Things I Know About Kids – Learning

First, I feel I should point out that I have done no real research on the topic of learning capabilities in small children, nor have I read any research done by others. What I know I’ve learned from my own daughter, and to a lesser extent my niece and the children we see at playgroup.

With that aside, what I know is that we as a society have a bad habit of underestimating small children. We follow guidelines that tell us what skills our kids should know and by when, we buy age-specific toys based on assessments made by the companies who designed them, and we get upset if our kids haven’t learned a specific skill by a specific time, even if they’ve become quite advanced in a different skill in the meantime.

In other words, we group all children together, expecting them to learn and grow at the same rate, and limiting them by focusing on only the skills we’re told they should have by now. I personally think this is very silly because, while you shouldn’t push your children to “learn learn learn learn learn!!!” you should always encourage them to go further and further.

I’ll give you an example. My daughter has a wooden alphabet puzzle. The back of the puzzle board states that the puzzle is for ages 3 and up. At the time we purchased the puzzle I thought that “ages 3 and up” couldn’t possibly refer to any kind of safety issue because the puzzle pieces are quite large, and a quick examination showed that there is no way the pegs could possibly become disconnected. When the safety check was all clear we gave our daughter the puzzle to play with…at the time she was just under a year old. Yes, we gave our one year old a toy that someone, somewhere, decided was meant for three year olds and up. We weren’t pushing the learning toy on her, and we certainly didn’t expect giving it to her to make her a genius or anything; we just figured it was a good, educational toy that she’d enjoy playing with. But here’s the thing…she caught on pretty fast. It only took her a few weeks to be able to locate where the pieces went, and by the time she was just under a year and a half old we had her telling us what all the letters were as she was doing the puzzle. It didn’t take long after that for her to understand that letters naturally went in a particular order, and if I wrote down letters she’d tell me which ones came next.

There were other factors that contributed to her success, of course… For one thing we took the time to sit with her and tell her what all the letters were. For another she also regularly watched a Sesame Street special that teaches kids the alphabet. But the point of the story is that if we had set the puzzle aside, assuming that she wouldn’t be able to understand it until she was at least three years old, she might not have caught on to the alphabet so soon. If we took it upon ourselves to assume that the Sesame Street special was too advanced for her, she wouldn’t be THIS close to being able to sing the whole alphabet song at less than two and a half years old (imagine me holding my fingers a few millimeters apart).

Again, I’m not saying my kid is a genius, but I can absolutely say with certainty that she has advanced faster than expected because we don’t hold back teaching her new things just because she’s still young. We make sure her toys are safe, and if we buy her something meant for older kids (Ninja Turtles action figures and My Little Pony sets come to mind) we make sure to remove any small pieces she might decide to swallow for fun. Once those two things have been accomplished, we let her play with what she’s interested in, and we encourage her to learn new things. In fact, she and her soon-to-be-four-year-old cousin can work my Samsung Galaxy Tab2 better than some adults I know.

Kids are sponges, they really are. We regularly take this into consideration when taking care not to transfer bad habits, but we rarely think about it when considering teaching and learning practices. Encourage your kid to learn, and (as long as safety permits) let them decide what toys and programs are appropriate for their age group. They’ll thank you for it later.

The Trick is to Learn From Them

A reminder: This post courtesy of Julie Jarnagin’s 101 Blog Post Ideas for Writers.

22. List the biggest mistakes you made in your first manuscript

For the purpose of this post, I am going to use Nowhere to Hide, my zombie apocalypse novel, because it is the only (non-fan-fiction) manuscript I’ve ever finished (minus the editing part, which is happening now). So, without further ado:

– I didn’t plan anything. While I’ve mentioned before that I’m not the planning type and that I tend to prefer just writing, I suspect that having a general layout (at the very least) would have significantly decreased the length of time it took me to finish this story.

– I wrote a prologue. I personally don’t see this as a ‘mistake’, exactly, but after having a number of people on Critique Circle tell me that the prologue was pointless and detracted from the story, I guess it was maybe a mistake.

– I started a “shout-out” naming convention, giving my characters last names of famous horror-guru authors/directors/etc, and then promptly forgot about following through with it once I hit the fourth character.

– Looking back at certain sections of the story, I see that I rushed through things that I didn’t find as interesting, but are actually fairly important parts of the overall narrative.

– I didn’t establish character stories. I’m sure this isn’t a necessity for everyone, but if there’s one aspect of the planning process that I, personally, should be doing, it’s creating character backgrounds ahead of time. I tend to just go with the flow, and more often than not I find myself writing my main character’s feelings or actions to reflect how I think I would feel or act, but that’s not really a smart way of doing things. Not all of my characters can have my exact personal thoughts and beliefs. That’s just foolish. What I really need to start doing is establishing my character’s lives and personalities before I presume to write about them.

I’m sure there’s more, but I don’t really have to bash myself all night long, do I? 🙂

Things I’ve Learned Through Blogging

A reminder: This post courtesy of Julie Jarnagin’s 101 Blog Post Ideas for Writers.

11. What you’ve learned through blogging

A few things:

– That sticking to a schedule is not as easy as it sounds.
– That coming up with ideas for things to write about is not as easy as it sounds (thus all the challenges).
– That it can be a great way to network and meet other people in your field, so long as you’re willing to put as much effort into reading other peoples’ blogs as you are putting into writing your own.
– That it’s a great way to keep your writing muscle flexed.
– That seeing your stat page count visits to your blog can be a ridiculously awesome high.
– That sometimes, unfortunately, you’ll put your heart and soul into a post and have no one read it.
– That it’s difficult to keep your train of thought on a post when you’ve got a toddler poking her head around your laptop and saying, “Elmo? Elmo?” 🙂

Writers…Writers Everywhere…

A reminder: This post courtesy of Julie Jarnagin’s 101 Blog Post Ideas for Writers.

9. Writers in your life and how they’ve inspired you

This idea could go in a few different directions…are these writers who are in my life, in the literal sense, or just writers who have influenced me? Let’s start from the beginning and list a few based on both possibilities.

In my life:
My best friend Kelly. She’s not a writer in the literal sense, but when we were young we both wrote a ton of stories and she influenced me in a motivational way. I always wanted to write at least as much as she did, and I wanted to write things that she would find interesting. 🙂

Influenced me:
Ann M. Martin, author of The Babysitters Club series. I read almost every single one of those books when I was young, so she absolutely influenced my writing style in those days.

In my life:
The various writer friends I’ve met through blogging and participation in NaNoWriMo. As with my best friend, these people motivate me to keep writing. There’s something about “competing” with people that really helps me to write. Every year during NaNo I write like a maniac, all because I’m racing with friends to finish first.

Influenced me:
Any number of authors: Stephen King, George R.R. Martin, C.S. Lewis, Douglas Addams, and a ton of others. I love to read, and everything I read gives me ideas to incorporate into my own writing style. I’ll never stop reading because the day I do is the day I stop learning, and the day I stop learning is the day my writing starts to deteriorate.