Natural graphic birth: The Birth of Leliana — Breech Birth Network

Natural live birth — DnaTube.com

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This babycenter.com video shows natural live birth. Thinking about going natural? See how one mom powered through without pain medication, from first contractions to the birth of her beautiful son.
Video Transcript/nNarrator: Samiyyah is the owner of a day spa in Philadelphia. She is 38 weeks pregnant with her second child.
Samiyyah: With the first pregnancy, I delivered in a hospital, and it was very restricting, you know, being confined to the bed, not being able to, you know, move when I felt my body wanted me to do certain things.
Narrator: For her son Safi’s birth, she was given pitocin to speed up labor, an epidural for pain management, and an episiotomy (a surgical cut to widen the vaginal opening).
This time, she’s planning a natural delivery — without pain medication and other medical interventions — at a birth center.
Samiyyah: Yes, I’ve been told that I am completely crazy for being, you know, for not having the drugs, but I’ve been there and I didn’t like it, so I figured I would try this. It’s healthier for the baby; it’s healthier for me. So why not? I mean, women, we were designed to do this.
Narrator: Seven days after her due date, Samiyyah’s labor kicks into gear. At the birth center in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, Julia Rasch, a licensed nurse/midwife, performs an internal exam and starts an IV line to give Samiyyah a dose of antibiotics, since she’s positive for Group B strep.
Samiyyah is 3 centimeters dilated, 100 percent effaced, and her water hasn’t broken yet, which is common in the first stage of labor.
Birth centers offer a more relaxed and intimate alternative to hospitals for women expecting uncomplicated births.
It’s important to choose a birth center with nearby hospital privileges in case of an emergency.
Helping her through her first natural birth is her husband, Arvan. Her mother-in-law, Irena, and 6-year-old son Safi are there for support.
Samiyyah: We’ve talked about, you know, what he’s gonna see, we’ve shown him pictures, and I think he’ll be okay.
Narrator: As Samiyyah’s labor progresses, her baby’s heart rate is monitored every 15 minutes.
Samiyyah: My goal is to remain calm and try to stay level-headed.
Narrator: As her contractions pick up, she starts experiencing painful back labor, typically caused by the baby’s head pressing against the lower spine.
Samiyyah finds some relief by trying a combination of slow steady breathing, constant deep massaging and counterpressure, spending lots of time in a heated Jacuzzi, and trying different labor positions.
Arvan: She’s doing great. She’s doing great. She’s really pushing through.
Narrator: Her midwife feels it’s time to break her water with an amni hook, since she can feel the amniotic sac bulging. This is a common procedure and usually helps speed up the labor process.
Samiyyah: I thought it would be painful, but it wasn’t at all. Actually it was like a relief of pressure.
Midwife Julia Rasch: Large amount of clear fluid. Beautiful.
Narrator: Her contractions now intensify as she starts to feel the urge to push. This is called hard labor or transition. The muscles your body uses to contract are transitioning from dilating the cervix to pushing the baby down and out.
Midwife: The intensity of the contractions is increasing, and just a certain force is now really behind that baby coming.
Narrator: Transition can be the most painful part of labor — but usually the shortest phase.
Narrator: Though most mothers dilate nearly 8 to 10 centimeters before transitioning, Samiyyah is only 5 centimeters dilated and is having trouble resisting the urge to push.
Arvan: Sam, do not push. Fight it. Fight it.
Samiyyah: I’m trying!
Narrator: Her midwife agrees her body is ready to deliver. Pushing before being fully dilated is uncommon. This is why each caregiver has to manage her patient’s labor on an individual basis.
Midwife: Okay now, take a breath and do it again.
Narrator: Her midwife uses her fingers to pull back her cervical opening as Samiyyah pushes.
The midwife made the right decision, listening to her body. With just 11 minutes of pushing, Arvan and Samiyyah’s baby emerges.
Samiyyah: [screams]
Arvan: Good job! Good job!
Midwife: There’s your baby!
Narrator: Sami Sarrajj, a healthy boy, is placed immediately on his mother’s chest.
Midwife: You did it! You did it!
Narrator: Dad cuts the umbilical cord, and the midwife collects some of the cord blood for routine testing.
It’s not over yet. The midwife helps deliver the placenta, and a nurse presses on the fundus — the upper part of the uterus — to check how much the uterus has contracted.
Applying pressure is a common practice used by caregivers to help expel excess blood.
Samiyyah tore along her previous episiotomy line, and her midwife repairs it with stitches, which takes 15 minutes to complete.
Arvan: You did a hell of a job… Yeah!
Narrator: Samiyyah is now breastfeeding and bonding with her baby. Incredibly, in an hour, she is showered up and savoring some well-deserved fettucini Alfredo.
It was a fast delivery, with just four hours and 11 minutes of labor. Samiyyah’s natural birth is a success, and she’s ready to try it again.
Samiyyah: One more. We’re going to try for a girl. (laughs)
Narrator: Everyone played a supportive part on the birth team… Even big brother Safi got to announce the news that his brother was born.

