What Would You Ask a Child Development Expert?
What Would You Ask a Child Development Expert?
In the family survey that was sent out, we asked you to tell us what you would ask a child development expert if given the opportunity. We received some great (and challenging) questions that we want to share and help answer using the knowledge and expertise that we have here at UCCC.
The first question is…
What is the most important thing I can do as a parent?
In order to answer this question we interviewed some of the folks at UCCC and LUME. Listen to what they had to say below.
So to recap…BE with your children...be present, be attentive, be available, be genuine, be responsive, be silly…and LOVE them.
I also want to share another perspective that reminds us as parents to relax and allow our children the opportunity to play. This brief article was posted in the November 19, 2015 ExchangeEveryDay e-newsletter.
When all the bad news in the world gets to be too much, I like to escape by reading Dave Barry. Last week I was doing just that when I discovered that even with Barry, I can't escape from thinking about our work. Here is some of what Barry had to say about his parents in his book, Live Right and Find Happiness:
"Above all, they did not worry about providing a perfect risk-free environment for their children. They loved us, sure. But they didn't feel obligated to spend every waking minute running interference between us and the world. They were parents, but they were not engaged 24/7 in what we have created, featuring many crucial child-rearing requirements that my parents' generation was blissfully unaware of.
"They didn't go to prenatal classes, so they didn't find out all the things that can go wrong when a person has a baby, so they didn't spend months worrying about those things.... They didn't form 'play groups' where they sat around worrying that their drooling baby was behind some other drooling baby in reaching whatever critical childhood development stage they read about in their 37 parenting handbooks written by experts, each listing hundreds, if not thousands of things they should worry about....
"They didn't worry that their children would get bored, so they didn't schedule endless after-school activities and drive their kids to the activities and stand around with other parents watching their children engage in the activities. Instead, they sent their children out to play."
We would love to hear your thoughts on this question. Post your comments below!
Post by Jessica Sims