Modern preschooler on the threshold of school

Author: Fomina Tatyana Alevtinovna

"To change society,

you need to educate another person,

a person who knows how to live in the modern world,

navigate in any life situation.”

Erich Seligmann Fromm

Preschool age is one of the key years in a child’s life and largely determines his future development.

The development of a child in the preschool years is a complex and multifaceted process. Every day the world around him is revealed to the child - the world of nature, art, human relationships. An insatiable thirst for knowledge encourages a preschooler to be interested in everything and participate in everything, to create and transform, to rejoice and be upset.

The main goal of modern educational preschool institutions is to ensure high-quality preparation of children for school. Practical searches in this direction are associated with deepening approaches to understanding the phenomenon of “Readiness of a modern preschooler for school”, with the development of content, pedagogical conditions and technology for preparing children for school.

Preparing for school is one of the most important tasks in teaching and raising a preschooler. At the same time, school readiness is an important outcome of a child’s development. It is the result of educational work with children carried out by families and kindergartens throughout preschool childhood. And besides, going to school is a new stage in the life of every child, a new round of life, a new atmosphere. The child learns a new role - a student, and at the same time new responsibilities. The word “I want” no longer exists, the word “Need” appears.

There is no one specific aspect of readiness for school; it is multicomponent and includes: physiological (physical readiness), psychological (psychological readiness) and social-personal aspect (social readiness). All these aspects are interconnected and cannot exist without each other.

The main criterion for preparing for school should be a developed cognitive interest, that is, the child should want to learn. If he wants this, then going to school becomes for him a joyful stage in life associated with the discovery of something new.

Parents and teachers working with preschoolers believe that modern children in their development are much ahead of their peers of previous years. Today, children much earlier than before become familiar with the basics of literacy - reading, writing, and counting. Already for two-year-old children, impatient parents buy “ABC” and hang the alphabet in pictures on the wall. Educational and useful games and toys are found in every home. Most six-year-old children know letters and numbers, can read syllables, can write in block letters and perform simple calculations. To the question “How, in your opinion, do children today differ from you at the same age?” The overwhelming majority of parents responded that today’s children are smarter, smarter, more developed, they grasp everything quickly, are relaxed, and are better adapted to modern life.

The modern child loses more in terms of psychological development than he gains.

Psychological examinations of older preschoolers, future first-graders, show that today, by the end of preschool age, many of them do not reach the level of psychological and personal maturity that is necessary for a successful transition to the next – school – stage of life. Thus, the cognitive development of modern preschoolers differs markedly from the age norm 15-20 years ago. Today's preschoolers are distinguished by a weakness of imagination, a pronounced focus on the clarity of perceived information and, accordingly, insufficient development of auditory perception and understanding, a lower level of speech development, imperfect communication skills, and the uniqueness of the emotional and moral sphere.

A characteristic feature of the cultural context of the development of modern children is the fact that favorite books, favorite characters, favorite plots are fundamentally different from the material with which they are found in the ABC and the first Books for Reading. Children are accustomed to more intense events and characters of the work, so the texts of textbooks are boring and incomprehensible for them, have little motivating power and, in fact, become just texts for practicing reading skills. Accordingly, the story about what he read does not captivate the child.

In modern children, the system of relationships dominates the system of knowledge. Instead of asking “why?” the question came “why?” If earlier a child had a well-developed imitative reflex and tried to repeat the actions of an adult, then in modern children the freedom reflex predominates - they themselves build a strategy for their behavior. Children are persistent and demanding, have high self-esteem, and do not tolerate violence. Their innate desire for self-realization and the manifestation of their active nature is noted. Children born at the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century grow up in different economic, social and cultural realities than older generations. A significant change in the content of children's lives is noted by child psychologists and teachers in almost all economically developed countries. New socio-economic realities have significantly influenced the sphere of family relationships, especially the relationship between parents and children. In conditions when the state stopped strictly normalizing living standards, limiting and regulating the level of income of the population, people, especially young people, had a natural desire and, at the same time, the opportunity to work and earn more, improve the standard of living of their family, create better quality for their children. conditions of development and education. The top positions in the hierarchy of family values are taken by concern for the material well-being of the family and the desire to provide children with the best opportunities for education, to give them a so-called “good start.” At the same time, the value of parent-child communication, spending time together, home traditions and customs, and family unity has noticeably decreased. Adult family members have neither the time nor the energy for all this; living together with their children has ceased to be interesting to modern young parents. Caring for the development of the child is increasingly transferred to professional teachers - nannies, kindergarten teachers, and additional education specialists.

Today's preschooler, faster than an adult, manages to master a mobile phone and computer, TV and tape recorder, goes to cafes and restaurants with family and friends, goes abroad on vacation, travels, knows car brands, names of clothing manufacturers, etc. Modern children are more focused on the future, they easily talk about where and with whom they will work, how much they will earn and spend, what kind of family they will have, in what conditions they will live and how to relax. In the behavior of children, there are some manifestations of adulthood, maturity in judgment, orientation to the future, understanding of oneself, one’s interests, needs, and capabilities. Modern preschoolers have become more relaxed, liberated, open, they show greater independence, initiative, they show feelings of freedom and independence.

