This week my granddaughters from Illinois visited my home and I had a chance to observe young sisters in action. The girls are four and six years old, which exactly matched that ages of siblings in a new study of children’s learning. Like kids in the study, my granddaughters shared information, helped each other learn new things, and acted as a learning-teaching team. See if your children do the same.

In the study, researchers sat in on 39 Canadian families for six 90-minute sessions, as children in the family interacted naturally. The kids weren’t given any sort of learning-teaching task, but simply did what kids do together. Like my granddaughters, the children in each family were ages four and six.

What the researchers saw was a whole lot of learning – far more than the lead scientist Nina Howe expected. She said she was surprised not only by how much teaching occurred of one child to another but also on the sorts of learning that was shared. Children not only taught each other how to do things, like how to make a block tower stable, but also concepts like the difference between a circle and a square or how to tell apart the days of the week.

Researchers also noticed that the teaching-learning process moved in both directions. Often the older sibling explained things to the younger child but sometimes the younger sibling did the teaching. There was a lot of sharing of knowledge and developing knowledge together.

Howe suggests that parents can capitalize on children’s willingness to learn from each other by making sure kids have lots of unstructured playtime. She says, “Give them the time and space to interact together, and have things in the home to promote teaching and learning, both toys and opportunities for kids to be together.”

Learning doesn’t always come from adults. Often learning is easier when the teacher is nearly the same age as the learner and can understand the learner’s point of view.

When kids are playing together, don’t interrupt or step in to do the teaching. It matters less that children get the right answer than that they consider the problem and come up with what seems right to them at the time.

Let your children play and figure things out. Listen in, if you like, but let the learning happen on its own.

Many children’s medications these days come with a dose cup to help measure out the right amount. But if the dose cup goes missing or if the only direction on the bottle says something like “one teaspoon” what do you do. What is a teaspoon anyway?

A study published recently in the journal Pediatrics points out that this problem isn’t insignificant. Researchers found that 40% of parents made significant errors in dosing children’s medications and made twice as many errors if the recommended dose was in spoonsful instead of milliliters. Ordinary spoons vary widely in capacity. A typical soup spoon – what one might think of as a tablespoon – might not actually hold a tablespoon of liquid and the same is true for a tableware teaspoon compared to a kitchen measuring teaspoon. Kitchenware is in standard sizes but tableware is not.

Not only that but a tablespoon is easy to mistake for a teaspoon, but it holds three times as much liquid. If a parent used a tablespoon when a teaspoon is called for in medication directions, the child would receive  a triple dose, which might be a serious thing.

In the study, even if a dose cup was included with a medication, if the directions said “teaspoon” or “tablespoon” 30% of parents used a household spoon instead of the dose cup. This resulted in measured doses that were 20% higher or lower than they should have been. In contrast, if label directions indicated a dose in milliliters, the dose cup or dropper was used by all but just 1% of parents.

The problem is that thinking in milliliters is foreign to most Americans but thinking in spoonsful is not. If the dropper or dose cup is not handy, parents are unlikely to be able to dose out milliliters at all. And even though the dose cup or dropper might be in milliliters, a 2009 study found that the bottle directions on 98% of the 200 top children’s medications are in teaspoons or tablespoons. So the problem of “what’s a spoonful” is real and dangerous.

Here’s the deal: take very seriously dosage amounts on children’s medications. Even though a child may be crying and upset and you might be in a hurry to get the medication measured out, take your time and use as exact tools as you can find. The dose cup or dropper that came with the medication is best. Lacking that, know which spoon in your silverware drawer corresponds the best to the sort of spoon indicated on the medication label.

When you measure, be accurate. Don’t overfill or underfill the measuring device. If you’re using a dose cup, hold the cup at eye level to make certain you’ve hit the dose line precisely.

Do your very best, once you’ve got medication measured out, to get it all into the child. This is certainly easier said than done, many times, with a squirmy, resistant toddler and liquid in an easily-spilled spoon. Remember that if you do spill and then try to make up the difference by adding a bit more, you are unlikely to hit the exact dose and the child may get more or less than she should.

