VII. Is television good or bad for young children? What effect does it have on them? Did you watch a lot of television when you were small? How much do you let/ are you going to let your children watch? Read the text and find the answers in the text to the questions below.
Television Exposure Damages Child Speech
Dr Sally Ward, the country’s leading authority on the speech development of young children, believes that babies under one year old should not watch television or videos at all. Children of two or three should watch for no more than an hour a day.
Dr Ward’s ten-year study of babies and toddlers in inner-city Manchester showed television was delaying speech development in children. The background noise from televisions stopped them learning to talk as early as they should. At eight months, they neither recognized their names nor basic words like “juice’ and “bricks”. At three, they had the language of two-year-olds.
Now she has found that children from well-to-do families are being handicapped in the same way. “The television is being used as a babysitter, with nannies particularly. Some of these middle-class children are spending far too much time watching television and videos.
“They get very fixed on the colours and flashing lights. We found in our study it was quite difficult to get them interested in toys.”
Parents or minders had stopped talking to them. They were not being taught a basic vocabulary through one-to-one conversation with adults.
All the evidence showed, said Dr Ward, the children whose language was below standard at the age of three could be set back for life.
From The Guardian by Sarah Boseley
toddlers – children aged one to three years old
inner-city – the poor parts of the city
well-to-do – rich
handicapped - damaged
nannies – women who look after other people’s children
minders – nannies and babysitters
set back – damaged; slowed down in development
1. What is bad and good for young children? 2. Two-year-old children don’t have very much to say. Why do you think it is important for them to speak? 3. Does the article reflect your own experience of young children and television? 4. Is it possible that Dr Ward’s research is wrong? Can you think of any problems with this kind of research?
IX. Critics of television are not only worried about young children. How would you answer these comments? Prepare some notes and then discuss the issue in class.
· Watching TV is completely passive. You don’t have to do anything.
· We’re all becoming couch potatoes.
· Teenagers should be creating their own entertainment.
X. Read the extract from a psychological manual and express your attitude towards the problem.
Child Abuse and Neglect
Most parents are kind and loving to their children. Yet child abuse - either physical or psychological – is unfortunately widespread. In a national poll of 1,000 parents, 5 percent of the parents surveyed admitted to physical abusing their children. Physical abuse is beating, hitting, or kicking of another person that results in bodily injury.
Even more common than child abuse is child neglect – the failure to give children adequate food, shelter, clothing, emotional support, or schooling. Physical abuse is horrifying because the results – bruises, burns, and broken bones – are visible. Yet more injuries, illnesses, and deaths result from neglect than from abuse.
Why do some parents abuse or neglect their children? Psychologists have found the following factors to be associated with child abuse and neglect:
a. stress, particularly the stresses of unemployment and poverty;
b. a history of child abuse in at least one parent’s family of origin;
c. acceptance of violence as a way of coping with stress;
d. lack of attachment to the children;
e. rigid attitudes about child rearing.
Studies have shown that children who are abused may run a higher risk of developing psychological problems than other children. For example, abused children tend to be insecure. They are less likely than other children to venture out to explore the world. And they tend to have less self-confidence. Physically abused children are also more likely to develop feeling of anxiety and depression, to become aggressive themselves.
There are many possible reasons for this pattern. For one thing, children may imitate their parents’ behavior. If children see their parents coping with feelings of anger through violence, they are likely to do the same. They are less likely to seek other ways of coping, such as humor, verbal expression of negative, deep breathing, or silently ‘counting to 10’ before reacting, thus giving the feelings of anger time to subside.
Children also often adopt their parents’ strict ideas about discipline. Abused children may come to see severe punishment as normal, to believe the old saying “Spare the rod; spoil the child,” which means that a child who is not punished will grow up spoiled. As a result, when they have children of their own, they may continue the pattern of abuse and neglect.
That doesn’t mean, however, that all people who were abused as children will become abusers themselves. Most children who are abused do not later abuse their own children. One study found that mothers who had been abused as children but were able to break the cycle of abuse with their own children were likely to have received emotional support from a nonabusive adult during childhood. They were also likely to have participated in therapy and to have a nonabusive mate.