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Natural Childbirth: A Global Perspective | Journal of Ethics

 

Fresh out of ob-gyn residency in Brooklyn’s Kings County Hospital, one of the busiest county hospitals in the US, I came close to being fired from my first academic posting for facilitating a tub birth in the Allen Pavilion of Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center. To rescue me from instant dismissal, the couple insisted that the tub was requested only for maternal relaxation, where precipitous birth ensued. Partially true—the patient did enter the tub for relaxation in the early transition phase, then delivered into the water some 20 minutes later while I neither dissuaded nor distracted her efforts beyond portable fetal heart monitoring. Did I collude with their birth preferences? Indeed so. Having birthed my own children in the East Side mansion basement delivery suite of Manhattan’s Maternity Center Association (MCA) some few years earlier, I was no stranger to alternative and out-of-hospital birth advocacy for low-risk pregnant women [1, 2].

Data on Home Birth

In the United States, the battle over home birth is at fever pitch, reflected in one 2014 study from Weill Cornell Medical Center/New York Presbyterian Hospital and another, with contradictory data, from the Midwives Alliance of North American Statistics Project (MANA) [3, 4]. The first reviewed Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data on neonatal and infant death, exclusive of congenital anomalies, in relation to type of birthing clinician and birth place [3]. This investigation said nothing reassuring about midwife home birth as opposed to midwife hospital birth, with final analysis revealing 0.9 more neonatal deaths per 1,000 births among home births than among hospital births [3].

Similar out-of-hospital birth concerns have been raised in European countries, particularly the Netherlands, which has been romanticized by the US home birth community and considered the mecca of optimal home birth policy among wealthy nations. In the Netherlands 22 percent of women deliver at home with certified midwives in a system designed to foster cooperation and facilitate transfers to hospital if needed [5]. In a 2008 review of 680,000 cases, home birth for low-risk women proved as safe as hospital births when there were no complications, but resulted in a disturbingly large 20 percent rate in neonatal morbidity and mortality when unexpected complications arose during home birth [6]. Other Dutch studies raise concerns about various perinatal mortality markers in which the Netherlands rank among the highest in Europe, with an overall perinatal death rate of 3.2 per 1,000 term births, which they identify as due to advanced maternal age and high rates of multiple pregnancies, without naming the country’s home birth legacy as a neonatal death risk factor [7]. Dutch midwifery itself came under direct fire in a prospective cohort study of birth morbidity and mortality related to pregnancy risk and caretaker (comparing midwife to obstetrician) that found a higher risk of perinatal death when labor started under midwife management than when it started under obstetrician management, regardless of whether the midwifery-managed labor began at home or in hospital [5].

These data stand in opposition to reassuring home birth studies embodied in one prospective cohort assessment of Swiss women choosing either home birth or hospital birth [8]. Following each cohort from antepartum to 3 months postpartum, including crossover patients (those who transferred to hospital birth during labor), no differences were found in neonatal or maternal clinical status, aside from lower rates of labor analgesia in the home birth group. Similar American findings on planned home birth outcomes was published this year by the Midwives Alliance of North American Statistics Project (MANA), with data from 2004-2010, a period in which stateside home births increased 41 percent [4]. Records from 16,924 women who planned home births showed 90 percent accomplished the goal, with low Apgar score in 1.5 percent of the births, intrapartum neonatal mortality in 1.3 births per 1,000, early neonatal mortality in 0.41 births per 1,000, and late neonatal mortality in 0.35 births per 1,000 [4]. Compared to the general US national neonatal mortality rate of 4 per 1,000 births, women in this study, high-risk or low, fared well [4, 9].

My Story

Now working year-round in Africa and Asia, I confess my preference for out-of-hospital birth for low-risk pregnancies has not changed. This despite an immersion in African maternal mortality and morbidity writ large; the wards full of women with foot drop, paraplegia, pelvic fibrosis, fistula, incontinence, stroke, coma, sepsis, necrotizing fasciitis, and all manner of iatrogenic injury; mothers with dead babies, babies with dead mothers; families with no money to pay, families with money who won’t pay; obstetric morbidity sustained in hospital for lack of beds or staff or supplies or side-money when corruption demands extra payment for service; nomads with no access whether they have money or don’t; and one camel herder who had given birth to more than 20 babies in the bush, angry that the twenty-first baby, in transverse-lie, warranted a caesarean, convinced even on the day of discharge home with a healthy baby in her arms that the hospital “just wanted my money. ” This Somali multipara’s intense bias against hospital birth is reflected in Tanzanian and continental African data on the training and supervision of health care workers and the effect of negative delivery care experiences on the reputation of the health care system: they can lower community expectations of facility delivery and result in high rates of home deliveries [10, 11].

