Decline of play and rise of sensory issues in preschoolers | Hacker News Reader

Decline of play and rise of sensory issues in preschoolers

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192 pointsnether127 comments

I've worked with high level machine intelligence, it has become very obvious to me that cognitive development goes hand in hand with physical movement and manipulation. Intelligence, real or artificial, do not fully develop without prolonged physical interaction with the subjects they proport to understand.

We learn about space, objects, and people by doing regular physical activity. We learn about things by touching them, throwing them, kicking them into the woods or on the roof. Our brains develop by manipulating and getting feedback from our environment.

I feel far less intelligent after a day spent in front of a computer or a book than I do after a day spent walking in the woods. I'm astonished by how brain-dead I become without physical activity, and how useless and un-creative it makes me.

Kids don't need 30 min of recess -- they need an entire day of working and learning with their hands and feet along with their brains.

I work for a Sudbury School (Arts&Ideas in Baltimore) where this is our mantra.

I've long take it as an article of faith that humans are wired this way. But I am astounded by the comment about artificial intelligence. Is there any kind of paper that explores this? Not even sure how to set it up or quantify such a thing, but that would be incredible to prove.

http://www.psychology.emory.edu/cognition/barsalou/papers/Ba...

"Abstract: Prior to the twentieth century, theories of knowledge were inherently perceptual. Since then, developments in logic, statistics, and programming languages have inspired amodal theories that rest on principles fundamentally different from those underlying perception. In addition, perceptual approaches have become widely viewed as untenable because they are assumed to implement recording systems, not conceptual systems. A perceptual theory of knowledge is developed here in the context of current cognitive science and neuroscience. During perceptual experience, association areas in the brain capture bottom-up patterns of activation in sensory-motor areas. Later, in a top-down manner, association areas partially reactivate sensory-motor areas to implement perceptual symbols. The storage and reactivation of perceptual symbols operates at the level of perceptual components – not at the level of holistic perceptual experiences. Through the use of selective attention, schematic representations of perceptual components are extracted from experience and stored in memory (e.g., individual memories of green, purr, hot). As memories of the same component become organized around a common frame, they implement a simulator that produces limitless simulations of the component (e.g., simulations of purr). Not only do such simulators develop for aspects of sensory experience, they also develop for aspects of proprioception (e.g., lift, run) and introspection (e.g., compare, memory, happy, hungry). Once established, these simulators implement a basic conceptual system that represents types, supports categorization, and produces categorical inferences. These simulators further support productivity, propositions, and abstract concepts, thereby implementing a fully functional conceptual system. Productivity results from integrating simulators combinatorially and recursively to produce complex simulations. Propositions result from binding simulators to perceived individuals to represent type-token relations. Abstract concepts are grounded in complex simulations of combined physical and introspective events. Thus, a perceptual theory of knowledge can implement a fully functional conceptual system while avoiding problems associated with amodal symbol systems. Implications for cognition, neuroscience, evolution, development, and artificial intelligence are explored"

Fascinating abstract. I think I may have accidentally downvoted your comment though, when I meant to upvote (on a phone).

I downloaded the PDF; hopefully I can find time to read it eventually. There are some gaps between the layers of abstraction presented in this abstract that I hope would be addressed by the full paper.

Their main point was that pre-computers, cognition was theorized to be tied to physical stimulus. When humans learned how to code computers, "AI" was theorized as existing in "black boxes" of pure abstract symbol manipulation.

The paper discusses how this doesn't make sense, and how cognition must be tied to biological sensing to be "smart".

I doubt that "physical manipulation" is a requirement for machine intelligence. It may as well be any kind of manipulation in any kind of reach and consistent environment. It could potentially be rich enough virtual environment.

But, in practice, the only "rich enough" environment currently available is the physical world. And virtual classroom is no substitution...

There's a somewhat relevant concept in Seymour Papert's book Mindstorms. Papert talks about "body-syntonicity" where the act of drawing a circle on the computer screen with LOGO can be seen as bridging children’s sense and knowledge about their own bodies to something abstract. Young children would often pretend to be the LOGO turtle, acting out commands on the floor, during stages of planning a LOGO program, or while debugging LOGO code. It has also been a strategy for teachers to introduce programming and procedural ways of thinking. This video shows this in action (with some followup comments from Papert): https://youtu.be/bOf4EMN6-XA?t=254

When I was in school with the BBC micro and the LOGO turtle we had an actual physical turtle hooked up to the machine via a long cable.

Needless to say this was much more popular with us than just the screen. I am sure it is partly for the robotic'ness of it but we would often walk around with the turtle as it was moving. So what you are saying and linked to I can well believe.

This sounds great. Do you have any more information on the mechanical turtle? (consumer kit, or a side-project by an industrious teacher?)

Here he is , as i recall it was a kit http://www.classicacorn.freeuk.com/8bit_focus/logo/logo.html

This was a consumer kit aimed at schools. Looks like there were many different types as obitoo has another that I have never seen.

http://gallery.nen.gov.uk/asset78077_1582-.html

Huh! Ours, and the ones I saw on telly as a nipper, did not look like an actual turtle! It was just a smooth hemisphere with gubbins on display, inside.

There is the theory of general causality developed by Judea Pearl, which as far as I've understood implies that you need to be able to purposefully affect the world you're observing in some way to do experiments before you are able to infer causal relationships even in theory. See eg. http://www.michaelnielsen.org/ddi/if-correlation-doesnt-impl...

