Deuteronomy 6:7 "And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up."

Friday, August 12, 2011

Do NOT teach your baby to read....

I just finished reading a very good article from a psychologist/neuropsychologist titled "Your Baby SHOULDN'T Read" and after reading this is really leaves me thinking, do we push our little ones too hard and too fast to learn. (You can read the article yourself here.)

I know for me, this is one of the reasons I am homeschooling my children. Not saying that public school necessarily pushes every child too fast, because I know for a fact they tend to do the opposite and hold some children back when they could do so much more, but I have seen at times where they will go on to the next part of a subject without everyone in the class mastering that one part. So then those children, who needed more time, are left behind and have a hard time keeping up.

It states in this article ....

"Leapfrogging necessary cognitive development skills....and asking a
young brain to do tasks for which it isn't truly ready...is asking for trouble with learning."

Dot is a lot of the reason why I am homeschooling. Dot seems to need more time for things, need more time to develop (along with other struggles, like having a kinetic learning style and thriving from one on one learning), so homeschooling was the best option for her. I felt like if we put her into the school system she would get lost or forgotten, not on purpose, but just because there are so many kids and they have to keep moving on, they don't have the time to go back over something just because one child isn't getting it. But since she is home with me, we can do this. If she is having a hard time with, say, addition but her math book says to go onto subtraction, we don't have to move on! We can travel back to addition and spend a little more time until she masters it.

Another reason we homeschool goes a lot along with this statement made about attachment and the benefits of it

.."Greater confidence and self esteem (and it isn't just based on performance and grades, but rather a sense of abiding and healthy self-worth)"
After reading that sentence I wanted to scream "EXACTLY"! How our children view themselves or feel about themselves should not come from the grade they made on a test or how far up they are in their grade level, but how often is it that we see that is exactly what happens in the school system today. I know it happened to me, I viewed myself as not being good enough or smart enough because I didn't get the best grades on a test (now knowing that was because I froze every time), or I wasn't performing as well as others in my class. That's just not right! And I didn't want that for my children, so I have decided to invest more attachment with them, by teaching them at home, where we don't have a "grade level" so much and we work at our own pace, however fast or slow we need it to be.

I also loved this statement from the article...

"(In the commercial for Your Baby Can Read, the announcer asks one
thrilled parent of three early readers, 'And did you have to do anything?' The mother replies with joy, 'I didn't have to do a thing!'
How so very sad that this program is taking away the attachment we can have with our children WHILE they are learning at the same time. Have we become lazy parents?

So, I am not saying that if you don't homeschool then you can't have the attachment with your child or your child will end up all messed up. That is NOT WHAT I AM SAYING AT ALL! I believe some people are called to homeschool and some kids are called to go to public/private school and they do great. I am saying that we need to watch how fast we try to push our children into learning, homeschooling parents AND public school parents, we all are at fault here.

We need to instead take our time and ENJOY our children and develop that attachment so they can develop what they need.

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