Euro-American strategists hoping to improve outcomes by restricting home birth have lessons to learn from African data. These factors involved in hospital avoidance for childbirth in Tanzania exist everywhere. Why would a Somali woman with access to hospital care birth 20 babies at home? Her perspective revealed a mix of reverence for tradition, nomadic living, and lack of faith in Western medicine. Why would a New York City gynecologist deliver her own children in anything other than a major obstetric hospital setting with the highest level of neonatal care? Simple: I was terrified—of being tethered to constant fetal heart monitoring, of restriction to the labor bed, of pain without emotional support, of sedation, of epidural anesthesia, of medication errors, of nosocomial neonatal infection, of inadvertent bottle feeding, of every iatrogenic possibility, and of laboring and birthing in a dogmatic environment that deems every pregnancy an adversary to be conquered, lest it wreak obstetrical havoc and malpractice litigation.

My version of home birth was choosing New York City’s Maternity Center Association (MCA) [1, 2]. I had full confidence in MCA because of its history as the country’s first midwifery training institute, its stringent antepartum and intrapartum hospital referral protocols, and its time-tested, animosity-free relationship with the nearby covering hospital and obstetricians. Having witnessed countless women arrive to the labor ward only to descend into terror and labor arrest, confined to bed, attached to monitors, sedated into a stupor or immobilized by epidurals, I could not bring myself to elect birth inside a modern hospital without compelling circumstances. It seemed to me then, and still does, that the ideal role of modern obstetrics is to nourish a system in which women labor under expert surveillance, yet are able to move, to be monitored intermittently without strapped-on monitors, to be coached through the pain, to choose birth positions, with all the interventions at the ready should labor obstruct, the placenta abrupt, hemorrhage ensue, hypertension develop, infection threaten, or fetal distress erupt.

The Risks of Childbirth Today

The global state of pregnancy and childbirth today is one of obscene maternal and neonatal apartheid. In 2013, 800 maternal deaths occurred daily, 690 of which took place in sub-Saharan Africa and southeast Asia, with only 6 per day in wealthy nations [12]. In sub-Saharan Africa, maternal mortality ranges from 300-900 per 100,000 births and neonatal mortality is 32 per 1,000 births, in stark contrast to maternal (2-12 per 100,000 in Western Europe, 11 per 100,000 in Canada, and 28 per 100,000 in the US) and neonatal mortality (2-9 per 1,000 births) in industrialized nations [13, 14]. The struggle among developing nations to reduce these flagrant differences in odds involves improvements to medical infrastructure; increased numbers of trained birth attendants, obstetricians, and pediatricians; and educational outreach into communities favoring traditional birth to increase utilization of birthing centers and hospitals. All these are in keeping with the United Nations 2015 millennium development goals “4: Reduce Child Mortality” and “5: Improve Maternal Health” [15].

While in Europe and North America home birth is the province primarily of women who are educated, mature, multiparous, and economically privileged, data on developing nations show opposite correlations, with socioeconomic advantage associated with lower rates of home birth [16]. This intriguing home birth contrast between resource-poor and wealthy nations reveals an evolution of disenchantment with the exact methods that developing nations struggle to achieve, the very same that have reduced Euro-American maternal and neonatal mortalities to unprecedented lows. Some few generations ago, the women of Europe and North America experienced pregnancy much as our African and Asian sisters do today—at great maternal risk from conception to delivery, with high rates of neonatal death. Why, then, would the most educated and privileged of women from wealthy nations, myself included, prefer to avoid immersion in modern obstetric technology during childbirth? Why would any woman anywhere want anything other than an obstetrician delivery with every possible intervention and monitoring device applied? Why hasn’t the modern miracle of negligible obstetric and neonatal morbidity and mortality that is the new norm in wealthy nations reaped the seemingly obvious consequence of enthusiastic and universal adherence to in-hospital birthing? Can we expect universal adoption of hospital birthing at some future point in Africa and southeast Asia, when 100 percent hospital birth has failed to occur in wealthy countries? Perhaps we might begin by accepting that there will always be women delivering at home—by choice or by accident, through lack of access or lack of faith. We might discover new possibilities for upgrading home birth by following World Health Organization guideline for improved maternal and neonatal outcomes that advises, “increasing access…begins with mobilizing what you have” [17].