Abridged from Psychology
XI. There are many ways children can seek help to end abuse. One option is to talk with trusted adults – teachers, religious or school counselors, coaches, or friends. In addition many communities have telephone hot lines and other services available for victims of abuse. Research the opportunities available for victims of abuse in your country and report to the class.
Vocabulary tasks
I. There are many words that can be used instead of ‘child’. Five other words (expressions) are used in the texts. What are they? Is there any stylistic or other difference between them? Add some other words you know with the same meaning use all of them in the sentences of your own.
II. Style of parenting can be classified along the dimensions of warm-cold and strict-permissive. Both dimensions are continuums, and most parents do not lie at the extremes but cluster in the middle. Define the words below and put them into the chart according to these dimensions. Support your opinion.
Demanding, supportive, lenient, neglecting, flexible, overindulgent, controlling, negligent, careless, affectionate, dictatorial, protective, democratic, indifferent, antagonistic, detached, caring, inconsistent, possessive.
III. What is the best way to punish a child? To praise him / her? What would you never implement as a punishment and why?
CARE means the state of constant and serious attention to someone’s welfare, one’s readiness to take a responsibility. Unlike concern and solicitude, it suggests activities to go through, to overcome some hardships. E.g. Care and diligence bring luck; the care of children’s health; care brings grey hair.
CONCERN suggests one’s mental and emotional state of uneasiness over someone or something in which one has an affectionate interest. Concern is particularly applied to that which awakens a painful interest in the mind ‘to express or show concern for someone’s trouble or distress’. E.g. to show concern for homeless; the child’s future is her greatest concern.
SOLICITUDE is a formal word which implies profound concern, thoughtfulness, for another’s welfare, comfort, safety, success, etc., or almost hovering attentiveness to another’s misfortune. Solicitude is an attitude or extreme attentiveness. It denotes the state of being desirous of good for the object concerned, often anxious concern. Solicitude needs no extraordinary occasion to be aroused and never rises to excess. It expresses hopefulness not implied in care. There may be solicitude to please or tender solicitude for the health of a person. Solicitude may be constantly displayed. It can denote a desire to do not necessarily accompanied by uneasiness. Like concern, it may be a sheer manifestation of attention. Unlike care, concern and solicitude can be used with adjectives denoting degrees. E.g. deep/ profound concern/ solicitude.
IV. Compose a dialogue with the words ‘care, concern, solicitude’.
V. Translate from Russian into English:
1. Нормальные отношения между родителями и детьми не являются следствием вседозволенности и слабой власти в семье.
2. Нормальные отношения отражают уверенность и родителей, и детей в том, что мнение каждого из них важно для членов семьи.
3. В современных пособиях по психологии есть немало примеров того, как телесные наказания приводят к задержке умственного и физического развития детей.
4. Родители часто прибегают к различным формам словесного и физического наказания своих детей, не понимая того, что это приносит только вред.
5. Для того чтобы обеспечить полноценное развитие ребенка, родители должны верить в него, не навязывать ребенку своего мнения и относиться к ребенку как к равному.
6. Если вы не будете прислушиваться к ребенку, вам не удастся стать ему другом и предотвратить кризис переходного возраста.
7. Учитель должен избегать ситуаций, которые вызывают напряженность в отношении с детьми.
8. Способность сдерживать свой гнев отличает хорошего учителя от плохого.
9. Неконтролируемые эмоции взрослых не могут дисциплинировать детей, наоборот, дети становятся неуправляемыми.
FRIENDSHIP
Before you read
I. Which of these quotations or proverbs do you agree with? Say why / why not.
· Friendship never ends. (The Spice Girls)
· Money can’t buy friendship.
· A faithful friend is the medicine of life. (Ecclesiasticus)
· The only way to have a friend is to be one. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
· A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
· Old friends are best.
· Good neighbours become good friends. (The title song of Neighbours, a TV soap opera)
II. Tell about a friend of yours. What do you like about her/ him? And what about negative points? Try to explain why you get on well together.
Reading tasks
