​The way parents speak to children about making mistakes shapes whether they view failure as part of learning or something unsafe, according to a new University of Auckland study.

As a parent, psychology professor Elizabeth Peterson found the "gold" of the study was its identification of three 'conversational features' that are crucial in such conversations - a collaborative action plan, the mention of cognitive tools, and emotional support.

"The sense of 'we' in [these conversations] is really important. It's [giving the child] this  idea that 'I have an emotion, I have a plan, and there's support behind me.'"

The study - which analysed recorded conversations between more than 200 mothers and their 8-year-old children after a recent setback - was published in the British Journal of Educational Psychology.

Although rates of anxiety among children are high and many are easily overwhelmed by a mistake or instance of failure, many parents in the study didn't mention their child's emotional response at all.

"Going back about it, over a past event, the emotions just weren't discussed. And if they were discussed, they were sometimes dismissed, ie 'Oh, you're a bit silly to think that way'."

Over half of the recorded conversations did not include any discussion of a forward plan for the child, Peterson says, and a lot didn't mention resources such as reframing and cognitive regulatory strategies.

"If they only discussed an action plan without any kind of collaborative resources behind it, those kids tended to fear making mistakes more, probably, because there was that sense of isolation."
There's real value in equipping children, from an early age, with tools they can call on when they hit a setback, Peterson says.

Alongside this, it's helpful that parents convey the message that making mistakes is a normal part of the learning process.

"Mistakes are welcome. Mistakes can often be signals of where we need to go a bit deeper. It's about being curious about them.

"Often we think of learning as this ladder that we have to get better and better and better at something. But actual real learning, I like to think of it more as a tide coming in where we learn some stuff and then we have some struggles and we go backwards."

Education specialist James Nottingham's concept of the 'learning pit' as a place in which you can't avoid getting messy conveys this well for Peterson.

"It's going to be hard, it's going to be emotional, but if we practise and we persist and we work on it, we'll come out of that learning pit better than we were when we started ... We often have to jump in and get a bit mucky."

For many, music is a central part of life, whether it's to help get you motivated to work up a sweat at the gym, focus on your studies, or even remember a loved one - and sometimes we'll do this without noticing the therapeutic benefits of listening to music.
 
It can help people at all stages of their lives and in many circumstances, physiologically and psychologically too, says Daphne Rickson, an adjunct professor at the New Zealand School of Music - Te Koki, where music therapists train.

"We all use music in our lives for various reasons, but there are a lot of people who are unable or find difficulty, have challenges, who need the support of the therapist. So the therapist, the therapeutic process in music therapy, is just as important as the music," Rickson told Saturday Morning.
 
"I think we would really like for music therapy to be a choice for people, a mainstream choice, for people who are experiencing physical, social, and emotional or spiritual challenges in their lives - that there are ways for them to easily access music therapy."
 
She recalls how a boy with autism struggled to communicate, until she found him humming the notes of a prominent car advertisement and replicated that to get him to sing along.
 
"It was an incredible breakthrough moment, his mum was there and she was very moved by his expression, and I think it's a lovely example ... because I think it's a beautiful way to demonstrate how connected young people can be to music and how they can excel and do things that they're not able to do in other contexts."

​Chris O'Connor, drummer for The Phoenix Foundation, has found a new career in music therapy, which has also helped transform his way of thinking too.
 
"I feel like I'm just a bit less angsty," O'Connor tells Music 101. "Although that could just be because I'm a bit older now, but I think music therapy has also helped sort of burnish off some angsty edges that are quite persistent.
 
"Music is high stakes for me. It's high stakes of if I don't feel a gig has gone well, I'm devastated, you know, it's high stakes, and music therapy has just helped me find my way into a zone, where I can keep the stakes high but actually be not undermining it by being too angsty about it.
 
"So I'm actually able to go a bit more 'you know what? I've got this music therapy job during the day, now I'm at this gig, I'm not here to mess about, I'm going to actually play beautifully, it's going to be wonderful and I'm gonna love, and let's go'."

Being able to help people connect with their emotions or trigger a memory for people with dementia, for example, has been hugely rewarding, he says.
​
"It's an incredibly humbling to be able to facilitate a real sparking moment, when you see that light in someone's eyes, and that's real excitement, it's palpable.

​​"I mean that's the thing with musical experiences, it's like a secret in plain sight, you know, like having an enjoyable musical experience is only something that you can know through having one, and that's a part of what I'm hoping to facilitate in music therapy sessions."
 
He also loves seeing the profession grow culturally.
 
"I think music therapy has really benefitted from more and more non-Western practitioners, more languages, more cultures."
 
'To be with other people who understand them'
 
A musician herself, Rickson was worried about how her daughter, who was born profoundly deaf, would be able to engage with music. After seeing how her pre-school programme used music to improve listening and speech, she decided to become a music therapist.
 