Let’s Mobilize

In much of Africa and Asia, women lack access to modern obstetric care because of cultural traditions or deficiencies of medical infrastructure. If the global obstetric community were to consider the most challenging of lifestyles for obstetric and neonatal optimization, such as the nomadic herding cultures of Tuareg and Somali women of the African Sahel, would not strategies to reach those women improve access to obstetric and neonatal care everywhere that deficits exist?

Consider:

• Subsidized prenatal vitamins to all women from marriage—or whenever the onset of sexual activity is common in a given country—to menopause to reduce preventable congenital anomalies,
• Traveling birth attendants networked to communities by mobile phone; equipped with medications and portable sonography, ventilation, hydration, and other portable medical devices for the top five obstetric and neonatal mortality indicators; and linked into cellular communication with referral hospitals and mobilization teams for interventions beyond the scope of these portable implementations.

The benefits to be had from respectful collaboration with traditional birthing practices are already evident. One novel capacity-building program in Somaliland, for example, embraced traditional, often illiterate, birth attendants (TBA) in a system of clinical training, facility upgrade, and financial and implementation support [18]. It allowed the trusted community TBAs to control and introduce a new standard in which all women labor and birth in Maternal Health Centers networked to referral hospitals for transfer and staffed by trained midwives and trained traditional birth attendants. Prior to this program, TBAs delivered all women at home, calling for help, often too late, only when complications arose. By validating existing pregnancy beliefs and community standards, a true transformation occurred that reduces maternal and neonatal risk.

Industrialized nations would benefit from extrapolations of such tactics emerging in developing nations. What steps might be taken to reduce risks for Euro-American mothers and babies birthing at home or in birth centers? Or even in hospital?

Consider:

• Engaging the home birth community by creating cooperative midwifery, obstetric, and pediatric professional guidelines for home birth,
• Equipping all birth centers and home birth midwives with portable sonography, maternal and neonatal ventilation and hydration supplies, and medications for the top five obstetric and neonatal mortality indicators,
• Adopting, for example, Mama Natalie and Helping Babies Breathe protocols used in poor countries for out-of-hospital births throughout the world [19, 20],
• Integrating communication between out-of-hospital births and maternity units in partnered hospitals to encourage remote intrapartum consultation and optimal stabilization and transfer to hospital when complications occur.

These two thought experiments are but a sample of the untapped potential for integrating maternal and neonatal-care practices. If the US obstetric community truly hopes to woo its educated and affluent home-birthers back into the fold, it may be time to create global obstetric guidelines that eliminate the stratification of policy between wealthy and poor countries, so that effective capacity-building and implementation concepts flow reciprocally between developed, middle-income, and developing nations. Lastly, it may be time to embrace home birth, in the US and in the world, rather than decry it.

• Patient safety/Iatrogenic harm,
• Public health/Chronic disease management

References

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2. The 1932 John J. Sloane mansion—nos. 48-50 East 92nd Street. Daytonian in Manhattan. http://daytoninmanhattan.blogspot.com/2012/07/1932-john-j-sloane-mansion-nos-48-50.html. Accessed August 20, 2014.

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10. Mselle LT, Moland KM, Mvungi A, Evjen-Olsen B, Kohi TW. Why give birth in health facility? Users’ and providers’ accounts of poor quality of birth care in Tanzania. BMC Health Serv Res. 2013;13:174.

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Butterfly effect in the development of a child’s ability to natural sciences from birth to 7 years / Sudo Null IT News

My husband and I are both not alien to pedagogy. For many years I taught children at the Ecological and Biological Center of the Anichkov Palace, my husband taught students at the Polytechnic University. And since circumstances made it possible to raise a common child, there was a discussion about how to do this. On the fact that the child must be taught to think scientifically, we agreed completely. However, further disagreements began. The husband suggested that we wait until it grows on its own and starts asking interesting questions. For at first it is boring with a small piece of meat and there are no common topics for conversation. And in general, how can you teach mathematics or biology to a slurring creature that blows bubbles of saliva in response to explanations of the Bayes theorem / Krebs cycle? But I think that, fortunately, everything is not as dull and useless as it seems. I’ll try to explain why.

Let’s start with the influence of genetics and environment on human development (or what happens if you step back and wait until it matures). It is believed that genetics determines the final result by 40-60%. The start is already not very good, is it? However, things are even worse. None of the Mowgli children, who were raised by wolves, monkeys, cattle and other animals from birth, could meaningfully communicate with people, even if they returned to human society. So practice shows that even 40-60% of the percentages due to genetics can turn into dust. Waiting on the sidelines until the baby grows wiser will not work.

