Hey there. I’m going to take a guess and say that I think that if you’re listening to this podcast, Parenting in the First 3 Years, then you probably are soon to be a parent or you are a parent of a very young kid or you’ve got a grandchild in this age group. And you want to learn everything that you can about how to, be the best parent you can for this little baby. And that’s what we do.
We want to learn all that we can. And in this world that we live in there is so much information out there for young parents that it can become a little bit overwhelming and you really have to kind of wade through of all of the stuff, all of the facts, all of the talk, all of the conversation about what your child needs and what you should try to avoid.
And so on this episode today, I have an amazing guest. Her name is Rae Pica and she is. One of the standard bearers in early childhood education. She has many, many books, 23 books that she’s written. I used to use her books as a professor of child development courses when I was training early childhood teachers.
She has served as a consultant to Mattel and Sesame street, the CDC, and one of my favorite TV shows. Bluey. She has been a consultant for them. And so she has so much to share. And in this episode, she is going to do some myth busting. Of information that is out there floating around. That is really not the best. Information for parents is things that you actually need to know to avoid.
We are going to explore these things together and so let’s get started.
In the first three years, children grow and learn faster than any other time in their life. It’s an amazing transformation. And guess what? Parents do too. I’m Ann McKittrick, the mom of three kids who’s helped hundreds of parents in my 30 plus years in early childhood education. The key to success is understanding not only your child’s development, but your own growth as a parent too, finding strategies so you can all flourish together. Welcome to Parenting in the First Three Years.
Thank you Ray so much for joining me on the podcast.
You are such a strong and important word out there in the early childhood community. And I know that you have so much to share with parents. I have a lot to glean from your wisdom. So thanks for being here. Oh, thank you for inviting me in. Yeah, I tend to have a lot of opinions. It’s one of my favorite things about you.I like opinionated people.
So one of the things that I know you have a pretty strong opinion about is just some of the, the myths that surround the way that we look at and think about children. And so that’s kind of what we’re talking about today. Yep, yep, absolutely. Parents are getting a lot of misinformation.
And the number one myth out there, in my humble opinion, is that earlier is better. Parents are being led to believe that if they don’t give their children the earliest possible start, whether we’re talking about athletics or academics, that their child will fall behind. And that’s a terrifying thought.
You know, we don’t want our children to fall behind. But it is a myth. It is absolutely untrue and is definitely doing more harm than good. It is doing more harm than good. There’s this little process called child development. And we’re asking children to do things for which they are not yet developmentally ready.
that puts pressure on them, where things like reading are concerned they learn to hate it because, you know, they’re, they’re failing, they’re struggling, they want very much to please the important adults in their lives, and they’re not yet capable of doing that. So it’s really sad, you know, children who were so excited to go to school, whatever that meant in the early years, are coming home frustrated and stressed and even depressed. You know, we have a lot of depressed preschoolers out there and that’s a pretty depressing thought. So yeah, one story I can share with you, an instructional coach emailed me to say that She was visiting a one year old classroom, which is not a term that I like for one year olds. You know, early learning environment is fine. Classroom has a whole other connotation.
Anyway, she was in this one year old classroom, and the one year olds, now picture them, They’re one. They’re one. Maybe walking. And they were being required to sit for 20 minutes, memorizing letters and numbers on flashcards.
And we’ve got developmentally inappropriate all over the place with that situation. I mean, let’s just take sitting, you know sitting still is an advanced balance skill. People don’t realize that. Why would they know that unless they studied motor development? It’s an advanced balance skill. And then there’s just the fidgetiness that comes with sitting still, Right.
Little ones were meant to move. They were meant to learn through movement. I don’t know if you can hear it outside, but the ice cream truck is going by playing its little tune. Which kind of seems appropriate since we’re talking about childhood. I won’t run out and get one, I promise. So, yeah, I mean, they don’t learn.