It seems the way of our brain works have some similarities with machines(well, it perhaps among the best average person at this time is able to perceive.). The brain gets information from sensors, tries to categorize everything and makes sense by use the categories in mind. New information from the sensors may trigger the brain to recategorize. All those steps make sense. I believe that's one of important reasons screen based devices are not good for little kids. They need to get exposed to the physical world since they are still learning how to interact with the physical world they live in. Leaving kids to screen is a low cost and time/energy-saving solution, but it increases the risk of "less-developed-focusing-muscle".

Montessori-based education revolves around learning and working with physicality[0]: "Exploration, Manipulation (of the environment), Activity, Order, Orientation" etc.

Disclosure: I was put into a Montessori school when I was young.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montessori_education

So is the solution to focus on simulating a body within a fairly detailed simulated reality? Forget how you model emotions (which might be emergent from patterns of subtle physical sensations) how do you do prioperception in that context?

Also, do you cheat and allow the entities "imagination" to be a perfectly modifiable simulation, or do you allow "errors" to enter into the simulation? What about the ethics of maintaining the integrity of the events and reactions that compose the entity, and the possible responsibility to ensure that reactions continue, or that those events have something to do with our "real" world and are not entirely simulated?

'Society of the Mind'[1] by Eric L Harry is a great sci-fi read about AI and has this as a major part of the premise. I read it a few years ago and recently bought a copy, re-read it. Still excellent.

[1] http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00SRV9UGE/ref=as_li_tl?i...

Related to this, an interesting read on the philosophy of embodied cognition: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/embodied-cognition/

It's been a while since I worked in AI research but although I worked in agent architecture and model based reasoning I was came to believe in the approach of "the world is its own best model" associated with Rodney Brooks:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsumption_architecture

i.e. Why put so much effort into modelling the world to allow reasoning when you can interact with the world to answer the same questions.

I feel far less intelligent after a day spent in front of a computer or a book than I do after a day spent walking in the woods.

Odd, for me it's the other way around. I may feel more at peace, more relaxed and better able to fall asleep when I was in the wood, but I definitely don't feel as intellectually enriched as I do after reading a book or on the PC.

Three main stresses that human body learn to deal with during the course of evolution trigger development of brain (and nervous system in general).

These stresses are endurance activity (walk long hours), strength activity (fight or flight response) and famine.

The agent responsible for development of nervous system in these cases is brain-derived neurotrophic factor. It is responsible for creation of new neurons and branching of old ones and directly related to intellectual performance.

So your link to high level machine intelligence is wrong, I believe. I also think I explained above why do you feel smarter after a day of physical activity.

> So your link to high level machine intelligence is wrong, I believe.

Alternate explanations are not refutations. Both could be factors.

Sleep deprivation. It explains all the symptoms mentioned in the article.

Kids in kindergarten start early, and stay later than they have in the past with no nap period. Busy parents (both of whom are now working full-time) are lucky to get home by 7pm, so the kid(s) are generally kept up till 9/10pm so the parents can have some time with them.

If parents are going to keep a 5/6-yr old up to 9:30pm or later, then wake them up at 7:15am to get ready for school at 8:15am.... which goes till 2pm with no nap time. Well yea, sleep deprivation hurts.

Ask your parents, grandparents, etc when they went to sleep, when kindergarten began, how long it ran, whether it included a nap/rest-time. Most of us got a lot more sleep than the kids now.

Edit: I agree kids need more free-play time, but that's separate from their sleep deprivation.

I think you're 100% correct here. My son is in bed by 8, no exceptions. Usually up around 8 the next day. My niece is in preschool from 7a-6p... Totally different experience which really sucks.

When I was that age, 8:00 meant that either Topo Gigio or the Muppets were on Ed Sullivan (they were always, for some reason, scheduled for the second half-hour). I'm not sure I needed the extra half-hour that going to bed at 7:30 gave me, but I'm pretty sure that my parents needed the recovery time before their two hours of grown-up television.

It's likely that there are many factors at work. You'll hear everything from changes in diet, too much TV, too much social media, too much time in front of the iPad, etc.

As an anecdote to perhaps corroborate yours, it felt impossible for me to get up at 7am every morning M-F from the ages of 9-22. It also felt highly unnatural to be doing so at all, as a majority of my friends experienced the same thing -- a very shifted sleep schedule which started later in the evening and lasted 8+ hours into almost noontime. Of course this could all be due to too much TV, too much social media, too much iPad, etc.

As for the article, play seems central to development. It certainly plays a role in bonding formation[1] and neural development[2]. However, just like every other factor, it's just hard to suss out its relative weight compared to everything else a child experiences during development.

My personal view is that this is all very speculative. When we can model the brain better, whether it's through more carefully controlled studies or even through machine intelligence simulations, we will actually be able to determine its real value. Though, I do suspect its high.

[1] http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/119/1/182.full [2] http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2014/08/06/336361277/scientis...

In the book Nurtureshock (must read for any parents, IMO), sleep deprivation is considered as #1 cause for all evils. Many schools forces teenagers to wake up as early as 6AM and they typically can't go to bed before 11Pm. This is loss of 2 hours of sleep each day for brains that are still developing. Result is colossal drop in grades along with other artifacts. Schools do this to accommodate different grades in same building. Lot of schools have fixed this slightly after this book came out by making teenagers start late and kindergartens start early.In my view, it should be unlawful to have schools start before 9AM for any grades.