Also, there is no age at which children suddenly become interested in science. Some start, some don’t. The teacher, if his conscience allows him, can simply take and sort the children into fit (and begin to cherish and cherish them) and unfit (and ignore in class, not take them to a circle, expel them from the Polytechnic University). A parent doesn’t have that luxury. Kinder surprise, there’s nothing to be done. The most expensive purchase in our life is not subject to exchange and return.

Therefore, we as parents face an interesting question — so what can we do to make the child reach his maximum? And when to start?

You have to start from the very beginning.

When a person is just born, his brain on average weighs a quarter of the brain of an adult. But this is incredibly quickly compensated: by the age of three, the brain size is already 80% of an adult. By the age of five — 90%. Every second, at least one million new neural connections (synapses) are created — more than ever in any other period of life. Including the connections necessary for many important abilities of a higher level are formed. Or not formed. And then forming them is much more difficult, if at all possible (read the article about the brain in full).

We’re interested in the first situation where bonds are formed, aren’t we? Fortunately, we know how to achieve this: new synapses are formed at the time of gaining new experience. Although repeating the old experience is also useful if you want to keep it: from about the age of seven, unclaimed ties begin to break down.

And here we come to the most interesting part. What kind of new experience will help shape scientific thinking? To teach a child to «read», «count», «play» chess and musical instruments before he learned to speak? Oddly enough, no. It’s too early for these skills. This is not full-fledged reading and counting, rather, a mechanical reproduction that has nothing to do with the development of thinking (this is not my opinion, but the author of this article). It is necessary to develop those abilities that, according to Vygotsky, are in the zone of proximal development. That is, this is something that the child is about to learn on his own (and which is not too easy for him, but not too difficult), but with an adult it will happen a little faster.

And our first butterfly effect will be what the newborn learns on its own if left undisturbed. Crawl. Yes Yes. Not violin, not chess, not even early reading. The basis of the intellectual development of the child is the development of interhemispheric interaction. For the joint work of both hemispheres, their functional connection, that is, synapses, is required. And they are perfectly formed during infancy, when the child crawls, making cross movements of the arms and legs (if you don’t believe me, contact here). It would seem that nothing complicated. But where is often the young crawler? That’s right, in a bed or an arena, God forbid what. The future genius of science must be pulled out of there and launched into free crawling around the surrounding space. Future wipers can continue to sit safely in the playpen.

And there are a lot of such simple life hacks with the butterfly effect. Many years ago, fortunately, I came across the book “Taking Science to School: Learning and Teaching Science in Grades K-8 ” , in which it was written in black and white what simple activities a child leads to the formation of his abilities in the natural sciences. Unfortunately, the book is quite old, 2007, but the advice in it is golden. Therefore, I will allow myself to stomp on this book for a longer time and describe the simple actions available to every kid, which from early childhood will develop his abilities in the natural sciences.

Development of abilities in physics through the knowledge of simple physics of solid bound bodies

Everyone knows that solid objects cannot move through one another, that they are stable in time and space and cannot disappear from reality and appear in another place and at another time. These truths can be realized by babies by 4 months. By 12 months, they can understand that any change in the motion of rigid bodies is due to the application of an external force (collision or gravity), that the interaction at a distance, characteristic of magnets, is not characteristic of other solid bodies. That the movement of a large object will cause more consequences than the movement of a small one.

It doesn’t take years for a baby to learn these truths. It is enough to tinker with a rubber ball, a wooden door (it can be a toy) and sticks — and he intuitively realizes the basic theories of physics even before he is a year old. Of course, he will not be able to formulate Newton’s principles in speech — but he will understand them and expect manifestations in real life.

In principle, it is even possible to find out exactly whether a non-speaking baby understood the pattern. Example: young children were shown a moving car that allegedly passed through a solid barrier (in fact, it drove behind it). As a result, the kids showed a discrepancy between their expectation and the observation that looked longer than than when the car hit the barrier.

By the age of two, children can become aware of space and time by watching, for example, rolling balls, part of the path of which is hidden by wooden planks. Five-year-olds can already clearly show their understanding of the movement of objects in space, independently adjusting the angle of inclination and the force of throwing balls to achieve the desired trajectory.

Development of abilities in psychology and cognitive science through the study of the behavior of objects with personal intentions

Living beings, unlike solid bodies, are able to interact at a distance, and cause significant consequences through actions that have extremely small kinetic and / or potential energy (for example, whispering one word or sending an SMS to a person who is also on the other side of the world). Interaction between people is studied by psychology. And although it is not strictly a natural science, nevertheless, it is also based on proof through experiment, so we will not neglect it here.

