As a proponent of learning naturally at home, at least for little ones, and for my own children finding that they learned better when ‘unschooling’ (a very natural form of learning), I was astonished to read recently that researchers at the University of Haifa in Israel
have ‘discovered’ that children with autism learn better in natural settings!
Any ‘real’ mother can tell you that!
As I understood the article, the issue had come up as to how to teach children with autism, between the ages of 7 and 12 years, to cross the road to get them to be more independent.
Do you mean we now actually need experts and researchers to tell us how to teach our children to cross the road?
I start teaching how to cross a road safely before a child can even walk. While they are in a pushchair you can say “We have to wait to let the car go by before we crossâ€. Children absorb and understand all those words way before they can say them. Certainly once they’re walking such behaviour can be taught on daily walks – but there’s the rub.
Children aren’t taken on daily walks any more; there is no walking around the neighborhood or to the park or the shops. As the working mother of two children I cared for said to me “How do you walk two children to the park?” Such parents just put their children in their car seats, going everywhere by car and most often the children are consigned to the artificial environment of a pre-school or daycare as soon as possible.
An educated ‘at home’ mother of two children who were already showing signs of anxiety and speech and other developmental delays told me she spent ‘quality time’ with her oldest when they went out in the car together!!!!!!!
Which also gets me going on ‘assistive dogs’ for children with autism. Whatever happened to ‘assistive parents’ for children with autism?!
I well remember one of the children I cared for years ago leaving my house with her mother. I said goodbye assuming that the child was ‘in the care of’ her mother. Quite suddenly the child just ran straight across the road! I was shocked! The mother (because she was a ‘busy, qualified, working professional’? – and by the way, she worked in social services with runaway teens!!) didn’t hold her child’s hand and simply hadn’t got a clue as to her responsibilities towards her child. Fortunately no car was coming down the road.
I recently saw a wonderful story on the evening news about a Head Start teacher who was very dynamic. She taught about exercising, she and the children sang songs as they moved around the classroom, she taught them about food (with plastic food!) – she was really doing a remarkably fine job.
But all that information and activity can come from a good home environment (and perhaps putting some children in Head Start IS better than their homes).
However, I am observing affluent, highly qualified, ‘stay at home’ mothers, who aren’t teaching their children anything! Some children of teachers have a terrible command of language even at 3 years old!
We can teach about food or our natural environment by sharing it with our children, we simply but naturally verbally label everything we eat or see so that they know the names, then they are encouraged to say those names – it’s not complicated but it does take time, effort and probably true awareness of what it takes to get a child talking and understanding well, and that it’s OUR RESPONSIBILITY AS PARENTS not to send them to school ill-equipped to behave well, learn eagerly or speak clearly.
Everyone learns better ‘naturally’ but a ‘natural’ environment has disappeared from most children’s lives. They are really no better off than Romanian orphans and we are seeing the same results – socially, emotionally and developmentally delayed children from all socio-economic groups.
Let’s go back to learning naturally.