Girls Just Wanna Have Fun (And So Do Boys)

Shopping for toys for our daughter is a bit of a Pepto Bismol pink nightmare. The packaging is pink. There are Disney princesses all over the place. All the housekeeping-themed toys are in attractive pink packaging. The last time I was at Toys R Us, I decided I had had it when I came across a girly pink maid's cart such as used by hotel housekeeping staff, only this one was plastered with Disney princesses. (I guess it was a "before" shot of Cinderella.) What is going on here?

Yes, boys and girls play differently. That much is obvious. In the 18-month to 3 years Sunday School class I taught yesterday, the girls used the blocks to build stables for the My Little Ponies while the boys made the blocks into guns. As expected, right? Except when the girls saw how much fun the boys were having, they built their own arsenals as well and joined in the fight.

I really liked what Professor Trawick-Smith said in the article "What the Research Says: Impact of Specific Toys on Play." He states, "We have found some surprising gender differences in our study. Many of the toys nominated by parents and teachers were used most often and in the most complex ways by boys. This included items that seemed gender-neutral from an adult perspective. What set the highest-scoring toys apart was that they prompted problem solving, social interaction, and creative expression in both boys and girls. Interestingly, toys that have traditionally been viewed as male oriented—construction toys and toy vehicles, for example—elicited the highest quality play among girls. So, try to set aside previous conceptions about what inspires male and female play and objectively observe toy effects to be sure boys and girls equally benefit from play materials."

So yes, there are differences, but there's also a need to let boys play with "girl" toys and girls play with "boy" toys. They might get different things out of them, but they all are benefitted by playing.

Play ON: The Dilemma of Self-Directed Play in a Single Child Household

I really enjoyed the readings and videos about the importance of play and good toys. It being the holidays, my husband and I have been wrestling back and forth about what to get our two year-old daughter. We have never been fans of electronic toys and so her toy cupboard is filled with blocks and babies and animal figurines. The debate has been whether to get her a train set or a toy kitchen. The goal is to come up with a toy that will engage her and allow her to play on her own for a while. Being an only child of parents who are both students, she doesn't usually have other people to play with and she's not good at playing on her own. The only time she does is at the Children's Museum where she can play next to, but not necessarily with, other children. An indefatigable extrovert, I think my daughter just doesn't like to be alone.

As much as I hate doing it, we have turned to media to keep her occupied while her daddy and I work on homework. (We are both studying child development right now and the horrible irony of this decision is not lost on us.) So my question is, how do you encourage a child to play on their own? I want to let her be self-directed and self-selecting in her play, but it doesn't work. Obviously, it's partly an issue of temperament, but might it also be the quality or location of toys? We keep our toys in a large bucket that she has a hard time getting in and out of. Perhaps if we followed the suggestions in "How to Raise a Low Media Child" and put the toys on shelves or in small baskets, the results would be better. There was definitely a lot to think about in the resources for me personally. As a professional, the organization and placement of toys is still probably something worth thinking about.

Learning Differences and Backlash

I really enjoyed the website Understood.org. One of the things that children's librarians will encounter are kids with differences. One in four children born in the US is at risk for developmental delay (speech pathology issues, Autism Spectrum Disorder, dyslexia, etc.). Early detection and diagnosis, while more frequent than it was, is still the exception rather than the rule. For that reason, we need to be careful with how we interact and what we say to parents of children who are, to borrow a term from my old teaching buddy, "strange rangers." 

It's particularly important to never attempt to label or diagnose a child. Even if the kid is so hyperactive he appears to be vibrating, do not ask the parent if he is ADHD. While it might be true, there is a stigma attached to kids who are seen as different. Sometimes, that stigma comes from the parents themselves, who see some kind of diagnosis as a sign that their child is somehow "broken." This leads to a lot of anger and denial aimed straight back at you, particularly if you are not the first person to mention it.

If there is clearly something different about a child and it affects the needs of the child as far as interaction and environment, the best thing you can possibly say to a parent is the open-ended, non-judgmental question, "What can you tell me about Johnny?" Parents aren't dumb. Most know their kid is different. Rather than engendering the wrath of the Apache Attack Helicopter Parent, Mom or Dad will usually smile knowingly and tell you everything you need to know about how to help the child without being on the defensive.

Burden of Responsibility

My background is in education. I spent six years as a classroom educator of both regular and special ed students. By law, I was required to provide appropriate curriculum and accommodations for all my students, regardless of what their learning difference was. Because of this, when people talk about providing library programming for people with special needs or language differences, my response is always, "Well, why wouldn't we? Aren't we supposed to?"