This really blows my mind if it's what's happening. Are you saying that kindergartens are getting rid of 'nap times'?!?!

Why would they do this?!?!

I thought it was obvious that children need sleep in order to learn and grow.

Secondly even if I put on a tinfoil hat I can't see even a financial incentive for getting rid of naps. That's down time that kindergarten teachers get to relax in the relative quiet and organize things.

So what possible rationale is there for getting rid of nap time?

Maybe the parents who are paying big money for kindergarten feel like they're getting shortchanged if their child isn't being educated the entirety of their time there, and this has led to pressure to reduce or eliminate nap time?

I hated naptime when I was at preschool, I could never get to sleep.

Although it's possible I'm just misremembering, and I got to sleep just fine most of the time and only remember the times I lay awake thinking about how I hated naptime.

My sons kindergarten don't have nap times for practical reasons. It's a forrest kindergarten, so they spend all/most their time in the woods. I suppose they could bring a tent or sleeping bags, but it gets rather cold during winter.

That probably doesn't answer your question directly, but it may be for similar practical reasons this is happening elsewhere (if it is - I don't know).

I didn't have nap time in school, I had to go to bed at 7 instead (with school starting at 9). Nap time is only needed if your night time is too short, IMO.

Similar experience. Both me and my sister were not napping at all and instead slept 8 pm - 6 am.

The rationale I've seen, in the public schools in my area, is to cram more reading and writing into the day. They eliminated nap time, and have alternating recess - mornings for 30 minutes one day, afternoons the next.

If your child can't read and write their own name by the time they get to kindergarten, they are considered behind age appropriate. This isn't an affluent area of the US, either. It's a rural, poor area.

The quest to test is what's eliminating all 'extra' times in schools. We have to beat China, Korea and all of Europe on standardized dick measuring tests, so our children get to suffer (unless you can afford alternate private schools like forest schools or something similar).

I lived quite far from school in my middle and high school days. It meant an hour long bus ride both ways (plus a 1.5 mile walk from the bus stop), and having to wake at 5AM to get ready.

The only way I had any free time was staying up late, which occurred every single school night. I got horrendous grades because focusing was impossible.

I actually blame this single circumstance for a large share of my life problems. It forced me to work my way up from a crappy community college after high school, and everyone I encountered just sort of assumed I was mediocre.

Schools in our area started at 7am for k and first grade. Some required taking a bus around 530-6. So my kids would be getting up at 4 something.

Screw that. I went to the school, picked a teacher I liked, hired her as a governess. Setup a room attached to the house as a classroom. Now school starts at 9am and it's much healthier. They sleep as much as they want, basically. (9-10 hours). Been doing it for a couple years now. Other parents have begged us to take their kids on.

Sounds like an expensive solution?

A family with two developers' incomes could easily pay the equivalent of a teacher's salary in many places. Teachers are underpaid for what we expect them to do, so it should be unsurprising that some teachers underperform -- the highly qualified who lack intense passion leave.

Tuition at some places for two kids can get near the point of hiring a teacher.

There is a focus in the article in playing outside which is good and fine.

But another important aspect missing today is age mixing. This is crucial because it is an informal mentoring process, in effect. 4 year olds learn best from being around 6 year olds who learn best from 8 year olds, etc. up the chain. There is also reflection from being a mentor to the younger ones. All of this is absent increasingly today.

It is not just lack of recess or whatever, but a lack of neighborhood, of community. The young ones learn how to share, how to regulate emotions, etc., in part by witnessing the older ones being that way.

Some schools practice the concept of "mixed age groups" where each class is composed of 3 different ages in equal proportion. For instance my 5-yo son has 3-yo's and 4-yo's in his class.

Thing is, it's a constant battle for the school with parents who always want their kids to with same-age kids or older-ones, never smaller ones. Everyone thinks their kid's development will be "held back" because of the younger children in the class. Telling them about how older kids also learn from playing or working with younger kids is a hard sell, when all parents think today is academic progress.

Unfortunately what they do not understand is that teaching someone else is one of the best learning opportunities you can get, even if you think its not. It both expands and cements your knowledge of a subject, and highlights the areas that you are unsure of.

I spent years training various technical topics, and the reason I was so fluent in them is because I was expected to be able to teach anyone around me on a dime.

the mixed-age classroom phenomenon is very common in Montessori schools. My son has gone from being the classroom baby (he started just after his third birthday, mid-year, due to the way special ed services are handled) to being the big kid (5 years old, with an extra half-year of school experience compared to others his age) who knows everything.

Montessori schools also really emphasize kids teaching each other. Since my son is kind of a math whiz [0] he gets to spend a lot of time showing other kids math concepts, while some of the more socially adept kids guide him through social situations.

There are some kids who don't do well in that environment, but it's great for a lot of young kids.

[0] he can coherently explain Graham's Number, knows pi to 206 places last I checked, and has started exploring limits

Amish teach grades 1-8 in one classroom.

I'm an American parent of mixed French-American children, and I have a very hard time believing that schools are the cause of this. American preschools are way behind French preschools in terms of academic preparation, and yet French children aren't exhibiting the same kinds of problems.

