Children and gamification in reality: anti-digital shooting aid from the BILD newspaper?

Breadbaking as a meaning-giving experience

Whether in the forest or in the kitchen - especially in the sensorimotor phase, it is about real sensory impressions that are crucial for the cognitive development of the children. The pedagogyProfessor Ernst Schuberth shows in his apartment on a mill that is in the kitchen - and tells a story of a granddaughter shortly before school readiness.

“There was nothing better for them than grinding the grain with the mill, mixing the ingredients, kneading the dough ... and in the end there was the bread with butter and salt on the table - a full, rich, sensual experience. ”

Tablets do not convey cognitive abilities

Such experiences await children at every corner of life: Therefore baking bread has nothing to do with nostalgia, but can be one of many steps for children to develop healthily. It is exactly this kind of real experience that young children are cheated on if parents believe that programs like the Teletubbies impart “first cognitive skills”, as the BpB writes on their website. The opposite is the case as soon as the “connection to reality” suffers, as Ernst Schuberth explains:

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“If a small child has been insufficiently trained in its movements and sensory perceptions, it will later be able to control thought processes less with the will. But what I did with my hand and my own body is immediately reflected in the brain. Every movement and every sensation changes the structure of the brain, which is exactly the cognitive development that a child has to achieve. ”

Interaction with the parents

Young children are unable to differentiate between a real situation and what is happening on a screen (“video deficit”). This is why interaction with parents is so important. If children are between 12 and 18 months old, it is easier for them to process information from a real person than to understand content from television.

The children also remember better when their parents spoke to them directly. This coincides with findings from developmental psychology: even the newborn has basic skills for social interaction, as Hellgard Rauh writes.

The basic skills

These include: a preference for the human voice, a preference for the human face, interest in dynamic stimuli as well as auditory and visual information. The child distinguishes between a world of things and a world of people: it regards objects as sources of information to which it pays attention "long, concentrated and tense" - and then suddenly turns away. The behavior of people who are seen as interaction partners is completely different, as Rauh explains:

“With them it is more relaxed, shows livelier facial expressions, lip and tongue movements (...), positive sounds (cooing) and smiles as well as a rhythmic look and vocalization behavior, even hand movements that are like preforms of gesture Act."

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The responsibility of the parents

Prof. Thomas Fischer can only agree with these statements. He has studied the world in many facets and completed three subjects (Business Economics, Law and Psychology). Since 2011 he is a lecturer in leadership psychology, namely at the University of Applied Sciences of the University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland. Therefore, he has an overview of where one-sided developments in childhood lead and says:

“My concern is that digitization does not give children enough space to really settle in physically. It's much easier to put a child in front of the caster than to walk with him outside in the forest, where you can pick up and throw away a pine cone. At the beginning of life, motor patterns are built up neurophysiologically, the large connections in the brain. This results in a considerable responsibility for the parents: I cannot sit in front of the computer all the time and expect my children to play happily without electronics. The kids want what dad and mom do. If the adults keep the iPhone in front of their nose, the child will try to imitate this behavior. ”

Help from the picture newspaper

In this question, Fischer gets help from a surprising corner. The BILD newspaper also cares about the well-being of children who grow up in the digital age. In a heading on September 09, 2014, she asked the question:

“When does my child need a smartphone? Before the third birthday, no child should get a mobile device in their hands - not even that of their parents. ”

Digital worlds are surrogates

Conclusion: Children under three years have nothing to look for. Finished, finished. This also applies to tablets, smartphones and all other gadgets, which are supposedly indispensable to children in the digital age.

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The misconception that the earlier children wipe tablets, the better prepared they are to later use digital media efficiently. Anyone who claims that overlooks a crucial difference: Digital worlds are not real worlds. They are a surrogate, a substitute for real experiences in reality.

The building blocks of the environment

Children reach for the world - and thus understand the first building blocks of their complicated environment. There are no terms yet, the cognitive process starts at a very basic level. It is only in the brain that the basics develop in order to solve mental problems later. This requires a variety of suggestions from the real world - simple toys, walks in the forest or direct interaction with parents. Hellgard Rauh writes:

"The ideas of objects and people, of processes and laws thus arise from the child's acting experience with its environment and are an active intellectual achievement of the child."

Acting experiences are imperative

Acting experiences are imperative for healthy development, but this cannot take place passively in front of electronic media. Passive and not interactive, as the objection could be. Because when toddlers swipe on the tablet or press keys on the gaming laptop, only a very limited motor repertoire is practiced. Not to mention the fact that real sensory experiences are not possible in this way.

Or can a forest be simulated on the screen - with green trees, rotted branches and anthills? With the musty smell of the floor, the song of the birds and the crackling noises when rotten wood breaks apart? No - this world is so unique that we have the important task of introducing our children to life from the beginning.

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