By sitting still, they don’t learn by memorizing. That’s not authentic learning. They learn experientially, by moving and experiencing, touching, using all of the senses. That’s how the little ones learn. And then the idea of letters and numbers at one, it’s ridiculous. I’m sorry. It’s just, it’s preposterous.
And when she was asked why that was going on. She said we have to prepare them for the two year old classroom. Because they don’t learn to read. Well, probably, you know, probably Plato. And the way things are going, a University of Virginia study has shown that Kindergarten is the new first grade, and I have seen plenty of evidence that preschool is the new kindergarten.
It just keeps getting pushed down, and as I said, it’s unnecessary, it’s unwarranted, it’s harmful. It’s doing a great deal of harm to the little ones, so I’m going to let you talk now.
Well, I’m just wondering, where do you suppose this push has come from? What’s the source of it? Why do we think that this is good and right?
Not we, but some yeah, a lot, a lot of people think it’s good and right, whether it’s coming from politicians. And I think really that that’s where it started in 1980 something. A nation at risk was published. And even though, it was all about how other nations were beating us, competitively ahead of us in education and blah, blah, blah.
And even though it’s been proven incorrect since then, it took hold. And it’s. It resulted in things like No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top. And let me tell you, education is not a race. Childhood is not a race. Life is not a race. So all of those policies and, you know, there, there’ve been other things that I’ve read.
It’s just that it keeps growing despite all of, all of us Talking about it being false and mythical, the idea keeps growing. It’s the idea that earlier is better has taken hold in this country and others. It’s not just here in the States. Right. You know, one of the thoughts that comes to my mind as you are saying that is that, to back off from this idea of earlier is better and to allow a child to do what is natural developmentally.
It’s slow. It’s a slow process. And we just kind of as people have been conditioned for things to happen fast, you know, we are impatient if it takes. Five minutes for them to make our coffee at the coffee shop or whatever, you know, we just we want things now right now And so yes, well, you know to do with it take 60 seconds for the internet to come up on your computer or whatever.
Yes. That’s a good point. And I hadn’t thought about it. We want things to go Quickly. Huh. And we want our kids to, to grow and to do and to, see what they’re going to be like. And so it’s, it’s sort of a, we all want them to succeed, but. We’re not giving them the opportunity to succeed.
Child development is what gives them the opportunity to succeed. So. It’s kind of like trying to rush your homemade yeast bread. There’s, there’s a good example. You have to let it rise a couple of times in order for it to grow. Yeah. Yeah. And we would never, look at a cocoon and say, come on, hurry up, become a butterfly,
oh yeah. We plant seeds, we don’t. We don’t expect them to pop right up into flowers. There is a process that nature put in place, and I’ve said it a bazillion times, we simply don’t know better than nature. We don’t have a better idea than nature did. It’s kind of a mutable child development, you know, can’t be changed, can’t be accelerated.
And children are very good at letting this, letting us know that, that message eventually, well, yes. A lot of times we can tell how they’re feeling. about things, their behavior, right? If they’re acting out, there’s a reason for it. You know, the little girl who had recess eliminated at her kindergarten, because of course, We have to, you know, have more instructional time, and in the minds of these adults making policies, that means more sitting time, which goes completely against child development, what nature intended, and the brain research tells us.
My goodness, I could sit here and talk all day about the importance of recess and breaks, physical activity and how the brain can only absorb so much in one sitting and requires breaks and blah, blah, blah. But you know, she just started acting out. She became a different child within a couple of weeks of going to kindergarten.
And this is a very good indicator, that something is wrong. And, you know, you mentioned. Well, we mentioned reading earlier, and that’s a really good example of the futility of pushing earlier. Because by the time children are in the third grade, and absolutely by the time they’re in middle school, you can’t tell who read earlier and who read later.
There’s no difference. So typically, the only difference is that the children who were pushed to read before they were ready. Are quite miserable and they don’t like reading that is not what we want. My favorite professional book is called smart moves. Why learning is not all in your head.
