If you're looking to give your child a strong foundation for academic success, it may be shocking to hear that the best thing you can do is allow them to play more every day.
Kids seem so desperate to grow-up, when they should be enjoying childish things like play, say experts. Lisa Salmon finds out what we can do about it. Spurred on by the toxic combination of marketing, media and peer pressure, many children are growing up too fast and trying to behave like adults, when they’re very definitely still children and should be enjoying playing and having fun. Past research by parenting website Netmums (netmums.com) found more than two-thirds of parents thought childhood was over by the age of 12, and a third by the age of just 10. And while we might expect young teenagers to try to act like grown-ups, the tween years of 10-12 seems too young to lose the innocence of childhood, when kids should still be having fun, instead of worrying about their appearance or trying to look macho.
Starting from the age of six years old, girls stop believing they can be in a role that requires ‘brilliance’ –jobs like being a president, a scientist or CEO - according to New York University research.
Girls are also three times less likely to be given science-related toys, according to the Institute of Engineering and Technology, while parents are twice as likely to Google ‘is my son gifted?’ than ‘is my daughter gifted?’
These are all the tell-tale signs of what Barbie doll makers Mattel call the ‘Dream Gap’.
Their virtual roundtable on the importance of female role models ahead of International Women’s Day in March 2021 saw representatives from UN Women, the European Space Agency and many more discussing this gap, and how it is holding girls and women back even now, in the 21st century.