constant

I am a young guy. I am obsessed/paranoid with being a future father though, and with early child development. I think it is because I am so self critical and have a lot of regrets because of this.

Parents, what did you do up until you kid was 10 or so, more specifically in the firsr 3-4 years of life to stimulate intellectual growth? Like everyone else, I want a smart child and I'd want to nurture a motivated child who is interested in learning. Anyone have any idea how to do this or any GOOD websites dedicated to this?

I know the basics.. let them observe "complex" things, talk to them all the time, try to teach them simple math by using blocks and such when they are older... but has anyone tried to purposely, for hours on end, teach a kid how to read or speak at a very early age and has it worked? Has anyone been able to teach their kid somewhat complicated mathematics at a young age and has it worked? Sometimes I think people aren't dedicated enough and they give up because their kid doesn't appear to be learning anything and they just wait until he is bigger to teach him stuff.. What is the right thing to do?

Now I am not saying I will be so obsessed with my future kids intellectual ability and development that I will be almost abusive, I'm not going to be unreasonable, but I won't lie: I would much rather have a kid who was a genius (and a social outcast) than a normal kid who had a normal child hood and I believe the "state" of genius or near genius can probably be taught or nurtured. I am also not very found of American society as of now, especially young American society, so I wouldn't even want my kid to be popular or sucked into it if I could help it.

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Rodney

I'm no parent, but I've worked in schools and and currently in a credential program. I've worked mostly with minority kids, many of them immigrants.

Now I've seen kids whose parents are dirt-poor and don't speak English well and just got here do really well, and I've seen kids whose parents were born here and who speak English as a first language do terribly.

It really comes down to a couple of things. First, stimulating the child. Spending a lot of time with him (I'll say hiim), talking with him, explaining things to him, teaching him things, doing things with him, just being a parent. The more you interact with him, the more developed his verbal skills (and his mental skills in general, will become).

Second -- it's really the same thing -- background knowledge. The more you work with the kid, the bigger his spoken vocabulary is going to be before he begins to read. It's a lot easily to learn to read when you already know the vocabulary verbally. It's a lot easier to learn to write when you already know how to make a good sentence verbally.

Also, read with him a lot. He'll learn how a book works (a lot of first-graders don't know), he'll learn to related written words to spoken words (kids tend to think that written words are from some special hard language, and the means of communicating in that language are different), and he'll get a wide variety of concepts under his belt that will help him in school. And once again, you'll be there, stimulating him with conversation and helping him explore the new concepts. That's just not going to happen if you're too tired to do this and he spends most of his time in front of the TV and Playstation.

If you do this, you're doing a lot. The kid will turn out great. No need to take extraordinary measures; in this day and age, with so many demands on families, the above measures -are- extraordinary for a lot of people.

skysooner

It is actually pretty simple. As has been said above, spend time with the child. My wife and I made a conscious decision for her to stay at home with the kids until they are both in 1st grade. My oldest has a fairly severe learning disability. Not only has he received special schooling (through the school system) since he was 3, my wife has been able to work very closely with him. She has her Elementary Ed. degree and is about to have her Master's in reading. He not only can read, but he can add and subtract 2 digit numbers in his head. Not to say it was easy (it was not). She just kept after him and kept after him until something mentally clicked. I'm a big computer gaming person, and he can watch me play and when I come back he has usually done better than I have. I think too much importance is placed on a child's outside activities. A child having fun is great but placing them on a schedule that an adult would have is just too much. I spent my summers with friends just hanging outside. Now kids are playing 3 sports at age 6. We just put my 4 year old in T-ball. His coach called last night and said that his team had been together for a year (WTF? 3 year olds playing t-ball?) and that our son would be one of 2 or 3 new ones.

INNOCENT SPEED

Read to your child all the time. And instead of sitting down and trying to teach them math incorporate it into everyday things. When you are dressing him/her count the buttons on thier clothes. This way they don't feel pressured, its just a part of thier everyday life. we did this with our daughter and she loves to learn. Just relax you'll do just fine.

FastShark85

We read to our kids pretty often (my wife does so more than me since she's a stay-at-homer). We've gotten them a variety of "building" toys such as Legos and Imaginex which they love. Our oldest is 5, and he's gotten pretty darn good at building stuff, and his patience has increased a lot, too. Then again, he also toilet-trained himself and, just this week, taught himself how to ride a bike without training wheels, much to our shock. Our middle child flat-out refuses to even try going without diapers....an example of the fact that all kids are different.

Our middle child is picking up what the oldest has learned since they spend so much time together...and the youngest (1) is still in his own world. They see the oldest one looking at books and coloring, so they do the same.

We play counting games with them, so they're learning the basics. The 5 year starts kindergarten next week, and he's already learned to write his name as well as the names of the rest of our family. Encourage the behavior that's desired (i.e., stuff that's geared to learning) and kids will develop an appetite for it.