Along with certain advantages of modern children over their peers of previous years, their obvious technical dexterity, ability to understand the language of modern technologies, rapid adaptation to changing conditions, one cannot help but notice the losses with which they paid for the achievements of scientific and technological progress. A significant portion of children entering school do not reach the required social standard for a first-grader. Children live in a world in which many aspects of human life are computerized. A computer is not a luxury, but a means of work, knowledge, and leisure.

Recent studies reveal that modern preschoolers have increased activity, high anxiety and excitability, aggressiveness, restlessness, a large amount of long-term memory, but are poorly able to concentrate for a long time. Modern preschoolers are in many ways more persistent and demanding of their parents; they know how to reflect on the meaning of actions and do not want to fulfill meaningless requests. These children are self-confident and more willing to show emotions, but at the same time they are in poorer health and sometimes have a number of diseases that children did not have before. The time of psychological crises in preschool children has also shifted: the crisis of 3 years now occurs a year or two later, while the crisis that previously occurred in a child before entering school now passes in children 7-8 years old.

However, thanks to modern educational and computer technologies, the child’s psyche becomes unstable. Every day he is faced with such huge flows of information that not every organism can withstand it. From an early age, a child is surrounded by television, radio, cinema, computer games, the Internet, he learns to handle them, but often acquires restlessness, unstable attention, and the inability to concentrate on one thing for a long time. Modern children can simultaneously listen to a fairy tale and draw or assemble a construction set, but are sometimes unable to sit still during a conversation.

A serious problem in preschool children lies in their hyperactivity and quality of speech. They talk a lot, loudly, but pronounce sounds poorly, and do not try to translate the quantity of these sounds into quality. Almost every 5-year-old child now needs the help of a speech therapist in developing correct and competent speech. Not only articulation suffers, but also vocabulary, which in modern children is much poorer than their peers from the 20th century. This influence is exerted on them by the constant proximity of TV and computer games instead of books.

The level of communication development of modern children turns out to be lower: they do not know how to establish relationships with each other, have difficulty joining in common activities, are reluctant to obey external requirements, and they have particular difficulty in following the rules that are common to all. This is due to a significant decrease in the importance of role-playing games in children’s lives, with its complex system of distribution of roles and responsibilities, requirements for compliance with rules and agreements among children.

In society today, close friendly ties between children have been disrupted; they have almost nowhere to communicate and play without the supervision of parents or educators. Previously, this function was performed by children's yard groups. Today it is too dangerous to let a child go for a walk alone, so the role of children's play has disappeared to almost nothing. The child still has educational games in kindergarten, but free creativity is becoming more and more irrelevant, and therefore the child’s imagination does not manifest itself so brightly. Children do not have heroes who could teach them moral principles by example. Modern heroes are bright, cheerful, but for the most part empty; a child simply has no one to adopt the best examples of behavior from.

We live in an era of economic crises and social changes. However, under the same circumstances, we behave and feel differently. For some people, life's difficulties have a depressing effect and lead to deterioration in health. For others, the same problems contribute to the awakening of previously hidden resources and spiritual improvement - as if in spite of emergency situations.

The child is helpless in these situations, but the wisdom of adults gives him protection, since it is the adults around the child who are able to create acceptable conditions for his full development. The basis of such development is psychological health, on which overall health largely depends.

The socio-psychological standard of the future schoolchild, specified in the relevant documents, clearly indicates that the school is expecting a completely different child than the one who enters it today. The documents clearly describe the image of an ideal preschooler who is ready to start school: independent, inquisitive, active, mastering the means of communication and ways of interacting with adults and peers, having developed speech, imagination, emotionally responsive, able to manage his behavior and plan his actions based on primary value concepts, having mastered the necessary skills and universal prerequisites for educational activities. It is assumed that a child comes to school and begins to study, having in his arsenal sufficiently developed cognitive processes, social interaction skills, and the proper level of motivation, which will become the basis, the basis for the formation of universal educational actions.

It is necessary to analyze the content of children's life and try to find new aspects and resources in it that can become sources of full-fledged mental and personal development of modern children.
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Attention: modern child!

Since the times of the classics, thoughts on the topic of the conflict between fathers and children have been known. Discussions on this topic continue, and, in all likelihood, will never stop. Little attention was paid to children in these disputes, since it was generally accepted that they were innocent angelic creatures who needed to be cherished and cherished. But relatively recently, adults began to notice that these kids are not at all the same as they were before. Perhaps scientific and technological progress played a role here. Nowadays, preschoolers confidently drag their PSP into kindergarten and play “shooters”, “quests”, “walking games”, and the teacher rarely and cautiously, lest she press something unnecessary, plays solitaire on the computer.

Previously, for all preschool children, the good heroes were Ilya Muromets and Ivan Tsarevich, the villains were Koschey the Immortal and Baba Yaga. For many modern children, the good ones are Spider-Man, Batman, Captain America, and the villains are Galactus, the Outlander and other monsters, and for many adults, all modern heroes, both good and evil, are just some kind of monstrous monsters. And these, of course, are not all the differences between children of yesteryear and modern preschoolers. Such children are incomprehensible to many adults and cause anxiety. Scientists are trying to help adults (and not only scientists, sometimes just people who think they have understood the issues of education), writing various programs and works on the upbringing and development of modern children. But the behavior of adults who strive for innovations in education does not always bring joy to children. Looking around, we notice less and less the joyful angelic glances of the younger generation. Maybe they need help?