This brings up an interesting question: what is the library's burden of responsibility in terms of serving the needs of minority populations in their community? By minority populations, I am not limiting the conversation to mere race or ethnicity. My question includes the visually impaired, deaf and hard of hearing, or (and this is a big one in public libraries) the mentally ill. Ethically and morally speaking, I doubt many disagree that we have an obligation to serve these patrons to the best our ability. After all, we all espouse the maxim "Every reader his book." But legally speaking, how far do we need to go? Obviously, libraries have to comply with ADA legislation, but are we required to shelve braille books and closed-caption versions of DVDs? What about materials in other languages?

My group mates and I are tackling this issue in our presentation and we all wonder if it would be possible to do some sort of class about interacting with diversity as part of the SLIS curriculum. One of our group members recently finished her portfolio and expressed concern that she had such a hard time meeting the indicator about diversity. Just a thought to pass on to the power that be.

Dialogic Reading - A Practice Session

I have recently been assigned the task of watching the toddler class at my church. Twelve kids from 18 months to almost four are in my charge for two hours every Sunday - eating snacks, playing with toys, singing songs, hearing a lesson, and occasionally trying to kill each other. Most people run from the job like a wildebeest running from a cheetah. I, on the other hand, was excited to do it because it gave me a chance to test out some of the skills I'm learning from this class. Also, it would be a good thing to put on my resume when applying for jobs as a children's librarian.

This last week, I thought I'd try something different and do some dialogic reading with my charges. I thought carefully about my choice of book and settled on Llama Llama Time to Share by Anna Dewdney. The rhyme was bouncy, the illustrations engaging, and the topic completely relevant to a group of kids who got into routine biting matches over the tea set. That's where my planning stopped. I hadn't thought about where I'd sit, so when I sat on the floor, there was a violent scrum in front of me, each of the kids elbowing the others to be able to see. My daughter, a member of class, was not helpful because she naturally assumed that if I was seated on the floor with a book in my hands, her rightful place was on my lap. Other than seating issues, I was unused to trying to read a book while holding it up for a group. I kept tilting it at an angle, obscuring the kids' view in order for me to see the text.

Still, we muddled through. I was impressed with how engaged and focused the kids were. I couldn't get them to sit still long enough to eat, but they were riveted to the book. They were able to answer Wh- prompts and Distancing prompts. I took it a step further and asked them to predict what would happen to the toy Llama Llama and Nelly Gnu were fighting over and all the kids had good suggestions.

A week later, the kids still remembered the story and I was able to use it as a reminder of the importance of sharing. However, I didn't bring a book the next week and nearly had a riot on my hands. Dialogic reading, although it requires some practice in advance, really engages kids without being too didactic. I really enjoyed it.

Life Without Brazelton - A Trip to the Pediatrician

As part of the research paper we did for class, I learned about the Brazelton method. One of the main beliefs that Brazelton has is that parents are the experts when it comes to their children. Professionals who work with parents and children should never dismiss that knowledge. A few weeks ago, my husband took our daughter to the pediatrician. She's prone to croup and had spent the night before wheezing, so we wanted to make sure it didn't get worse. Working at our pediatrician's office was a medical student from a local university. He was doing his pediatrics rotation and did the preliminary exam before our normal doctor came in.

"What makes you think she has croup?" the student asked, his tone derisive. My husband explained the symptoms again and my daughter's history, but he immediately shut down to any efforts the student made to help our daughter. Later, my husband told me that he felt like the student thought he was stupid and didn't know what he was talking about. Even though the student might have been right, his manner made it impossible for my husband to listen.

Dealing with parents is tricky. It doesn't matter how much expertise we have if we don't treat parents with respect and honor them for what they know. And they know a lot. Most are willing to share if we give them a chance.

Digital Media as a Means for Enhancing Relationships

Cen Campbell's presentation about young children and the use of technology sparked a thought for me. She mentioned the importance of technology fostering and enhancing relationships between the child and the caregiver. It reminded me of my own daughter.

The first time my daughter met her grandparents was on a computer screen. At the time, I hadn't read the American Pediatric Association's edict forbidding screen time for children under two. All I knew was that I was 8 time zones away from my parents and I wanted them to be able to see their first grandchild. Since then, technology has been an integral part of my daughter's relationship with her grandparents. Her favorite activity to do with her grandpa is to sit on his lap and scroll through family pictures and videos on his phone. Now she knows about her cousins who all live out of state, as well as relatives that have passed away. Technology has really helped my daughter bond, not only with her grandpa, but with her extended family as well.

