Me again. Read the link on hothousing. It is a difficult thing. I can understand if you are yelling at your kid, you are going to learn the alphabet before you are 2 or you don't get ice cream.
I am grateful that Wila is smart and curious and wants to learn. There are times she doesn't. Then there are times she is spelling words on the fridge with the magnetic letters and asking how to spell something. Or counting and doing addition on her own.
But I did read to her for a couple of hours everyday when she was an infant, I got the Baby Einstein DVDs, I sang the Alphabet song with her and got all kinds of "Alphabet" books early on. And counting stories. You can't turn around in that section of Barnes & Nobles without hitting an Alphabet or Numbers book. So I think it is relative. Maybe if my child was not as smart and I had to push to want her to be where I see her classmates, maybe I would be that crazy.
I was a chaperone for a field trip to Carnegie Hall. I had my DD and another little boy's hand. As we were walking up the stairs of the subway, I suggested counting. The little boy couldn't count past 10. First I was shocked, he is 4. Then last week I was with another mother and we were heading to the library for a puppet show. There was counting going on and the mother was telling how the little girl counted to 23 that morning. I have learned not to say anything, like when a friend whose son is in kindergarten and learning to read and I piped up and said DD is reading the early readers also, I got silence. You all know about that. But if I was that mother and I was with another mother and they said yes, my daughter quickly learned to count past 100 when she got the base ten concept down, I would probably be doing a lot of hot housing wondering why my kid wasn't.
Just joking.
Ren