Finally, if the child immediately vomits up the medication, don’t give a second dose without consulting an expert. Children are tiny and it’s easy to overdose them. If you’re unsure if your child got the medication he needs into his system, call your doctor’s office or the local poison control center for advice.

Having a sick child is no fun for anyone. But making a child sicker by not medicating enough or medicating too much isn’t a good thing either. Take time to review medications ahead of time and take care to use the right spoon!

If your child is headed off to college this fall, you might be shocked by some of the hidden costs of books, student activities fees, and such. You’re paying plenty and the idea of paying for gym time might not seem like a priority. But new information suggests that going to the gym regularly boosts students’ grades.

Paying for a college student’s gym membership may be a great investment in your child’s future.

At Michigan State University, researchers found that freshman and sophomore students who were members of campus fitness centers had higher grade point averages (GPAs) than students who weren’t members. They had earned more credits after four consecutive terms than non-member students. Freshman gym members were more likely to attain sophomore status (as determined by credits earned) than freshmen who were not gym members. Students with campus gym memberships also stayed in school longer and were less likely to quit college early.

The thinking of researchers is that being a member of the college fitness center helps teens feel more connected to the school and to their classmates. In addition to the familiar benefits of exercise, like increased oxygen to the brain and increased feelings of optimism, going to the gym may help students feel more at home at school and more committed to their education there. The link between gym membership and school success is stronger than just the link between physical exercise on one’s own or as part of a team sport.

The bottom line is that although paying for access to the campus fitness center may seem like an added expense and an unnecessary frill, it actually may make the difference between being successful at college and being less successful.

If your teen is headed off to college this fall, consider adding membership to the campus gym.

Parents anxiously await the day when their child rolls over, sits on her own, or starts to walk. So when other children seem to be getting to these milestones quicker, moms and dads naturally worry. But such worry is probably groundless. The normal range of developmental markers is much larger than you might think.

A recently-completed longitudinal study followed 222 Swiss children from birth through the toddler years. Researchers then conducted tests of motor skills and intelligence at seven intervals between the start of elementary school and the end of high school. They discovered that the timing of key accomplishments varied greatly and had no bearing whatsoever on children’s overall ability and development.

For example, the study found that children learn to sit up anywhere between four months and thirteen months. They begin to walk anytime between eight-and-a-half months and twenty months. In other words, the normal range for these accomplishments is really large. But kids who were “early” were not more capable, either in motor skills or intellectual ability, at any point throughout school. Kids who were “late” didn’t lag their peers in any way. Early or late, it didn’t matter.

The researchers point out that if a child isn’t walking independently by 20 months that there might be an issue and that this should certainly be checked out. But so long as a child seems otherwise healthy and alert and engaged in life, parents can take a wait-and-see attitude. They can be pretty confident that their child will suffer no long-term effects from being the last in the playgroup to achieve a milestone.

© 2013, Patricia Nan Anderson. All right reserved.

After the shiny newness of your baby wears off and you settle in to the reality of sleepless nights, unaccountable crying jags (the baby’s and yours), and less money and less sex than you ever imagined at this point in your life, the realization that life has changed and not noticeably for the better hits you hard. Then comes the guilt and denial. Certainly you can’t really feel so burdened and unhappy by your new status as a parent. Surely your feelings are just wrong.

Right or wrong, they are not uncommon. According to the American Medical Association, 42% of new mothers and 26% of new fathers show signs of clinical depression between three and six months after the birth of a baby. In addition, a new longitudinal study reported in Pediatrics found that men who live with their children continue to experience feelings of depression for five years! In fact, parents typically report lower satisfaction and more negative emotions when doing things associated with parenting than with while engaged in other activities, like working, commuting, exercising, socializing, and so on.

Most parents adjust. The ups of parenthood outweigh the downs, though the downs do seem deeper and more common than they should. Most parents do not resort to plotting ways to become “child-free” and even fewer put their plotting into tragic action. But it’s not hard to understand why a parent might be driven to the brink. New parenthood requires more adjustment than anyone ever warned us about.

