Let Them Be Children (A mother's plea)

I want to share a precautionary tale to parents. We live in a competitive world. We all want our kids to be the best that they can be, but many of us tend to gauge that according to their talents as compared the children around them. It is this innate competitiveness that drives parents to put their very young children in academic preschools, push concepts beyond their learning capacity, and accidentally show their own disappointment if their children are not as advanced as the neighbors.

I am guilty of this more than most. As a young mother, I put my three year old son into preschool. I wanted to give him a competitive edge. You see, to my young mind, more school had to be better. I didn’t want him to start out life behind. My oldest son was everything I could have hoped for. He started reading at the age of four. He was doing geometry in first grade. He won every trophy his school awarded and I certainly took all of this as proof that I was a great mom. 

I started my second son on the same path. And he was equally brilliant. He was tested and placed in GT classes in first grade. He got to attend with his big brother. They are only 13 months apart in age, so I pushed him hard so he wouldn’t have to feel inferior to his excellent older sibling. It wasn’t until we moved to a new state that I started to question my own parental brilliance. In Idaho the standards for GT are different. When we were in Texas, both my sons were given a battery of tests and evaluated by a panel of educators before being allowed into the program. In Idaho, they are given a single IQ test. If they score in the 98^th percentile, they are put into GT. My oldest qualified. My second received a letter stating he was “only in the 95^th percentile.” 

My perspectives began to change that day. You see, I knew that both boys were equally talented, if in different ways. And I suddenly began to wonder if I had been judging them as absolutely as that IQ test. I assumed early schooling was better. I assumed I should get them reading before kindergarten. I assumed that both boys needed the same things. 

When it was my daughter’s turn, I decided to do a little research. What I found shocked me. Long term studies on the benefits of preschool found none. The countries that have the latest age for mandatory education also have the highest literacy rates. Children who are pushed to read early are less likely to read for fun. Changing from the overly competitive mother to the one that looked at her children’s individual needs is definitely a process. But I tried. My daughter, however, chose her own levels and she was reading before kindergarten. In first grade, she was tested and placed in the GT program. She had much less intervention from me, but chose her own talents. 

Then came my sweet Quentin. My fourth child was just as quick as the others in his growing up years. He proved himself bright and capable. I was impressed by his early grasp of rhyming and his cleverness with speech. But he didn’t really understand reading before kindergarten. I taught him what I could, but the concepts proved elusive for my third son. My paranoid inner parent took over and I jumped right back into my habit of researching everything to death. I made myself remember that pushing too hard too young is a bad thing. I knew he’d be okay not starting kindergarten ahead.

At back to school night, the teachers told us that they would actually be teaching the kindergarteners a “first grade curriculum.” This set off a few alarm bells with me. Although I once would have embraced the idea of further advancement for young children, my recent research had proven in my mind that such pushing could be dangerous. I had even started to read some research that indicated it was best to wait until first grade to actually read and that kindergarten should just establish the framework, such as letter sounds and names.  Still, Quentin was bright and I was confident he could handle the work. 

Halfway through the year the teachers implemented a “reading at home” program. They sent home two books a night and the child would need to read the books until he/she could do it fluently. After achieving fluency, the child could write the book into a log. There was going to be a party (the “lunch bunch”) and every child who had reached 60 books would be invited. 

Right away I noticed problems. Quentin didn’t want to read the books. I encouraged him to and we did the two books every night, but he became increasingly sullen. Even when we weren’t doing homework, he would make comments like, “I hate sounding things out,” and “Reading is SO boring.” It was a lot of work getting through those two books a night. Since he had to read them to fluency, he would often have to go through them 3-4 times. This was on top of a very lengthy list of sight-word flash cards that the teachers had asked us to read daily. So, when, after a few weeks, the teacher sent out a clarification that the children could record the books twice if they came back and read them at another time in the evening, I concluded that Quentin did not need to do that. Once was enough.

I became scared that Quentin was really developing a hatred for reading and I went back to the internet to find a solution. I made a deal with him that if he read me a book, I would read him one from our home library. This was less successful than I’d hoped. After getting through the books he was assigned, he really didn’t feel like being read to. But, we did our best.

I was surprised, then, when Wednesday of last week rolled around and Quentin looked at his list of fifty books he’d read and mumbled, “The lunch bunch is on Friday. I’m NEVER going to make it.” I actually didn’t put much thought into the statement. Quentin must be mistaken. They wouldn’t have the reward party when they hadn’t even sent home 60 books yet. But I should have paid attention to the dates on the letters the teachers had written, because I was the one that was wrong. 

When I went to pick up my son from school, I found him in the hall awaiting pick up with two other children. The rest of the kids were in the classroom, staying late for their reading party. The teacher assured Quentin that he would be able to come to the back up party that would be held later for the kids who had not already met the requirements. But that really wasn't much comfort to my little six year old. As we were left the school, he started to cry. Among other things, he said, “I guess I’m just a dumb kid” and “I bet all the other kids in my class will have a great time at lunch bunch without me.”

The truth of the dangers of pushing these tiny children too hard came crashing home. I know that teachers are under tremendous pressure to show certain levels of progress in their students. I know that they are being judged, often unfairly, by arbitrary bench marks placed by government agencies. I think that these kindergarten teachers, who I have loved and Quentin has adored, were falling prey to the same sickness that I suffered from as a very young mother. This is not a failing of the teacher, who has been nothing but loving and encouraging to my son. I don't think it's even really my failing, although I should have been more attentive to the requirements instead of assuming what we were doing was good enough. This is a failing of our culture and our political process.

You see, I don't see this as an incident, but as an example. How many of our most valuable and impressionable are feeling dumb just because they are progressing at a different level than another child? How many kids can sense their parents disappointment in their inability to keep up with ever accelerating requirements, even when they do their best? How often does a child say inside his head, that there is no point in trying because they are not good enough? How often could all these things be avoided by just giving a child a little more time to grow?

This is truly the danger in our current educational system. This is the real danger of the language used by a president who is mercilessly pushing for younger and younger kids to be put into school. Pushing these children to be doing more than they are ready for is setting them up for failure of the worst kind. It is preparing them to give up before they are even ready to start. 

I am not someone who thinks that kids should be sheltered from all disappointment. I do not have a problem with awarding trophies to some children and not to others. Indeed, I think it is vital that children learn to experience and deal with disappointments in life. I am the mother who lets my children fall down and knows that they will be stronger for it in the end. But this is not a soccer game. This is something that every child needs to be successful at. The current state of our education system and the current mindset of our culture are absolutely failing our children. 

I wish I could take my 23-year-old self by the shoulders and explain to her how wrong her mindset is. I wish I could stand before congress and tell them what they are doing to our impressionable young children. But I can’t. So, I will just write this here for any other young mom who might be walking my path. Be very careful. Your children need to be children.