Teaching self-control skills to children reduces classroom problems

Children taught skills to monitor and control their anger and other emotions improved their classroom behaviour and had significantly fewer school disciplinary referrals and suspensions, according to a study by University of Rochester Medical Centre researchers.

Children in a school-based mentoring program were about half as likely to have any discipline incident over the three-month period of the study, according to an article published online by the Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology. They also had a 43 percent decrease in mean suspensions as compared to the control group, which did not receive mentoring of the self-control skills.

In the four-month interval after the intervention began, 1.8 percent of children in the mentored group were suspended compared to 6.1 percent of the control group. Children taught the new skills also had a 46 percent decrease in mean office disciplinary referrals as compared to the children in the study's control group

"It is exciting that adult mentors, who are not mental health professionals, taught children a set of skills that significantly strengthened the children's ability to function well in their classrooms and meet school expectations," said Peter Wyman, Ph.D., lead author of the article and associate professor of Psychiatry at the Medical Centre.

"This study suggests that with appropriate guidance from a trained adult, young children are capable of learning a great deal about their emotions and skills for handling their emotions effectively and those skills can have direct, positive benefits for their functioning in school."

The study evaluated the effectiveness of the Rochester Resilience Project that was developed by Wyman and Wendi Cross, Ph.D., associate professor of Psychiatry and Paediatrics at the Medical Centre, to address the needs of young children with emerging behavioural and social-emotional problems by providing an accessible school-based intervention.

In a relationship with an intervention mentor over four months, children learn and practice behavioural and cognitive skills designed to strengthen their self-regulation of emotions and address specific goals to improve school adaptation.

"Our goal in developing the Rochester Resilience Project was to 'translate' findings from research about how children learn skills to be more resilient in relationships with adults into an accessible program in schools," Wyman said. "Being a successful student in elementary school classrooms establishes a foundation that makes healthy development more likely in the future."

Activities establish the Resilience Project mentor as an empathic adult informed about each child's life context, strengths and challenges. Through adult-led interactive learning and practice in natural settings, children are taught to monitor their own emotions and the emotion of others, using cues to identify feelings and intensities of feelings.

Mentors introduce 'feelings check-in' as a standard practice that serves as a teaching tool about feelings and a transition to skills focused on managing feelings.

Self-control and reducing escalation of emotions is taught through the concept of a "feelings thermometer" to depict intensity. Children learn to use "mental muscles" as a tool to monitor feelings and to stop feelings from entering a hot zone.

They also learn to maintain control and regain equilibrium through strategies such as taking a deep-breath, stepping back from emotionally intense situations, and using an imaginary umbrella as protection from hurtful words.

For each of the 14 weekly lessons, children met individually with their mentors for approximately 25 minutes in a private setting during the school day. The skills taught to children are labeled in simple terms suited to developmental level.

Reinforcement and feedback from mentors in settings in which children use new skills is also critical for children to successfully acquire the skills. Mentors collaborated with teachers to identify classroom situations in which the mentors could provide reminders to children to use new skills, and cues were provided, a sticker or button, for example, for the child to take as a reminder.

In the study, 226 children from kindergarten up to third grade in two urban elementary schools took part. They had manifested emerging behavioural, social-emotional, and/or on-task learning problems at school.

This population was selected due to evidence that those problems increase the likelihood that children will be less successful at school and may develop behavioural problems, such as substance abuse.

Children who received the intervention showed improved functioning in all domains of classroom behaviour rated by teachers.

The intervention had a positive impact on children's classroom behaviours and rates of disciplinary incidents, including fewer aggressive or disruptive problems, improved on-task learning behaviours and peer social skills, and less shy-withdrawn and more assertive behaviours, the researchers concluded.

After the study was completed, children in the control group also were mentored and taught the self-control skills. The mentoring improved peer social skills, more for girls, than for boys.

Link: www.urmc.rochester.edu

The Child's Developing Brain needs play

Scientific research has established that the major part of the development of human brain happens in a child’s first three years of life. These first three years of pre-school life is the most impressionable period of human brain during which new neural networks are being formed in certain parts of the brain.

A child who is one year old has the maximum number of brain cells the human brain can have in its entire life span. Neurobiologists believe that about 10 billion nerve cells in the infant brain are constantly making the synapses that promote thought, emotion, and physical movement. The capacity to form such neural connections depends on whether the infant brain receives proper stimulation.

Sensory stimulation such as listening to speech or watching colors or emotional stimulation by getting hugs or eye contact can change the physiological development of infant brain by changing the quality and quantity of the electrical wiring between brain cells. This promotes the growth of dendrites in the brain making stronger and richer neural connections.

Different parts of infant brain get stimulated in different ways when infant brain experiences different emotions leading to connections between different synapses. Infants who experienced playful teaching by happy adults or teachers in a fun environment showed considerable neural activity in areas of brain which specialized for positive emotion.

When such infants grow up into adulthood, they are more like to feel positive and stay positive even when they experience a negative or stressful event in their environment. Such stimulation of the infant brain can determine whether the infant will grow into peaceful & happy adult or a violent antisocial troublemaker.

To read the full article click here

Infants do not appear to learn words from educational DVDs

Infants do not appear to learn words from educational DVDs

Children age 2 and younger spend an estimated two hours per day exposed to media on a screen, and the average age at which infants begin watching programming designed for their age group is five months, according to background information in the article.

Manufacturers' claims that these infant-directed media can teach children specific vocabulary words have not been substantiated.

Rebekah A. Richert, Ph.D., and colleagues at the University of California, Riverside, studied vocabulary acquisition among 96 children age 12 to 24 months. Participants were tested on measures of vocabulary and general development, and their primary caregivers (77 mothers, seven fathers and four others) answered a series of questions about their children's development and previous exposure to educational media. Half of the children were then given an educational DVD to watch in their homes.