We invited to discuss this problem:

Nadezhda Olegovna BEREZINA – Candidate of Medical Sciences, Senior Researcher at the Research Institute of HD;
VASILIEVA Elena Yurievna – child analytical psychologist, art therapist;
EGOROVA Marina Sergeevna – Doctor of Psychological Sciences, Head. Department of Psychogenetics, Faculty of Psychology, Moscow State University. M.V. Lomonosov;
LASHNEVA Irina Pavlovna – candidate of medical sciences, senior researcher at the Research Institute of HD;
MIKLYAEVA Natalya Viktorovna – candidate of pedagogical sciences, associate professor of Moscow State Pedagogical Institute, head. Department of Pedagogy and Methods of Preschool Education, Moscow State Pedagogical Institute.

– In the opinion of professionals who have been working with children for many years, are there any fundamental differences between modern preschool children and preschoolers of yesteryear?

M.S. Egorova : Social institutions related to raising children are very conservative and do not change exactly the opposite over 5–10 years due to changes in the political situation, parents’ income or the content of television programs. The first poems and fairy tales that children hear are the same ones that their grandparents (if great-grandmothers) listened to. What to play with a child, what to praise for and how to punish is determined by the childhood experience of the parents. The new things that appear today (toys, computers, books) are filtered by the family and included in old, familiar structures.

A study was conducted in our laboratory at the Psychological Institute of the Russian Academy of Education: we talked with 6-year-old children on various topics: what they love and what they are afraid of, what they play, what is read to them, how they spend their weekends, etc. (in 2001, based on the results of this research, the book “From the Life of Preschool People” was published). Now, 10 years later, we are conducting a similar study. So, it cannot be said that the social development of preschoolers raises concerns: as before, they love classic fairy tales and find their “heroes” among their characters. They know very well what is good and what is bad, and they want to be “good” - to help elders, not to offend little ones, not to be greedy, not to fight, to take care of nature, to do well in school. I don’t know what would have to happen in society for parents to be unable to convey these basic ideas to their children.

N.V. Miklyaeva : I don’t think there are any fundamental differences. These are children who derive joy from physical activity and knowledge of the world, strive for communication and want to “do like adults” and “be adults,” according to D.B. Elkonina. They, like preschoolers of previous years, need the approving attention of an adult and acceptance of their feelings, love. For this, they are ready to explore unknown territories and perform unimaginable feats: for example, many parents want their children to learn to read and count early - and now, at the age of 1.5–2 years, they are ready to spend all the potential of mental development on recognizing and identifying letters , putting them into syllables and words, counting jars and molds - if only the adult would pay attention to them and show how happy he is with their success. As a result, the development of visual perception and visual-effective thinking is carried out on a different material than before - on a higher abstraction and degree of schematicity than before. The constructive capabilities of preschool children have been increased thanks to an enriched subject-development environment at home and in kindergarten. As a result, visual-figurative and figurative-logical thinking develop better.

Many modern children can do things that their peers couldn’t do 10–20 years ago. But not because mental development has become different (it, as before, develops according to the laws of systemogenesis) or the children themselves have changed: but because the demands of adults on what an ideal child should be have been transformed. If earlier this was considered a sympathetic, kind and honest person, now this is considered an intelligent and independent person. Therefore, modern children begin to lag behind in the development of social emotions - empathy and sympathy, aesthetic experiences and feelings, but intellectual emotions are very developed - surprise, joy from learning about the world and self-knowledge, etc. Conceit grows. This is on an emotional level, but on a volitional level - what? Weakness, and brought up by their own parents. Basically, they show their will where they need to achieve something from adults, but not where they need to subordinate their motives of behavior to the social “should” or “shouldn’t.” Adults often do not want and are afraid that their children grow up and... cease to be children. Children feel this - they are afraid and do not want to grow up. In addition, despite the sense of independence and self-sufficiency brought up in them (by the way, it often concerns only the expression of their desires and opinions, and not practical orientation in the world around them and the corresponding competence), they often have an inferiority complex (paradoxically: and this is when increased level of self-esteem) and are afraid... that they are not loved.

E.Yu. Vasilyeva : The most common problem that I encounter in practice lately is disharmonious development. This is a lag in the development of the emotional-volitional sphere (children are infantile, dependent, motivation is reduced) against the background of age-developed intelligence. Such children often develop neurotic symptoms, difficult contact with peers, and impaired adaptation. In my opinion, nowadays parents pay a lot of attention to the intellectual development of the child, starting from an early age, and at the same time little attention is paid to the child’s feelings and experiences, and emotional contact is lost. And perhaps this is a requirement of the time - a huge flow of information that children encounter every day, they are not able to comprehend and process...

BUT. Berezina : There are negative trends in health; we have fewer and fewer absolutely healthy children. Over the past 20 years, the first health group has almost halved. Now in preschool institutions there are only about 5% of absolutely healthy children, the number of children with chronic pathology has almost doubled - about 25%. The negative trend in the health of modern children can be seen very clearly. This applies to deviations in the physical and neuropsychic development of preschool children.

– Speaking about the characteristics of modern children, you did not mention indigo children, about whom they now talk and write so much in various media. Have you ever encountered a similar phenomenon in practice?

BUT. Berezina : So far only in the media, in literature. We visit many gardens, but have not met indigo children.

