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Crazy Conclusions in Early Childhood

raisingfutureadults.blogspot.com

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Re: Crazy Conclusions in Early Childhood

#41

Post by freetime2 »

xchaotic wrote: post #31

This story looks borne from the helicopter parenting theme. Some kids learn some things slower and it eventually cleared up. But with helicopter parenting he was sent to pre school and all this reverse psychoanalysis was done. It’s not wrong and it’s borne from parents caring about their kids, but letting them be kids is cool as well.

> This did not become a long term issue for him. I made sure he felt safe during this minor ladybug invasion and when he got older he figured out where and how he had jumped to the wrong conclusion and it was never a big deal. But it could have been, especially if I had not made sure to make him feel safe and protected and take his fear seriously even though I knew there was no real threat.

I also got a helicopter parenting vibe from this article. Particularly the way she seems to be crediting her parental decisions with the child not developing “long term issues” from having some ladybugs in their bedroom.

I don’t have any issues with her decision to let her son sleep in her bedroom for a couple days (and I might have done the same). She just seems to be overvaluing the importance of her response in this situation, and undervaluing kids’ natural ability to develop and outgrow their fears.

Re: Crazy Conclusions in Early Childhood

#42

Post by jgilias »

xchaotic wrote: post #31

This story looks borne from the helicopter parenting theme. Some kids learn some things slower and it eventually cleared up. But with helicopter parenting he was sent to pre school and all this reverse psychoanalysis was done. It’s not wrong and it’s borne from parents caring about their kids, but letting them be kids is cool as well.

This is a bit unfair though. The general advice I've seen is that if a kid doesn't start forming simple sentences by the age of three, parents should start looking for help. Reason being, a delay in speech development may later lead to other problems, among them life-long speech impediments. As a stutterer myself, I can attest that having these are no fun.

Also, pre-school is beneficial for development in general. They start learning how to function as part of a wider society there. The only 'mistake' I can identify in the article was going for the 'on-off' pre-school regimen. According to some experts in child development I've spoken to (Montessori method), predictability of routine is paramount to healthy development. If the child is 'on-off', he/she doesn't really become a core part of the 'pre-school society', has trouble making friends, and in general it messes with their little heads that there is no predictability on how their day or week is going to go.

But helicopter parenting? No, not really.

Re: Crazy Conclusions in Early Childhood

#43

Post by toxik »

freetime2 wrote: post #41
xchaotic wrote: post #31

This story looks borne from the helicopter parenting theme. Some kids learn some things slower and it eventually cleared up. But with helicopter parenting he was sent to pre school and all this reverse psychoanalysis was done. It’s not wrong and it’s borne from parents caring about their kids, but letting them be kids is cool as well.

> This did not become a long term issue for him. I made sure he felt safe during this minor ladybug invasion and when he got older he figured out where and how he had jumped to the wrong conclusion and it was never a big deal. But it could have been, especially if I had not made sure to make him feel safe and protected and take his fear seriously even though I knew there was no real threat. I also got a helicopter pa…

It’s very common for people to overvalue their own contribution to positive outcomes. I know I do, sometimes I can see myself doing it, but it doesn’t take away the feeling that it’s true. I see it in my parents-in-law too, they think they taught my kid do something new or they saw a behavior first where we (the parents) have seen it for forming weeks.

I think it’s important to let it pass, it helps us feel involved and meaningful.

Re: Crazy Conclusions in Early Childhood

#44

Post by chriskanan »

spoonjim wrote: post #24
TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #4

That a 16-year old remembers such detail about age 3 seems… unusual. I don’t mean a memory here or there; this child remembers very specific experiences and the feelings he had about them when he was almost pre-verbal. Seems almost incredible.

A 3 year old can remember something at 16 if they regularly recall it. It gets refreshed like DRAM. I do this with my kids for special memories. They can remember everything they did at LEGOLAND the day after. So I have them tell me about it, regularly, and they remember it permanently.

