September 2009 Weddings
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Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
For the mommies and nannies
http://www.slate.com/id/2288402/?gt1=38001
I just noticed this really great article on msn today. It discusses the benefits of discovery-based learning in toddlers and preschool aged children and the harm done by teaching too much too soon. I'll stay off of my high-horse today, but this is my background and my field of "expertise," so I thought I'd share.
Re: For the mommies and nannies
:Blog:
Very interesting, even to a non-mommy or nanny.
I've often wondered about this, as it seems that many kids don't have imagination and creativity anymore. There's a lot of important things that can happen (in the developmental process) as kids "discover" things.
I have 2 different friends (with babies 2 months apart), who both though their kids were going to skip crawling and go straight to walking. I kept my mouth shut on how important crawling is to the developmental process (not to mention left brain-right brain crossover), because I didn't want to make waves. They were both so set on encouraging standing and walking with help, no one bothered to let them learn to crawl. Same kind of thing, they were so busy pushing their kids to walk that they could have missed some very importent developmental processes. Both kids did start crawling, btw.
Real Montessori schools do this. Most Montessori schools now are by name only. They don't practice what they preach anymore than regular public schools do.
I don't believe so but I could be wrong. From what I know, Montessori schools don't discipline either.
The article means more as non-school age. Parents are always so worried if their child doesn't know their alphabet letters by age 2 it seems. Like neuner said about the friends with the crawling. They try to skip steps.
Also, it's very common now for people to put their kids in preschool around 3 years old. Where as when I grew up, you may or may not have gone and if you did, you did when you were 4 turning 5. So now kids go to school at 3-4, 4-5, then start kindergarten at 5 through the rest of their schooling. There's nothing wrong with holding off for another year and letting them be.
:Blog:
Montessori schools are all about independent or "self-directed" learning. Some do get a bad rap for being too lax on discipline too, but as far as I know that isn't really part of the original concept.
Many parents today seem to fall under two ends of the spectrum: do nothing/ sit them in front of Baby Einstein/Dora for 5 hours a day and think they're going to learn something or do way way too much. We have kindergarteners who enter the first day knowing nothing, like not even their last name or basic colors and numbers. We have others who enter reading, and of course their parents think they're gifted. I have to politely tell them that that's because you have been doing nothing but shoving reading down their faces since they were two. There's more to learning than sight words, people. I'll stop there. :-)
I'm just curious if they both came up with the whole "my kid's going to skip crawling" idea because of cues from their kids or just because they wanted it to be like that? I'm only asking because quite frankly, Phoenix pretty much skipped rolling because she was so focused on sitting. Sitting is a more advanced skill and as soon as she showed thats what she wanted, thats what we worked on. We definitely still encourage and help her learn to roll, but why would we focus on making her roll first just because generally that comes before sitting?
ETA: My point being, going off developmental cues from your baby and pushing them to be advanced just because you want them to be are two different things.
{My Blog}
Wow, thanks for sharing this. It's so important. I also have a lot of experience with stuff like this - the psychology of it plus the direct experience with children.
I am a big proponent of what they call spontaneous learning. A lot of time at work, I might show the baby something a toy does and then I'll hand it to her and see what she does with it.
However, I know this is almost impossible (to teach this way) in our current public school system. That's why I love private schools (although catholic private schools are way too strict, in my opinion), charter and montesorri schools. I believe in discipline but different than the traditional way.
Basically, kids are complex. LOL
I don't think it was them responding to what the kids wanted/were interested in, it was more "my kid is so awesome he/she is just going to skip crawling." I also don't think you're losing as big of developmental steps (someone correct me if I'm wrong) by skipping rolling as it would be skipping crawling.
And you're still helping her learn to roll, rather than saying "well, she just doesn't need to learn." Does that make sense?
Parents should let their kids progress as they would.
Yes, they should help them learn rolling, crawling, sitting, etc - WHEN the child expresses an interest in it.
Also, they should consistently be teaching their children (not reading/talking AT them but teaching, lol) but yes, I think the parents were thinking 'my kid is awesome, they're gonna skip this step,' which is terrible parenting in my book.
My college's education department was pretty much centralized around this theory and things being developmentally appropriate. That is what all my early childhood classes were about (I was elem. ed. major and early childhood minor). I feel like kids learning numbers/letters/colors etc young does not mean it was forced. The child I am currently a nanny for is 2 and knows all this. I don't sit down and shove knowledge into his head. I provide an environment that promotes learning and let him do the rest.
As for the crawling thing. I was told that crawling is the one thing that they don't technically count when looking at milestones because it is not needed to continue meeting future milestones. Weston does an army crawl and thats about it. He hates laying down and would much rather stand/walk. I still have him go on his stomach and make attempts but am not going to force him to do something he hates when standing/walking is what he enjoys and prefers.
I think this is exactly what you should be doing. I'm all about kids learning numbers/letters/colors. I just think you have to do it in the right environment. Sorry, if it seemed like that wasn't my point.
Oh totally totally. It makes me sad that people have to think and prove that their kid is special by making them learn this early, skip this stage, do this before all the other kids, whatever. My baby is awesome because she's awesome, I don't need any other reason than that, and I certainly don't need anyone else to agree with me.
I probably read too quick
Sorry, I'm really passionate about this subject!
But see, I see this as different - just like Mz-Zane, you're responding to your child. You encouraged crawling and he wasn't intersted. That's different to me. And he's at least army crawling. One of the kids I was referring to is going to be a year old and just started army crawling. They never encouraged it at all, just started saying when he was like 6 months old that he was going to "skip crawling." Their insistence that he's above the curve has actually put him behind developmentally, if that makes sense.
I understand what you are saying.