And it’s written by Dr. Carla Hannaford. She is a neurophysiologist. Ph. D. after her name. Carla didn’t read till she was 10. She did okay. Yes. She did okay. And that’s just one of her many books. And you know, I think, for those listening, we are zero to three here.
So there’s a lot of things that you put in that same category. I often say to, to parents when I’m talking to them is when you go into the four year old classroom and watch the children play, there is no indicator whatsoever on who co slept and who slept in their own bedroom and in the crib and who drank breast milk and who drank formula and all of these things that seem to be so important and critical. They are. I’m not saying that they’re not. But urgent is a better word.
You know, it’s just like, it all works itself out, you know, this, this body and this brain is going to create, it’s going to develop whether or not they sleep in your bed with you, or if they sleep beside you, or if they sleep in another room in the house, you know.
And walking is another great example if we’re talking zero to three. Right. Parents tend to see only the developmental milestone chart in the pediatrician’s office, and it says, you know, the average age is 12, but what, 12 months, but what does average mean, it could be as early as eight months. Or as late as 16 months and it averages out to 12.
So there’s no need to worry. I was a very early walker. You know, I don’t think it made me brilliant. I think you’re brilliant. Well, thank you. But I don’t think it was the early walking that did it. Yeah. Yeah. I think it was all the playing that did it, I mean, all the pretending and the creating and the imagining and,
That’s how nature intended children to learn to play. Yeah, I saw a question on a parenting group in Facebook the other day and the mom was asking how can I teach my child to walk, and, you know, it’s just that no we don’t teach children to walk we just give them plenty of space to play.
Go through the processes of, you know, all of the things and pulling up and beginning to, to take those steps, but, but it just, to me, it was a real indicator just of this misconception of I’m in charge of my child’s development. I’m the one who has to make all these things happen, which is an awful lot of pressure for a parent, right?
Yeah, it’s not just the children who are feeling pressured. The parents feel every bit of responsibility is theirs and, and they can hand some of that over to mother nature. Yeah. Just kind of sit back and relax and try to mute out the noise that makes you think otherwise. Yeah. Yeah. So I know that, you know, this is very closely related to the, the myths that you like to talk about around play,
I’m just envisioning, you know, a parent of a one year old or one and a half year old. And they’re thinking, well, what do I do? I mean, I don’t even know how to help my kid play. Or what do I need to do to provide an environment where play is, is going to happen appropriately. Yeah, I mean, as I said, play is the way nature intended the young of almost all species, including the human species to learn.
And, you know, I always use the example of kittens and puppies and baby goats and, and we would never ask them to sit still, you know, they learn by playing and, you know, rough and tumble on the whole. The whole thing. And we have to allow the little ones to do that. So the myth surrounding play, and these all tend to overlap, of course, is that it’s not productive time.
Play time is not productive time. That they have to be doing something productive, which is kind of a crazy word to use with, with the littles, right? So we think, you know, we have to get them some lapware some computer. Apps that are for learning and that’s all two dimensional what they need a three dimensional experiences.
They don’t need a lot of toys, they need, you know, tummy time and floor time. And if we’re going to give them toys. then they should be something that has more than one use. These single use toys are boring. You know, they just they have just that one opportunity and then the children are bored with it.
So, you know, we need to give them blocks. We need to give them blocks, right? I mean, it’s, I know that that seems hopelessly old fashioned compared to the Blinking lights and billions of bits of information that digital devices provide. Right. But old fashioned doesn’t mean no longer valuable.
Right. They have so much more to offer building a block tower with your hands. It just teaches so many more lessons than. making one with a computer mouse, you need to feel, you need to smell, you need to, you know, you need to manipulate it with your hands. So yeah, I mean, playing with the little ones think the old fashioned stuff, think about the old fashioned stuff is what I would say.
And, you know, I mean, just going outside with them, you know They need to swing, they need to roll down hills, they need to do all those things, and those things prepare them to sit still because it develops the proprioceptive and vestibular senses, and we’ve taken away so much of that from their childhoods, you know, and, and that’s, What nature gave us to create the ability to sit still, which happened somewhere around age six.