So what’s the solution? Here are some thoughts.

First, feelings of depression and dissatisfaction are normal, not pathological. One doesn’t have to blame hormone swings and one doesn’t have to have been the one who actually gave birth. Parenting is a stretch and wearying for both moms and dads. This normalization of bad feelings should give us all hope. It’s not us. We’re not bad people. We’re just like everyone else.

Second, this normalization of new parent depression should open the door to talking about it. Because feeling limited and sad about being a parent is not an embarrassment or a sign of being a sociopath, we should be able to talk about it with a physician, a therapist, or even with your mother. We can give up going it alone and share our distress about parenthood without feeling like a monster.

Third, this is easier said than done. Your mother may not be sympathetic (she may even seem to find karmic glee in your situation). Your physician may not take you seriously. You can’t afford both a therapist and Pampers, so that’s out. To whom do you unburden your sad and sorry soul? You’ll have to try. Find a parents’ group. Find a post-partum doula. Talk with your public health nurse. There are resources out there. This is important, so do what you need to do.

Fourth, go easy with your spouse. If you and your spouse have a nice, open, accepting relationship the two of you can compare notes and make a plan to work together to support each other. But if your spouse is also barely holding it together, adding to his or her worry a worry about your mental state too may be just too much. Work together but don’t dump on each other or abandon one another. No impatience. No blame.

Finally, get help when you need it. This is your child’s health and well-being at stake, this is your own health and well-being here, this is your family. If you are seriously worried about yourself or about your partner, forget finding support and find professional help. Don’t become a statistic.

Feelings of unhappiness and frustration are so common among new parents that it’s amazing the fiction of happily-ever-after has stood so long. Knowing these feelings can linger for years is a revelation.

It’s okay to feel dissatisfied. It’s not okay to think getting rid of your kid is the solution.

Goodness knows, raising children is costly. Every once in a while you might look for a quick source of cash more than what you might locate under the couch cushions. Every once in a while you might recall that your child has a nice nest egg, just waiting to be tapped.

It’s not unusual for parents to feel their child is richer than they are. Maybe the child has a bank account stuffed with an inheritance left by a favorite, dearly-departed aunt. Maybe the child has a stock portfolio started when the he was a baby and now worth a bit more than a new car. Maybe you started a college savings plan for your child and the money is there, calling to you. Maybe your child has her own bank account, filled with her earnings from a part-time job.

Because minors cannot enter into contracts on their own, you likely have access to all of these accounts. The accounts may be in your name but even if they aren’t, you, as the child’s parent, are likely to be the owner-of-record. When that money calls to you, you have the means to answer the call.

It’s very easy to imagine that this money is partly your own.  You need it now to tide the family over, the child is part of the family, so if you take his money you’re helping the child too. Your kid is a minor, so she really can’t have that money herself, so it really is yours, right? This is what you tell yourself anyway. And, of course, you’ll pay it back before he needs it. Sure you will.

Here’s the deal. You may have a legal right to access your child’s money. I am not an attorney and every state has slightly different laws, so I am in no position to tell you for sure, but it’s possible that if you stole money from your child’s account you’d get away with it, no problem.

But it would indeed be stealing. Morally, ethically, you know that taking money out of your child’s account – even just borrowing it for a while – is not right. Your child is an independent person, even if she’s underage. Her money is hers.

You know this. You have no intention of accessing your child’s money without her permission. But what if you ask her for it? What if she says, “yes,” you can have it?

Keep in mind that even in this case there are ethical problems. Your child is not free to make decisions on her own, from a legal point of view. And he may feel pressured to go along with your request because he is dependent on you and needs your goodwill. In an unequal social situation, the less powerful person must be protected. Just asking for the money puts your child in a funny position, where he might assume it is dangerous to refuse.

So the answer is no, no, no. Do not tap into your child’s money. Don’t do it. Put the possibility out of your mind. And now is the time to protect your child from predation by other relatives.

