WK6: The Sexualization of Early Childhood

“So sexy so soon” was very shocking to me but it also made me realize that today’s environments make children develop sexuality so early. I agree that early sexualization is a big issue because it is related to how they use their precious time, how they develop self-esteem and how they have relationships with others.            

 

My six-year-old daughter does not show much sexuality yet. However, I recently felt that media is not so healthy and it is so hard to avoid while benefiting from fun parts of it. My daughter loves the song “Die Young”. Since she and I can’t catch exactly what the words say and liked the tune, I liked her to have a favorite song. However, when I thought about showing her the music video of the song, I was shocked how sexual it was. I used to think her trying to sing the song with music was good because she can practice her English but I found out that she was trying to learn what I do not want her to know yet.

 

I think that the messages impact children by indicating a sexual relationship is how a man and woman have relationships, using sexual appeal is a good thing and being sexy is a scale of evaluating people.

 

I think that early childhood professionals can raise awareness for parents of the negative impacts of the media in regards to early sexualization and recommend that they avoid inappropriate ones to reduce the negative effects. Another thing we can do is when we hear inappropriate words from children who are just mimicking what they heard from media, we should teach them appropriate ways. If we heard “Baby, I’m your slave. I’ll let you whip me if I misbehave,” we can explain that when we love somebody, the way to show love is not becoming a slave but understanding, caring and doing nice things for the person. And you deserve the same back too.

Resource

Levin, D. E., & Kilbourne, J. (2009). [Introduction]. So sexy so soon: The new sexualized childhood and what parents can do to protect their kids (pp. 1-8). New York: Ballantine Books. Retrieved from: http://dianeelevin.com/sosexysosoon/introduction.pdf

WK5: Evaluating Impacts on Professional Practice

I think my experiencing isms work both positively and negatively to children and families. I try to act fairly or speak up for victims of the isms I have experienced. For example, my mother only asked me to help with the housework; only her daughter, not to her son. Since I thought it was unfair, I try to teach children that we should be willing to help others out with their work so that gender roles associated with certain chores are not encouraged while making sure girls do not feel pressured to be subordinate to others. I feel that being humble and hiding feelings or opinions, traits that are considered virtues in my culture, do not help me to thrive in American culture. Rather, I feel that people see me as unconfident or weak and lead people act unfairly and disrespectfully towards me. So, I encourage children not to hide their abilities or feelings as well as teach them to respect others.

However, my experiences of isms may have given me a negative impression of groups that I associate with people who’ve acted in biased ways towards me. I might see a family from a certain group with the prejudice that they could have prejudice against me without reason. And this could become a barrier which would prevent me from having a truly trusting relationship with them.

WK3: Observing Communication

I observed an interaction between a preschool teacher and a preschooler in the classroom. The teacher heard that the child’s grandmother had passed away. At snack time, she talked with him, saying “I heard your granma has passed away.” He nodded. She asked, “Are you sad?” with empathetic tone. He nodded again and his eyes looked a little wet with tears. She said, “You know, it is OK because she is going to watch you all the time now and you even have a great granpa.” He nodded and smiled a little bit and went back to eating his snack.

 

What I learned is that adults should not avoid conversations about the loss of an intimate person or something sad that happens to a child because I’ve noticed that the child understood a sad event that happened to him and that he looked happy about having caring adults around when he was having a hard time and so he could share his feelings.

 

Lisa Kolbeck talked about how she encourages children to talk and listen to each other and spread their play by her talking about scientific factors (Laureate Education, Inc., 2011). I think the teacher could have included his classmates with permission from his parents. I think he was able to learn that he could be sad and tell it to an adult from the interaction with the teacher. If his peers tried to support him with this, he would notice that his friends are with him when he has a hard time and he could do the same for his friends when they have hard times. Also his peers will be able to learn how they should act when somebody is sad.

 

I think that the teacher’s showing her concern for him helped him to notice that he is supported and cared. I also think he felt that he is seen as an important person instead of a helpless child with the fact that the teacher talked about the event which is hard for a child to understand and deal with.

 

I try to talk about topics that are difficult for children by making them simple. I think this part is similar to the teacher. However, if I was in her place, I might have been nervous about talking about it and that could have made an awkward atmosphere. But the teacher brought this conversation up very naturally. I think this example will improve my communication with children because I think I may sometimes sound unnatural because I think too much or try to be too careful about how I say things. I believe that children will not open their hearts if I sound like I have agenda hidden behind my words.

Reference

Laureate Education, Inc. (2011). Strategies for working with diverse children. Baltimore, MD: Author.

WK: Creating Affirming Environments

I would make my setting reflect diverse cultures visually and with sound because I want all the children to feel the classroom is theirs. I would decorate the walls with posters and pictures of people from different countries and scenery from daily life in different types of places all around the world such as markets, buildings and festivals. I also put up words in different languages and play music from different cultures. 

The thing I would want to put my biggest effort into would be toys. It is because toys appeal visually and are things that children use the most and naturally have interest in the most. I also think that using toys from different cultures is a good way for children to learn about cultures and make children barrierless towards new cultures and people from different cultures. Starting from having dolls that reflect races and cultures, I would like to get toy food that reflect different cultural norms, blocks from buildings from different countries, traditional toys, and stuffed toys based on characters that are popular in other countries.

Above is an example of toys that reflect Japanese culture. I would collect these kinds of toys from different countries.

Adriana shows the decorations of cultural things that families brings. I think this is a good idea. I also would ask children and families to draw what they do outside of the school or what is important to them.  I would have time for them to talk about and teach me and other children things from their cultures such as dances, songs, foods, methods making animals with origami and so on.

Strategies for Working with Diverse Children

WK8: What I Have Learned

One hope I have when working with children and families from diverse backgrounds is that they can feel they are understood and welcomed. It is typically easy to look nice and exchange friendly conversations. However, the roles of early childhood educators are deeper than being nice around the children and their families. I hope to understand what their beliefs are, what differences and discomfort they have experienced when dealing the dominant groups, and what anxiety they have so that I can help the children to develop positive identities and to be fully nurtured.

One goal I would like to set for the early childhood field is to increase the number of staff and teachers who are educated on anti-bias education. Anti-bias education is very important because it affects healthy identity development. I believe this is more important in the long run than teaching letters or math. However, I feel that currently more and more time and interest are devoted to more academic topics. That is why I set this goal.  

                    

To my colleagues,

Thank you very much for sharing your insights. I hope we all can become true anti-bias educator and make changes in the early childhood field. Please let me know if I can help you with something even after we finish our course.

 

Aya

Start Seeing Diversity Blog: Creating Art

What I wanted to show in the illustration is that children build their identities from what other people think about them or their groups, which can be biases, something that causes children to feel discomfort or trauma (Spay of the colors indicating that). I also wanted to show that those messages or experiences stay in children as they grow up. I did not add physical features for the children because the differences among children are limitless and these differences are equally important. The colors are both in dark and bright colors because children get positive and negative messages and the mix of the colors can be taken as beautiful or dirty depending on people viewing it because I believe that identities are the same since some people may think one person’s features are cool and others may not agree. I chose to not put faces on the children as they are growing up in the illustration because some children view their identities as positive and others do not. I also wanted to show identities are subjective and dynamic in some ways.