Use your inner ‘parenting voice’
NEW YORK — Parents should lose the flash cards, learning apps and other educational gadgets and strategies de jour, advises Stephen Camarata, a child-development researcher who thinks they need to rediscover their inner “parenting voice” instead.
He’s had plenty of practice himself. He has seven kids, ages 19 to 35.
The Vanderbilt professor built a reputation as an expert in speech and language disorders in children. Last year, he put out a book, Late-Talking Children: A Symptom or a Stage? His followup has a broader focus, titled The Intuitive Parent. In it, Camarata takes on the marketing frenzy aimed at ensuring educational success, the neuroscience of learning and the heightened anxiety that has made parenting today a competitive sport.
A conversation with Camarata: Q Has this generation of parents lost the ability to follow their instincts in raising children?
A They haven’t lost their ability, but outside pressures are derailing that. Marketing is one factor, and there’s a distortion of what neuroscience has told us.
Another factor is simply that our lives are busier and busier. A parent may have big job commitments and other things that lead to a lot of self-inflicted guilt and pressure to rush things along.
Q How does a parent of a child not responding to traditional schooling advocate effectively?
A It’s really important that the parent enter into a dialogue with a teacher pretty early on. Parents have a lot more ability and a lot more authority than they might think at first blush.
Studies show that parents are doing 75 to 80, 90 per cent of the homework. That’s not how a child is going to learn. I’d go to the teacher and say, “Here’s how much my child can do. I’m going to have him do that.”
Q Where does technology fit into your model of intuitive parenting?
A. I don’t want to see a child left alone in a corner with a device. A parent should be there and interacting in the same way they would with a book. You need to be actively involved.