If it really is a play issue, it's more likely that American parents don't allow their children more freedom on the playground, instead helicoptering around (I'm guilty) and not allowing them to just handle things themselves.

On a vacation to France last year, my SO and remarked several times on how different the behaviours of children and adults in the playgrounds in cities and towns of France differed from their counterparts in Canada and the US.

The interaction in France reminded me much more of my parents and I than the modern parents of North America.

It's hard to put a finger on exactly what it was but there was a lot more letting the kids climb on stuff, do "dangerous" things, work out their own problems, fight their own battles and basically run around having fun.

Today's America has a stronger phobia of getting hurt.... or maybe of getting sued.

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2011/may/21/children-weak...

http://www.bustle.com/articles/41370-11-stupidly-dangerous-t... --- I remember some of these toys and they were great fun.

Wow, the only dubious of those choices would be the rocket. The rest of them are great for learning your body, and act responsible. I really blows me mind that a trampoline is seen as a dangerous thing - I'd say a pool is worse. The trampoline is a endless source of fun for children, and I've yet to even hear of someone getting anything worse than a sprained angle from one.

> anything worse than a sprained ankle

There were eleven trampoline deaths in the US between 1990 and 1995.

http://www.avon.nhs.uk/phnet/Avonsafe/Trampolines/Trampoline...

There were about 100,000 ER presentations in the US in 2007. These are all preventable accidents. And these accidents happened after considerable work had gone into making trampolines safer.

Safety nets help (many injuries happen when people fall off), but here's a passage describing another method of injury:

> 3.5 If a trampolinist lands on the mat when out of phase with the other participants, the mat may be rising to meet them and the effect is of meeting a hard surface. All the potential and kinetic energy in the system is transferred to the person, who may be unprepared. Depending on the child’s mass, the energy transfer may be equivalent to falling from 2.2m or 3.4 m equivalent to a fall from a first floor window7. This fact may provide a useful tool to communicate the effect of trampolining to parents and supervisors.

None of this means that trampolines should be banned. A manufacturing standard is probably needed for domestic equipment. And people should be encouraged to have adult spotters and safety nets.

> There were eleven trampoline deaths in the US between 1990 and 1995.

Looks like an incredibly safe activity.

How many deaths were there for people simply falling while they walk?

How much time do people spend walking versus trampolining?

What possible "manufacturing standard" could fix that method of injury you quoted?

"According to the American Association of Orthopedic Surgeons (AAOS), 246,875 medically treated trampoline injuries occur annually in the U.S."

If kids want to jump, get them a safe inflatable castle and let them jump inside. Those don't suffer from the trampoline problem you delineated, and frankly are more fun.

The real problem is finding alternatives for things like stairs and bathtubs.

I cannot take that too serious. It purposely try to paint it as a very dangerous activity. Landing out of phase is not the same as landing on a hard surface, at worst you get propelled up way higher than you're comfortable with, and it's certainly possible for 4 children to launch one of them high enough to clear the safety net.

And you know what, that is okay. Because it's one of the less dangerous things children can do that improve their physical understanding and ability. Certainly beats them trying to get on the roof of the playground.

But I agree that safety nets, or trampolines dug into the ground is a very good idea. Actually, both would be the best.

I had the same reaction as an American living in Berlin. There was a playground right next to my apartment where a whale shaped slide also had a water pump that went right into a sandbox essentially making mud. There were always kids playing and always kids making mud but never once did someone get buried in mud, mud thrown at them... it was _civilized_ play day in and day out. Just kids having fun in a way that I haven't seen with my own eyes for a while. (plural of anecdote is not data, etc etc.)

Don't fall into the stereotype trap of thinking all parents are helicopters.

My kid is 2 and we let him go down water slides and climb up those "safe", modern jungle gym thingies.

It is kind of disturbing though that I don't see kids running around exploring the woods and creeks and stuff like we did in the 70s and early 80s.

It depends on where you live. Kids near me spend all day in the woods digging holes and looking at bugs and stuff just like we used to. But we live where there are no playgrounds in very rural areas.

I'm with you. The overly structured method of childhood now is disturbing. Whereas we used to play sandlot baseball, kids are on competitive traveling teams. Where we used to 'explore' the woods and camp on our own, kids are in scouts and have structured hikes every weekend with overnight camps in cabins. etc. etc

Maybe it's just rose colored glasses, but I do genuinely believe that the unstructured play of my youth seemed a hell of a lot more fun than what my nieces and nephews are going through with schedules and practices and structure.

I've made a conscious effort to let my 18 month old do this, even if it does mean the odd grazed knee or bump on the forehead I'd rather her learn from doing and making mistakes than wrap her in cotton wool, she gets more than enough wrapping with cotton wool from my wife :)

What age are we talking about here? I think below 3 absolutely requires supervision and helicoptering. No?

It really depends on the child. If there's one thing I've learned from inheriting two toddler-aged stepchildren, it's that all kids are developmentally unique, even siblings.

Have a look at something like heuristic play.

You take a safe floor surface. Yu scatter a bunch of differnet really world objects. The aim is to have sensory stuff there so you use hair brushes, different fabrics, baskets with differnet weaves, pine cones, safe mirrors, bells, washed chip (uk crisp) packets (that crinkle and are shiny) etc etc.