N.V. Miklyaeva : Ideas about unusual children are not new. Thus, Waldorf pedagogy already laid claim to the discovery of “secret spiritual powers” in man and the education of the “sixth race”. There are other examples.

Modern society is not far from the idea of raising and educating children of a special race - representatives of the future of humanity. These ideas are being implemented today within the framework of working with “indigo” children. It is believed that they show us the prototype of that superman to whom all humanity is moving: with enormous intellectual and spiritual capabilities, endowed with superintuition and extrasensory abilities. True, for some reason he combines all this with hyperdynamic syndrome, impaired attention and behavior, and lack of communication skills. This is another “social dislocation” in the way of educating and training the younger generation, a “pedagogical hole” into which parents and educators find themselves, associated with an unwillingness to look at things realistically, to analyze their own and others’ mistakes and due to the need to achieve instant, “one hundred percent” results. raising and teaching children. This doesn’t happen, especially at someone else’s expense. Especially if this “account” is presented by religious organizations and communities that pose a danger to the spiritual and moral development and upbringing of children, to the formation of their worldview.

This is exactly what happens with indigo children. Otherwise, so many “emissaries of light” and people – “catalysts of humanity”, engaged in “spiritual philosophy” and mental-physical medicine, Reiki, chiropractic and parapsychology, would not have appeared among their propagandists.

E.Yu. Vasilyeva : In my opinion, behind this term there are often real difficulties of both the child and the adult. These include impaired contact with the baby and difficulties in adaptation... It doesn’t matter what we name the child, it is important to provide him with adequate help, which he most likely needs.

M.S. Egorova : There are a lot of popular publications about indigo children and very few serious works. There have always been children who began to walk at 8 months, spoke complex phrases at one and a half years, and could read at two years. Children develop at different rates, and only by tracking a child's development over many years can we tell whether he was truly a "special" child or whether he simply developed differently.

– What trends in the development of modern children alarm you?

I.P. Lashneva : Modern children are more sociable and informed. They are more aware of life in the adult world than children of yesteryear. But children of previous years were more imaginative, their imagination was much more developed. Modern toys and games do not allow the imagination of modern children to develop brightly. Everything has already been done for their imagination.

N.V. Miklyaeva : Their inability to play. They have violated the prerequisites for the transition from objective activity to gaming, which are necessary for mastering introductory, display, plot-display and plot-role, role-playing games. Mostly children get stuck at the stage of plot-based play. Because the game develops spontaneously, mainly through playing with toys that are at home and in kindergarten, but is not aimed at reproducing different vectors of human relationships, in which toys are not an end in themselves, but only a means to outline their contours and attributes. Meanwhile, play activity is the leading activity of a preschool child, as it fulfills his need for social competence and determines the specifics of the social situation of the child’s development: mastering the social position “I and society.”

Modern children would like to learn to play on their own, but they cannot: today the children's subculture, which would pass on gaming experience to younger and older preschoolers from one generation to the next, has actually been destroyed. There are practically no mixed-age groups in kindergarten. They don’t fit in the yard (and parents are afraid of this like fire, preferring to keep their child busy with all sorts of sections and circles). In a family, most often there is one child, with whom adults have no time to play, or they prefer to engage in activities that are more important for his development - reading, writing and counting (you can also draw and make crafts together, but this is already the “ceiling” of the creative activity of parents). Meanwhile, who can teach children that the constitutive moments of play activity are an imaginary situation, a play role and play rules?

M.S. Egorova : Modern preschoolers become familiar with competition very early. In order to get into a good school, you need to be “prepared”, and the poor child begins to be trained. And the point here is often not the parents’ ambitions, but the fact that a “bad” school means a lot of problems in the long run (not only a low level of education, but also friends from dysfunctional families). And it’s unclear what to do about it. Schools are really very different. Entering school cannot be postponed until next year, like college - you didn’t get into where you wanted this year, prepare better and try again in a year. So parents try, and often not very competently - they do not take into account the age characteristics of the child, cause aversion to learning, overwork the child, which affects the health.

There is also competition in child care institutions. No matter what methodological manuals were written explaining that preschoolers should not be given negative feedback, children were and are being compared with each other, they give hidden grades, they say who is better and who is worse, and thereby reduce both self-esteem and cognitive skills in children. need.

I.P. Lashneva : We are alarmed that the number of children with health problems is increasing. To confirm my concerns for the children, I will cite the results of our research. Deviations in physical development reach, according to our research, 19–24%. 12% of children are underweight, and 8–12% are overweight. Over the past 5 years, the number of overweight children has increased. Every third person is diagnosed with stage 1–2 obesity. This is no longer a functional deviation, but a diagnosis. 60–70% of children have functional disorders of the musculoskeletal system. 35–40% have deviations in the formation of the arch of the foot. Moreover, 70–80% of them have a combination of flat feet with valgus deformity of the foot. Every third child has weakness in the abdominal muscles, which increases the risk of hernias. Asymmetrical forms of poor posture are associated with long-term static loads in preschool children.

A lag in physical fitness was found in 25% of five-year-old children and 15% of 6–7-year-olds. Every fourth child has below average performance in the standing long jump. The most common deviations occur in children who often get sick, in the absence of a balanced diet, hardening, and a daily routine with sufficient physical activity. Physiometric data: 25–35% of children had a below average level of muscle strength development. The vital capacity of the lungs is reduced in 10–15% of preschool children.

