2 interesting videos on third culture children

What are the Characteristics of TCKs?

There are different characteristics that impact the typical Third Culture Kid:

• TCKs are 4 times as likely as non-TCKs to earn a bachelor's degree (81% vs 21%)
• 40% earn an advanced degree (as compared to 5% of the non-TCK population.)
• 45% of TCKs attended 3 universities before earning a degree.
• 44% earned undergraduate degree after the age of 22.
• Educators, medicine, professional positions, and self employment are the most common professions for TCKs.
• TCKs are unlikely to work for big business, government, or follow their parents' career choices. "One won't find many TCKs in large corporations. Nor are there many in government ... they have not followed in parental footsteps".
• 90% feel "out of sync" with their peers.
• 90% report feeling as if they understand other cultures/peoples better than the average American.
• 80% believe they can get along with anybody.
• Divorce rates among TCKs are lower than the general population, but they marry older (25+).
  
  • Military brats, however, tend to marry earlier.
• Linguistically adept (not as true for military ATCKs.)
  
  • A study whose subjects were all "career military brats"—those who had a parent in the military from birth through high school—shows that brats are linguistically adept.
• Teenage TCKs are more mature than non-TCKs, but ironically take longer to "grow up" in their 20s.
• More welcoming of others into their community.
• Lack a sense of "where home is" but often nationalistic.
• Depression and suicide are more prominent among TCK's.
• Some studies show a desire to "settle down" others a "restlessness to move"

http://tckid.com/what-is-a-tck.html

This video by Pico Iyer asks the important questions, Where is home?

Don't Help Your Kids With Their Homework

http://mrwalkersworld.net/parentzone.htm





"One of the central tenets of raising kids in America is that parents should be actively involved in their children’s education: meeting with teachers, volunteering at school, helping with homework, and doing a hundred other things that few working parents have time for. These obligations are so baked into American values that few parents stop to ask whether they’re worth the effort.

Until this January, few researchers did, either. In the largest-ever study of how parental involvement affects academic achievement, Keith Robinson, a sociology professor at the University of Texas at Austin, and Angel L. Harris, a sociology professor at Duke, mostly found that it doesn’t. The researchers combed through nearly three decades’ worth of longitudinal surveys of American parents and tracked 63 different measures of parental participation in kids’ academic lives, from helping them with homework, to talking with them about college plans, to volunteering at their schools. In an attempt to show whether the kids of more-involved parents improved over time, the researchers indexed these measures to children’s academic performance, including test scores in reading and math.

What they found surprised them. Most measurable forms of parental involvement seem to yield few academic dividends for kids, or even to backfire—regardless of a parent’s race, class, or level of education."


http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/04/and-dont-help-your-kids-with-their-homework/358636/

The Overprotected Kid

"One common concern of parents these days is that children grow up too fast. But sometimes it seems as if children don’t get the space to grow up at all; they just become adept at mimicking the habits of adulthood. As Hart’s research shows, children used to gradually take on responsibilities, year by year. They crossed the road, went to the store; eventually some of them got small neighborhood jobs. Their pride was wrapped up in competence and independence, which grew as they tried and mastered activities they hadn’t known how to do the previous year. But these days, middle-class children, at least, skip these milestones. They spend a lot of time in the company of adults, so they can talk and think like them, but they never build up the confidence to be truly independent and self-reliant.
Lately parents have come to think along the class lines defined by the University of Pennsylvania sociologist Annette Lareau. Middle-class parents see their children as projects: they engage in what she calls “concerted cultivation,” an active pursuit of their child’s enrichment. Working-class and poor parents, meanwhile, speak fewer words to their children, watch their progress less closely, and promote what Lareau calls the “accomplishment of natural growth,” perhaps leaving the children less prepared to lead middle-class lives as adults. Many people interpret her findings as proof that middle-class parenting styles, in their totality, are superior. But this may be an overly simplistic and self-serving conclusion; perhaps each form of child-rearing has something to recommend it to the other."

http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/03/hey-parents-leave-those-kids-alone/358631/

Natural Math Multiplication: an online course in April for parents, teachers etc

Natural Math Multiplication: an online course in April

We invite parents, teachers, playgroup hosts, and math circle leaders to join us in April for an open online course about multiplication. Each week there will be five activities to help your kids learn multiplication by exploring patterns and structure. To get your course completion badge, do at least two activities every week. The course starts April 6 and runs for four weeks.

