This Week at MES

Nicholas has fun in the mornings while we sit in a line waiting to drop him off at school. Since we are on the school property and moving at a snail's crawl in the line, I let him out of his car seat. He loves sitting in the front, playing with the buttons on the dash, rolling down the window, etc. At home, we've been listening to the birds in our yard lately and trying to identify them by their songs. This morning in car line, Nicholas rolled down the window and pretended to be a blue jay for everyone to hear.







Mrs. Carrico sent home the following to all of the parents this week. It is an except taken from a book titled, The Hurried Child: Growing Up Too Fast Too Soon by David Elkind.

Do not pressure your kids to learn. Children today are under a great deal of pressure to grow up too fast, too soon. As a result they develop a fear of failure, an absorption in measuring up to the unrealistic expectations of others, and a host of stress symptoms. David Elkind, professor of psychology at Tufts University, has dubbed this cultural tendency the hurried child syndrome, and advises parents to let children be children while they're young, allowing them to enjoy stress-free, spontaneous play activities that they regulate themselves.

We have learned a great deal in the past twenty years about the importance of early intervention in influencing a child's chances for success in life. We've also been exposed to a wide range of techniques, activities, and resources for enriching children's lives. The temptation is great, even among those parents who are not part of a fast-track family, to unleash this knowledge upon kids in mega-doses to force a positive mega-effect.

However, here, as elsewhere, the motto less is more seems to apply. Children often do their best learning without adult supervision during unstructured playtime. It is often only when they make their own choices about what they wish to learn and how they want to learn it that their motivation and achievement levels go way up. Parents should realize that they can usually better help their kids by simply listening to them, respecting their lives, and allowing them the freedom to explore new ideas and subjects on their own, rather than by piling on another French lesson or computer class.

I enjoyed that excerpt and I plan to get the book to read more about what he has to say. I completely believe that children will learn at their own pace and in their own way. We, as parents, don't need to worry about chasing down our young children to make sure they memorize a bunch of useless information or learn how to read by some random age that someone else decided was appropriate. Nicholas is only three years old and right now he is learning about things that he enjoys - making friends, exploring the outdoors and the world around him, planes, dinosaurs, space ships, and a myriad of other boy related things. We are also making sure that he is learning about boundaries, respect for others as well as respect property, sharing, and consequences. This is really all he needs to know at age three. All that other information will come later in his education. I spoke to a mom this weekend who also has a three year old. She is worried that he doesn't know how to read better than he does so she is going to start working with him on phonics every day. I understand her ambition for her child as I feel it too at times. But this age is so precious and they are only this young once. Let their spirit and wonder fly free so that they can explore and discover all the joys awaiting them in the world around them.