You then place your crawling infant on the floor and then only monitor for safety.

So, there's some helicoptering (you want to make sure the child doesn't choke or poke their eye out) but apart from that it's not directive.

Crawling infants have a pattern of crawling where they explore their area in geadually increasing loops. They move away from the parent, explore a bit, and return, then move away and explore a bit more, then return. There's an old (1980s / 1990s) british tv show that had a timelapse of this.

Tiny kids are fascinating.

I would love to see a video of this British TV show, is it on Youtube anywhere that you know.

I'm not sure. Here are some links about it:

http://www.walltowall.co.uk/program/baby-its-you-a-babys-wor...

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Baby-Its-You-Leanne-Klein/dp/B000A7I...

It's a matter of degree. I have a two-year old, and while he's certainly not off exploring forests or anything, the majority of the time when he's at a playground these days, I'm sitting at a bench on the side watching him play. He occasionally falls, even from things that are probably "too big" for him, but most playgrounds are built in a way that serious injury is pretty rare.

There are absolutely parents that stay within a couple of feet of their 2-3 year old children. I had one comment to me a couple of weeks ago how confident with climbing, running, etc. my two year old was - it took a lot of restraint to not say "He climbs well because I let him climb."

While I agree with your general point, it's nature as well as nurture.

My first child who was (and is) a natural-born monkey whose idea of a good time at 18 months was leaping off a high platform to shimmy down a fireman's pole. Then we had our second child, who if anything had more freedom, more exposure to age-inappropriate toys/environments, and less supervision than our first (can't watch two kids as closely as one!)... and he'll fall off anything he tries to climb. And no, it's not a medical issue or anything, they're just not wired the same way.

Child development is absolutely fascinating. We had a child a week after my cousin and his wife had one. They live quite a way away from us, so we get together on long weekends and holidays in the summer, that sort of thing.

I have an academic background/career, my wife is a teacher. We live in a very rural area. They live in a very, very, urban area. He is a professional maitre d' in a fancy restaurant, and she is, as of recent, a CPA (was previously a chef of some kind).

The children in question are slightly over 2.

Their child is super confident around people. He is very outgoing, he is super friendly and doesn't hesitate to go to you to be picked up if he needs something. He is great on stairs, and is incredibly confident in his jumping off of things. He doesn't really talk. He is incredibly scared of bugs, birds, and any animal larger than a Labrador retriever.

My kid is shy around people. He will go to you, only if we say it's alright first. He sucks out loud on stairs, and jumps off of low objects. He talks in complete sentences and uses new words constantly. He loves picking up bugs and spiders, and is fascinated by all animals.

Neither one is better than the other, more advanced than the other, or really any better off in the long run, I'm convinced. They're just different. You can definitely tell what their parents do for entertainment. My cousin and his wife spend their time in the city, with people, doing things that require movement around the city. My wife and I spend our time either messing around in the woods, or sitting on the back porch listening to NPR or talking with friends. In rural areas, story telling is key to entertainment, so that's what we do.

And the imprint these two different lives are having on children who are relatively similar in genetics, socioeconomic status and amount of care in the home is simply fascinating.

Supervision, yes, but preventing them from pushing their boundaries, no.

I see 2 year old kids who can climb and navigate almost any playground, because their parents let them try, and let them fall, when reasonable. I have seen 5 years old who cannot do the same because the parents never let them take risks.

It is OK for kids to fall and get hurt sometimes. One of the harder parts of being a parent is letting that happen, and making judgments between when it is safe to let them fail vs. when it would truly injure them.

It could just be a matter of overdiagnosis of problems from medical professionals in a for-profit healthcare system.

Could it be the French approach to baby storage? One thing that strikes me as a parent living in France is seeing all these three and four year old kids strapped in to push chairs at all times with dummies in their mouths.

Our kids will be running around feral, trashing the place and getting disapproving looks from the other parents, who seem to be spending the whole of their effort suppressing their kids natural desire to play.

Granted, they're well behaved by the time they get to school. But thus far we haven't been inspired to emulate that treatment.

As much as the rise in "sensory issues" may be real, it could also be occupational therapists trying to generate more business for themselves.

It's happened in South Africa's[1] for-profit private healthcare sector, where wealthy areas with high concentrations of occupational therapists just happen to have enormous rates of diagnosed sensory issues in normal children, to the extent that medical schemes (insurers) have had to ration these treatments (with the tacit approval of parents, who know it's often a scam, but are forced by schools to undertake OT treatments).

Especially as formerly good South African schools have been forced to cut back, and the overall quality of education has deteriorated, OTs have become the "real" teachers in affluent areas, teaching handwriting and other motor skills, often to every child in some schools. And, anecdotally, bright young women who want to work with children aspire to become OTs, rather than teachers nowadays, exacerbating the problem.

Wikipedia has the citations on this issue. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupational_therapy#Children_...

If I was an parent of a young child in the U.S., my spidey sense would be very tingley when I read articles like this.

[1] yes South Africa is a third-world country, but there are aspects that are very "First World"

I just wanted to say good on you for bringing this up from another perspective. I would've never thought about this.

My opinion on this whole ordeal: ask the kids. I wonder what a video montage of an interview of every single kid would do to the viewing population. Get a few to cry and I can imagine people getting all riled up...

