Over the last summer vacation, how often do you think your child picked up a little extracurricular reading? Children don't usually see any models in their family either; adults aren't the first in the room to jump at the chance to read a book over a holiday exactly.There was a study published in the New York Times recently that proves that children in low-income families typically lose as many as 10 IQ points over the course of a standard school summer vacation.The reason - middle-class parents usually send their children packing to music lessons or a child book club or two over any extended holiday.This doesn't usually happen in poor low-income families.Harried overworked parents hardly have the time to think about this.Now IQ isn't some hard-to-pin-down scholastic test figure.IQ measures often have some real visible effects on how things work out for your child when she gets back to school in September.Many studies observe a lower ability at reading when school reopens.They see this happen so often, they actually have a name for it - Summer Slide.So how does that work - does a child actually make up the IQ loss over the course of the next school year? Unfortunately, that's not how it happens.Which the loss makes the child lag badly the following year, the vacation that shows up then only adds to the IQ loss that occurred earlier.It's cumulative.Now it isn't difficult to put an end to this of course.Most of our modern problems have simple and straightforward solutions - head to a child book club and sign your child up.It doesn't matter what she reads - just as long as she does.Did you ever think that fiction - the typical child detective stories, Hardy boys or anything could hardly ever be as good as activity books or puzzles? Activities certainly seem do be what you should think of to help your child keep her edge; but that's not exactly how it works out.In a study with hundreds of children, they found out that children who did regular activity books and puzzles were nowhere near the junk-reading children in general intelligence scores and reading scores.If you want to put a figure on it, a summer of reading gives a child the same level of advancement as two years of summer school.It doesn't matter if your child likes to read about Michael Jackson and nothing else; teachers usually thrust the classics and other heavy reading on children to help raise their refinement and their appreciation for writing.It doesn't seem to really take that kind of torture though.The lesson is clear - get your kid to sign up to a child's book club.She can read anything at all; if she refuses to read anything other than the gossip section, it doesn't matter.A child's personal preferences dictate how closely she will be involved in the activity you give her.When she is involved in her books, that's all that's ever going to help her with her IQ.
Wednesday, September 19, 2012
A Child Book Club - The Best Thing That Could Happen to Your Kid's IQ
Over the last summer vacation, how often do you think your child picked up a little extracurricular reading? Children don't usually see any models in their family either; adults aren't the first in the room to jump at the chance to read a book over a holiday exactly.There was a study published in the New York Times recently that proves that children in low-income families typically lose as many as 10 IQ points over the course of a standard school summer vacation.The reason - middle-class parents usually send their children packing to music lessons or a child book club or two over any extended holiday.This doesn't usually happen in poor low-income families.Harried overworked parents hardly have the time to think about this.Now IQ isn't some hard-to-pin-down scholastic test figure.IQ measures often have some real visible effects on how things work out for your child when she gets back to school in September.Many studies observe a lower ability at reading when school reopens.They see this happen so often, they actually have a name for it - Summer Slide.So how does that work - does a child actually make up the IQ loss over the course of the next school year? Unfortunately, that's not how it happens.Which the loss makes the child lag badly the following year, the vacation that shows up then only adds to the IQ loss that occurred earlier.It's cumulative.Now it isn't difficult to put an end to this of course.Most of our modern problems have simple and straightforward solutions - head to a child book club and sign your child up.It doesn't matter what she reads - just as long as she does.Did you ever think that fiction - the typical child detective stories, Hardy boys or anything could hardly ever be as good as activity books or puzzles? Activities certainly seem do be what you should think of to help your child keep her edge; but that's not exactly how it works out.In a study with hundreds of children, they found out that children who did regular activity books and puzzles were nowhere near the junk-reading children in general intelligence scores and reading scores.If you want to put a figure on it, a summer of reading gives a child the same level of advancement as two years of summer school.It doesn't matter if your child likes to read about Michael Jackson and nothing else; teachers usually thrust the classics and other heavy reading on children to help raise their refinement and their appreciation for writing.It doesn't seem to really take that kind of torture though.The lesson is clear - get your kid to sign up to a child's book club.She can read anything at all; if she refuses to read anything other than the gossip section, it doesn't matter.A child's personal preferences dictate how closely she will be involved in the activity you give her.When she is involved in her books, that's all that's ever going to help her with her IQ.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
0 comments:
Post a Comment