Reel Urban News Father’s Day 2017
12 Steps you can take to prepare your toddler to lead and thrive in a technology driven world
We live in a world that continues to become more and more dominated by technology. As a software professional and father of a vibrant four-year-old daughter, I’m keenly aware of this fact. I know that if I don’t start preparing my daughter NOW to be technically inclined I will severely limit her potential as an adult. I also understand that what I expose my daughter to between birth and about 7 years old will expand or limit her potential as an adult. I would like to share some of the things I do to help my daughter prepare to lead and execute in our world as it becomes more automated and dependent on technology.
- Condition your child to solve her own problems.
It’s so important for children to become solution oriented. Developing the habit of solving your own problems instead of expecting the answers to come from someone else takes practice. The earlier you start helping your child to become solution oriented–the better. How do I help my daughter develop this habit? By asking her to think of solutions to the problems in her own little kiddie world. When she comes to me with a frustration, I ask her questions that help guide her to the solution. For example—I remember when she was about 1 ½ years old. She was trying to turn on the light switch but she couldn’t reach it. She asked me for help. Instead of turning on the switch for her, I asked her “How can you turn it on yourself?” She thought for a moment and still couldn’t come up with the answer. But at least she was thinking. Then I asked her. “Well what about your stool” She immediately put a big smile on her face, ran and got her stool from the next room, put it on the floor next to the light switch, stepped on it, and proudly turned on the light. She was so proud of herself for being able to come up with the answer herself. We continue to go through exercises like this as I guide her to develop her own problem-solving skills. I challenge her to find her own solutions from how to find her missing sock (instead of just asking me) to how to change the TV to her favorite (educational) show. Yeah.. we only watch educational shows. I help her along the way so she doesn’t become too frustrated and I try to ensure that the problems challenge her without making her feel hopeless. The more you do this with your children the better equipped they will be at solving very complicated problems in the grown up world that is quickly approaching them.
- Exposure your children to puzzles.
Surviving and thriving in a technical world requires analytical skills. One of the best ways to teach your children how to become more analytical is to expose them to analytical games and puzzles. They don’t have to solve them all but just having puzzles around and teaching them little bits at a time and helping them develop a strong sense of pride in solving puzzles will go a long way in cultivating a love for problem solving and developing the mental capacity to solve complicated math, science, and software problems in their adulthood. People often see my 4 year old carrying around a Rubik’s cube. She plays with it when she is in the mood. She now knows how to make a line with three colors on it and most importantly she is developing a love for the puzzle and she feels a sense of accomplishment when she is able to do maneuver it how she wishes. Some of my favorite puzzles are Rubik’s cubes, the iPhone/Android app named Flow, and an app named Scratch Jr. She currently doesn’t do much with the puzzles but that doesn’t matter—I’m cultivating a love for solving the puzzles. She will probably be much better at it next year and when she finally gets to the point that she can solve a Rubik’s cube she will be extremely proud of herself and she will always have a love for solving puzzles. This love will serve her greatly in the future as she is called on to solve technical problems in her future workplace or perhaps in a company she owns. By the way.. solving a Rubik’s cube isn’t’ as hard as you think. Just look for videos on how to solve it online. Some may call that cheating—but it’s better than not knowing how to solve it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HsQIoPyfQzM
- Allow your child to explore their space.
I really try to allow my child to explore her space, touch things, play with her environment. Many of us grew up in a very strict households where children were seen but not heard and had to sit up straight and be still. This is a great way to raise your children if you want them to be followers and employees—but this isn’t such a good idea if you want to cultivate a love of learning, exploration, and leadership. Let your kids explore their world. Yes, they will knock some things over and break a vase here or there. But the value they get from learning and having a freedom to explore the world is more than worth the extra work that may be required to clean up their mess. Of course, this is within reason. You don’t want your kid knocking over $10,000 vase in a store on Rodeo Drive for the sake of exploring their universe. ?
- Read to your Child.
This is an obvious one. Read to your child! Kids love reading and the more you read to them the more intrigued they will be with reading when it’s time to read on their own.
- Teach your toddler to Read.
I started teaching my daughter to read about 3 ½ and she continues to work on it. I knew I had a busy schedule and I often have problems being structured and consistently finishing these kinds of long term projects so I enrolled her in a tutoring center near my house called Kumon. Kumon will take children as young as 2 years old and has a reading class and a math class for about $100-$150 per month depending on your local market. It’s a great resource to help your kids read. Of course, you can skip the monthly fee and buy the Kumon tutorials online at amazon and teach your kids the same material. After about 6 months of this, my daughter knows all the letters, the sounds they make and is learning all the blending sounds now. More importantly she has developed a love for reading and she gets a sense of accomplishment every time she is able to sound out a word or spell a word. She will be reading shortly and I’m sure she will be far above grade level by the time she starts school. This will give her the confidence to excel as she starts interacting more with other kids as she enters school.