When additional tests were conducted after six weeks, there was no evidence children learned the words specifically highlighted in the DVDs, and watching the DVDs was unrelated to measures of general language learning.

However, children whose parents reported that they began watching infant DVDs at an early age scored lower on a test of vocabulary knowledge.

The association between early DVD viewing and delays in language development could have several explanations, the authors note: "Parents who are concerned about their children's poor language abilities may use baby DVDs to try to teach their children, parents who use baby DVDs early may be less likely to engage in behaviours that promote language development or early viewing of baby DVDs may actually impair language development," they write.

Word learning better in deaf children who receive cochlear implants by age 13 months

Word learning better in deaf children who receive cochlear implants by age 13 months

A growing body of evidence points to the importance of early auditory input for developing language skills. Indiana University Department of Otolaryngology researchers have contributed to that evidence with several projects, including their study involving 20 deaf children (22- to 40-months-old and 12 to 18 months after cochlear implantation) and 20 normal hearing children (12- to 40-months of age) that was presented Feb. 21 at the AAAS meeting.

The study's principal author, Derek Houston, Ph.D., associate professor and Philip F. Holton Scholar at the IU School of Medicine, said the study found that deaf children's word-learning skills were strongly affected by their early auditory experience.

"This research is significant because surgery at very young ages requires more expertise," said Dr. Houston. "It is important to know if the increased benefit of early auditory input warrants surgery at younger ages."

Currently, the Food and Drug Administration guidelines approve cochlear implantation at one year of age, although many children are implanted as young as 6 months of age.

Dr. Houston said the research showed that deaf children's word-learning skill was strongly affected by their early auditory experience, whether that experience was through normal means or with a cochlear implant.

Children who received the implant by the age of 13 months performed similarly to their normal-hearing counterparts while children who received a cochlear implant later performed, on average, more poorly than their normal-hearing peers.

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Our Belief Window - Hyrum W. Smith

Hyrum W. Smith is the US author of a number of self-motivational management books, one of which is 'What Matters Most.' I have just finished reading it and would like to share with you his view on 'Belief Windows'.

His 'Belief Window' and it's relationship with our basic needs is a very much simpler version of Maslo's Triangle or hierarchy of needs but it is none the less interesting.

4 Basic Needs
In contrast to Maslo, Smith tells us we have 4 basic needs in our lives that should be met.

1. To live - basic survival
2. To Love and be Loved
3. To be Important - status, standing, respect, etc.
4. Variety - Amusement, entertainment, lack of drudgery

Belief Window
He tells us that we have a 'Belief Window' through which we look and perceive our lives. This window on the world contains all our perceptions of the world. It shows us what we think we know. The view from everyone's 'Belief Window' is slightly different. We see the world in different ways, depending on who we are, our upbringing and experiences.

Our Beliefs
Our 'beliefs' are the things that we think, accept or believe are true and by which we live our lives; e.g. I never win at conflict therefore I avoid it, big dogs bite therefore I avoid them, if I don't wear nice clothes people will not like me or think I am not important, if I don't do what people ask of me then they will not love me, to be a good mother I must give up my own needs, etc.

Being a Good Mother
NB - I have to say that the belief system surrounding 'being a good mother' and, to a lesser extent 'being a good father', is a vast area of concern for us and one in which we can face and address many unresolved issues. It is an area that most councillors and therapists make a steady income from.

Exam Beliefs
We need to go discover and exam our own beliefs to determine what they are and why they appear to meet your needs, albeit in the short term. The difficulty comes when some of these beliefs may be helping us with conflict but not be meeting our long term needs. These are the ones we really need to change.

Conflicted
If we feel 'conflicted' or concerned in our daily lives, then it may be that our 'beliefs' are not meeting our 'needs' and we should sit down and examine them, to find the 'source' of this conflict. Of course, this is often easier said and sometimes not so easy to do.

Seek Help
It can be difficult to examine the content of our 'belief windows' on our own but a good coach or therapist can assist and at the same time, be objective. They are well trained in helping us to examine our beliefs and from this thoughtful 'examination' we are able to see where the conflict is and what is needing changed.

Changing
The change itself may be simple once it is revealed but it may also be more complex and we may need some assistance through that change. Change in all things is difficult and needs to be carefully managed to reduce the stress and discomfort of it.

Benefits of Change
We should not be afraid to seek help in working our way through changes in our thinking or in our lives. We will be pleased that we did so. We will reap the long term benefit of resolving conflict in our lives and see life more clearly through our brighter less complicated Belief Window.

Babies, Even When Premature, 'See' With Their Hands

Even premature babies at 33 weeks post-conceptional age, about 2 months before term (40 gestational weeks), are capable of recognizing and distinguishing two objects of different shapes (a prism and a cylinder) with their right or left hands. This is the first demonstration of fully efficient manual perception in preterm human infants.

The source of all perceptual knowledge, the sense organs and sensory systems of premature babies are less efficient than those of full-term babies, even though the latter are also not yet fully developed. Starting in the very first minutes after birth, a full-term infant is subjected to extensive tactile stimulation: it is washed, held on its mother's stomach, nursed, diapered, etc.

Its body almost immediately experiences contact with skin other than its own, with towels, sheets, nipples -- in short, with objects of different textures, shapes and consistencies. It is common knowledge that a baby will flex its fingers tightly if its palm is touched by a finger, but this grasping reaction is not just a simple reflex.

Even in the first hours of its life, a full-term newborn already has effective manual perception, a tactile capacity that enables it to make sense of its environment. But what about the premature infant, whose neurological functions are even less developed due to its early birth?

To read the full article click here