Make certain that your child’s accounts are held by two different adults, preferably one who is not a member of the family and who can be counted on to stand up to anyone who requests sign-off on release of the funds. If only you or only your child’s other parent is the co-signer or signatory on the account, then the account is vulnerable to raiding without anyone else knowing. The time to add another name to the account is now, before there is any hint of temptation to tap into it.

Finally, make certain your child knows the money is hers, not someone else’s, and she has responsibility to protect it until she reaches legal age. She should not tap into it herself but should hold it until she reaches 18. Restraint on all sides protects everyone from an ethical lapse.

One of the most damaging acts family members can commit is to steal from each other. Selfishness, double-dealing, and greed tear families apart. This is hard enough when the bad actors are one’s adult siblings or cousins. It’s even harder to accept when the bad actors are one’s own parents.

No child should look back on his childhood and realize he was robbed.

The rising numbers of children identified as being on the autism spectrum has many parents concerned. What if their own child is affected by this disorder? What can be done if he is?

Autism is a brain difference that affects as many as 1 in 68 children. It is characterized by lack of interest in social connections and difficulty with making social connections. Since language is social, some children with autism do not learn language. Children with autism typically are more interested in “things” than in people.

Obviously, anything that causes a child to struggle to connect with other people causes problems for that child. Everything from following directions to making friends is affected by an autistic child’s lack of social abilities. It’s important to identify autism early so these essential social connections can be made while a child is still young.

Autism is actually many different disorders under one name, in the same way that “cancer” is an umbrella term for a whole host of different diseases with different causes and effects. Although no cause for any form of autism has been identified, it is quite definitely a difference in brain wiring. Because this is so, and because the brain in early childhood is especially open to rewiring, identifying autism early so brain-based therapy can be started is particularly important.

The problem has been that children with autism are not identified early. Although a screening tool, in the form of a parent questionnaire, has been available for children as young as two, most children with autism are not identified until age four, as they are entering kindergarten.  Pediatricians simply don’t have access to the questionnaire or the ability to interpret the results. This means that years of brain retooling have been lost by the time a child is diagnosed. All the early social development that should happen before a child starts school is missing in the freshly-diagnosed autistic kindergartener. He is behind his classmates, unable to cope with the classroom situation and may never catch up or fit in.

Now, however, a simple pair of biomarkers has been identified that even local pediatricians can use as a screening tool for autism as early as a child reaches just nine months of age. The screening process identifies children who may be at risk for autism and for language delay. The two biomarkers are larger-than-average head circumference for body size at age nine months and failure on a test of the head tilting reflex. In this reflex, the head position is adjusted automatically when the child’s body position is changed – or not, as is the case for children at risk for autism or for language delay.

Initial screenings of 1,000 infants found 49 infants without a previous diagnosis who displayed abnormal results on the two biomarkers. Of these 15 were identified as at-risk for autism and 34 at-risk for language delay. Of those identified as at-risk for autism, the diagnosis was confirmed with further testing at age three for 14 of the 15 children.

If you are worried about your baby, remember that early diagnosis of autism leads to early treatment, which is much more effective than treatment begun later. It’s important to take action and get answers.

Now, with these simple biomarkers, doctors everywhere are able to get parents the answers they need to ease their minds and help children.

© 2014, Patricia Nan Anderson. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Join Dr. Anderson in an online conference for teachers and parents. Find out more at Quality Conference for Early Childhood Leaders.

A new bill, the Infant and Toddler Care Improvement Act was introduced in Congress recently.  Its purpose is to shine a light on group care for the littlest children and inspire improvements in quality. Improvement is surely needed.

Babies who are in full-time child care are there every weekday, all day long, adding up to about 160 hours each month. Nearly 30% of children who use child care are under age three, and many of these are enrolled in home-based child care where the oversight is less than it is in center-based care. Yet these early years from birth to age 3 are very important to children’s development. Busy parents count on their toddlers’ child care provider to do a good job of caring for their kids and guiding their development.

So is that happening? How good is your baby’s child care? What should you look for?

