US low score on world motherhood rankings: charity

MyOwnDrum said:

Kids have done fine without structured preschool for most of human history. :doh

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Not only that, government statistics have shown, programs like head start do nothing to add to the overall educational quality of a child's total education.

All the benefits of the benefits of preschool are erased by grade 3 and kids who went to preschool can't be differentiated from kids who didn't.

Harry Guerrilla said:

Not only that, government statistics have shown, programs like head start do nothing to add to the overall educational quality of a child's total education.

All the benefits of the benefits of preschool are erased by grade 3 and kids who went to preschool can't be differentiated from kids who didn't.

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Pushing early academics is a huge mistake. If kids go to preschool it should be to learn to play, cooperate, and fingerpaint. It should be a loving, social time, with lots of fresh air and healthy snacks.

agreed.....about the academics. but head start is a way to prepare kids to learn, and i think is a great program. sometimes just having some structure is good for kids.

MyOwnDrum said:

Pushing early academics is a huge mistake. If kids go to preschool it should be to learn to play, cooperate, and fingerpaint. It should be a loving, social time, with lots of fresh air and healthy snacks.

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I actually disagree with that greatly(agree with the not pushing academics part), I've seen some other studies that say a child should not enter formal schooling until the age 9-11 to better develop the parent/child bond and to allow the child's brain to stabilize, so that it can accept the schooling environment/structure more readily.

liblady said:

agreed.....about the academics. but head start is a way to prepare kids to learn, and i think is a great program. sometimes just having some structure is good for kids.

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It's good for children from underprivileged homes, who otherwise would be plopped in front of cartoons all day.

yep.....too true.

Harry Guerrilla said:

I actually disagree with that greatly(agree with the not pushing academics part), I've seen some other studies that say a child should not enter formal schooling until the age 9-11 to better develop the parent/child bond and to allow the child's brain to stabilize, so that it can accept the schooling environment/structure more readily.

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I think the Waldorf method reflects that philosophy. Yes, it's better for kids to delay learning to read until 9, and there is research to support that in the long run that is more beneficial.

My point is that pre-school shouldn't teach academics, shouldn't teach letters, but should allow children to explore their environment and develop their minds and bodies without encouraging early reading.

The schools have it backwards these days and are severely off course by pushing kindergartners into academics. I always fought it, and by 4 grade my kids were reading on the 12th grade level and reading for pleasure.

MyOwnDrum said:

I think the Waldorf method reflects that philosophy. Yes, it's better for kids to delay learning to read until 9, and there is research to support that in the long run that is more beneficial.

My point is that pre-school shouldn't teach academics, shouldn't teach letters, but should allow children to explore their environment and develop their minds and bodies without encouraging early reading.

The schools have it backwards these days and are severely off course by pushing kindergartners into academics. I always fought it, and by 4 grade my kids were reading on the 12th grade level and reading for pleasure.

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I've never been a fan of early childhood education, if you go to college now it's a pretty huge major and the states/feds are pushing the programs hard.

To me, it seems like a state/fed subsidized day care program.

lizzie said:

?Behind International Rankings of Infant Mortality: How the United States Compares with Europe? | Journalism Center on Children & Families

And from CDC:


The table is at the link.

Products - Data Briefs - Number 23 - November 2009

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And it is a load of excuses by the US.

First off the chance of a child surviving under 22 weeks is under 1%, so any impact on the statistics is minimal at best. Does it happen? Yes, but there is a 99% chance of said child not making it. Children born after 23 weeks of gestation have a 50% of survival and those born 23+ weeks have a far far higher chance of survival.

Secondly there are a huge set of western European countries that have the same standards as the US, and ALL are above the US in the list I believe.

Thirdly of those countries not with the same rules.. lets look at some of them..

Norway.. 12 weeks.. NO child has ever ever ever survived under 21 weeks of gestation, so this in all practice is the same rule as the US and the rest of Europe.

Netherlands and France. 22 weeks or 500 grams.. only one reported child in human history has survived under 22 weeks of gestation... one child. Children under 23 weeks can pretty much be counted in under 100 I believe.

Face it the differences are at best minimal if there are any real differences in reporting between the US and all major industrialized countries.

And if you seriously think that Europeans dont do everything to save a child born too early, then I must say... the arrogance and ignorance is appalling.

Harry Guerrilla said:

What does that have to do with motherhood?
Why would it be considered wrong for a mother to spend more time with her child?

Seems to me, that someone came up with a subjective measure of good.

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yup. i work with two other folks who have kids that are about two and a half (my son's age). They are both in daycare. one of them can count to three and one of them isn't talking sentences. my kid knows all abc's, can count to 20, and has been speaking full sentences for months now; because he has someone who pays personal attention to teaching him throughout the day.

as for the child mortality, we've been over and over why that's a messed up metric.

PeteEU said:

And if you seriously think that Europeans dont do everything to save a child born too early, then I must say... the arrogance and ignorance is appalling.

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I wasn't implying that at all. I was providing some information regarding the differences in methods used for calculation and that the US has a higher rate of prematurity. A higher rate of prematurity, in a country that counts all live births, is going to have higher mortality rates.
Where did you get the idea that I was insulting Europeans? Seriously.

High rates of premature birth are the main reason the United States has higher infant mortality than do many other rich countries, government researchers reported Tuesday in their first detailed analysis of a longstanding problem.
In Sweden, for instance, 6.3 percent of births were premature, compared with 12.4 percent in the United States in 2005, the latest year for which international rankings are available. Infant mortality also differed markedly: for every 1,000 births in the United States, 6.9 infants died before they turned 1, compared with 2.4 in Sweden. Twenty-nine other countries also had lower rates.
If the United States could match Sweden’s prematurity rate, the new report said, “nearly 8,000 infant deaths would be averted each year, and the U.S. infant mortality rate would be one-third lower.”
The first author of the report, Marian F. MacDorman, a statistician at the National Center for Health Statistics, said in an interview that the strong role prematurity played came as a surprise to her.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/04/health/04infant.html