So, yeah, yeah, I love that. And I love how even everything that children do in their play is. Has developmental stages to it, you know, and, and with babies, what they do with blocks is going to be totally different what they do with blocks when they get to be three or four or five or even eight years old, you know, but it does begin.
It does begin in the first year, you know? Yeah. Where is Thumpkin? You know, this little piggy, all of those things. I’m not sure they’re being passed down anymore, but if they’re not, Look them up. That’s what Mr. Google is for. Yeah. And make up songs. You know, do all that stuff. Oh, absolutely. So, as we are talking about the benefits of play, besides what you’ve just said, what else would you add to that?
What are some of the, the things that kids learn as they play alone first and then alongside others and then begin to play with others? Yeah. Well, I mean, we hit all of the domains, you know, cognitive, social, emotional, and, and physical. And I mean, let’s just start with physical, which probably gets the least respect of all of them.
But playing is how they develop their bodies, muscles and bones grow and strengthen through play. Motor skills, they may not end up being dancers, gymnasts, or, involved in sports, they still need to have the confidence to move and move well. And it’s what determines whether or not they’ll become lifelong movers, which equals lifelong health, you know, fine motor.
So, you know, the blocks. The puzzles the scribbling, you know, finger painting, all of those fine motor activities are so important. There are so many life skills that involve. Fine motor activities. They might not all end up being surgeons, of course, but they could decide to be fashion designers, seamstresses, carpenters, dentists, , and then, there were the many sports that require fine motor skills.
So just the physical alone, when they get to be playing with others, There’s, nothing like the social and emotional development that occurs, when you play with others. Cooperation, negotiation you know, collaboration, compromise, conflict resolution, all these skills that we need as adults.
We learn them by playing. And I’m not talking being part of a t ball team, I’m talking about child directed, child initiated play, where the adults, just step back and let them play with each other. You know, I think it’s really interesting, like all of those skills you just listed, negotiation, taking another person’s perspective, conflict resolution.
All of those kinds of things are so much a part of our success as adults. But I, I think it’s interesting that there seems to be a new word being thrown around out there in the training world of gamifying things. And what I interpret that as meaning is that, you know, instead of like planning a PowerPoint talk for a training.
Instead, you would create some games that would happen to disseminate the information and help people process and all that kind of thing, which Right. You know, it is grownups love to play too. We love playing games , and now we’re bringing it into every other aspects of our life, which is really good and healthy.
And so kids who play well are going to be. Even further ahead, a little bit later, they’ll be, they’ll have those skills in advance. Yeah, they really will be. It’s the most productive time is when they’re playing. Yeah. Well, this is really good. And I think it’s a great encouragement for parents to, to really step back and observe their children and just kind of let things happen, kind of scaffolding them all along the way to give them what they need, given the materials they need, but then allow.
The growth to happen very slowly. Yes. Thank you so much. Is there, I would love to ask you for just one last word of encouragement or a tip that you would have for parents as they’re listening? Trust the process. Child development is a process. And, and the other thing I want them to know is I, I just want them to think about the fact that childhood is this little itty bitty span You know, across the whole lifespan, it’s just a little, little itty bitty bit of time and we need to allow them to, to have childhoods, and that means, you know, , if we’re trusting the process and you can you can trust the process, then they’ll have real childhoods that will last them a lifetime.
So, yeah, that’s great. So you have a very special gift for everyone who’s listening. It’s a catalog of or a library of eBooks that are just excellent. I took a look at them and I downloaded the one “Why Your Child Needs to Play”. And so I think that’s the one that’s most appropriate for this conversation, but you’ve got so many other great things for parents and I’m going to put that link in the show notes and I hope that you guys will explore Ray’s work and all of her amazing books.
She’s got lots and lots of invaluable resources for you. Thank you so much for being with me today. Thanks Ann. I appreciate it.