Pediatric Occupational Therapists are basically "professionally trained parents", people who spent a few years studying child develpoment. You can quibble with the price and the necessity, and in some regions the practitioners might not be qualified, but in general an hour or whatever per week with an Occupational Therapist is going to yield insights into a child's development, and training for parents to be better in their roles.

Modern developed countries have a "no child left behind" attitude. 30 years ago, a kid who couldn't keep up and fit in would be left to waste away in the corner (if they were nonviolent) or pent up in an asylum environment (if they acted out)

I don't have a problem with occupational therapists. Indeed, I went for occupational therapy myself, in the 1980's when it was far less common. I had genuine problems that needed addressing (when I was 5 I couldn't do buttons or zips and I couldn't use my hands to save myself when I fell down). This was about 30 years ago, and I was helped, and definitely not left to waste away in a corner.

South African occupational therapists are certainly skilled and qualified by world standards.

The problem arises when "no child left behind" becomes "every child has a problem", especially when there is a clear financial motive for overdiagnosis.

And, in my opinion, the idea that parents need "training to be better in their roles" from "professionally trained parents" is another step towards breeding neuroticism in parents.

Articles like this are not too credible which tries to generalize personal anecdot and a comment from a friend. Where is the research and citations? I'm also not sure what is the take away here. Don't send kids to preschools? If that's the case then there is a fair amount of research that kids who attend full time preschool have much better chance of academic success and they are better at social skills[1]. Montessori crowd is even proud to put kids to school as early as 18 months, 3-6 hours a day and 5 days a week. Is Montessori method considered play based or more academic focused?

[1] http://www.seattle.gov/council/issues/PreschoolforAll/docs/A...

A tangentially related story: Seattle's public school teachers are threatening to strike. One of their demands (in addition to pay and such) is that children get at least 30 minutes of recess per day for elementary school students.

And it looks like they're getting the recess, but we'll see about the rest.

What a world where teachers have to not just demand something so basic but have to threaten to strike over it.

I wouldn't quite call it "basic". Just look at all the confusing/opposing anecdotes being exposed in the article and the comment section here.

If anything, without more evidence, we might as well chalk-up the pre-school teachers' threats to strike as being self-motivated. I.e. Preschoolers getting more sleep = being calmer = 30mins break for teachers + easier time after nap time.

Still, a 30 minute break isn't something they should have to strike for.

just 30 minutes? That's insane.

I assume that's recess, in addition to lunch.

So? Lunch is waiting in line and sitting at a table -- often sitting quietly, in schools where the adults are strict. Recess is physical activity.

Really? I didn't go to school in the US. Do they really spend the whole lunch hour sitting around?

We went outside, ate our sandwiches or bought lunch from the canteen, and then played for the rest of the hour.

The whole "school lunch" thing in the US I find bizarre.

Hour? We got 30 minutes. Technically 25 minutes with a 5 minutes passing period (to get to back to class). Even with the school taking staggered lunches that still meant 1000 kids on lunch. It could easily take 20 minutes to go t through the cafeteria line.

Though that was highschool. I can't remember middle/elementary well enough, though even then I really don't think it was an hour.

What is the opposition arguing for instead? No recess at all? For elementary school students? Ridiculous.

I have grade school kids and the testing regime is brutal and the educational system produces about twice as many teachers as the economy needs so a teacher who's kids don't improve enough on multiple choice tests will have their career destroyed, which means a financial death penalty because the student loans can't be discharged, which means the destruction of their lives and families lives. So its kind high stakes for the teachers.

I got an interesting perspective from a young teacher a few years back, I'm not sure to what extent this is backed by research and science, but she did quote various studies. Interesting in any case, even as a hypothesis.

Anyway… she thought kids were grossly over-schooled at younger ages. Here argument was basically:

(1) Kids are hitting diminishing returns on formal schooling at 2-3 hours per day. Their attention can't stretch much farther and their progress is ultimately determined by biological limits. A 4th grade reading/math level is determined more by average cognitive ability at that age than by the hours of classroom time they have put in.

(2) The second point was a more intuitive one: classroom sizes, particularly in linear subjects (mostly ready, writing, math in primary school) are way to big to be effective.

Putting these two together, she wanted 2-3 hours of school with smaller classes. IE, a teacher teaches 2-3 classes per day with 1/3 the students. She thought it would be more effective and leave more time for play and other things.

Fleshing it out in my head, I think it would be something like 4 * 30 minute classes with short breaks between classes, which makes intuitive sense if you've interacted with kids 6-11.

The elephant in that room is child care. We live in a monetary world. Education and child are services that cost money. Taking child care away has immediate opportunity costs. But, for people that can afford to lose 5 hours a day of child care, it would be interesting to experiment with this sort of thing for 6-9 year olds.

There are costs to achieving 2 hours of learning in 6 hours too. Boredom, frustration, less time for play or sport or whatnot.

Reading this made me sad, but for a different reason than I'd anticipated when I first started reading. The trigger for me was the realization that our children are not having the conversations that they ought to be having.

Talking with/to children is important for their mental development, or so I have been told. I am no expert on this matter, but this is what I have come to understand. It's rooted on the understanding that social expertise is developed by means of continual practice; if kids do not play/socialize/work together at a young age, they risk not sufficiently developing this skill as they grow.

