I have two children, a second grader a kindergardener. When my kids were preschool ages I had many friends whose kids were around the same ages and I am not exaggerating, almost every single one of these kids was so advanced compared to my children! My friends had their kids in montessori preschools and most of them told me that their child was in the gifted range. Now as you can imagine I felt concern for my young preschool aged kids because they seemed so late with everything, from potty training to socialization to even talking and then once they talked it seemed like it took a while to talk well with decent grammar. When my eight year old started kindergarten he couldn't even hold a pencil and the teacher couldn't tell if he was right or left handed (turns out he's a lefty)! Anyway, I accepted the fact that my kids were dull to average in intelligence and that everyone else had these gifted kids.
Well fast forward just two years from there and my son is in second grade in a good public school. Somehow and I don't know how, he is testing at a fifth grade reading level and an eighth grade math level. He has been struggling with kids wanting to copy off of his paper and then later they bully him and call him 'nerd' and 'weird'. He tells me all he wants in life is to be average. All the gifted kids we knew now seem so much less advanced. My son was even told to tutor one of the gifted kids. Ironically, one of those gifted kids now bullies my son and calls him 'nerd'. My friends still think they have the gifted kids and still think my children are dull, but that doesn't seem to be the case anymore. I don't like their assumptions of superiority especially when I don't consider them to be very intellectual.
So what I don't understand is why there is so much emphasis on kids doing things early.. From my experience kids who are early to develop end up being average in intelligence later on. As an analogy, even animals seem to mature very early compared to humans as if humans need a slower, but longer maturation to increase intelligence or develop optimal cortical formation. Preschools promote early learning, give false hope to parents that their children are gifted and then make a good profit. The teacher recommended him for the gifted program, but all the slots were filled up, presumably by the kids who were labelled gifted before kindergarten.