Each activity will have adaptations for toddlers (2-4), young kids (4-6), and older kids (7-12). If you want to remix activities for babies or teens, we will help!

Click to join the course.

Here is the preliminary syllabus.

Week 1: Introduction. What is multiplication? Hidden dangers and precursors of math difficulties. From open play to patterns: make your own math. 60 ways to stay creative in math. Our mathematical worries and dreams.

Week 2: Inspired by calculus. Tree fractals. Substitution fractals. Multiplication towers. Doubling and halving games. Zoom and powers of the Universe.

Week 3: Inspired by algebra. Factorization diagrams. Mirror books and snowflakes. Combination and chimeras. Spirolaterals and Waldorf stars: drafting by the numbers. MathLexicon.

Week 4: Times tables. Coloring the monster table. Scavenger hunt: multiplication models and intrinsic facts. Cuisenaire, Montessori, and other arrays. The hidden and exotic patterns. Healthy memorizing.

 

You don't need an app for this

Thought that you might enjoy this short 8 minute TED talk. Often we have a bias against Africa and see it as a continent that is behind the times etc. Perhaps we have got it wrong and we need to review the way we think about technology and innovation of technology.

Toby Shapshak: You don't need an app for that

"Are the simplest phones the smartest? While the rest of the world is updating statuses and playing games on smartphones, Africa is developing useful SMS-based solutions to everyday needs, says journalist Toby Shapshak. In this eye-opening talk, Shapshak explores the frontiers of mobile invention in Africa as he asks us to reconsider our preconceived notions of innovation."

Social Media Parenting: Raising the Digital Generation

linkedmediagrp via Compfight cc










"Who are your kids friending on Facebook? What are they really texting to their classmates? How much online time is too much?
Too often, parents who are misinformed about the social web (willfully or otherwise) will shut their kids out of it completely, only to find they are logging in anyway. If you're not taking an active role in your child's online life, you may be missing important opportunities to ensure they are on the path toward "digital citizenship," and protected from inappropriate content and people.
To help shrink the tech-culture divide between parents and their kids, we sought advice from the experts, who draw not only from their own research, but their family experiences as well. Keep reading for some valuable wisdom on raising the first fully digital generation."

http://mashable.com/2010/05/13/parenting-social-media/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Mashable+%28Mashable%29

10 Reasons Why Handheld Devices Should Be Banned for Children Under the Age of 12

Redmer Hoekstra via Compfight cc




"Should Handheld Devices for Kids Under 12 Be Banned?

A Huffington Post article, 10 Reasons Why Handheld Devices Should Be Banned, from a couple of days ago has clearly hit a nerve. The link has spread far and wide, with hundreds of thousands of social media shares.
The author links to studies from the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Canadian Society of Pediatrics, Kaiser Foundation, Active Healthy Kids Canada, and Common Sense Media as the primary sources that back up her call to ban the use of all handheld devices for children under the age of 12 years. She cites sleep deprivation, obesity, delayed brain development, mental illness, aggression, addiction, and digital dementia as just a few of the detrimental consequences of allowing kids under 12 to use handheld devices.
(Since the post was published, many have written responses that refute both the factual assertions and the conclusions the author makes.)
The article comes at a pivotal moment when schools, teachers, and parents are figuring out how students can use mobile devices — specifically smartphones or tablets — for the purposes of learning: to create, collaborate, research, share information and opinion, and possibly as an equalizing force in the digital divide.
How does this call for a ban on handheld devices square with what parents and teachers believe about the value of devices towards the purposes of learning, whether in or out of school? Should mobile devices be kept from students below the sixth grade altogether? Is a child’s age a valid determining factor in answering these questions?"