If we are seeing anti-social behavior from children these days it would seem that trends in contemporary society have caused a decline in the opportunities kids have for conversing with others. The lacking development of our auditory sensory skills means a lacking development in the other sensory categories - speaking and hearing are the categories we master first as humans.

I don't believe the cause of this is limited to the apparent advances in the stupidity of early childhood educators, as it is likely that the on-demand exposure to engaging media content at younger ages and other related trends are also to blame. After all, if a kid is staring at a screen, they are not developing their social functions, either.

In general, I believe this damage can be sourced back to the general trends of the modern household, which has both parents working full-time just to get by economically. The humans with which the child is most willing to converse are not available and instead the child is left in a scenario that more resembles Lord of the Flies.

This is all why I, personally, do not plan to bring children into this world until I can afford the time to raise them with the love and attention they deserve. So that the availability of finances has no bearing on their future. I owe any being I bring into this earth at least that courtesy.

What if we raised our children as a society instead of turning it into an adversarial sector of the economy that is dictated by the interests of politicians, military leaders, factory owners, and every other adult who sees power to be apprehended and utilized when they see a child?

I share your compassion for your children, for all children really.

> What if we raised our children as a society

This presumes that we could come to any sort of group consensus "as a society" on how to raise our children.

Well, quite a few European countries have taken the approach of building an environment that somewhat devalues personal gain (through higher taxes) but drastically reduces fiscal insecurity (through free education, healthcare, extended parental leave etc.) in order to make it relatively easy to raise a family.

Their birth rates are generally lower than US birth rates.

According to this[1], that seems to be true for Germany, but the other rich European countries (western and northern) are pretty close to the USA.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_birth_rat...

Thanks for looking it up!

There need to be no one true consensus. I lecture children being violent towards others, or destroying things, or running in next to the swimming pool. Other people have a different limit. The point is that children learn that there is a world outside their home with a different ruleset.

Most of the time the parent are embarrassed they didn't react first, but only rarely do they throw a hissy fit.

America at least already attempts, futilely, to our detriment I believe, to do so with its incredibly bureaucratic and hierarchical institutions. You either surrender your child to the maw of the state or you're rich enough to buy your own resources for your child though mental wellness of kids at such high powered schools tend to be bad too; I don't think the rich can buy their way to better schooling either. All of this is a 'consensus' of some sort.

The consensus I would like to see is one of decentralization and autonomy: Autonomy for children, autonomy for teachers, autonomy for communities to take care of their children as they see fit, where their consensus is reached by their own methods; let us imagine a truly democratic means of human organization.

Under our current systems, children are seen as barely anything more than property of parents who must obey the regulations of a government that sees children as manpower and the grist to feed the economy. At best a child can belong to a family with wealth to manage, where they can be elevated to the status of capital investment.

Am I being too cynical? I am clearly ignoring all the wonderful things we think about children. But that's the point. The all-suffocating grip of our economics and our politics squeezes the humanity and color out of every body.

>>This is all why I, personally, do not plan to bring children into this world until I can afford the time to raise them with the love and attention they deserve. So that the availability of finances has no bearing on their future. I owe any being I bring into this earth at least that courtesy.

Just be careful you don't end up like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hL1-340ODCM

As someone with 2 kids, while there are definitely clear "Wrong Times" there is no time that completely feels like "The Right Time", there's always a "More savings", "Just one more promotion", "That one vacation I didn't take", etc.

I second this, there's no right time and having children will be a pretty big shock to the system no matter how much you prepare yourself mentally or financially. I must say though if you could take day care out of the equation. Kids really don't cost that much in themselves unless you want to have the newest fanciest everything and designer clothes ha. If you want children don't put it off for the perfect time, there won't be one

I've always found a strange dichotomy in this. On the one hand, we're supposed be these extremely socially-driven creatures.

Yet on the other hand, it seems like we very easily gravitate towards isolation. The gravitation towards on-demand media and 'looking at the screen' has to be appealing, more appealing en-masse than socializing, otherwise why would we collectively gravitate towards it as a large group?

I think what I'm saying is that I think people gravitating towards TV and solitary activities is the symptom, not the cause. The real question is - what's making people more anxious about being social? Is this really a rise in social anxiety, causing a rise in people being isolated?

watching TV, and playing video games, does feel social!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernormal_stimulus

I hope this article is remembered when the next, "I taught my 5-year-old to code" blog post comes around.

Probably the key is to provide rich enough environment and be very careful with repetitive scheduled activities... Teaching a five-year-old to code is probably Ok, as long as it is a very small part of life of that 5-year-old...

There are too many people who think it would be catastrophic if children had any autonomy. It seems like even the most easy-going person can turn into a despot when it comes to a child. I wish we would treat children with more respect.

On the other hand, maybe most adults simply reflect onto children the strictly regimented structure of modern adult life. Better start young, yes? So they don't know any other way of being a human. It seems, though, no matter how early you start, a child simply knows when she is being a human being in the wrong way.

Kids needs to play, trying to treat a 5 year old as an academic is nuts. Imagination and creativity don't come from studying, they come from playing. Thankfully when I was growing up recess was still important even into middle school.

For that matter I think adults need recess too!

My son is only 2, but we decided to get him into "school" last winter.

When my wife was interviewing these places, the choice was between "learning" environments and "social" environments.