I can see how this sort of thing can be used on a family level, but I'm still trying to puzzle out what it would look like in a library setting. Some apps, like a finger paint program that was recommended by a contributor to the little e-lit discussion group, could be used in a story time to practice drawing letter shapes with the help of a parent. However, when I tried it out with my own kid, she was not interested. Like books, not every app is going to work with every kid, but there will be some that are better than others. I've really come to appreciate the little e-lit forum for their input and suggestions on that front.

A Few Thoughts on Diversity

Reading the ALSC White Paper set me thinking about some of the things I've been trying to do in the library I work at. As previously mentioned, my daughter is mixed ethnicity. I am Caucasian and my husband is Hispanic. In every library I have worked in, I have fought with the children's librarians to try and make programming and collections more equitable for those who speak Spanish in our community.

In the library district I work in, it is common practice to have a separate Spanish or World Language collection. These include books for all age ranges, fiction and nonfiction. Often, the collection is hidden away somewhere out of sight and the Spanish children's books are never placed near the English ones. In the library I worked in previously, I finally convinced the staff to move the Spanish children's books into the regular children's section, but it took almost a year. I also managed to successfully lobby for multilingual story times since that particular branch has some Spanish-speaking staff. I'm happy to say that their first bilingual story time is next week. My daughter and my husband will be attending.

At my current library, things are much less forward thinking. Although the children's section has a lot of extra space, the librarian in charge of the World Language section doesn't see the need to change anything. She's even opposed to the idea of adding adequate signage properly identifying the section. I've tried to explain how marginalized it makes my husband feel when he tries to get a book for our daughter and has to go to a poorly-organized, ill-maintained shelf buried behind the reference section. She doesn't get it, and the library manager doesn't seem to care either.

When it comes to the general children's collection, I find that most of the books featuring Hispanic characters are about peasants living in little pueblos and making tortillas. It angers me that my daughter can't see herself in what she reads. The only children's book I've seen that accurately depicts the Hispanic American experience for children is Niño Wrestles the World by Yuyi Morales. Our library recently hired a new book selector, who happens to be a person of color. I'm hoping her perspective helps broaden the collection a little bit.

A Few Thoughts on Outreach

I live in a really small town without a lot of formal community groups. What we do have, though, is a LOT of churches. Reading the article about advocacy and outreach this week, I realized that a great place to advertise programming in our community is at our local churches. The people who attend them tend to be very family-focused and have small children, so it would be a good place to do it. The problem is getting access. I doubt that our children's librarian would be willing to take a Sunday and do a brief tour of churches, but I suppose it's worth asking him about. Maybe it would be enough to just make up fliers for church bulletin boards and mail them to the pastors of each church. It's a thought.

What I'd Tell My Mommy Friends

Since I started this class, I've been wanting to write a post on Facebook or something that announces to all my mommy friends the highlights and importance of the things I've been learning. Considering I'm supposed to essentially do that here on the blog, I figured this is as good a place as any to write a rough draft of my magnum literacy opus.

If you want to have a smart, book-loving, academically successful kid...

...talk to him. Scads of research shows the number one thing you can do to build your kid's vocabulary, word skills, and future academic success is to talk to him. Talk to him when he's two days old and you wonder if there's anything to him besides saliva, a voice box, and a fully functional rectum. Talk to him when he's a toddler and you can't get him to hold still for two seconds together. Talk to him on the potty, at the park, in the car, and in the bathtub. Talk to him in the grocery store while you're buying food. Talk to him while you're doing dishes and scrubbing toilets. Talk to him wherever, whenever.

Talk to him about the weather, about the hazards of washing the coloreds and the whites together, about the gross national product of Djibouti, about how much you love the Denver Broncos, about where the geese go when it gets cold. It doesn't matter what you talk about, so long as you do the talking. Books on tape, overheard conversations, and, Lord forbid, Baby Einstein DVDs just don't have the same effect. He needs to hear you, to see your face, to watch your mouth move, and to observe what you look at. He needs to learn about the give and take of normal conversations, ones in which he can babble and you respond to him. It cannot be overstated. TALK TO YOUR CHILD.

...read to her. Books use vocabulary that you might not think of in normal conversations. Besides, it introduces children to the idea that sounds correlate with words on a page and letters in an alphabet. Show how text moves from left to right and top to bottom by following along with your finger as you read. Ask questions about the pictures, about the story, about the individual letters in the words. Ask her to make predictions and summarize when the book is finished. Help her get excited about books. Read them over and over until the book falls apart and you truly believe that if you have to say "I will not eat them, Sam-I-Am" one more time you might just upchuck green eggs and ham all over the floor. Do it because that's how she learns. Do it because one day, she'll be reciting the book along with you and suddenly understand that the words on the page and the words she's saying mean the same thing. And then she'll be reading.

