Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Your baby can read

Ouch
I think blue collar men at HOT!, so I married one, and we started our own small business.

My DS had to touch the stove twice just to prove it did not hurt him and he was too stuburn to cry
"If your going to be dumb, you got to be tough"

The initial premise seems to assume that kids are flawed in the way they learn or in their motivation if we don't direct it or fix their learning. I don't by that premise.

Because parents don't buy Teach Your Baby to Read or sit down and give kids formal lessons, doesn't mean toddlers and preschoolers aren't learning hard work or perseverance. In fact the formalized parent directed learning may actually kill that joy in learning and the self awareness of what works for that individual.

My DD also has had issues with constipation, and I handled it by explaining that she needs to eat more fiber and drink more water, and she has changed her diet as a result. Yes, I would prefer that she experiences horrible constipation once (or even a few times) and learn from it, than be force-fed healthy food until she is too old to be forced (at which time I presume that she'd start eating ice cream for breakfast). Obviously if you are talking about a medical condition with more serious repercussions, the answer would be different.

It seems to me that you have a very particular vision of the future you want for your child...and I think that's a dangerous thing. When I think of what I want for my DD, all it is is her happiness (okay, okay, and a grandchild someday). I think my job is simply to make sure she has a happy, safe, and full childhood, not to make sure she is able to have any particular career (or type of career). The latter is her own decision and her own responsibility.

Besides which, I think we are all working off of a very likely flawed assumption; that being, that we can decide these things for our children. Does anyone here really believe that a program like Your Baby Can Read can have a significant effect on a child's future opportunities? Really? Honestly? I am sure I could force my DD to stop skipping 16 when she counts if I wanted to drill her, but I can't imagine that it could possibly have any positive effect on her potential. It would, however, surely impact our relationship and her happiness and free time.

Not enough parents think as you do, Dandy. A little "failure" goes a long way!

OK, I was interested to see how the"Your Baby Can Read" program looked like. Well, you can watch some of it from youtube and it looked really boring to me. To prove it I took my 26mo old DD and sat her in my lap to watch one of the clips. After 1min she started asking for anything else. She usually has no problem concentrating LOL

At least for us that program would not work, as she would be begging for something more interesting to watch.

I guess I really don't see the point of trying to "give the child an edge" as an infant or a child.

I think, if a child ASKS for specific things like wanting to take ballet, or music lessons, or go to science camp (like my dd7 did), it's good to support that interest.

I have a pretty enriched environment at home, but never had the desire to teach reading early. I had one that went from not reading before kindy to reading 6th grade material in the span of 2 years. I have one daughter that self-taught to read at 4.5. She's reading easy chapter books (Magic Treehouse) and she's almost 6 now.

I don't see the point in sitting down teaching a baby to read when I think kids who are really interested and really ready will catch on and quickly advance.

Kids need time to be kids. There will be opportunities when they are older to be tailored for the job market, I kind of think it's a waste of my headspace to worry about what my almost 6 year old will do for a career when she's 20. I want to enjoy her being a child as long as she can.

There's a lot to be said about being able to just play in terms of creative thinking/creative problem solving (a skill in high demand in many careers).

Here's some food for thought

NPR articles:

Old Fashioned Play Builds Serious Skills


Creative Play Makes for Kids in Control

From a homeschooling archive
Much Too Early

Okay, I have to modify the portion below. I don't know if this group is the same as Your Baby Can Read...but if not it is seems similar to the Doman techniques.

The author of Teach Your baby to read, G. Doman, has been under a LOT of criticism over the years, taking peoples money for his "proven" techniques.
Rush Little Baby

His original studies were regarding brain damaged children, and his techniques have been criticized for the use with brain damaged children by the AAP

See Wikipedia Article

The Institutes for the Achievement of Human Potential


Go ahead, spend money on ridiculous scams to give your baby an edge, but it's not proven to be beneficial over the long term.

Thank you Sciencemama.

