Name: Laura E. Berk
Background: A professor of psychology at Illinois State University, Laura E. Berk has done extensive research and teaching in the field of early childhood development. In “Awakening Children’s Minds: How Parents and Teachers Can Make a Difference” (Oxford University Press, $25), she applies a sociocultural theory of child development to parenting and teaching, emphasizing adult-child communication in shared activities.
Q. We’ve been hearing conflicting messages in recent years about how much parents matter. What do you think?
A. Parents have been given very polarized messages. On the one hand, that they’re all-important and nothing else matters and that if something goes awry they’re totally to blame. On the other hand is the recent message that children’s development is all in the genes and perhaps in peer associations and that parents matter little.
Both of these are quite incorrect and dangerous messages. The first is very unrealistic, and it doesn’t encourage parents to look at their child’s qualities and say, “What kind of parenting is best for my particular child?” With the second, I think it’s particularly risky in American culture to communicate to parents that it’s OK to abdicate because you really don’t matter anyway.
I try to give parents a more balanced message, while reminding them that they are crucially important in the mix of factors that affect children’s development. They can have quite an influence on other environmental factors that affect their child. They can even moderate many genetic influences and their impact.
Q. Are you talking about spending “quality time” with children? How important is that?
A. American parents have been given the message over and over that it’s quality, not quantity, of time spent with children that matters, but you can’t really have quality without extensive quantity. And certain children need much more time than others. We not only have to do good things with children; we have to do them consistently over an extended period of time or they don’t have the impact they could have.
Q. One of the things you encourage is to have a sit-down meal with the family on most days.
A. Parents need to remind themselves of the criticalness of that time. I think the pressure of American life, the fact that we expect to lead such a fast-paced existence, makes us set aside some things that we know, historically, are important for children. So much happens when you sit down at dinnertime with children and really talk with them, really engage. It’s a chance for them to touch base with an adult’s worldview. They can’t do that when the lives of parents and children are segregated.
Q. Talking back and forth is different from being talked at by a computer or TV?
A. It’s a different kind of engagement. We can compare it to how maybe we send an e-mail message when it has to do with business or scheduling an appointment, but when we have important issues to talk about, we pick up the phone or talk face to face.
Q. “Quantity” can sound daunting, but if you think of involving kids in everyday activities, it sounds more within reach.
A. Parents can get so caught up in the notion of being “too busy” that they fail to realize they have more time than they think to engage with their children, and there are many ways to do that. Survey data that we cite in the book indicate that American parents think they’re busier than they really are.
Q. You say an important part of children’s development comes from engaging in dialogue with experts, then internalizing that dialogue. What is that about?
A. It’s a way that I try to explain to parents the importance of their role. They are shaping the child’s mind. And minds are social organs; they extend and connect with other minds. When parents engage with a child, they’re building that child’s mind. They are transferring ways of thinking about the world, values, beliefs, modes of interacting and actually building that child’s view of the world.
Engaging in that kind of dialogue with children has a great deal to do with how they develop academically. Children who’ve had a lot of verbal interaction with parents, discussion with parents, whether it’s in a book-reading or conversational or teaching context, are kids who tend to do much better in school.
Q. And isn’t stimulation essential to brain development, the actual connections between neurons?
A. Absolutely. It’s experience with other human beings that builds the brain, causes those fibers that grow from the neurons to interact and link with one another and get firmly established.
Q. How do you keep from being overstimulating? If you throw too much at children–or adults–it tends to backfire.
A. We can tell whether we’re doing that by being sensitive to the child’s reactions to our interactions. Parents should think of themselves as mentors, as experts inducting the child into their culture without losing sight of the child’s individual characteristics and interests.
Q. What have you learned from listening to children talk to themselves?
A. Private or self-directed speech is a real, concrete illustration of the social nature of our minds.
When the child interacts with others, he or she turns that dialogue to the self and it becomes part of the child’s inner interactions.
When we listen in to what children say to themselves, we can see the mark of the nature of our own interactions.
Q. Parents aren’t the only experts in children’s worlds, are they? When you’re little, even an older child is an expert.
A. That’s true. And if parents are not there, not engaged, they’re going to be replaced by others who are perhaps less desirable an influence on the way the child comes to think and control behavior.
