Why are children more accurate than teenagers?

Parent Cafe
1

<p>Seriously. This is not a joke post.</p>

<p>Please help me understand this. For example,</p>

<p>ADULT: What did you learn in school today?
CHILD: I learned how to multiply. I learned that multiplication is grouping.</p>

<p>ADULT: What did you (teen) learn in school today?
TEEN: Nothing.
ADULT: Excuse me? What do you mean you learned “nothing”? I thought you were enrolled in Freshman English, Biology, and Geometry. But you learned “nothing” today?
TEEN: Right. Same old thing. Learned nothing. </p>

<p>Disclaimer #1: These are not my children.<br>
Disclaimer #2: My children have never ever responded, when I asked them what they learned today, that they learned “nothing.” Now, in a particular class (subject), especially elementary level, if nothing new was covered, they occasionally admitted that (virtually) “nothing happened” in class today in that particular subject, but never for all subjects.</p>

<p>So, my children are out of high school, and I never had this kind of translation or comprehension problem when questioning them. Is the translation, thus:</p>

<p>1-“Knowledge was being imparted but I wasn’t listening.” (Learned nothing.)
2-“The subject was being instructed, but it was way over my head,” therefore I learned nothing (although others might have).
3-“No exciting information was being shared.” (Because only excitement is “something.”)
4-“I wasn’t being entertained,” therefore I learned “nothing.”
5-"Nothing I could directly perceive as relating to my practical life that very day, hour, minute was being communicated; that would be “something.” Therefore, I learned nothing.</p>

<p>Because in my work I get this response whether the high schooler in question is taking an advanced load of academics or a light, more basic load.</p>

<p>Understand that the question and response gets repeated, so it’s not a matter of just one day they “learned nothing,” but (and sometimes it’s articulated close to this), “I never learn anything;” “they teach us nothing,” etc.</p>

<h1>1 - Please help me out with the translations.</h1>

<h1>2 - Suggested responses, please. Are you in the habit of pulling out the syllabus (in some cases I can do this) and challenging them that heroic virtue, essay structure, cell mutation, and Constructions were variously covered today?</h1>

2

<p>Being a teenager, I find that the proper translation is usually some combination of 3, 4, and “I don’t feel like engaging you at the moment and will therefore talk as little as possible.”</p>

3

<p>

</p>

<p>Now that one I did consider as an option, but I guess when I want to blow someone off, I more often respond with “I’ll talk about it later,” or, “I learned a whole bunch of stuff but don’t have time to go into detail just now.” Apparently I’m the weird one. :)</p>

4

<p>I think the problem is with your question. Younger children love to share what they’ve learned. Teenagers do not, for the most part. Especially when asked a direct question like that. Whenever I wanted to hear what was on my teenager’s mind, I just started a general conversation without any direct questions (they hate that) and sooner or later, it would come pouring out. But that only happens once. Poor H, he never heard it because I would always see our kids first and once they’d talked about their day to me, that was it.</p>

5

<p>I have one answer based on talking to my oldest, who does this sometimes. Its not an attitude from her, but more simply too difficult or pointless for her to answer. We have a very close relationship, she’s very good natured, very open, and very analytical (with ridiculously high abstract reasoning abilities). </p>

<p>So I’ve asked her about this when she has at times said, “nothing”. Sometimes it means literally nothing. The work was easy and mundane, maybe repetitive and she honestly doesn’t feel she learned anything new except to practice or revisit what she knew already (she does go to a very selective, competitive school but it’s not challenging for her). </p>

<p>It can also mean that she can’t answer it because what she learned is too abstract for words or too process oriented to be perceived consciously as ‘acquired’. Some days nothing comes to mind that can be parceled into a particular specific answer, such as I learned how to compute a t-test, or how to conjugate using the compound past tense. If she can tell me that and can remember something worth sharing, she says so. Other times what she learned isn’t so objectively parceled, with a name, a principle, or easily explained to me. She knows she has been learning but there isn’t a particular parceled piece that comes to mind. On such a day, she may be proud to tell me about a great presentation she made on a current event and the interesting debate that ensued. In another class, they may have discussed the inherent tension and foreshadowing that emerged in the novel they have been analyzing. In the afternoon, she may have come to deeply appreciate the conceptual overlap between what she is studying in physics and what was covered last term in chemistry. Yet she may not be able to say “I learned x”.</p>

<p>She has also taught me that it’s a really pointless, often shallow, question to ask. Some of the most important, influential, intellectual, and mind expanding learning that goes on, happens gradually, beneath the surface, and doesn’t fit into such a question. Learning facts or skills or other compartmentalized tidbits are not nearly of the same interest or value.</p>

6

<p>“I just spent hours and hours at school and now you want me to relive it? Forget that noise. Maybe if I give you one word responses you’ll take the hint and stop asking.”</p>

<p>Starbright also made some great points.</p>

7

<p>my kids only share about what they’re excited about learning when it’s their idea & they iniate the conversation. i consider us close. they never respond well to Qs but do much better with conversations they direct.</p>

8

<p>Agree that Starbright’s answer was great. It’s a question I would never ask a teen; actually, I probably wouldn’t ask it of a child, either. No matter how well-meaning, it carries an air of challenge that might elicit a tendency to either perform for the listener (more likely in a child) or shut the conversation down (more likely in a teen.)</p>

9

<p>My older son became a teenager in first grade. Sadly he was mostly right, but he still preferred to go to school over homeschooling!</p>

