Tips for online monitoring of children

The Covid-19 pandemic has forced children worldwide to stay at home and take online lectures. Since children have little self discipline and lectures are usually boring compared to other things the kids could do on their computer (e.g. watching videos, playing games), parents need to monitor them.

My 8 year old uses a Windows 10 computer. He has two accounts, one for school and one for playing games. I use Microsoft Family to block games on his school account and limit his time on his gaming account. When I am at home, I use Google Hangouts for real time monitoring of his activity on his school account because he tends to slack off or watch movies. He shares his screen with me so that I can see what he is doing. Since he likes to be loud, I am usually in another room. But he is scared to be alone, so seeing me on his screen has he additional benefit of calming him down.

Teaching English and mathematics to a six year old

My six year old son has learnt reading and writing which opened up a lot of opportunities. While thinking about how I could be more useful to him, I decided to try Duolingo for English teaching and Khan Academy for mathematics. Everyday at 18:30, I sit down with him and he first does Duolingo for 15 minutes, and then Khan Academy for another 15 minutes, for a total of half an hour a day. My role is to make sure that he really does the exercises and not play games or watch YouTube. I only help him when he gets stuck and requests my assistance.

Since both Duolingo and Khan Academy have curriculums that progress according to his level, I don't have to think about what to teach when. Khan Academy videos show me how to explain mathematical concepts to a child. Duolingo, besides training his English, also improves his reading and comprehension skills. Using the English version of Khan Academy also supports the language effort (of course, I have to translate math questions that have too many words in them to Turkish). The exercises show him the importance of paying attention to detail before jumping to conclusions, i.e. conscientiousness. Doing something every day is helpful in forming the most useful habit in life: persistence. And finally, he got rid of fearing failure and started to treat failure as a learning opportunity.

Baby / child sleep training

Last weekend we met with friends who have a couple of months old baby. They asked us about sleep training. We told them that we first tried it according to the book but then changed it dramatically.

The main problem was that our son, who was 1 year old at the time of training start, resisted being laid down into the crib. Resisted means that he cried and wept with a terrified "I am going to die" look on his face and arms extended towards you begging for help for 45 minutes! We could not bring ourselves to leave him alone in his room like that. So, we laid besides him in the crib until he fell asleep (took about an hour) and sneaked away.

After a couple of months, we put some pillows beside his crib and waited there for him to fall asleep which again took about 1 hour each day. Every half an hour, I changed places with my spouse. It sometimes took 1.5 hours. After he fell asleep he usually woke up when we put him into the crib and the whole procedure lasted for another half an hour. Trying to carefully lift and place him into the crib was bad for our backs too.

Finally we decided to buy an adult size matress and laid it on the floor of his room and gave up on the crib altogether. At bed time, we cuddled him, played children's music, and when he fell asleep, we simply left the room without the crib hassle. Win-win :)

Child education

Today we were talking with friends about our favourite topic, education of children. The gist of the conversation was that parents have limited control over their children and can "only" introduce them to different experiences. I criticized the use of the word "only" because a good introduction is not a trivial thing, it requires a lot of thought on the parent's part. The material has to match the child's ability to grasp and find it interesting enough to pursue it further on his/her own.

Examples:

• Experience foreign languages via computer games, songs, movies and trips abroad.
• Musical instruments. I played the guitar and keyboard in my younger years and know that playing an instrument is not a matter of talent but a matter of persistent work, i.e. not suitable for most young kids. Talent comes into play when one strives to be a professional.
• Math, history, politics... All of these are extremely interesting but the wrong teacher can cause the child to be disgusted and block them out completely. I know people who refused math or history until they were 30 years old and found out that these were actually quite fun.
• Sports, dance and other physical activities: See The Inner Game of Tennis

The first rule of a good introduction for any topic: What good is this for, where is it used? Keep in mind that even if your child is not immediately enthusiastic about the subject, he/she will have it imprinted in his/her mind and when the time comes, will have less difficulty in making that first attempt (which is usually the hardest psychlogically). Example: As a young child I observed how my father (a primary school teacher) was writing with beautiful hand writing his normally boring daily classroom plans. To this day, I like to write nicely. We don't want our kids to realize how everything is so mind blowing until they are adults, do we?