Taking a child development course!
I'm going for my Bachelor of Commerce, so the two are completely unrelated but I chose it for an elective anyways. And I'm so glad I did! Not only have I learned tons of stuff about children, I've also discovered lots of evidence and statistics to back up my beliefs about parenting. And because I can relate to so much of the textbook, it's much easier to learn and remember.
However, I am doing school online so I don't actually attend a class. I'm not sure I would be so thrilled with listening to a bunch of non-parents debating whether my parenting techniques are appropriate or not :)
What have your experiences been with Child Development courses?
the first time i took developmental psych, i was pregnant. and it was great, i mean really and truly fantastic. the professor was really cool and had an approach i generally agreed with. heavy on piaget. i learned so much, probably more than i learned from my pregnancy library :) there are still times when i recall something from that class and apply it to my interactions and understanding of my kid. it's a huge benefit, and i feel so grateful for having taken it when i did. the timing was uncanny.
i have always joked that every expecting couple should be required to take a full semester of developmental psych.
now that i'm taking it on a graduate level with a school psych slant, it is still interesting, but i'm finding SO MUCH bias in the text book. the professor said the book is for social work, which it obviosly is, but a lot of the case studies are like "lucy is a preschooler whose mother, ms johnson, has her when she was 18 years old, and the father left ms johnson while she was pregnant. in observing ms johnson interact with lucy, it is apparent she does not understand her needs... blah blah blah." this is like, every chapter. it's really annoying, but we haven't talked about any reading in the book, so i think i'm just going to stop reading it
:roll:
I took 2 parenting classes (high school not college), while I was pregnant too. I found it very helpful. If I hadn't taken it, I wouldn't understand the reasons Kaden does certain things (that normally tend to irritate me and then I remember something I learned about in that class and Im like "Okay I cant get mad at him for doing this") Like when he gets into EVERYTHING and then I think "okay he has to get into stuff so that he can learn what everthing is" KWIM?