"It was just so obvious how music was engaging the little children, it was non-threatening compared with speech, and that's something goes right through music therapy work; where if somebody asks you a question, you have a feeling that you have to answer and it has to be the right answer, but if you are just invited to sing, then you know there's no right or wrong way to do that, so it felt very non-threatening."

Her research into children at a Christchurch school, which used singing each morning for wellbeing after the 2011 earthquakes, found the students reported feeling more settled and able to learn after their sessions.
 
"Singing together, chanting together is a very connecting activity to do.
​
​"One of the important messages to bring in here is that not all music does all things. So music therapists are very careful in terms of what music they might choose for what purpose ... something that might be calming and helpful for one person might actually remind somebody else that's not so calming.
 
"For example … if there's a piece of music on the radio at the time the earthquake struck, regardless of what that music may have meant to somebody before that moment, it may strike terror again when they hear it next time."
 
Several neurological choirs in New Zealand are also supporting people in communication and wellbeing, she says.
 
"They could go there to sing, and through the singing to improve speech but also to be with other people who understand them, to really get support from the music therapist who knows how to choose songs, adapt songs, compose songs, that are appropriate for the group."
 
With huge demand for music therapy, Chris O'Connor hopes to see more people join the profession.
 
"So many musician friends of mine would make such great music therapists, some of them have already been cornered by me."
 
 
Reference:  RNZ
www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/527406/the-power-of-music-a-secret-in-plain-sight-that-helps-bring-breakthroughs

​The ability of New Zealand children to hold a conversation is slipping, according to teachers.
 
Teachers are blaming Covid-19, excessive screen time and limited interaction with books for an increase in five-year-olds struggling to string a four- or five-word sentence together.
 
That is according to a new report from the Education Review Office, published in August.
 
"There is a complete lack of positional language, pronouns, and simple grammar tenses. A 6-year-old might say 'Me go pee' instead of 'I need the toilet'," a new entrant teacher told researchers.
 
"I have been teaching for 24 years and have never seen this low level of oral language."
 
But parents need not panic, at least not too much anyway. There are simple strategies that parents can do to up their children's chatter skills, according to Dr Elizabeth Doell, a speech-language and communication lecturer from Massey University.
 
"If we think about starting early, that would be really good," Doell says, adding that for most kids it is never too late for a parent to start consciously working on their child's language development.
 
Turn taking
 
Even when a baby accidentally smiles and a parent responds with a smile or a kind word, we are practising "turn taking". This strategy can continue with verbal language.
 
"Right throughout the whole of a child's early life, they need to have responsive partners, conversational partners who are aware of what they like to talk about and who can engage them in things that are interesting," Doell says, adding that this could be a parent or even an older sibling.

​Tired, busy parents take heart: it doesn't need to be a long, planned conversation, but small interactions as the day unfolds.
 
An example could be an adult asking a child what they would like for dinner and the child says "Fish and chips." The adult can respond with something like "I like fish and chips too."
 
"[That] is just making it into a slightly longer sentence and that's what we call modelling and expanding," Doell says.
 
Throw out a complex question
 
Home language and communication is typically more simple than what a child will encounter at school. It is also often in the here and now, such as "What do you want to eat?"
 
The questions children encounter at school will likely be more complex and looking into the future, according to Doell.
 
But there is no reason why a parent can't give their child some practice at home. Often this means posing an open-ended question, Doell says. This might be "what do you want to do in the weekend?" or "what do you want to do in the future?
 
"That is quite a big jump from that home language," she says.
 
This is something that children impacted by Covid-19 lockdowns and closed schools might struggle with, but many will likely catch up, she says.
 
"Just because they didn't learn it at the time we expected them to learn the language, doesn't mean they can't learn it."
​
​Interactive reading
 
Being read to might be a passive activity for a child, but parents can turn it into a conversation. Try reading a page or two and asking your child 'What is going to happen next?" or "How might that person be feeling?"
 
"Those nice open questions create a conversation around the story," Doell says.
 
"It's a strategy that we use a lot with children who are needing some more support with their language”
 
While excessive TV has been partly blamed by teachers for poor language skills, parents can use TV as a conversation starter just like they would books, Doell says.
 
Is there a health problem?
 
It is so simple that parents might overlook it, but a constant stream of snotty noses, ear infections or other hearing issues can impact a child's ability to engage in conversation, Doell says.
 
This is something a GP can look at.
 
Children who are neurodivergent, such as those with autism, might also struggle with language.
 
Quality early education
 
Studies show that quality early education can accelerate literacy learning by up to a year.
This is especially the case for children from poor communities and is one of the reasons that New Zealand heavily subsidises early education from age three.
 
When to seek help
 
Parents who are concerned about their child's language and communication can first chat with their child's school or early learning teachers, because you might not have anything to worry about. A GP can also help.
 