10

<p>It really annoys me when my mom asks, “What did you do today in school?” (Thank god I can’t see her EVER asking, “What did you learn?”) Instead of saying “nothing,” I generally just refuse to answer at all. Because a) it’s boring, b) I’ve already forgotten, and c) who cares? I doubt she’s interested that in math, we did three homework problems on the board and took notes on parabolas. Most people like to talk about things that are actually relevant and/or interesting. If something noteworthy like a fight happens at school, then I’ll probably mention it myself.</p>

<p>And I’d like to point out that I would never ask an adult, “What did you do at work today?” and expect a detailed answer of every boring thing they did. ;)</p>

11

<p>I never really understood the point of this question though I do always answer my mom out of politeness. I have a great relationship with my parents so anytime something important/interesting comes along, I volunteer the info.
If you want to know what happened during the day, ask “Anything you want to share with me today?” The teen will either share (you’ll get answers and the teen will feel like he/she is being treated as an equal/adult) or they’ll refuse (without feeling like they are being nagged at).</p>

12

<p>My experience with my own teenagers is that they hate questions. Much better to confide a bit what is going on in my own head and then ask them to tell me what is going on in theirs. As in,
"I saw this guy today in wool socks and birkenstocks like your history teacher and it made me think of him . . . " If you’re lucky they will jump in and talk. If not you have to just wait for next time. Questions make them freeze up. Teens want more than anything to have boundaries and a sense of control. Anything that ends in a question mark is like a mortar shell.</p>

13

<p>Saying, “Nothing” is so much more polite than saying, “Get lost, you’re annoying me!” </p>

<p>We did teach them to be polite when they were little children, didn’t we? :)</p>

14

<p>Clarification:</p>

<p>I will admit that I was overgeneralizing. I don’t exactly ask them such a direct and overbroad question. I thought that the ending portion of my OP made that a little bit more clear than were indicated by some of the responses here. The questions are probing and specific, and tend to work from the indirect to the more direct, if the resulting answer to an indirect question is enigmatic or tentative.</p>

<p>I was much more referring to the repeated statement emanating from teenagers (not in response to a direct question from an adult) that they “learned nothing in school” – not just today, but any old day, and cumulatively. (“Nothing all year, nothing all semester” – take your pick) And it’s more than one subject. If you are enrolled in classes beneath your ability, or taking instruction from someone who is ineffective, repetitive, etc., these dismissive responses are logical in context. But these situations of which I speak do not fall into those contexts.</p>

<p>And again, while I never asked my own teens such a broad and open-ended question, had I done so I can promise you they wouldn’t have answered, “nothing.” So I guess the answer, they’re simply atypical.</p>

15

<p>Epiphany, I think my answer still stands. I think its quite difficult and not particularly important, if teens can not consciously articulate what they have learned. The marks of excellent education often doesn’t have packaged labels. It’s conceptual, it’s abstract, it involves critical thinking…it is development of the mind and that is slow, gradual and complex. </p>

<p>As teens, they expect (heck some adults do too!) to have these overt, obvious labeled ‘how tos’ coming out of the day, the week, the month. I think it’s not realistic (and not necessary). They might swear they haven’t learned anything because there was no ‘big ah-ha!’ and the little conscious tidbits they can say they learned are too trivial to mention (and maybe they swear they also haven’t matured, changed, or even grown…until they try to put on some old jeans). Yet one can see quite starkly that they have grown, changed, mastered a huge amount of intellectual knowledge and skill over the course of a year. </p>

<p>I guess I just don’t see it as very important. Often one has to look back and see where they have come from, or be faced with some kind of marker of the past and present, to appreciate how much they have learned.</p>

16

<p>Admiring starbright’s post #5 (and also #15).
In the “olden days,” if one read and understood the reading assignments ahead of time, and did and understood the homework problems, then one might wind up learning things principally at home, rather than in school–with occasional instances where a teacher added depth or something new. I do remember those! Not sure whether it is the same now or not. (Agree with the consensus on the thread.)</p>

17

<p>I think it has more to do with differences in brain development at different ages than anything else; during the early teen years much of the brain development relates to hormonal changes and changes in parts of the brain that control social/emotional behavior and development, so kids basically “think” (behave, communicate) more with their emotions. At the same time, their thought process is also moving from the concrete/categorizing pre-teen and becoming more abstract, resulting in less concrete responses to questions like “What did you learn today?” But the executive function abilities that will help them cement and organize this new abstract way of thinking will not be fully developed until they are in their 20’s, so until then… ;)</p>

18

<p>It sounds as if Epiphany is a teacher or counselor and is referring to talks with kids she works with vs. her own kids?</p>

<p>Actually, when I think about getting my own kids to talk about what they’ve been learning in school, the challenge is more to get them to shut up then speak up. They are both quite pompous at the dinner table and like to set DH and me straight on just about every topic out there!</p>

19

<p>Just a thought: What about asking the teens what was covered in class, or what they talked about, as opposed to what they learned?</p>

20

<p>Here’s how it works at our house:</p>

<p>Me: Did you get any grades today?
Kid: No. (conversation over)
OR
Kid: Yes. (at this point we can talk about the assignment, test, etc.) </p>

<p>And, before anyone flames me for “monitoring” my kids’ grades, let me assure you it’s not like that. If I wanted to monitor them I could easily do it through the teachers’ online system. My question is mainly a safe ice breaker that leads to a no or yes answer. If yes, then a conversation is viable.</p>

<p>ETA: I gave up on asking “what did you do?” or “what happened” years ago. Dead end. However, hw, tests, projects, etc., are tangible outcomes of a day in school. They happen and can’t be shrugged off with a “nothing.”</p>