no space to stop and think about what is being shown or said. Sure, there is a pause button, but I don't know anyone who will pause a show every time they have a thought that should be explored more deeply. It would ruin the passive viewing experience.
Audiobooks are somewhere between of course, as they take out the skill of learning, but also don't give the visuals, so my daughter still has to do some problem solving. However, they also suffer from the speed of flow problem, where it is highly unlikely, and even more so for a child, to pause the audio to think deeply about what is being communicated. So, consuming the book becomes a less "skill rich" environment, making it far more entertainment-centric content.
My failure as a parent is that even though I know this, I haven't reduced the amount that my daughter listens to them, and instead enforced encouraged her to read more. And my wife doesn't see the harm in it in the same way I do, especially since she hears from other mothers how they wish their children would behave more like Smallsteps at times, as if Smallsteps herself is the only factor that counts, and not the parenting supporting her. There is nothing stopping most kids from having different behaviour, other than the repetitive facilitation of the behaviour they currently have.
So, in order to start to change the behaviour, there are a couple options I have available to me. One is to stop her listening to audiobooks altogether, since we as parents are the gatekeepers of the content. However, I think this isn't a viable solution and will cause more problems, since it is a punishment for her, when she hasn't done anything wrong. However, even though she doesn't listen for hours on end, and when she does she normally plays at the same time, it can be limited. Playing at the same time is not a bonus, since what it means is that focus is split, as humans are incredibly bad at multitasking.
So, then it comes down to encouragement, which has already started with her reading a couple paragraphs of the books (in English) that I read to her at night. She is already improving her problem solving ability when she comes across words she doesn't know or can't pronounce, and she is asking to read, without me asking her. Her fluency is increasing rapidly and I notice the change in her spoken language, where she is intentionally introducing words she has learned from the books.
The next thing is through role-modelling, where we all put aside time to read together, especially her and my wife. My wife "never has time" to read, although she loves it, so putting aside even 15 minutes at a time a few times a week, will make a dramatic difference in her life, and support my daughter to build her love.
Ultimately, the skill of reading (and writing) will degrade in general as kids and adults spend so much time on screens consuming mostly shortform information. Very little thought is required and the speed of flow of information pushed through the feeds means that there is extremely low likelihood that people will slow down enough to dive deeply into any of the topics, and the topics are varied, unfocused, and largely presented in ways that will not encourage any activity or skill development. And there is skill loss from not doing an activity and as I see it, a lot of the lost skills are fundamental human skills that help us understand our world, and communicate with clarity as we interact with people.
This skill gap is an opportunity for those who have developed the skills, especially when it comes to face to face communication with people. Problem-solving is a large part of communication, but people are becoming far worse at it as they transmit what they want the way they want it, but only receive information when it comes in the form they want. Perhaps due to a lack of problem-solving ability, they do not see that when they communicate, they aren't being listened to either, just like they aren't listening well to others.
So in the interest of Smallsteps' development for the future, I have to stop failing as a parent and start changing my behaviours so that she will be exposed to the conditions required to develop her own skillset. Consuming information isn't enough, there has to be practice. And the thing with reading is that it is an active process that forces the practice of a cluster of skills that compound to make a better critical thinker, and communicator.
Should write more about my many parenting fails?
Taraz
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