You Have to Know Your Child

When a baby is first born, it (mostly) cannot hold its head up. The muscles in its neck simply aren't strong enough to manage this task. I was watching someone recently with their four-week-old. They were holding him on their lap, facing them but in a sitting position, and helping their son practice holding his head up. He wasn't really trying, but I know that in a couple of weeks, he'll be picking his head up off his mum's shoulder and watching his brothers and sister run around playing, and he'll be thrilled at his new-found skill.

Which is to say that you have to think ahead when you're teaching. Lets face it, our board books were well loved before we actually got to read through an entire one from start to finish in one sitting, but now the girls can't find books to satiate their appetite for words. A toddler needs introduced to the idea of building a block tower, and encouraged to practice his hand/eye co-ordination by trying it long before they can do anything but knock it down, but the lego structures my seven-year-old nephew can create now rival his dad's. We had to sing the alphabet song and trip over the magnetic alphabet pieces for a long time before our daughter started asking what the letters were, and unless we took her finger and helped her to trace each shape as we clean them up together for the #*&^! time today, she would still be working out the process of deciphering one from another. It takes mental effort to think ahead, but it is a necessary step for any educator, if they want to keep their students engaged and working to their fullest potential.

Furthermore, teaching "at age level" as a solution to this will rarely work. A boisterous seven-year-old boy may well need to be working on advanced soccer dribbling techniques, but may still be struggling with his alphabet - mostly because its too difficult to sit down and complete the official work in the official way. A five-year-old girl, on the other hand, may well enjoy having the entirety of a high school world history textbook (I recommend the Usbourne History of the World!) read to her over the course of her kindergarten year ... and you'll be amazed at how much of the information she retains. My almost four-year-old is learning to read (she even let Grandma and Grandpa listen last night!) but is steadfastly wed to her diapers and can't really understand why mommy thinks the toilet would be preferable.

All this is to set the stage for the following: as a parent, you knew when to encourage your child to take their first tentative steps - sometime between 8 - 18 months. You knew when to encourage their first words, when to encourage them to use a ride-on toy, when to first have food directly off your plate, whatever it was. And I would suspect that it wasn't the exact same day as the other kids in your pre-natal class were ready for it. And the same is true in education. Each and every child is unique. I firmly believe that there is no possible way an off-the-shelf-curriculum, bought based on age-level, could possibly be appropriate in every subject for every child (or in fact any subject, for any child!!)

The bottom line? You know your child best. Observe them. Watch what they're interested in. Figure out the next step. Make sure that you and your spouse are clear on your really long-term goals (by 18, they should be able to live independently on their own and have the opportunity to go towards whatever post-secondary experience they are interested in, for example). Look through curriculum, consider the general course of study suggested, get the major points and make sure you cover them on your child's own pace. Always be a couple of steps ahead of yourself - so that you know where you're trying to get to and are ready with the next challenge when the 'teachable moment' appears. If you can get your child through the terrible twos, then you can certainly teach them to read, write and 'rith - you just have to know your child.