Objects with personal intentions are more difficult to study than solid inanimate objects. Babies feel the difference between them very well. Babies are aware that an inanimate object moves along a predictable path until it hits a barrier. And objects with personal intentions move along an unpredictable trajectory. In the third year of life, children begin to understand that other people may have false knowledge. This lays down the understanding of the subjectivity of human knowledge. The book does not provide examples of how to develop the psychological abilities of children, however, based on the logic of reasoning, it is enough for kids to observe human society in its diversity in order to draw the right conclusions on their own.

Development of abilities in biology through observation of living beings

There is practically no natural innate understanding of biological laws in children. Which is not surprising. Even adults a few hundred years ago believed that the brain is an organ that serves to cool the rest of the body. Even now, many adults only think that they know biology.

Children can tell a living object from a non-living one, for example, by the ability to walk. However, newborn chickens do it just as well. So this is not exactly what we need.

Older children can correctly classify and group, for example, birds and toy planes, despite the fact that they seem to have a clear resemblance. However, in this particular case, it outweighs the understanding that birds are objects with personal intentions, and an airplane is an inanimate object.

Children are able to understand animals mainly due to their resemblance to humans. Accordingly, the more emotions understandable to people a living being shows, the better it will be understood by a child. Rather, in preschool age, an erroneous humanization of living organisms occurs. A deeper understanding of biology comes to children only at the elementary school level.

But biology is not hopeless either. By observing living beings, children can draw the correct conclusions that food gives strength for growth and movement, and without food the body will become unusable. And that plants need food just like animals do. And also that animals and plants belong to different groups of living beings.

Developing abilities in chemistry through observation of substances and their transformation

As with other sciences, children should not be expected to know organic and inorganic chemistry, thermodynamics, or patterns of changes in the properties of elements in the periodic table. And not every adult knows this.

But on the other hand, they can understand that what matters for some things is what they are made of (for example, food), and for others what shape they have (for example, tools). Preschoolers perfectly remember not only words that denote specific objects (“boat”, “cup”, “airplane”), but also words that denote materials (“wood”, “glass”, “plastic”) and their properties (small or large, hot or cold, red or green). They understand that a piece of gold is homogeneous. And if you take a pinch from a pile of some substance, it will still be the same substance. From about 4 years old, they understand that the same type of object can be made from different materials (for example, a toy airplane made of paper or wood, a spoon from plastic or metal) or that two different objects (for example, a spoon and a cup) can be made from the same materials. And that when an object is destroyed, the material of which it consists continues to remain the same (for example, if a paper airplane is torn apart, it will cease to be an airplane, but remain paper). Children are able to understand the concept of conservation of the amount of matter: they realize that pouring water from one vessel into another or rolling a sausage from a plasticine ball does not change the amount of water or plasticine. In preschool childhood, children perfectly master the system of measures and weights.

The most difficult thing for kids is to understand the molecular basis of the structure of the material world. However, even here you can go through understandable chains of reasoning — for example, what things are made of, what remains unchanged during various transformations, and what changes, and why different things have the same properties.

Developing the ability to think scientifically based

Contrary to the common and outdated belief that young children think concretely and simplisticly, their thinking is surprisingly complex. Young children and non-speaking infants are well versed in cause and effect relationships, capable of categorization, induction, and many other forms of reasoning.

By the end of preschool, and often long before, children begin to use deductive and inductive reasoning, Bayesian inference and clustering, covariance and correlation. Able to evaluate if-then rules, understand direct and indirect evidence.

Young children are capable of modeling. In the role-playing game, they can replace the phone with a banana, although they are well aware that the object has not really changed its original identity, character, or function. Although they are far from true abstract scientific modeling, they prefer the model to be as close as possible to the original.

These abilities will later form the foundation for the development of a scientific style of thinking. Although it is useless to torment children with talk about abstract concepts. Even if they use them empirically, they will not be able to support a conversation on an abstract topic.

The child’s motivation

There is another important aspect in the development of the prerequisites for scientific thinking in a child. Like most adults, children are unlikely to want to solve a problem that does not concern them. In order to involve the child in solving the problem, it is necessary to justify why it needs to be solved. And now it’s time for us to say goodbye to «Taking Science to School: Learning and Teaching Science in Grades K-8» and move on to another book. At one time, Albertine Adrienne Necker de Saussure, the Franco-Swiss writer and teacher, very aptly said: “ Give the main role to the child, add a cat, a horse, a few details to make a picture, tell with enthusiasm «- and you will get a story that will captivate the child. If this knowledge is enough for you to make the picture go, then ok. If you want details, I advise you to read How to Tell Stories to Children: And Everyone Else Too. Children are very receptive to stories. But there is no need to be afraid that in order for the child to become interested, one must compose on the go a la a book about Harry Potter. The story can be very simple, but if it has the right ingredients — a child, his situation, very qualitatively tied to what is happening to him here and now, and a decision carefully slipped into the story from an adult — you will be heard.

