Homeschool News & Views
Issue 51, for December 30, 2007
From Homeschool Helpers
Greetings. This is Dan
White with Homeschool Helpers.
We taught all our five
kids to read, starting at about age two.
Why did we do that?
Because we read a book saying we could do
that. I guess
that shows the power of information.
When we were still in
college, Margie had seen a book about teaching your baby to read. Since she wasn’t
married at that time, she didn’t buy the book then but it stuck in her
mind. Later, after we were married and had
one boy who was almost two and another child on the way, we revisited the
college campus and she bought that book, Teaching Your Baby to Read by Glenn
Doman.
Soon we tried doing what
the book said. It worked. Our son, who was about twenty-two months old
when we started, did start learning to read.
Seeing him read “mommy” and “daddy’” and “cat” for the very first time
is something we will never forget.
Our son, on the other
hand, will never remember it. None of
our five kids can ever remember not knowing how to read, any more than they can
remember not knowing how to speak.
We later simplified the
approach outlined in that book, as even that author underestimated the power of
the human brain.
There was a popular notion
that children could not learn to read until they reached the age of readiness
for reading, which was -- coincidentally -- about the same time that they were enrolled in the educational institutions. After we had successfully taught all our kids
to read – very successfully – one
woman suggested that we were very fortunate that we did not damage our children
by teaching them to read.
That’s an incredible statement – that if we sat down for
fifteen to thirty minutes for three or four times a week and read a book with
our children, we might damage them for life.
Her basic assumption is that young children simply cannot learn, and
that if you do teach them, you are putting so much pressure on them that you
may crack their poor brains.
The truth is that parents
who don’t
take the time to spend with their toddlers and teach them are damaging them for
life. They are making them less than
they could be, if they received close parental love and attention.
In the US, there is a big
push by the educational establishment now for early childhood education. The goal of their early childhood education
is to separate the children from their parents.
More and more they are pushing programs like Head Start, so that the
institutions can capture America’s children at a younger and younger age.
At the same time, there is
a strong financial enticement for parents to ignore their children. The myth is put
forth that more money automatically equals better children. This leads families to pursue more wealth by
having both parents work full time. In
the pursuit of more money, so that the children can have a better life, the
parents wind up ignoring their young children, by placing them in day care or
early institutional schooling.
The goal of the
educational establishment is that every child will reach school age “ready to learn.” Boy, doesn’t that
sound good? Parents are the dumb caretakers
of their kids for the first few years, then they send
them off to the educational experts when they are finally “ready to learn.” Let me tell you that
as a parent who taught all five of his kids to read at age two, and when all
five of those kids scored at the 99th percentile on reading, that “ready
to learn” phrase makes my guts gag.
Guess
what? As soon as a newborn baby dries off, it is
ready to learn. They don’t
have to go to a Godless institution to learn.
They immediately begin learning from their parents.
In the past decade or so,
science has discovered some amazing things about humans and all of
creation. Psalms 139:14 says “I will praise
you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Marvelous are your works. That my
soul knows very well,” New King James Version. Modern science continues to show this more
and more.
From the book Early Childhood Development:
"Recent brain development research makes clear
how vital the early years are in forming neural pathways between brain cells
(neurons) and their connecting links (synapses).”
In other words, the early
years fix how well a child’s brain works for the rest of his life.
“At
birth, an infant has about 100 billion neurons…
Each one can produce up to 15,000 synapses.”
A new little baby, who
can’t crawl, can’t walk, and can’t talk has about a
hundred billion neurons, or nerve cells in its brain. No wonder that baby learns to talk, picking
up all the difficulties and complexities of learning a language in a couple of
years, without anybody ever actually teaching them.
Each one of those hundred
billion neurons or brain nerve cells can make up to fifteen thousand synapses,
or connections with other neurons. That
is a potential fifteen trillion synapses, or information processing
connections.
That’s a lot of gigabytes.
You are born with the
neurons, or brain cells. Then you make
the synapses, or connections, when you use those brain cells.
“The first three years of life are when the vast
majority of synapses are produced.”
Hold the boat here. That’s a huge statement. The first three years of life are when the
vast majority of synapses are produced.
So if the average person on the globe lives to be
seventy years of age, for the final sixty-seven of those years he is relying on
the brain connections he made during his first three years.
Wow! I guess that makes
the first three years of life very important!
“The number of synapses increases with astonishing
rapidity until about age three and then holds steady throughout the first
decade of life. In this way, a child's
brain becomes super-dense, with twice as many synapses as it will eventually
need.”
If someone says a person
is dense, that is taken to mean that he is slow. It should mean just the opposite, that his
brain is overcrowded with synapses. But if you do tell
someone he is dense, you better explain what you mean.
“In the second decade of life, most of these excess
synapses are eliminated.
Brain development is, then, a process of pruning. This is why early experience is so
crucial: those synapses that have
been activated frequently by virtue of repeated early experience tend to become
permanent.”
All of this means that brain power is not just a matter of genetics, but also a
matter of attention. The way a baby is either involved or ignored by his parents up to age three helps
determine the way his brain works for the rest of his life.
I recall reading once that people who have perfect
pitch were worked with musically by the age of three. Perfect pitch is so rare and difficult for a
musician that if you don’t get those connections made
by age three, you’re probably not going to have perfect pitch.
If the brain connections
we use throughout all our lives are made during our
first three years of life, then what should be done with children during those
first three years?
Parents should spend as
much time as possible with them.
Doing
what?
Doing
everything! Cuddling, wrestling, holding, chasing,
reading with them, singing to them, playing music with them, playing ball with
them, telling them stories, correcting them.
Etc., etc., etc.
So what does society try
to get parents to do?
It tires to get them to
ignore their children. It puts out the
myth that if you ignore your child, and put your child in a kiddie
kennel, maybe even a Christian kiddie kennel, so that
you can have more money, your child will have a better life. That is a Satanic lie and will permanently
lessen your child’s life in its health, in its mental well
being, and even in its brain power.
Society also puts out the
myth that the earlier you put your child in an institution, the better off you
child will be. That is also a Satanic lie.
We taught all five of our
kids to read, starting at age two. With
each child, that was only about one or two hours per week. Isn’t that
amazing? In doing that, we gave each of
them the gift of being superb readers. We
didn’t know it at the time, but we also gave them a
better brain for life.
If we had it to do all
over again, we would teach them much more than reading. We would also teach them music and numbers. We did play ball with them early on and they
are all excellent athletes. Some of that
they inherited but I also think they got wired for
that by doing it at an early age.
And all of that took time. Not just a smattering of time here and there,
but consistent time, day after day, week after week, year after year.
The love
of a parent for a child is best shown by the parent taking time for that
child. Not by going somewhere else and
doing something else, but always by the parent spending time one on one with
his beloved child. This
is particularly important during the first three years, when a hundred billion
neurons are making fifteen trillion connections. When you are playing with or teaching your kid,
you can look in their eyes and almost see their brain cells connect.