...sing to him. It doesn't matter if you sound like Miley Cyrus without AutoTune. The point is not to show off your vocal stylings. Singing slows down language so that your kid can hear the individual sounds in the words, which heightens phonemic awareness. It works best if you sing songs meant for kids. Even if they're kind of stupid and pointless, most have language patterns that emphasize simple rhymes, something that will help your kid read later. Hand motions are good, too, because they foster gross motor control and help your little one remember the words. Clap the rhythms of songs and individual words to help your kid hear the differences in syllables, another pre-reading skill. If you're dead set against singing, do the same things with nursery rhymes.

...let her draw. Few things strike terror into the hearts of parents like the sight of a toddler with an uncapped marker, but it's the best way to help her learn to write. Have her sign her name on her drawings to help her understand that writing has meaning. Let her "help" you write the shopping list or a to-do note to yourself. Authentic writing tasks make writing real and make her feel important.

...let him play. Dramatic, "let's pretend" kind of play helps him to tell his own stories, something that increases linguistic skills, reading comprehension, and social skills. So when he tells you that you're a shoe monster and he's the Jello Knight of Destiny, roll with it.

...listen to her. Even if her words are more like spit bubbles and screams, ask her what she's done today. Work with her to retell the major event of her day as she saw it. Use her own words to reply back and lengthen her response. When she says, "baby cry," say, "Yeah, we heard that baby crying in the store today, didn't we? The mommy was holding him." It models correct grammar and vocabulary while making her feel like you listen, which you should do anyway.

...get him a library card. Go to story time. Check out new kids' books so you can give Green Eggs and Ham a rest for a while. Talk to the children's librarian for suggestions on books and programs. Introduce him to the wild world of books, including nonfiction.

So that's it - 800 pages of early literacy research condensed for your reading pleasure.

You're welcome.

What's the deal with being poor?

A lot of the research cited in class refers to the detrimental effects of low socioeconomic status on children's literacy rates. It's almost as if poverty is a plague that, once caught, spreads to the whole family. What I'd like to know if what, precisely, is it about being poor that is so harmful? Is it the long  and inconvenient work hours kept by those with low-paying jobs? Is it the lack of household stability caused by such work schedules? Is it the raised parental stress level that accompanies the uncertainty about one's financial future? Is it simply a lack of education?

Despite public perceptions to the contrary, poverty effects a wide variety of people, particularly in the wake of the economic downturn. No longer does the word "poor" apply to just the uneducated. As college debt because the unifying problem of the rising generation, "poor" may soon be an applicable term for families with highly educated parents. If that's true, what does that affect what we know about childhood literacy? Will the exact nature of poverty finally be revealed, or will the change of demographics simply yield a new set of problems?

Dr. Ripley's Believe It or Not

Despite the fact that Dr. Ripley's Youtube video felt like an infomercial, the man had one point that stuck with me long after the cheesy testimonials faded from the screen. Like so many others, Dr. Ripley discussed how some children grew up without adequate talk from the adults in their lives, which leaves those children with a huge vocabulary gap by the time they reach school age. Also like others, he mentioned that the kind of talk children receive in what he termed "taciturn" families tends to be more imperative form - come here, stop that, put that down, get off the furniture, etc.

What set Dr. Ripley apart, however, was the extension he makes with these findings not just to literacy development, but the emotional development of a child raised in such circumstances. What talk that child receives in almost always corrective or punitive. It's easy to see how this would be damaging to that child's sense of self-worth and self-efficacy. I'm sure in many cases it would lead to a sense of inadequacy. Coupled with already being behind linguistically, many of these kids would not have the emotional wherewithal to bounce back and thrive in the face of such looming obstacles. It makes me wonder if there's any correlation between lack of sufficient talk in formative years and instances of learned helplessness in individuals.

The Question Everyone Asks

Raising a bilingual toddler is an interesting experiment linguistically. It's unendingly fascinating to see which words will come out in which language and then try to back track and find out why. One of my daughter's first Spanish words was "agua" or water. A year later, when we go out to restaurants and the waitress asks us what we want to drink, my exuberant child still places her order in Spanish, even though she knows and can say its English equivalent. Invariably, someone will ask if she speaks both English and Spanish and which one she uses most often. Kids, in particular, are fond of this question. I always tell them that my daughter uses whichever word she finds the easiest to say. Agua requires fewer labial gymnastics than water. The same is true of caca. Puppy, on the other hand, is easier than perrito with its rolling r's.

