Toddler teaching has become super popular as of late it seems. New games and activities for your preschool aged kid to learn new motor, reasoning and cognitive skills is all I hear and read about. I have friends that love these types of things and take time and energy to create said activities.
I look at our educational system and wonder how we got here?
- American students rank 25th in math and 21st in science compared to students in 30 industrialized countries.
- By the end of 8th grade, U.S. students are two years behind in the math being studied by peers in other countries
- Sixty eight percent of 8th graders can’t read proficiently, and most will never catch up.
So I read this and think, well it's no wonder parents are taking such extra care in helping their toddlers learn how to read and do long division? Right? I'm not convinced. As I've said before, I do want the best for my kids. They are my world and their development is important to me. I'm just not sold on this idea that teaching them things that their brains might not really be able to understand is best for them.
I married a student. Meaning, my husband loves school. He loves learning, he loves classes, he loves homework, etc. If he could get paid well to be a student the rest of his life he would quit his job today. I may be exaggerating a bit, but you get the point.
I am the opposite. Don't get me wrong, I liked school. I thought my college years were some of the best of my life. However it was more for the lack of parental supervision and classes that started at noon that kept me coming back each semester.
I don't think college is for everyone. I don't think that telling a kid that they have to go to college is doing them any good. I don't think that raising your kid with the mentality and the assumption that college is where they're headed is healthy. I won't argue that it's not a good idea, because let's be honest, in this economy, any type of advanced training is just good sense.
Here's my biggest issue with toddler teaching. Let say I teach my 4 year old how to do basic addition. I teach her the difference between a noun and a verb, I teach her how to spell basic words, etc. Then she turns 5 and starts kindergarten in a school district where most of her classmates have been in daycare since infancy because both of their parents work full time. She's far more advanced then the other kids because I took an enormous amount of time out of my life over the last 2 years teaching her all these things to prepare her for school. But because the rest of the kids aren't as advanced, the class content isn't either. So instead of learning along with the other kids, she sits there bored, tired, a nuisance to her peers. She knows all this stuff already and she doesn't care that Bobby and Jane don't. She's been hearing all about how much fun school is going to be and so far she's been disciplined 3 times because she wants to have fun and all the teacher wants to do is talk about the alphabet.
I don't know. Maybe I'm out of line. Maybe if more parents took concern with advancing their preschoolers educationally then problems like the above wouldn't arise. Somehow I don't see that happening.
My solution to combat over teaching my toddler...? I'm not going to force her to learn things that she's not ready for. I'm not going to set a goal of making her the smartest kid in her kindergarten class. She'll learn how to spell when she learns how to spell. She is however going to get a ginormous amount of opportunities for self-exploration. She's going to be showered in hugs and kisses and lessons of loving thy neighbor. She will be taught good manners, politeness and the importance of sharing. She will abide by a bedtime routine, sit with the family at dinner time, and learn the responsibility of chores. She will be taught all the things that I can't be sure she'll learn in school. I can control how much extra help she gets on educational lessons once she hits school age at home. I can't guarantee that in school she'll be taught valuable life lessons that are going to turn her into an outstanding human being that I can be proud of. Those lessons are my job. And I plan on taking them very seriously.