– The deteriorating health of modern children is a very alarming fact. What is this connected with? What factors influence the mental and physiological health of children?

M.S. Egorova : Maternal health, competent pregnancy support, patronage in the first months, breastfeeding if possible. Reducing the number of kindergarten groups. Support for various forms of preschool education. The preschool period cannot be shortened - many children cannot begin education at the age of 6; they are not yet physiologically ready for the school method of acquiring knowledge. And this is a problem not only of school reform - for example, parents of boys are afraid to send their children to school at age 7 because of the army (there will be no “spare” year).

BUT. Berezina : Unfavorable factors are an unfavorable environmental situation. Especially in a big city, for example, in Moscow. This is hypokinesia, characteristic of modern children. And again, these are diseases that are associated with both the pathology of pregnancy and the difficult course of childbirth, as a result of which children experience deviations in physical development and neuropsychic development. Increased workload also affects health and the impact of the educational process. For children, especially preschool age, this is very bad. An irrational daily routine, long periods of watching TV, sleep disturbances, lack of sleep, and poor nutrition have a detrimental effect on children. Violation of hygienic conditions for children in preschool institutions. An unhealthy lifestyle in the family is also significant.

– According to the World Health Organization, up to 20% of children worldwide have mental health problems. As for our country, the statistics are also disappointing. According to the Research Institute of Pediatrics, 20% of children aged 6–7 years are not ready for school, and 30–35% of preschoolers have chronic diseases. If we rely on statistics, then children urgently need to be saved. First of all, from whom and from what?

E.Yu. Vasilyeva : From us, adults, or rather, from those who forgot that they were once children and tightly slammed the door to their own childhood, from those who know the answers to all questions and therefore always know what is best... Every child is unique , a unique world, and the task of adults is to learn to understand this world, to help it grow up, preserving and protecting this uniqueness.

I.P. Lashneva : I am concerned about the negative information that our children receive from television and radio screens. Negative characters are found even in cartoons. This naturally affects children. You also need to pay attention to the qualifications of teachers and the hygiene culture of parents. At all meetings we talk about the fact that the load should not lead to deterioration of health and should be adequate to the functional capabilities of the body.

N.V. Miklyaeva : Each generation must be responsible for what it does. The generation of modern adults are people who are afraid of the future, who are afraid to live, afraid of everyday unsettled conditions and everyday problems. Their fear is passed on to children who are not even... born yet. And I think the point is not even that children are born weak and sick. Unfortunately, these are the kind of children that modern adults need to feel strong, to understand the responsibility of parenthood and to try to lift it - and bear it as much as you can. To suffer along this path and... learn to understand that nothing can be more expensive than this baby, that for his sake she is able (or is able) to move mountains and fight with any future that awaits him. So fear gives way to love. This is how our generation learns to take responsibility for what awaits it and the next generation. Previously, this was taught by war, now – by children’s illnesses.

Another thing is that we do not understand how to act in such a situation, we despair and become despondent, we run away from these problems, we try to isolate ourselves from them, labeling them and conveniently forgetting them. Do you think it is so important that a child at 6–7 years old will not be able to complete a number of diagnostic tasks and will be unprepared for school? Is the whole point of the previous period to be labeled “pass” or “fail” at the next stage of its development? Children are not a commodity that we, adults, put into categories - unfit, with developmental problems, or normal, or maybe talented or gifted, even an indigo child? In this regard, many parent and pedagogical communities have now been created on the Internet dedicated to the problems and prospects of raising such children; even clubs for indigo families are appearing. As if they are the chosen ones. As if they are not concerned with the problems of modern society. They have their own label and... their own price.

We analyze and sort everything into pieces, determining the price of this “everything” - the health of children, their interests and views, abilities, intelligence and problems, trying to protect ourselves from the feeling of our own helplessness. As if this would make it easier. As if it would be possible to piece together some Kolya or Dasha “piece by piece” and determine the price of his development, upbringing and training... Also, piece by piece, we collect methods and techniques, modern technologies of education and training, forgetting that before us is just a child who wants attention, warmth and affection, who is ready to do a lot for this. As a result, we stuff him with all sorts of developmental techniques, spending a lot of time so that he loses interest in movement and play, in research and creative activities. He loses them... along with the remnants of his health. Yes, overloads play a big role here, but, I repeat, that’s not the point. More precisely, not so much in them. Rather, the point is the inability to look at the world holistically and the unwillingness of an adult to take the child’s place and understand what he expects from you now and now, why he communicates with you - so that the child understands why he came into this world. This gives rise to a feeling of trust in an adult and a feeling of trust in the world, security from communicating with him. This is the psychological basis on which the child’s health rests. This is the concept of NORM.

By the way, it is now almost lost. We are either looking for deviations - for the worse or for the better, or correcting them. The same fate applies to physical, mental or psychological health. In this regard, we should not forget that the development of a child is carried out according to the laws of systemogenesis: there are always periods when some functions develop worse, others better, being in the stage of maturation, transition to the next level of development. However, diagnostics of children during this period will show functional deviations in the development of this particular system.