This tendency to go for the easier word matches the findings in Berk's Chapter 9 and is consistent with her continuing muscle control and memory. Recently, however, my daughter has switched to using languages based on context. Around her dad, she speaks as much Spanish as she is able. Around me and her English-only grandparents, English is the language of choice. When it's just me, my husband, and our daughter, her language choice depends on which parent she most associates the concept with. For example, going to the park is something she does with her dad, so it's always "parque." Similarly, she accompanies me on my daily jog, so "run" is always in English, even though a lot her verbs are in Spanish rather than English because they're grammatically more important in that language than they are in English.

When my husband and I first made the decision to raise our daughter bilingually, we worried that it would delay her language development. People were always telling us horror stories about how they tried to teach their kids two languages as infants and then the children didn't speak until they were four. Beck points out that there are many factors at play which dictate when a child begins to speak, one of which is personality. Considering my little girl's rather gregarious nature, it's no surprise that she spoke early and often, no matter what language her discourse was in.

What It Looks Like in Our Library

Reading the article about Colorado Public Libraries' Programs and Practices made me think a lot about what we offer at the library I currently work at. So far, we do one story time a week and are adding a story time for babies at the end of this month.  Our library is part of a larger library district, which offers an "ages and stages" training about child development and literacy. They also provide a form for planning the story times which includes a space for rationales about why certain stories or songs were chosen based on early literacy skills. However, to my knowledge, no formal early literacy curriculum has been adopted and the outreach and training we provide parents depends a lot on the training and initiative of the individual doing story time.

Reading the things that Colorado has done to promote early childhood literacy really fires me up about doing something similar in our area. Heaven knows that the parents and schools in our area need the help. However, the biggest problem we face is the lack of manpower and training. The person in charge of children's programming at our library has very little background in the subject, though he has been to the trainings provided by the district. Furthermore, the library is woefully understaffed, forcing our reference and programming people to spend most of their time helping out the circulation people. Even suggesting such an idea right now is enough to make my coworkers want to set me on fire.

Unlike my coworker, I have an extensive background in literacy instruction. I was an English teacher for six years and did graduate coursework for a Reading Endorsement, which focused on literacy development and intervention. As for language development, my best friend in college was a linguistics major who would frequently regale me with newfound facts about Chomsky's LAD and the importance of Broca's area. I went on to study the topic further on my own when my husband and I decided to raise our daughter bilingual. I wanted to know how our decision would affect her development, so read all the research I could get my hands on.

Early literacy and language development is a subject I'm passionate about, so it galls me that I can't do anything yet with my ever expanding knowledge. However, there was one suggestion in the article that I think I can talk my coworker into: putting up monthly displays about each of the pre reading skills such as phonemic awareness and print awareness. I previously volunteered to help my coworker put up some displays in the children's area. Perhaps this will be a case of killing two birds with one stone. Granted, it's not enough, but it's a start.

Talking about Talking

As the mother of a toddler, it's difficult for me to view the information learned in class on a purely professional level. Like all parents, I want my child to succeed and thrive more than anything in the world, so anything I can learn to give her a leg up in life is of profound interest to me.

One of the things emphasized in the readings over and over again is the importance of talk in developing language skills in children. While I knew this before, I didn't fully appreciate the almost abysmal achievement gap insufficient talk creates. This is particularly prevalent in children of poverty. Impoverished parents tend to focus their talk most on discipline and behavior correction, limiting the amount of vocabulary used in those interactions.

I was intrigued by discussion of narrative development in children. While I find charming the disjointed and sometimes fanciful stories my daughter tells me, it never occurred to me that her doing so was a developmental milestone, or that there was a documented pattern of progression for her stories. The ability to tell about past experiences in a linear fashion focusing on a main event and what happens after is crucial to creating meaning from storybooks and other narrative texts. As such, they are an important part of literacy development. Parents would be well served to ask their children about their day, following up with open-ended questions to elicit responses and help their children develop these skills. I know I've started doing it with my daughter more after learning about the research.

One final note I found important was the encouragement for parents to speak to their children in the language they know best. My husband and I are raising our daughter to be bilingual, since Spanish is my husband's first language and the only language most of his family speaks. When we first decided to go this route, he was very hesitant, and worried that it would negatively affect her school performance later. The readings this week as well as other research I've done on my own all indicate that any vocabulary gains a child makes in any language will ultimately benefit the child, regardless of what the "target" or "school" language is. The point is not to learn English or learn Spanish but to learn language and to foster the brain development that facilitates that. The library system I work at has a large amount of Spanish-speaking patrons. I've watched many parents struggling to speak to their children only in English so they don't "fall behind" when they get to school. Sharing this research with second language learners would be very beneficial, not only fostering the child's development, but also providing already struggling parents with increased peace of mind.