4 out of 5
by
Diana
from
The United States | Jun 10, 2010
The heart of this book is that play, love, and work are the essential trio, whether for children or any happy, healthy human being. Take away one leg of the trio and you'll truly have an unbalanced life. American society today is either totally repackaging play as licensed toys with no room for imagination or turning it into something "developmentally appropriate" for an educational benefit, thereby turning play into work.
Parenting today no longer seems to include sending kids outside to play at whatever their imagination gets them into -- see Free Range Kids and Last Child in the Woods. In fact, a complete parenting course could be presented based on just those 3 books. I think Elkind would hear strong agreement from the other 2 (as well as John Rosemond) in regards to his assertion that no child needs more than 1 social activity (like scouts), 1 athletic activity, and 1 artistic activity (like music lessons) to provide all the enrichment he needs and still have time for spontaneous, self-directed play (p. 82.)
Elkind also stresses the integration of play, work, and love in what he calls lighthearted parenting and encourages us to use humor as a means of communication with our children. Besides using humor to discipline and socialize our children, Elkind also encourages us to share our passions, and to establish patterns of family play, games, and experience sharing (p. 171.) In fact, the universal trait in those who excel in their professions before age 40 seems to be that they felt an underlying love, respect, and honesty from their families (p. 187.)
Where this book really shows the errors of American society, however, is in our education system which has gone to a "factory model" (p. 200- 201.) He takes a long look at John Dewey's concept of progressive education, stating that its project method combines creativity, self-motivation, and practical learning -- play, love, and work (p. 196.) With such integration, he also has a favorable view of the Montessori and Waldorf methods.
We know that children learn about their world through play, by experimenting and by developing mastery of a skill at their own pace, yet as soon as they are in school, it's all about drill-to-kill, busy work, and teach to the test. We know that the best early childhood programs are play-based, yet with the pressure to get ahead, too many of them are now academic in focus. In looking at the results of several studies (p. 209 - 212), Elkind is even able to state that not only is there later academic advantage for children who attend an academic program, but that such children also have higher levels of test anxiety, were less creative, and had more negative attitudes toward school than did children who attended play-based programs (p. 211). Oh that every parent could read that before selecting a preschool!
3 out of 5
by
Marie
from
Frederick, MD | Apr 23, 2008
Elkind combines academic research with anecdotes. He includes reviews of some popular educational software, an overview of the history of toys and how we got to be such a consumer culture, the negativity of screen time for kids, the downside of "helicopter" or "hyper"-parenting, and some glimpses into how to judge when a child reaches "the age of reason." He's a huge advocate of self-directed play/learning, of NOT pushing kids into academics before they are developmentally ready to be successful (decoding phonics in kindergarten is an example of too much, too soon), of allowing them to hold onto mythical explanations of scientific phenomena. It's not a riveting read, maybe because of all the research and footnotes, but maybe because I've already been exposed to these ideas in similar books, so I did not have a eureka moment as I was reading.