During critical periods of development - at 1, 3 and 7 years - the entire system is in a state of unstable equilibrium. This especially applies to the musculoskeletal and cardiovascular systems. So what, after screening, should children be included in the category of having health problems? Isn’t it possible to simply choose the optimal daily routine, physical and mental activity, and hardening methods? This turns out to be more difficult than starting to treat a child for something that, fortunately, he does not yet have. Bye…

M.S. Egorova : Unfortunately, very few people can be saved “urgently”. The health of children is laid down long before they are born. What was their parents’ childhood like, what did they eat, what were they sick with - all this is not indifferent to the health of someone who is born today. And this cannot be corrected in one day. Systematic work is needed to improve maternal and child health care. Often, women’s stories about their stay in the maternity hospital can’t be compared with anything in terms of drama. It is necessary to develop correctional pedagogy for children who are unable to study in a normal primary school. Schools are needed for children who, in terms of their level of mental development, are ready for learning, but for health reasons cannot withstand the usual load.

– Children’s health is deteriorating, parents’ ambitions are growing, and the requirements of regulatory organizations are becoming more stringent. What should educators do in such a situation?

I.P. Lashneva : It is very important for educators that they use in their work those methodological recommendations that are approved by both the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Education. Now it is very difficult for a teacher to figure it out and find what he needs for work. All materials must be tested so as not to harm children. N.V. Miklyaeva: I do not agree that it is more difficult for educators to work because children’s health is deteriorating. Yes, they have certain health problems. These problems may be associated with reduced activity of children and receptivity to pedagogical influence from adults, with a violation of their learning ability. It is more difficult for educators to implement an individual approach to children in the pedagogical process. This requires not just experience, but the ability to analyze educational and training situations of interaction with a child. There are plenty of opportunities for this: there are many teaching aids and recommendations that allow you to increase the level of self-education, and advanced training courses are constantly being organized. The most important thing for modern educators, in my opinion, is to love children, to be able to want to do something for them and for them, and to learn to think before doing. This is especially true for the use of new-fangled methods and technologies, which are backed by nothing but speculation (this is again a jab at benefits for the development of indigo children).

– What should a teacher be like to work with modern children?

BUT. Berezina : As a rule, teachers in kindergartens in Moscow are qualified. Almost all of the teachers have higher education. But we must pay attention that they work in such a turbulent information period, when there is a lot of information from all sides, sometimes contradictory. They are faced with this and even get confused about what is really needed and what is contraindicated. It is very difficult to understand the flow of such information. Yes, and all sorts of proprietary methods that have not passed the hygienic examination. That's why advanced training courses are needed. There are excellent institutes that provide what educators need in all areas. And methodological centers that should cooperate with scientific institutes and work in unison on childhood problems.

– How well do teachers know health-saving technologies?

N.V. Miklyaeva : To own something, you need to know and understand it, research it in practice and draw conclusions about the possibilities of application. In this regard, health-promoting, health-preserving and health-forming technologies belong to the category of unstable terms - scientists themselves have not decided exactly how they are similar and how they differ. At the moment, this is rather a generalizing concept, which implies an emphasis on the preventive and propaedeutic functions of physical education and health work in kindergarten.

The use of health-saving technologies involves the creation of such conditions for the interaction of an adult and a child, a child and other children, in which external factors have an optimal impact on the implementation of the processes of protecting and strengthening the health of preschool children, the prevention of possible diseases through the means of physical education and through the formation of habits in children healthy lifestyle.

What can be said about their use in kindergarten? Often, educators pay little or no attention to educational technologies, but spend a lot of time on educational ones. Meanwhile, knowledge of “how the lungs breathe” or “blood moves through the vessels” does not instill in children a desire for self-improvement; on the contrary, there is a fear of what is dangerous to health, of illness and ubiquitous microbes. The joy of movement and physical activity, characteristic of children, is lost. In addition, it is also impossible to run up the steps or run around the veranda of the kindergarten. Because you can only run in the gym, but here you can “break your foreheads.” In this regard, it sometimes seems to me that the “methods of ensuring life safety” developed today can, over time, replace the entire complex of preventive measures. After all, for example, you can drink an oxygen cocktail, do acupressure self-massage and walk on wet towels with your bare feet so as not to catch the flu, etc. At the same time, for some reason, it is “possible” to dress 25 children in warm clothes before going out for a walk, while dressing the remaining five or seven. For some reason, “you can” not pay attention to the fact that they are wet, but they are taken out for a walk outside, where it is frosty, etc. This is the reluctance of educators to break away from solving some situational, not even pedagogical, but everyday, organizational tasks of interaction with children, with the children's team. It also allows you not to notice how tired the children are of just sitting in class, listening to how the teacher has been “broadcasting” for 30 minutes, how they simply lack the opportunity to... run around the group. And how is this possible? After all, the group is not for running. A sort of pedestrian crossing for trained bunnies. What else can they do? Sit. So they sit, and we run around, introducing health-saving technologies into all routine processes so that our children do not turn into plaster statues. This is the main problem with the implementation of these technologies. I hope we can solve it.

I.P. Lashneva : The problem of introducing health-saving technologies is the need for doctors and educators to work together. But now, as you know, rates in kindergartens for personnel involved in health improvement have been greatly reduced. On the one hand, we are talking about health-saving technologies everywhere, on the other hand, we are eliminating the salaries of health-improving nurses. We do not have a wellness specialist to coordinate work in preschools. Sometimes there are not enough premises for physical therapy or massage. There are no prerequisites and no bids. And although there is a crisis now, a children's institution cannot exist without it. For us, practitioners, these are the most pressing issues. And if they are not resolved, the health of children will worsen.

