Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums Pre-school I'm stunned

Your DD is just like my DS. No nap during the week when grandparents are babysitting, but he naps on the weekends when we are tired entertaining him.

Mr W (24 mos) drives us nuts with the sleeping.

Into bed at 8:30 pm - with him falling asleep at 9pm after getting up out of bed ever 2 minutes.

Sometimes he wakes up every hour. Sometimes he sleeps all night.

Then he is up at 5:30 AM. We put on his fav shows and get another hour of sleep.

Lately he reads out loud from 5:30 to 6:30 in our room.

DW told the school today that he is limited to 1 hour of sleep, instead of his 1:30-2 hours.

Once the days get longer, we will take him for a long walk every evening. During his birthday, we took him to a bounce house and he ran around with the 3 and 4 year olds and came home exhausted and slept for 12 hours. So we think the long walk every night will help.

Once he gets into sports, things will get even better.

I've heard that a slow pace is good for kids -- specifically to make learning faster. I have no doubt that starfall's pace will teach letters quickly, (DS was saying letter names for a while when DH got home yesterday) I just wonder if letters are the right thing to be focussing on <2 or 3 years, even with a really early reader (and at 9-18 mos, who knows which of our kids really will be bleading-edge early readers?)

I worry about the pace inhibiting his learning of things like cause-and-effect, and the few options inhibiting his sence of exploration. Reading is linear, and so there's a reason for a reading thing to be linear, but life isn't.

So I guess in a lot of ways my concern with starfall for this age-group comes down to the question of "why would I want my 9-18 month old focussing in this way," and "will this type of focus have a negative effect overall."

And the answer to those questions is probably: what the Bl$#%& heck am I affraid of, t'aint like he's behind, eh?

Somebody said "moderation" up there somewhere...

I think Kriston or Grinity said last year that the kids will tell you what they are ready for. If they enjoy it and do it, then its right.

Mr W goes through plateaus of skills and likes. We expose him to stuff and let him tell us what he wants to do. He may spend an hour one day then not go pick up the laptop for a week.

Right, but there's quite a few things that he'd do all day if I let him... and I often let him!

At some point I have to exercise some guidance, I think, or he'd just stick with one thing kinda forever. Also, at his age, I'm in pretty much total contole over what he's introduced to. So I have to take responsibility for deciding what to introduce him to, I think.

Today he made jazz hands with everyone who would do it at the play center... for an hour! When no-one else would do it any longer, he spent the next hour putting balls into a ball run. Then we left. The first was limited by people's patience, the second was limited by the lenght of the programme. The computer has no natural limit.

I'm going to be fighting with the "how much guidance" issue forever, I think. Mostly, if he's having fun I figure it must be good, and most things have natural limits. But I still feel like it's important to have some kind of philosophy about what's to be encouraged, what's to be discouraged, and what's inbetween.

(much enjoying this discussion... I need the imput & sounding board on it!)

I'm all for appropriate limits. The "They'll let you know what they're ready for" is more about whether it's okay to answer a kid's questions or do a certain level of math with them. (And I think that's how Austin intended it.) If they can form the question, then I think they are ready to dip a toe into learning that thing. If Starfall interests the child and YOU are okay with the concept of computer time for a young child, then it's probably okay, within limits.

That doesn't mean that the child should get to make all the decisions about YOUR day or about computer time. You're still the parent and it's okay to set appropriate limits. I can't imagine anyone here would say otherwise.

Child-led learning doesn't mean that the child is the boss! Just that you don't have to wonder if it's okay to answer his questions or let her read if she wants to.

Completely agree with your assessment and find this to be true with our DD. She will focus on numbers for a while and everything is about numbers and than a plateau or shift of attention to reading.

And for the does it matter if your child learns their abcs before age 2 question ... I don't think so. I still see that as pushing somewhat. And only if the child really shows no interest in it but it becomes the focus of the parents. By having things available to them and they gravitate to it, I don't see that as pushing but just exposure. DD found some abc books when she was around 6 months and the books had been out because a friend's toddler had been over and was restless so I pulled them out for him. I never thought lets see if DD can learn her letters ... that would be nuts! But she gravitated to them and asked repeatedly 'what's this?' and 'what's that?'. By nine months she knew all her letters. Basically I'm saying sometimes these kids just shock you and instead of worrying if they are in the right age to know it, you might just need to go with their interests and not worry about it.

I get what you're saying and that's initially why I asked about a time limit. I have kind of mixed feeling about computer usage and also what to present to DD. I DON'T want to push her in any way whatsoever. She's only 1 and I feel she has a lot of childhood left before her. So I try and follow her lead but she's been asking about letters for awhile now and I'm beginning to think she wants to know more than what I'm doing? It's hard to know what she's thinking but I figure if she enjoys the computer and we just do it occasionally (we don't even do it everyday) it can't hurt her too much. I do plan on learning some of the songs from there because she's really taken a shine to them.

I think I have a lot of unschooling/Montessori leanings but even with that there's always the question of what you're going to expose your kid to and how much. For instance, we're a bilingual family and DD gets a lot of exposure to a 3rd language on top of that. She never had the option not to learn DH's language (and she's not going to have that option ) so I guess in that sense I'm picking stuff for her. But how she learns that language and to what extent is something that can be more up to her.

It's an interesting subject and something I can never quite make up my mind about. When it comes to letters and reading, specifically... I guess, by the mere fact that I've been reading to her since she was born that means she's more likely to read early. However, Western society places a very high value on being literate (as do I since I'm a huge bookworm) so it's a choice I make as a parent. That being said, I don't feel it necessary to push her into early reading. But if she insists on asking about letters, words, etc. I also don't see a reason to deny her that. Sorry if this is a bit jumbled. I'm working this out in my own head too.

That's a good way of putting it.


I like how you explain the difference between exposure and pushing. I think it's natural for parents of more advanced kids to worry about this because there's the idea that we some how "created" this kid to be this way (I even had a pediatrician tell me when DD was 4 months that she was so advanced because I was at home with her and breastfeeding. Because I was apparently at home with her doing workouts so she could sit up on her own and crawl early ). In some ways yes because the kid had to be exposed to what skill it is but not in the sense that you're necessarily drilling the kid to learn the skill.

About simple options at starfall, I think it is a really good thing. It is the ONLY site I have found for two year old fine motor skills with a mouse, appropriate content or not! Bear learned to use a mouse on that site because the buttons are big enough that he had a good chance of hitting them. There were also few enough that it was hard for him to accidentally click one he didn't intend to. They also get more complicated the farther along you go, to a certain extent.