We chose the social environment. There's plenty of time for him to learn numbers, letters (he's only 2), but it's more important now for him to to learn to take turns, run around with other kids, bang on the drums and sing when the weekly musician comes in, etc...

2 seems way, way too young for any sort of school environment.

2 goes almost all the way to 3. There's a big difference between 2 and 3-epsilon.

Depends on what you mean by "school" (NB the quotes in the parent comment). There is a huge variance in options for working parents of a 2-3 year old. From cramped cinder block day care -- aka The Cacophonous Petri Dish; to private nanny; to "forest schools" where kids spend as much time as possible outside digging in the dirt, climbing tree stumps, and learning how to devise and engage in large projects together (yes, a group of 2.5 year olds is capable of this).

I don't think the parent comment was talking about toddler MIT.

Do you have experience with any particular 'forest schools'?

I do. The one I'm familiar with has large garden areas, trees for climbing/wandering around, uncultivated wilderness areas, etc. It's not a vast tract of land, but enough that it seems huge to a small person. Indoor time focuses on exploration of provocations set up by teachers, telling stories, singing, role-playing, etc.

This is interesting. What is it called?

We have a full-time nanny, so this isn't really day-care for us. This is specifically for his socialization and "getting out of the house"

You misunderstood "school". It was 2 days a week from 9 to 1:30 in the afternoon.

Now it's 3 days a week from 9 to 1:30.

Kids can go into school at age 2? I thought Kindergarten started at age 4-5

Here in Singapore they can participate in a playgroup starting 18 months, the weird thing is most of the time it's in a classroom type of environment.

Our daycare has a bunch of "school-esque" stuff. It's almost 100% learning through play, but the kids do have development plans, areas that they focus on learning, etc. "School" is a broad term, and while sitting at a desk is 100% unrealistic for a 2 year old, opportunities for educational play definitely exist.

Curious too on how this may relate to allergies.

Indoor activities have become so much more engrossing over the last 10-15 years. All that time spent inside in front of a TV/computer/tablet screen isn't as valuable to a developing immune system as the occasional eating of dirt or mosquito bite.

Not only allergies but I also wonder about air quality in general.

I think it does. People raised on farms have less allergies than the rest of the general population [citation needed but I'm lazy]

Kids need to play outside, in the dirt, interact with live animals and other kids and be exposed to a lot of different food when they're young and later on in life as well.

There's many studies that support that hypothesis though it tends to be in the 0-5 age range.

My wife teaches children in the age of 4-6 at an expensive, well-known, and high-achieving school, following a British curriculum but not in the UK.

The whole damn syllabus is play-focussed. Teachers aren't allowed to plan lessons more than a day or two in advance as they're required to follow the children's interests. Play activities are set up to help the children develop certain skills, and their development in those is monitored, but again, it's _all_ play.

This was a difficult adjustment for her coming from a deprived inner-city school in the UK, but she's now on top of it, and the whole child-led development thing appears to be pretty well established in academic circles.

Perhaps sitting still in general is not good, especially not for children.

My son will go to school next year and I almost feel a physical pain myself when imagine him having to sit still for hours on end. I think I suffered because of that a lot in school, too.

I also credit not having too many back issues (fingers crossed) to sitting sloppily in my chair most of the time, rather than in an upright (90°) position. Tilting backwards with the chair might be more relaxing for the spine.

I don't have a good solution, though. Perhaps it helps to design the classroom differently, let kids walk to learn stations and communicate with other kids and so on.

When I click the link it takes me to the page with the article, but then before I can scroll down, one of those god-forsaken "enter your email address to get updates!" popup came up which I couldn't close. Usually pressing 'esc' or clicking the 'x' takes those stupid things away, but this one wouldn't let me read on unless I give them my email. Thankfully readability to the rescue!

mirror: https://www.readability.com/articles/zmba4zju

All that time and effort wasted and even doing harm. Extracting defeat from the jaws of victory.

Pre-school "academic" what? I can't think of anything very significant and non-trivial in academics before, say, the ninth grade. Academics can start to get severe for some majors by, say, the junior year of college, e.g., a physics major may want to know differential geometry and exterior algebra. The real challenge in academics is research, if want to take such a career direction.

Learn "the days of the week"? Can't remember when I didn't know those. Maybe Mom or Dad went over them say, several times over a period of two weeks.

The alphabet? There is a little song for that. Reading? Somehow by the second grade or so, I basically knew how to read. Arithmetic? Learn to add and subtract single digit numbers and memorize the multiplication table, and then apply those to the rest of arithmetic.

I have a friend who went to a terrible school, and somewhere in the early grades got sick and was at home for some days. There his mother was shocked to discover that he couldn't read. So, in two weeks, she taught him. He was PBK at Suny and got his Ph.D. in mathematics at Courant.

Here's one: Since we are awash in computers, early on teach touch typing -- that is, let the kids learn where the a-z keys are.

K-12? Let be mostly play.

I remember looking round a local pre-school and being horrified that they had the kids all sat down quietly on the carpet while the 'teacher' stood up front holding up flash cards with shapes on them reading out the names.

the special snowflake parent wanted her special snowflake child to be a little genius and forgot that all animals need physical activity

might as well run straight into the ocean

it's all these fucking meds American pharmaceuticals love shoving down their own kids throats.

How come that kid doesn't have any shoes on?

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