What does it mean to “carefully slip” solutions (or knowledge, or any personal opinion) to a child

Here, too, the devil is in the details. In the book of Lyudmila Petranovskaya “Secret support. Attachment in the life of a child” describes an interesting psychological experiment. In it, children with their parents were invited into a room full of educational games and entertaining gizmos, and left for 20 minutes. Through a secret window, the experimenter observed the behavior of adults. Four main options stood out: 1 — they barked so that the children would not touch anything, 2 — they stuck into the phone (or otherwise abstracted from what was happening), 3 — they began to actively show the children how to play games and toys from this room, 4 — the parents themselves began to play enthusiastically (if the child asked what they were doing, they answered). Then the experimenter tested the level of cognitive activity of children. This revealed a very interesting correlation: children with parents in groups 1 and 3 had the lowest level of cognitive activity. The best was 4, although 2 was not far behind. That is, it turns out that the parents from group 3, who wanted the best (to develop the baby!) In the end, achieved exactly the opposite effect. Supporters of discipline — discipline and achieved, but not development. Those who did not interfere — and in fact did not interfere. The luckiest children are those whose parents are inquisitive themselves, but at the same time they are not intrusive and answer the children’s questions, if any.

There is also an article about how an adult can discuss near-scientific issues with a child. The main advice is to ask open-ended questions. Ideally, do not even ask questions, but slip materials for experimentation, and then, with an innocent face, answer the questions that the child HIMSELF has.

And even incorrect, but the child’s own ideas for his development will be more useful than ready-made ideas proposed by adults. But, of course, provided that the understanding of their wrongness will eventually be achieved.

Practice shows that highly educated parents cope better with children’s issues. Observations of parental behavior at museum exhibitions have shown that educated parents ask more open-ended questions, develop causal chains, encourage children to ask questions themselves, and allow children to interpret the knowledge they have received. The less educated themselves, together with the children, read the description of the exhibits at the exhibition at this time and cannot take a step to the left or right from the training manual, at best they tell what they themselves know.

To make everything completely clear, here’s an example for you:

— Dad, dad, is the wind blowing because the trees are swaying?

What is the correct answer from dad? Option 1: «Haha, gotta tweet this. » Option 2: “Grow up — you will know. And in general, when I eat, I am deaf and dumb. Option 3: «No. The swaying of the trees is a consequence, not the cause of the wind. Wind occurs when air masses move from an area of ​​high pressure to an area of ​​low pressure. Option 4: “Hmm, maybe so. But there are no trees in the field, but there is wind. And what is swinging there? Grass? But the grass is small, and the wind in the field is strong. Don’t you know why?

A bit about the developing environment

What is this — a bare room? A room with a minimum of toys? A room full of toys? Not a room at all? And there are some interesting experiments on this topic. In Masaru Ibuka’s book It’s Too Late After Three, the first option is unequivocally rejected. I do not know how it happened, but someone did not feel sorry for the control group of poor children who were brought up in four bare walls for several months. The second group is in a room with a stimulating environment. As a result, the level of intelligence in children from an empty room lagged behind by 3 months from children from a normal one.

Regarding the number of toys: apparently, it’s good to have them, but they are few. Then the children play with each of them longer and in more diverse ways (and this is not what we need!).

Well, the non-room option seems to be the best one. For children to develop scientific thinking, they need access to materials that they can tear apart, to tools that help them do this. They have to dig in the mud and splash in the water from the pond (with algae, swimming beetles and a mysterious bottom, which is not visible, since the water is muddy — this is me personally). Designer nurseries are great, but very far from solving the issue that interests us.

Total

By the age of 7, most children will develop their own opinion about science, as something that is worth / not worth their attention. And it will not be easy to change this attitude later. So we take a child, a spatula, a shovel, balls and sticks, put it all in a dirty puddle on the shore of the pond and begin to enthusiastically catch every little thing from there with a net until the child asks what is happening in general. Well, we are not lost, now we know how to answer 🙂

P.S. For inspiration, you can also read this article with the memories of scientists about their childhood. There are a lot of lively and interesting stories.

Living light. Natural Lighting Design

On October 20, a new stream of the Lighting Design course starts at MARCH. On the eve of the launch, we talked with the curator of the program, lighting designer, Ivan Fedyanin. We learned from Ivan about how he started his professional career in the lighting design industry, what is the difference between a lighting artist and a lighting designer, and how the industry itself is changing and continues to evolve today.