The round table was moderated by Ella Emelyanova

Currently, interest in childhood is becoming more and more intense, and the image of a child is occupying an increasingly significant place in the world of adults.

In modern science, research continues on certain patterns of level-by-level development of personality in ontogenesis. So, D.I. Feldstein considers childhood as a special phenomenon of the social world, which the scientist defines functionally, meaningfully and essentially. Functionally, childhood is an objectively necessary state in the dynamic system of society, the state of the process of maturation of the younger generation towards the reproduction of the future society. In essence, childhood is a process of constant physical growth, accumulation of mental new formations, mastery of social space, reflection of all relationships in this space, definition of oneself in it, one’s own self-organization, which occurs in the child’s constantly expanding and increasingly complex contacts with the adult community and other children. Essentially, childhood is a special state of social development, when biological patterns associated with age-related changes in the child largely manifest their effect, “submitting” to an increasing degree to the regulating and determining action of the social.

In contrast to the approach common in psychological research, when childhood is usually considered “disconnected” - a separate characteristic of infancy, early childhood, preschool age, etc. is given, D.I. Feldstein proposes to isolate the main formative line of development of a growing person throughout his childhood, which allows us to trace the real continuity of the process of growing up. The need to isolate a single formative principle is determined by the fact that the indicators of maturation available for different periods of childhood (in which individual mental new formations are identified) do not correlate with the integrating property, which is at the same time a general, constantly developing and self-developing phenomenon in ontogenesis, in relation to which all are determined. acquired neoplasms.

Usually, when characterizing the general orientation, such a component is emphasized as the child’s appropriation of social norms, values, and the level of organization of the life of the society in which he functions. But at the same time, the child’s individualization is considered, as a rule, outside of social connections, only as an individual’s reaction to them, which is actually opposed to those social relations in which his individuality is formed. Therefore, it is necessary to identify a kind of “end-to-end” definition of growing up, revealing the meaning and content of what develops in the child as the main thing in this growing up.

Each new generation of people appropriates the level achieved by humanity, taking it for granted. For example, today a child from an early age can freely handle a TV, a computer, and masters all this as already solved problems, a starting position. Modern children have become, on the one hand, much more active in their reflection aimed at the world around them as a whole; on the other hand, more infantile in terms of social orientation. Serious shifts have occurred in the motivational and need-based sphere of children - there is the emergence of new, often very controversial, values, an alarming shift in motives, etc.

To a large extent, this is due to the loss and lack of stable socially developed guidelines, clarity of positions in relation to the reality of the adult society itself. Children of preschool age are just entering the social world, they accept, often even before full awareness, the moral norms of relationships and behavior in human society, they perceive the world first of all with their feelings, and then with their consciousness.

Comparative studies in different areas of child development (intellectual, moral, physical, aesthetic, development of play, communication) conducted by T.I. Ponimanskaya, showed that modern children, just like children of the last century, learn, for example, such norms of relationships as mutual assistance and willingness to help a friend.

However, unlike children of the 80s of the last century, modern preschoolers express new opinions: of course, you need to help, but, firstly, only when you are asked for it, and you don’t need to take the initiative yourself, and, in -secondly, “when I see that he himself was working, but did not have time, and when he was chatting, there is no need to help him.” Differences also emerged in the manifestation of kindness and selflessness. Modern children are not in the mood to give their toy to other children “just like that,” but “if he gives you something, then you can.”

Such changes in children, in their assessments of the actions of their peers, in determining their own line of behavior are explained primarily by social changes.

In the 90s of the last century, during the period of revision of life guidelines and values, the focus on individuality, on the independence of people from each other, on focusing on oneself and one’s successes began to prevail. Children, as we know, reflect all the features of the adult world; they actively appropriate their forms of interaction with the outside world, with people.

A complex and inadequate situation has developed in building relationships between children and the adult world. On the one hand, the adult world seems to have moved closer: children have become more independent, relaxed in relation to adults, and more confident, which is associated with greater availability of information. On the other hand, at the same time, the adult world has moved away, since adults not only become less involved with children, but also do not appear before them in a clear position of their attitude and their demands.

We found that the scientific understanding of the uniqueness of children's nature began to take shape in the second half of the 19th century on the basis of the affirmation of the idea of the child's self-worth. But only in the 20th century did society develop a steady interest in childhood as a social phenomenon, and an entire “children’s” industry was formed, covering both the material and spiritual spheres. It was during these centuries that through the efforts of F. Frebel, N.F. Pestalozzi, M. Montessori and other pedagogical reformers developed socio-psychological and cultural ideas about the special status of childhood. At the present stage, psychologists interpret childhood as a complex multidimensional phenomenon, which, having a biological basis, is mediated by many sociocultural factors.

