Sat 6 March 2010

THEN Conference Hamilton

Venue: Hamilton Sth Baptist Church, 131 Ohaupo Rd, Hamilton

Contact: Margaret, Phone: 07 843 5656, THENmail@gmail.com

Costs: $20 THEN member, $35 nonmember, $40 on-day

Registrations close: Sunday 28 February 2010

(you can still turn up on the day and pay the on-day registration)

Vendors: Home Education Foundation, Learnex, CES Books and more.

Programme

9am Open for Registrations including on the day registrations

10am Start and Welcome

10.05am – 10.30am Craig Smith — Keynote Address

10.30 Morning Tea, Vendors Open

11.00am – 12.00pm Session 1

Craig Smith: Getting Started in Home Education: In this presentation Craig Smith covers the details of getting your child out of school, different approaches to home education, curriculum materials and the legal aspects of home education. For those new to home education this is a great place to get an over view.

Wintech, University and Vision College reps: Preparing for Tertiary

Rowena Powell: Reading, the Reluctant Reader and Maths Reluctant: Rowena home educated her own children and now specializes in teaching reading writing and maths to children who need extra help. Her workshops usually have a hands on approach to how you go about helping children to master the art of reading writing and maths.

Barbara Smith: Coping with/Avoiding Burnout: During this presentation Barbara Smith will look at the symptoms and causes of home school burnout and strategies for avoiding it. Many of us worry about whether what we are doing is right, is there a better way and strive too hard. Barbara will lead us to an understanding of what home education really calls us to.

12 pm Lunch BYO. Tea and coffee provided

12.45 pm – 1.25pm Session 2

Craig Smith: Is it possible to discipline children in our undisciplined society? It will be very interesting to hear what Craig has to say here. He is right; society is undisciplined. How do we teach discipline to our children in a world that mocks it.

Barbara Smith: Books, Great books and more books: How is your home library coming along? From her years of home education experience Barbara will share her wisdom of what it really is worth spending your money on to develop your home library. What books are of greatest value? And Why?

Gladys Billings: Teaching Writing: Gladys is the home schooling mother of Anna (15) and David (15).
If our child is a good reader we naturally think they will be a good writer. But this does not always follow. Writing is a skill which any child can acquire so as to express themselves creatively or in essays. For the last 4 years Gladys used Andrew Pudewa’s wonderful user-friendly Excellence in Writing material to teach children how to write.

Johanna Whittaker: Lapbooking and Unit Studies: Johanna is the home schooling mum to Nathan (10) and Grace (12). She discovered the creativity, fun and convenience of Lapbooking when undertaking unit study work with her children. They have been making lapbooks for about five years, subjects ranging from butterflies to India. If you just want to find a way to conveniently record and store project work in an attractive innovative way, then investigate this workshop.

1.30pm – 2.30pm Session 3

Craig Smith: Dads: The dad’s essential role in home education is what Craig will explore during this session. The father’s input into home education and family life is vital. Craig as father of a large family will share his wisdom and experience and hopefully inspire other dads to get more involved in their children’s education.

Margaret Evans: Homeschooling on the Smell of an Oily Rag: Margaret is a mother of 6, who has home educated her family over 22 years, much of that time while on the DPB. Can it be done without spending much money, and how do you choose what to spend the little you have on? Alison Kinghorn, who home educated her three children, will also have some input.

Barbara Smith: Training our Children’s Minds: Barbara takes the grammar, logic and rhetoric stages of classical education and applies it to the Hebrew/interpersonal approach to learning which results in a very interesting and informative workshop.

Katherine Baxendine: Home schooling Large Families: Kathy is married to David. They live on a dairy farm in Matamata area with their 11 children who range in age from 19 years to 15 months. Along with Kate Molloy (mother of 8 children) Kathy will lead the workshop whereby they will share ideas and tips that have helped them in their homeschooling.

2.40pm – 3.15pm Panel of homeschooling parents, and homeschool graduates – chaired by Craig Smith.

Close and thank yous

Afternoon tea and vendors stalls open until 4pm

Some Kids Are Never Spanked – Do They Turn Out Better?

Po Bronson

For decades, research on spanking was challenged by the lack of a control group to compare against – almost all kids (90+%) had been spanked at least once, at some time in their early lives. New research shows that now up to 25% of kids are never spanked, so it’s a fair question: How are they turning out? Are they turning out better? Surprisingly, they’re not.

In NurtureShock, we described some extensive cross-ethnic and international research on spanking by Drs. Jennifer Lansford and Ken Dodge.

Their data suggested that if a culture views spanking as the normal consequence for bad behavior, kids aren’t damaged by its occasional use.

To explain this shocker, the scholars suggested that in cultures or communities where spanking is common, parents are less agitated when administering spankings. Spanking almost never—when combined with losing your temper—can be worse than spanking frequently.*

But what about the third option: not spanking them at all?