From July 20 to August 9, the MARCH School of Architecture, together with Gorky Park, will hold a cycle of «Architectural Evenings», consisting of three discussions, in which we will talk about light, education and photography in the context of architecture and interaction with it.

The discussions will take place in the School Pavilion in the Muzeon Park of Arts, one of the educational venues in Gorky Park.

From September 12 to 17, the LOCUS x ARCHITECTON award will take place in St. Petersburg to encourage and support emerging talent in architecture and design by providing a platform for young architects to showcase their projects. MARCH architect and director Nikita Tokarev will serve as a jury for the award.

You can watch broadcasts from open presentations of the final projects of undergraduate and graduate programs MARCH 2022-2023 academic year in the recording.

On June 29, an exhibition of student works «MARShow» opened at the MARSH School of Architecture. This year, on a white plane, we are bringing together the projects of students from British and Russian programs, undergraduate and graduate programs, all the briefs and studios of this special and difficult year, those that took place in person and remotely, collective and individual work. You can see the exposition until September 9, from 10:00 to 19:00 daily. On event days, the exhibition is open until 21:30, and every Thursday at 18:00 there are guided tours. Entrance to the exhibition is free, participation in excursions — by registration.

National book design competition «Zhar-kniga» is the main event of the festival of the same name. The purpose of the competition is to determine the trends in the evolution of the book form, to formulate distinctive features and to determine the criteria for evaluating the design of a modern printed book.
The MARCH 2022 Yearbook has been shortlisted for the competition and will now go to the international competition Schönsten Bücher aus aller Welt / Best Book Design from all over the World, which is held in Germany. After that, it will become the property of the National Library of Germany (Deutsche Bucherei, Leipzig).

On June 29, MARCH opens an exhibition of works by undergraduate and graduate students — «MARShow 2023». This year the exhibition brings together the concept of the interaction of the past, present and future. The exposition reflects a new chapter in the history of MARCH, but also the indispensable experience of the past years and dedication to our approach to architecture and education. The exhibition will be held in person at MARCH and will last until September 9th.

From May 30 to June 6, MARCH undergraduate and graduate students will present to critics the results of their work in the 2022-23 academic year. You can join them as listeners. To do this, please fill out a short form and come to MARCH on the appointed day at the time.

From May 24 to May 27, Gostiny Dvor on Ilyinka will host the XXVIII International Exhibition of Architecture and Design ARCH Moscow. The theme for 2023 is «Perspectives».
MARCH will once again take part in the exposition as part of the special project «The Day After Tomorrow», curated this year by Vladimir Kuzmin and Vladislav Savinkin. And also the teachers of the School will take part in the business program.

The University of Creative Industries Universal University from the next academic year has the right to issue Russian diplomas of the established sample of higher education for undergraduate programs. Obtaining a license is an opportunity to preserve all the accumulated experience and traditions, to continue building up-to-date education in architecture. Universal University and the MARCH School of Architecture open enrollment for undergraduate and graduate programs in architecture.

Continuing an established tradition of releasing a collection of some of the best student projects at the end of each academic year. In the Yearbook you can find not only the projects of undergraduate, graduate and preparatory students, but also the work of students of additional professional education programs, as well as information about some of the public events that we organized with our partners during the academic year. This year, the presentation of the yearbook coincided with a very significant date for us — today the MARCH school celebrated its 11th birthday!

As part of the intensive course «Modern Wooden Architecture», the students of the course had the opportunity to visit the production and facilities of our partners — Alpbau.

The MARCH School of Architecture and the Alpbau company held a competition for grants for training in the Modern Wooden Architecture program. Under the terms of the competition, the participants had to illustrate their idea of ​​a residential glamping facility. The authors were free to choose artistic techniques. And although it was not easy to make a decision, today we are summing up the results of the competition and publishing the results.

In the spring at MARCH, intensive PRO training «Exhibition design» begins. Within three months of training, students individually and in groups will create exposition projects for real sites. In addition to the Museum of Cryptography, the Peredelkino Creativity House will also become such a platform.

On March 1, MARCH begins training at the intensive PRO «Exhibition Design». This time the program will be built on the principle of trinity: students will try on the optics of a curator, an architect and a graphic designer. Together with teachers, students will create two exhibitions for Moscow museums — one project individually, the second — in a team. One of the exhibition venues will be the recently opened Museum of Cryptography.

From January 23 to January 27, 2023, open presentations of student projects will be held at the MARCH school. Higher education students will present to critics the results of their work in the first semester. Everyone can join open presentations as listeners in an offline format.

From December 29 to January 8 inclusive MARCH is on vacation. We asked the curators and teachers of the educational programs of the School to share their recommendations with you: what to watch, read, listen to during the holidays, and where to go if you spend the weekend in Moscow.