"In those [school] contexts, the children will be using quite different language," Doell says.
"The language at home is going to be much more informal and probably not as big a range of vocabulary."
 
 
Reference:  RNZ
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/525929/as-more-children-struggle-to-speak-here-s-how-to-get-yours-talking

​We all have big feelings, but for toddlers especially, it can all get a bit too much sometimes.
But can you stop a tantrum in its tracks?
 
According to some parents, a game that teaches breathing through these big feelings is helping their kids to not throw their toys.
 
The Engage programme - a series of games and activities designed to help kids self-regulate - is rolling out across the nation's early learning services, with the goal of being in more than 2000 centres by June 2027.
 
While parents and teachers say the techniques are working wonders, education experts warn no approach is a silver bullet.
 
Barnardos in central Wellington has been running the Engage (Enhancing Neurobehavioural Gains with the Aid of Games and Exercises) programme since May.
 
Delivery manager Dianne Kabigting said the superhero breathing exercise is a favourite.
The exercise involves mimicking a hero's classic gesture - such as hands on hips for Wonder Woman and shooting webs for Spider-Man - while taking deep breaths.
 
She said it helps the kids work through periods of heightened emotion.
 
"We explain to them that we use this breathing exercise when we have really big emotions, when you're feeling angry, frustrated this is a really good time to do this breathing... and then when it happens in real life we can coach them to do these breathing exercises."
 
It was a helpful technique, kaiako/teacher Tiara Lafeta said - especially before nap and kai time - because it was not uncommon for a room full of children to get "pretty hectic".
The exercises also got a good run in the playground.

"When we notice that they're getting into a bit of a scuffle we ask them, 'What can you do to calm down a little bit?'
 
"The fact that they can talk back to us and say, 'We can do our superhero breathing'... [it] just helps them regulate their emotions."
 
It is not just kids taking deep breaths.
 
A mother - whose two-and-a-half-year-old son attends Barnardos - finds the deep breathing beneficial for her too.
 
She said when it comes to the exercises, her son had a favourite hero.

​"He is obsessed with Spider-Man. We do that every time he needs to calm down or he's having a bit of a tantrum - which he does a lot of these days - and we find it really useful."
 
Psychologist and University of Otago professor Dione Healey created the programme and said it was an approach that had kids learning life skills through play.
 
"If you want them to learn to calm down or slow down if they're getting overly excited, or learn to persist a little bit more, for example getting them to complete a puzzle without having to leave halfway through.
 
"So you pick your skill and then you think about games that would involve that skill."
 
She said decades of research also showed self-regulation played a critical role throughout life.
 
"The [longitudinal] Dunedin Study published a famous paper that's often referred to around the importance of self-regulation development where they showed that poor self-regulation at age three was predictive of a wide array of adverse outcomes in adulthood.
 
"So if you had poorer self-regulation, you had higher rates of unemployment, relationship difficulties, physical health difficulties, mental health difficulties, substance use problems, criminal involvement ... so it was a strong predictor of life course outcome."

​Healey said self-regulation was a core life skill, and one that related specifically to the transition from early childhood education to school.
 
"Being able to sit still focus, concentrate, manage your emotions and behaviours in the classroom for example are really important skills."
 
University of Canterbury psychology professor Lianne Woodward agreed, and maintained the strength of the Engage programme came from its real-world application, which signalled a move away from computer-based teaching methods.
 
"It's play-based and it's fun for children, and so they're learning but they're playing.
 
"Children learn in interactions with other humans."
 
University of Otago education professor Alex Gunn cautions that no technique was a silver bullet, and warned against being too prescriptive about what was and was not 'correct' child behaviour.
 
In her view, the merit of the Engage programme was its ability to foster shared understanding about behavioural expectations and "getting adults to talk to each other".
 
"It really schools the adults more than the children in some ways ... and that's a little bit of magic in the approach."
 
Government funding in April last year, means Engage is now rolling out across early learning centres and according to programme lead, Jimmy McLauchlan, is on track to be in more than 2000 by mid-2027.
 
Walk like a giraffe
 
Healey said for parents wanting to encourage certain behaviours, the key was to explain the skill and the why first.
 
"Sometimes when you walk down to the park with mum, if you run ahead that could be dangerous, so you might need to slow down when she asks you."
 
The next step was to introduce the game that used those skills.
 
Healey said the most important part was to link it all back to real-life scenarios.
She said in the Engage game, 'animal speeds' could be a useful one for indicating a gear change.
 
"A cheetah could be really fast, a giraffe could be moderate, and a sloth could be slow.
"So if you're a parent with a child and they're running around and you want them to slow down you could say, 'Go into sloth mode'.
 
"Or if you want to speed up you could say, 'You're bit of a sloth at the moment, go into giraffe mode, we need to hurry up to get somewhere on time'."
 
Reference: https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/529696/how-to-stop-a-tantrum-before-it-starts