Unfortunately, there’s been little study of this, because children who’ve never been spanked aren’t easy to find. Most kids receive physical discipline at least once in their life. But times are changing, and parents today have numerous alternatives to spanking. The result is that kids are spanked less often overall, and kids who’ve never been spanked are becoming a bigger slice of the pie in long-term population studies.

One of those new population studies underway is called Portraits of American Life. It involves interviews of 2,600 people and their adolescent children every three years for the next 20 years. Dr. Marjorie Gunnoe is working with the first wave of data on the teens. It turns out that almost a quarter of these teens report they were never spanked.

So this is a perfect opportunity to answer a very simple question: are kids who’ve never been spanked any better off, long term?

Gunnoe’s summary is blunt: “I didn’t find that in my data.”

The study asked teens how old they were when their last spanking occurred, and how often they would get spanked as a child. That was cross-referenced against the data on bad outcomes we might fear spanking could lead to years later: antisocial behavior, early sexual activity, physical violence, and depression.

But Gunnoe went further. She also looked at many good outcomes we might want for our teens, such as academic rank, volunteer work, college aspirations, hope for the future, and confidence in their ability to earn a living when they grow up. Studies of corporal punishment almost never look at good outcomes, but Gunnoe wanted to really tease out the differences in these kids.

What she discovered was another shocker: those who’d been spanked just when they were young—ages 2 to 6—were doing a little better as teenagers than those who’d never been spanked. On almost every measure.

A separate group of teens had been spanked until they were in elementary school. Their last spanking had been between the ages of 7 and 11. These teens didn’t turn out badly, either.

Compared with the never-spanked, they were slightly worse off on negative outcomes, but a little better off on the good outcomes.

Only the teenagers who were still being spanked clearly showed problems.

Gunnoe is now looking at how parenting styles might explain these patterns—especially the mystery of why the never-spanked are doing worse than expected.

Gunnoe doesn’t know what she’ll find, but my thoughts jump immediately to the work of Dr. Sarah Schoppe-Sullivan, whom we wrote about in NurtureShock. Schoppe-Sullivan found that children of progressive dads were acting out more in school. This was likely because the fathers were inconsistent disciplinarians; they were emotionally uncertain about when and how to punish, and thus they were reinventing the wheel every time they had to reprimand their child. And there was more conflict in their marriage over how best to parent, and how to divide parenting responsibilities.

I admit to taking a leap here, but if the progressive parents are the ones who never spank (or at least there’s a large overlap), then perhaps the consistency of discipline is more important than the form of discipline. In other words, spanking regularly isn’t the problem; the problem is having no regular form of discipline at all.

_____________

* As we wrote in our book, even in cultures were spanking is more common, its use is still very rare (perhaps once or twice in a kid’s entire lifetime), and we aren’t talking about severe beatings of a child, but a swat across the behind. Additionally, the work of Dodge and Lansford (who remain adamantly against corporal punishment) suggests that, in societies that consider spanking unacceptable, parents still spank—but they hit in anger—when they’ve lost control.

http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/nurtureshock/archive/2009/12/30/never-been-spanked.aspx

MEDIA RELEASE

17 January 2010

Time Out Targeted as Next Taboo of Parenting

Family First NZ says that ‘time out’ is now being labeled as harmful to children based on flawed ideology and without any research to back up the claims, as was the case with the smacking debate.

“Last week, an Australian parenting expert labeled time out as shameful and humiliating, joining other so-called parenting experts who claim that time out creates hurt, anger and defiance in a child ultimately harming them. They also claim that nervous habits can result, and that children should not be told they are naughty,” says Bob McCoskrie, National Director of Family First NZ.

“Once again, these unsubstantiated and ideologically flawed claims and latest fads in parenting by academics simply undermine the confidence of parents to raise their children in a positive and common sense way. Where does it stop? Will it soon be unacceptable to withdraw privileges or ‘ground’ a child – perhaps it will soon be even unacceptable to frown at a child who is misbehaving!”

“Great and law-abiding kiwi parents are being forced to changed their parenting techniques based on flawed and unproven ideology. Yet all these techniques have been proven throughout the generations to be beneficial to raising law-abiding and positive members of society.”

“The discipline, training and correction of children, and techniques being used to achieve this, are being demonized with no justification.”

“For example, research earlier this month has shown that light smacking is not harmful and can even be beneficial to children.”

“Parents should be given the freedom and respect to raise their own children in a common sense and non-abusive way rather than being harassed with the latest theories of child rearing from so-called experts,” says Mr McCoskrie.

It’s time the government listened to thorough and balanced research, and to the experience of parents and grandparents on smacking, time out and other issues related to raising responsible and law abiding citizens, rather than the flawed ideology and scaremongering of academics and state agencies who have misdefined positive parenting and child abuse.”

ENDS

For More Information and Media Interviews, contact Family First:
Bob McCoskrie – National Director  Mob. 027 55 555 42

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