- Help your child appreciate math and numbers.
Guide your child through counting. Count stairs, count cars, count books, count strawberries in your plate. Count everything around. Once you add some more math skills such as adding and subtracting you can start adding and subtracting all those things as well. A great tool to help facilitate a love for numbers is an abacus. It gives your child a tactile object to practice counting and it will become enjoyable for your child over time.
- Develop your child’s memory.
A good memory is one of the key tools you can give your child to help them perform better in life. Card matching memory games and Simon Says are great tools to help your child develop his or her memory. I encourage you to purchase them and place them in your child’s play area and make it a toy that they are very familiar with. Another little activity I do with my daughter is I ask her to remember the parking coordinates when we park in parking areas in the mall (like Orange-T-5). We started this about 6 months ago and now she remembers these parking coordinates better than I do. ?
- Make Learning Fun—Not Stressful.
First and foremost, you want your child to love learning. She or he will learn the specific task of reading or writing or whatever when they are ready but your job is to expose them to different learning modalities and allowing them to enjoy discovering and learning the puzzles, games, language, and toys that you expose them to. All kids love to learn. Just some are raised by parents who don’t cultivate that natural love for learning and their love for learning becomes stunted. So just positively reinforce their learning experiences with praise tickles, make it fun and they will naturally find learning about the world around them interesting. Try not to be task oriented as you teach your child to learn. Don’t think.. omg.. when are they going to learn to read this word. (I struggle with this myself) Make it fun. Again, reward your toddlers with hugs and tickles when they accomplish something and they will look forward to the time they spend learning with you. There is no rush. If they love learning they will always learn a specific task. But if you try to focus on getting the task mastered you may frustrate them and they will begin to resent the process. Which is the LAST thing you want.
- Teach your toddlers even when it seems like they aren’t learning.
Your toddlers are learning even if you think they aren’t. This is especially true between the ages of birth and 6 months of age when they aren’t talking or giving lots of verbal feedback yet. I noticed the things that I would do with my daughter during those early ages came really natural to her at a very early age. For example. I would constantly sing her ABCs to her when she was about 3 months old to sooth her and she seemed to learn her ABCs much earlier than most of her peers and she could focus on her ABCs when her attention span was very low between the 1 to 1 ½ year mark while I couldn’t get her to focus on anything else.
If there is one thing I would have done differently—I would have exposed her to more topics between birth and 6 months old before she could give me feedback that she was actually paying attention. Even now, I notice when I talk to her about some science concept like gravity. She may not give me any feedback on the concept but a week later she will throw a ball on the floor and say—“Daddy look – gravity made that happen” (When this happened I was totally blown away) They are truly learning whether they choose to let you know or not. So teach them even when you think they are oblivious to the pearls of wisdom you drop before them.
- Always give TONS of positive reinforcement for learning.
When your toddler learns something or shows you something that they have accomplished drop whatever you are doing and make a HUGE deal out of it. They need this positive reinforcement to let them know that this is important and it will create in them a drive to learn more and explore their world even more.
- Encourage your child to socialize with their friends.
Having book sense and no social skills can be extremely limiting. You want your child to develop his or her social skills to the best of their ability. In general, social people really run the world. The purely technical people typically work for the more social people. So as your child is learning do not ignore play friends and basic social skills. This is a must even as the world becomes a more technologically advanced place.
- Teach your young children standard English and good diction.
I was supposed to only have only 11 items then I thought of this one. I’ve never seen anything ruin the potential of young black kids like poor diction. You can be bright as ever, however, if you can’t communicate in standard English people will judge you to be stupid. TEACH YOUR KIDS GOOD DICTION and STANDARD ENGLISH. “We were”not “We was”. “THere” not “Dare”. “THat” not “Dat”. The list goes on and on.
I found my daughter saying “we was” because of exposure to other family members who used nonstandard English and I simply corrected her every single time until she started speaking correctly. I knew that if I didn’t correct her non-standard English now it would become a difficult habit to break later on. The same with her pronunciation of the TH sound. Yes she is still practically a toddler and often toddlers don’t have the control of their tongue to pronounce the TH and other sounds. However after quizzing her a bit, I figured out that she could say it correctly—she just wasn’t practicing saying it correctly. She still has trouble with a few blends—but those will go away as her motor skills increase. However, I urge people to make this an important priority as you educate your young leaders of tomorrow.
I hope you find at least some of the elements of this article helpful. Education is so important and the earlier we can prepare our children for the future—the more they will be able to accomplish in their lives–giving them greater opportunity to move up the socioeconomic ladder and to create a better life for themselves and their own children and give back to their community.