[quote=no5no5 It seems to me that you have a very particular vision of the future you want for your child...and I think that's a dangerous thing. When I think of what I want for my DD, all it is is her happiness (okay, okay, and a grandchild someday). I think my job is simply to make sure she has a happy, safe, and full childhood, not to make sure she is able to have any particular career (or type of career). The latter is her own decision and her own responsibility.

Besides which, I think we are all working off of a very likely flawed assumption; that being, that we can decide these things for our children. Does anyone here really believe that a program like Your Baby Can Read can have a significant effect on a child's future opportunities? Really? Honestly? I am sure I could force my DD to stop skipping 16 when she counts if I wanted to drill her, but I can't imagine that it could possibly have any positive effect on her potential. It would, however, surely impact our relationship and her happiness and free time. [/quote]


Well, I've bobbled the quote function somehow, but with luck, you will have mercy on my technical limitations, which are manifold, not to mention manifest!

no5no5 makes very good points, which also speak to something I have been pondering vis-a-vis the "motivation" thread: that which motivates the truly free individual, versus that which motivates those who are in some way not free. I don't think I can articulate very clearly yet those things I have been contemplating, but it seems to me that those motivating factors would be very different (i.e something like love, altruism, hope, pride in work well done, perhaps, versus fear, shame, anger, "Stockholm syndrome"...???) One tends to think in this context of the many sad posts here where a child has basically shut down in the face of inflexibility on the part of a teacher/principal/school about giving work of an appropriate level; it's essentially a response coming from a place of lack of freedom.

I am reminded of some experiments a colleague and I tried in various classes we taught: we offered our (university) students several choices of means of evaluation (exams versus projects, assigned topics versus self-chosen ones, essays versus presentations, etc.). It was exponentially more difficult to grade (and didn't lend itself to every course we taught), but we both found it so well worth it, because the students who had choices about what kind of work to do did better and more interesting work, and told us that they got a great deal more out of their courses when they were evaluated in this way.

All of which is probably a propos of nothing, so thank you for putting up with my musings....

peace
minnie

After having DD4 fall backwards, after sitting crosslegged on the picnic table, head first onto concrete on Tuesday, I think object lessons are really relative. Yes, it was a scarey 24 hours. I got ice immediately and we headed to the ER.

I don't want DD experimenting with drugs or a friend with benefit. There are things I cannot control when she will be 14. But she is 4. So why is not letting your child eat PB different than forcing my child to eat the fruits and vegetables when her problem is with her bowels. Your allergy is more of an exception than her physical problem?

I understand what many of you are saying. But this discussion is not going to be determined by this post. Only in years time. What was a good parenting decision. Though I still don't see DD becoming a tradesperson. She is too much like me, rushing jobs by hand. No perfectionism there. And her clothing budget would exceed the trade salary, that I am certain. She channels her grandmother there. And I had my decades in that realm. Hence, why I went to Wall Street. Had to support the habit.

Ren

Trying to influence where your child will end up when they hit the employment world? I'm 44 now and still haven't figured out what I want to do when I grow up. By now I should probably have taken responsibility for my own choices but... At nineteen I tested 152 on an IQ exam for entry to the Army, that was after 13 schools and swapping through 3 different exam systems, I finally gained the results I needed to get to Uni only to find out I couldn't get a grant and with little to no parental guidance on where to go next decided to join the Army and go to Uni later. 12 years service, 2 husbands and a very late baby life kinda took over and here I am, still undecided. Would things have been different if my parents had taken an active role in my education instead of just being content that with shifting school every few years I still managed to come top of the class... probably/possibly... who knows. Do I feel like I failed to reach my potential? sometimes, but at the end of the day my decisions were my decisions, and for all I know my parents really thought I was doing great and they had nothing to worry about.

I think its great that we as parents are probably so much more enlightened about our kids and have the opportunity to perhaps 'guide' them towards their star - but bottom line is if DS chooses to smell the flowers rather than reach for the stars, then I for one will smile wryly and be there to support him.