Looking Back Day care can be good Day care can be good for kids! It's really time to put some myths to bed and set aside the guilt many parents have about putting kids in day care. Recen studies clearly show that day care can be a good thing for kids if you choose a quality day-care setting. The largest and best-designed study ever done on day cares was initiated by the U.S. National Institute of Child Health and Human Development in 1991. The study was -conducted by 29 researchers (mostly psychologists), who followed 1,300 families and their children in 10 different sites across the United States. They released their first wave of results this past April. In terms of cognitive development, the authors conclude that children in high quality day care do just as well on cognitive and language tests as children who stay at home with their mothers, independent of how many hours per day they spend in the day care. The key, of course, is to define what high quality day '11W key, of care really means, so parents can look for it and avoid defne what anything less. The authors day care rea provide a lot of help here. The quality day cares had parents ca care givers who asked ques- and avoid ai tions to the children, ••••••••••••••••.•• engaged them in conversa- M. AM0L tion and responded to them when the children spoke. They were not a babysitting service. Many day care centres will tell you that they do that. It is a matter of frequency, however. Do they engage them often in interesting ways for extended conversations, or do they engage them when there's a problem? To separate the wheat from the chafe, the authors point to several telling signs of a high quality day care: • a small ration of children to caregivers - this allows the caregivers to be more involved with each individual child • breaking up into small groups - day cares that organize children into smaller groups for different activities provide more attention/inter- Psychology in the '90s action with the children; • a narrow range of ages - the narrower thé range of ages, the more stimulating the activities are for the children and the more interactions the children have with caregivers. If the age ranges from one month to 10 years of age, for example, it will be much more difficult for staff to stimu- late all of the children in their care. look for a positive relationship between your child and the care giver - this is a very positive sign that the setting is of high quality. Children simply do f coUrSE, 15 tr,>not form a bond with day care staff unless the staff high quality member is providing the lly means so time and attention needed to nourish that bond. n look for it Bonding with a child care nything Jess." staff is a very good thing, ••••••••••••..••••. not the bad thing that many L RICGVR parents fear. There are, however, some things that day cares cannot do, no matter how good they are, and it's important to recognize their limitations. Some parents send children to a day care for the wrong reasons, because the parents are stressed, depressed, having marital problems, or because they have a low socioeconomic status and can take advantage of subsidized day care opportuni- ties. The study found that a day care will not serve as a buffer for these children. It will not protect or immunize children against stress at home, poor parenting, poverty or parental conflicts. These children did perforn poorly on all tests of cognitive and social development, independent of how good their day care was. The lth Annual International School of Refereeing started up again at E.C. Drury High School and Milton Memorial Arena in August, 1980. Here, (former) NHL referee Bruce Hood shows Connie Brackett of Indianapolis the right direction while Jeff Gardner of Victoria, B.C. and Jim Burlew of Potsdam, N.Y. watch. Are you another yeller? If you have a kid playing hockey, or watch games on a regular basis, chances are you're a yeller. It's what people do when they go to hockey games. It's in our genes and cannot be con- trolled. Most of the time, we're yelling for our own sake because unless you have a big booming voice, the players rarely even hear you. You might be an Old Yeller, or you may fit into one of the classifications below, whether you know it or not. The Unhelpful Helper These are the people, and they're most of us, who feel it our duty to help those who don't need it. For example, when a player falls down, they will yeli, "Get up!" When a player has the puck on his stick with a clear shot on net, they will yell, "Shoot!" When a player needs to skate quickly, they will yell "Skate!" And when an opposing player is carrying the puck they yell, "Check him!" Ail this yelling is harmless. And largely unhelpful. The Mensa Yellers These are the people who yell after the fact. For example, a player will pass the puck out in front of his own net to an opposing player who scores. The Mensa Yeller will yell "Come on, View point with MURRAY TOWSEN you can't pass the puck out in front of net." Oh, so that's what I did wrong. Cheerleaders your own Mostly the mothers do this type of thing, and it's probably the nicest form of yelling. They have a team cheer, or chant one of the standards. With rep teams, it often works that the moth- ers sit together while the fathers stand at the back. The Volcano Yeller These are people who are quiet most of the time, but erupt on rare occasions. I recently saw a very nice woman, who had said little all sea- son, go nuts at the end of the very last game. She was standing overtop of the exit, scream- ing at the referee as he left the ice, calling him names that would make Howard Sten blush. Many parents get frustrated at times, and most of us at one time or another have "lost it." The Nasty Yeller I actually heard a father at a midget game in Toronto yell this to a tiny but tough opposing player: "What are you doing here anyway, num- ber 16, you belong in a circus. Keep your head up, circus-boy. We're going to get you." Alf Goodearle, the former president of the Milton Minor Hockey Association told me once that if he heard a particularly abusive parent, he would go sit beside them and ask them some- thing like: "Enjoying the game?" Sometimes people don't even know how mean they are because they get caught up in emotion of the moment. ...