Spaced repetition is a technique for exploiting psychology's spacing effect for getting information to be stored longer [1]. That is (roughly) a memory needs to be recalled to be retained and the optimal time to do that recall is just before forgetting the material. This is implemented by Anki, which I loved using throughout my PhD and a few years afterwards with 20K+ flash cards on AI, math, and neuroscience. I started skipping doing it every day after becoming a professor, but I wish I had the time to pick it back up.

Also, memories become plastic and maleable when recalled, so just because they can recall something does not mean the memory hasn't been twisted by doing so [2].

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacing_effect

[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_consolidation (see section on reconsolidation)

Re: Crazy Conclusions in Early Childhood

#45

Post by andi999 »

iamflimflam1 wrote: post #38

I remember as a child being extremely puzzled as to how glass worked. I could not understand how something solid could be transparent. I had seen that when things moved quickly they seemed to become translucent so I came to the conclusion that glass was made up of tiny cogs, all moving extremely quickly. It never made complete sense though. I must have driven my parents insane with my constant questions of how glass…

Sounds not less intuitive than the band gap explanation. How did you explain color tinted windows?

Re: Crazy Conclusions in Early Childhood

#46

Post by bambax »

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #4

That a 16-year old remembers such detail about age 3 seems… unusual. I don’t mean a memory here or there; this child remembers very specific experiences and the feelings he had about them when he was almost pre-verbal. Seems almost incredible.

Memory exists from the start of life. You can train an infant to recognize a signal (a sound, a light for instance) and associate it with a pleasant or unpleasant experience.

The reason we don't have memories from our first months of life is because, it seems, when we learn to speak the previous experiences become somehow inaccessible to our cognition (but they're still there).

It doesn't seem impossible that people who learn to speak early have more early memories.

But of course, there is always the possibility that the memories are those of the adults who repeated them so frequently that the children began to treat them as their own.

Re: Crazy Conclusions in Early Childhood

#47

Post by lugged »

andi999 wrote: post #45
iamflimflam1 wrote: post #38

I remember as a child being extremely puzzled as to how glass worked. I could not understand how something solid could be transparent. I had seen that when things moved quickly they seemed to become translucent so I came to the conclusion that glass was made up of tiny cogs, all moving extremely quickly. It never made complete sense though. I must have driven my parents insane with my constant questions of how glass…

Sounds not less intuitive than the band gap explanation. How did you explain color tinted windows?

Colored cogs.

Re: Crazy Conclusions in Early Childhood

#48

Post by barrkel »

iamflimflam1 wrote: post #38

I remember as a child being extremely puzzled as to how glass worked. I could not understand how something solid could be transparent. I had seen that when things moved quickly they seemed to become translucent so I came to the conclusion that glass was made up of tiny cogs, all moving extremely quickly. It never made complete sense though. I must have driven my parents insane with my constant questions of how glass…

Even weirder is how glass is partially reflective. What mechanism lets some light through but sends other light off in such a regular ordered way?

Re: Crazy Conclusions in Early Childhood

#49

Post by odiroot »

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #4

That a 16-year old remembers such detail about age 3 seems… unusual. I don’t mean a memory here or there; this child remembers very specific experiences and the feelings he had about them when he was almost pre-verbal. Seems almost incredible.

I wish I had such "useful" memories. I just vividly remember having my diapers changed (before the modern "panty-style" ones) and really disliking it. The material had very rough surface (to a child), probably due to bleaching many times.

Re: Crazy Conclusions in Early Childhood

#50

Post by ups101 »

Around age 7 my daughter showed ocd like behavior (incessant scratching her arms) when she realized loosing connection during chrome casting meant the device kept playing. We had to unplug the chromecast device and inspect it, lying there dead and silent on the table, to settle her down. Same thing when our pc was updating, saying “please do turn off computer” and then _proceeding to reboot on its own_ at end of update. She wouldn’t enter the living room if google home was plugged in, and we would have to convince her it was OK google was listening (!…). as a toddler she would shake from fear if curtains were gently blowing - we figured she thought someone was standing there and tried to inspect it together to no avail. only recently we understood she in fact feared the house would blow away. Equal parts worried and proud of my little tin foil hat in the making :-).
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