My wife was an elementary school teacher before staying home with the kids, so she does a pretty good job with them.

skysooner: My 5 year old has already played organized basketball, t-ball (two "seasons") and soccer ("two seasons"). They're not really competitive, but they're organized by the YMCA and get the kids accustomed to the concepts behind the games. Plus, it's a great way for the kids to meet friends. We didn't push him to play...we just asked him if he wanted to.

jbrooks544

It sounds like you could be poised to go a little overboard. Doing stimulating intellecutual learning stuff is great, don't get me wrong, but it is REALLY easy to get carried away. It can turn into overkill and be actually damaging unless you really just take it easy. Our kids were in a very good daycare from 6 weeks until kindergarden. Either 3 days a week full day or 5 days a week 1/2 day. This is because we are both career executives in the family business. The day care was montessori and they actually are also a private elementary school on site too. Not a park'em and forget'em home daycare setup. I am so thankful for how they were set up and how well they taught and helped socialize our kids. It was a perfect compement to all the attention and caring we give at home every day. We read to our kids, keep them busy with interesting toys and activities, etc. etc. etc. Having the school there helped take the pressure off in case we forgot to teach them to count or eat with a fork at the right time (only half a joke). Don't be too dissapointed if a few of your high aspiring theories go quickly by the wayside when you are knee deep in diapers and bodily fluids, the house is a wreck, and you haven't had a full night's sleep in a month. The most important thing is to be there and to love your child and pay attention to them. Believe it or not, most of their intellect will come of it's own accord, despite a lot of what you do or don't do. Don't fool yourself into thinking that you can have any huge effect pre-10yrs. devil's advocate, but no one has ever proven that high school or life is any better or worse because you torture the kid with flash cards for 8 hours a day at age 3 (half a joke).

Seriously, there is a lot of research that links early childhood learning and learning skills and iQ with the kid getting enough sleep.

skysooner

FastShark,

There was a little bit more to the story. In my hometown, there is the YMCA league and a local private league. The YMCA is the most non-competitive and the most fun, but they are very unorganized. When we signed my oldest at age 5 up for t-ball, he got a team but no coach. We cancelled and waited for 6 months till the next season. We got him into t-ball on a team with the other organization where most of the kids had been playing together for a couple of years. My son has some learning disabilities that make it very difficult for him to function in a loud setting. He actually overcame it and really improved in catching and hitting the ball. No, he wasn't the best player on the team, but he wasn't the worst either. The coach's son amazingly always played in the infield while being one of the worst players on the team. At the end of the season, the coach asked us if we wanted our son to continue on with this team since they were sticking together for the machine pitch part of the game. This team would have out-of-town weekend tournaments once a month. We weren't sure our son could make the transition, but he told us to take him to the batting cage to check it out. We took him there, and after about an hour he got the hang of hitting the ball off of a machine. We felt good about it and decided to let him play (he is 6, almost 7 now). When I called the coach back to tell him that our son was going to play, he gave me some bs about not wanting our son to get hurt and the level of play was very competitive and that he only had to play him one inning a game and that it wouldn't be fair to him to always be in right field. WTF? I cut him off then and there and said we would never have our son playing for that organization again. We ended up putting our youngest in this same organization, because we know the transition point for him is about 2 years away and he might actually learn something. It was just mind-boggling for me to see that kids are playing t-ball at age 3. I didn't play organized sports until I was 7 at least (and that was the earliest they would accept us). We played on our local field against local teams. It didn't take us out of town on the weekends. I guess I just find it appalling that there is this much intensity on winning at such a young age (to the detriment of our children). I would much rather spend time with them one-on-one than expose them to that. I don't know if we are making a mistake with my youngest, but I fully intend to be a coach on this team to make sure I can watch closely on how he is doing.

FastShark85

What's amazing about that?

We've had couple bad apple coaches, too. They didn't pay any attention to making sure everyone had equal playing time (hey, it's not competitive so let everyone play the same amount of time). The response to this suggestion, which was given in a very casual non-criticizing way, was a very snide-tone-of-voice "why don't you coach yourself??" (that comment coming from a person wearing a t-shirt emblazened with the message "PROFESSIONAL ROLE MODEL".

My wife was shocked and aghast at the response. I was mad but kept my distance.

I coached 10yr baseball (first year of overhand pitching for boys) when I was in college with a couple buddies. Since we didn't have kids on the team, there wasn't a compulsion to favor anyone. I learned a lot about kids, their abilities' and the behavior of parents.

I plan on trying to coach again soon...it's just a matter of being able to make a commitment to get out of work early once a day every week.

skysooner

Yes, I was spoiled. I coach church league basketball for 4th grade to high school. The league rules very specifically prohibit player or coach misbehavior. It actually makes it easier on us as we can just laugh at situations on the court. I was never very good at baseball, but I know the strategy and how to teach. I'm hoping to get back into it.

As for the coach, that is a great idea.

hobo

I'm no parent but I did do research on it for a project in school once. Putting too much pressure on the child is probably the worst thing a parent can do. Read together at night and reading will become more natural to the kid, who will in turn develop an interest in reading.

I don't know how this works, but genetics may also have to do with early development. Some kids just learn better, no matter the environment they live in, as long as they get the chance to learn. Some kids also seem to have better a memory than others, allowing for them to learn how to speak, read and write a lot fast.

I do know that reading, writing and speaking are very important. The early the kid learns those things, the better able he/she will be able to learn in school because they can focus more on the other aspects of the curriculum.