The quality of child care for babies is often quite low. States typically require one staff member for every four babies, which means caregivers are busy most of the day with custodial care of feeding, diapering, and soothing babies. In many child care facilities, babies aren’t even held to be fed; instead, bottles are propped up and children left on their own.

With so many children to care for staff have little time for learning activities or even for talking one-to-one with small children. Many child care providers use television or DVDs to entertain babies and toddlers despite the fact that screen time is bad for small children and interferes with language development. With many children to care for – as many as seven toddlers per staff member – children tend to hear direct orders like, “Stop that!” “Come back here!” and “No!” more than engaging conversation. Overuse of this “discouraging speech” has been shown to inhibit learning.

In an effort to keep costs down, many child care providers cut corners with infant and toddler care. How can you be certain your child’s care is good enough? Ask yourself these questions:

• How many babies does each staff person care for? Does this meet the state requirements? Remember that state requirements are the maximum children allowed per adult, not the ideal. The number of children should never, ever be more than the state permits.
• How long has your child’s caregiver been in the business? What training does she have? Being a mom isn’t enough training. This is a business. Your child’s caregiver should be professional enough to have had recent training.
• How long has your child’s caregiver been at this location, with these children? High level of staff turnover is a problem in child care, as caregivers move in and out of jobs. You want your child in a location that is good enough to retain its staff over time.
• When can you drop in to visit? If you must make an appointment, your child is at the wrong location. You should be able to drop in any time and see your child. When you do, pay attention to the number of children per staff member, the cleanliness of the room, and what children are doing.

It’s important to pay attention to child care quality. It’s hard to change providers and we all tend to stick with what we have even if we know it’s not the best. This is okay for your daily coffee shop, maybe. But it’s not okay for where your child spends her precious time.

© 2014, Patricia Nan Anderson. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Ask for Dr. Anderson’s new book, Parenting: A Field Guide, at your favorite bookstore.

Your small child is trying to make a block stack and the blocks keep falling down. What are you likely to do?

1. Help her align the blocks so they balance better
2. Build the block stack for her
3. Do nothing.

Does it surprise you to know that “do nothing” is the choice that contributes most to your child’s development? It is. Letting children work out their own problems and stretch their abilities is the key to learning new things and to feeling a sense of accomplishment and pride. Quite often, “do nothing” is the very best action a parent can take.

Just standing by, letting a child figure something out, seems counter to “good parenting.” But, in fact, letting a child learn by doing is important. Yes, of course, building a block tower is something you could do easily. If the objective is to have a tall tower, then helping your child make the tallest tower possible might make sense. But that’s usually not the objective. In just about anything a child does, it’s the doing that is important, not the actual outcome. And the only way to learn how to do something is to try.

We parents do tend to change the agenda. We see the outcome, not the process. So when a small child is trying to climb the steps to the top of a playground slide, we believe that getting up to where the child can slide down is the point. But actually negotiating the steps themselves is satisfying. Do you doubt me? Remember when your child was learning to go up and down the stairs in your home? Getting to the bedrooms wasn’t the point. Just figuring out how to go up and down was.

The only time it’s sensible to help out is when the child is obviously frustrated and mentally stuck. At that time, it’s helpful to point out that the blocks will stack higher when the child starts out on a smooth surface instead of on the carpet. It’s also sensible to help a child frame the problem. The child who can get two blocks to stack can see if he can stack three. Three stacked? See if he can stack four… It’s not height that matters but achieving a bit more than before.

Standing by, “neglecting” to help, can get you criticized by other parents at the playground. They may think you’re not involved and then they might step in to provide the assistance you were being careful to avoid providing. A quiet word with such parents – “please let him figure it out… don’t worry, I’m watching him” – is called for in such a situation.

Some parents hover to the point of interference. They are actually limiting their children’s growth. In addition, they are teaching their children to give up early and lean on somebody else. You won’t do that.

You want kids who are persistent and resilient. You know that to develop your children’s confidence you must let them figure things out.

© 2013, Patricia Nan Anderson. All rights reserved. Ask for Dr. Anderson’s new book, Developmentally Appropriate Parenting, at your favorite bookstore.