Specialists of the Department of Preschool Pedagogy of the Russian State Pedagogical University named after. A.I. Herzen under the leadership of A.I. Gogeberidze highlighted some characteristic features of a modern child:

Formation of civic position. A modern child loves his homeland, his family, his peers and friends, and wants to make life better, more worthy and more beautiful.
Formation of a value system. A modern preschooler has a good understanding of himself, his immediate environment, his present and future. He is ready to evaluate various phenomena and events of life from different points of view: interest, utilitarianism, usefulness, aesthetics, knowledge. Modern children are more focused on the future, they look to the future with confidence, easily talk about where and with whom they will work, how much they will earn to spend, what kind of family they will have, how many children they will have, in what conditions they will live and how they will relax. By older preschool age, children are able not only to accept a learning task, but also to understand its meaning for themselves. As a rule, it is associated with the successful future of the child: I will learn to read - I will do well at school - I will go to college - I will get a great job! - I will live well! Children's activities acquire more and more personal meaning for the child.
Manifestation of the position of an active figure. The internal reserves of a modern child are revealed in different types of their preferred activities: visual, gaming, musical, literary. But, unlike his peers of previous years, he confidently combines them, unites them with each other, because he is more comfortable this way and can do everything. He organically weaves his ideas about this world into different spheres of life. He is the bearer of a subculture that is inherent only to a preschooler and distinguishes him from children of other ages and adults,
The focus of the modern preschooler on communication, it is necessary to recognize that the modern child is lonely. He very often lacks communication with mom and dad, peers, he gets lost in the world of voluminous information, he wants to talk and act together.
The orientation of the modern preschooler towards knowledge of man and nature. A child is interested in a person from all sides: as a biological and social being, as a creator and bearer of culture. Children love to compare themselves and others, play at people of different professions, draw themselves and their peers, look at portraits and illustrations of fairy-tale characters, fashion magazines with men and women, play educational games related to the study of a person and his world, ask a variety of questions about him questions.
Modernity, in tune with the technological progress of the modern preschooler. This is a modern person who can master a mobile phone and computer faster than an adult. He listens to and watches the same songs and TV shows with his parents; goes with family and friends to cafes and restaurants, goes abroad on vacation, travels; navigates car brands and fashionable clothing and perfume designs, stores and products.

Let us also note that the life of a child of the 21st century has not only changed very much, but is also closely related to the capabilities of the parents. It can be noted that children’s judgments about life, their preferences, and interests depend on the area of residence. The child’s growing interest in people and his thirst for communication with peers allows us to conclude that priority should be given to the personal and social sphere.

It seems important to think about what tasks of education and development would unite children with different life experiences and growth conditions, and to find specific ways to solve this problem.

Literature: 1. Study of the problems of preschool childhood in the multicultural space of Russian cities. Results of an interregional study. Monograph. [Text] - St. Petersburg: Publishing house of the Russian State Pedagogical University named after A.I. Herzen, 2009. – 521 p. 2. Feldshtein, D.I. Psychology of growing up: structural and content characteristics of the process of personality development: Selected works [Text] / D.I. Feldstein. – M.: Moscow Psychological and Social Institute; Flint, 2004, 2nd ed. – 672 p.

Peculiarities of growing up of modern children

502 2 min.

Associate Professor of the Department of Theory and Methodology of Preschool and Primary Education at the Yelabuga Institute of Kazan Federal University Tatyana Galich analyzed the problems that accompany raising children in the 21st century and spoke about the features of their growing up.

Photo: Alexander Miridonov, Kommersant / buy photo

The world is constantly changing. The speed at which life undergoes transformation is much faster now than it was 20 or 30 years ago. In the past twentieth century, a child developed in a small society: a family, a yard company, a pioneer organization - with a clear connection to a specific adult. Today, the child is placed in a situation of broken connections and a chaotic flow of information. Modern children are very different not only from those described in their writings by Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, Jan Amos Comenius and Vladimir Sukhomlinsky, but also from their peers in the last decade of the twentieth century.

“Children grow and develop in the conditions of a post-industrial information society. From birth they are exposed to modern high-tech achievements. All technical innovations are becoming part of the life of the younger generation: computer games, interactive toys and museum exhibitions, commercials and new films. Hence, the main characteristic of a modern child is a high degree of awareness,” explains Tatyana Galich, associate professor at the Yelabuga Institute of KFU.

Modern children talk about “adult” topics, watch TV series, understand the intricacies of love lines, remember well everything that happens to the heroes of passions and retell the episodes in detail to their grandmothers and mothers. Preschoolers sometimes make such unexpected conclusions and conclusions in non-childish situations that adults begin to seriously think about the premature maturation of modern children. “The issue is controversial. Rather, it is “hearsay”, under which, unfortunately or fortunately, there is no experience. But great awareness has a downside. It has been revealed that many five-year-old children need the help of a speech therapist,” continues Galich.

An uncontrolled information flow leads to a lack of emotional-personal, emotional-business communication with the mother in infancy and early childhood, which leads to an increase in the number of children who do not master the curriculum in kindergarten and school. First of all, we mean tactile and visual information coming from the mother.

One of the most striking manifestations of the consciousness of a modern child is clip thinking. It is fed by advertising, music videos, and gadgets. Indeed, films by cult directors, from which it is impossible to protect children, are distinguished by intermittency, sharp transitions from one storyline to another, when the viewer must hold the pictures in memory so as not to lose understanding of the meaning of what is happening. The aesthetics and means of expression of the new cinema correspond to modern trends, otherwise it would not be in demand.

Despite the negative trends in the development of modern children, there are features in their personal development that will contribute to the transformation of the modern world into a world of light and goodness.

Yelabuga Institute KFU