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hugs bennit;o)

Think twice before limiting your kids’ video play; then don’t.

Quite a few parentshave asked me, at talks I’ve given, about the advisability of their limiting their kids’ computer play. Others have told me that they do limit their kids’ computer play, or their total daily „screen time,“ in a tone that seemed to suggest that any reasonable parent would do that.“People who have been reading this blog can probably guess my reaction. I have a very high opinion of children’s abilities to make good choices about how to use their free time, as long as they really have choices. Some kids go through long periods of doing what seems like just one thing, and then some adults think there’s something wrong, because they (the adults) would not make that choice. But in my experience, if kids are really free to play and explore in lots of different ways, and they end up playing or exploring in what seems to be just one way, then they are doing that because they are getting something really meaningful out of it. For a nice example of this, you might watch the film on the home page of the Sudbury Valley School website, where a young man describes his year of doing almost nothing but computer play.“ … read the whole article here:

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/201201/the-many-benefits-kids-playing-video-games

„Arbeiterkinder und Jungen werden bei der Empfehlung fürs Gymnasium benachteiligt. Das hat eine Studie der Vodafonestiftung ergeben. Experten plädieren für die Abschaffung von Noten und die Einführung einer schriftlichen Beurteilung.“ … den ganzen artikel gibt’s hier:

http://www.berliner-zeitung.de/wissen/problematische-bewertung-schulnoten-sind-ungerecht,10808894,11308322.html

„How Children Learn Bravery in an Age of Overprotection

It’s dangerous to try to protect children from all dangers.“

…  „In the spring of 2008, Lenore Skenazy, a resident of Queens in New York City, left her 9-year-old son off at Bloomingdale’s in midtown Manhattan, in the middle of a sunny Sunday, gave him a handful of quarters, $20 for emergencies, a map, a Metrocard, and a kiss (I assume) and said he could go home himself.  To do so he would have to take the subway and a bus, on a route he had taken many times before with his mom. When he got home he was pleased as punch. He had been begging for this opportunity to prove that he could get home himself by public transportation, and now he had done it. He glowed with his new sense of maturity.

Lenore, who was then a columnist for the New York Sun, wrote a column about it. Within hours after the column appeared some in the media had labeled her as „America’s Worst Mom.“ In a rare show of unity, all of the women on ABC’s The View soundly condemned her decision.  The more polite of the other fourth-grade moms at the playground said, according to Lenore, things like, „Well, that’s fine, and I’ll let my son do that too…. when he’s in college.“  Lenore used this incident as a trigger to write a wonderfully funny book entitled Free Range Kids, in which she diminishes parental fears by showing how ridiculous so many of them are. … “ read the whole BRILLIANT article here:

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/201112/how-children-learn-bravery-in-age-overprotection

thanks for sharing to isaac graves