to think getting a private tutor for a four year old is insane?

[mslucy]

I am rarely shocked but heard today that an old friend of mine is thinking of getting a private tutor for her son, who is one day older than DS.

She is a very successful lawyer and only sees her kids at the weekend.

She is already forking out £££s on private school fees, so why the feck she needs a tutor is beyond me.

Shocked and saddened. Want to kidnap her poor ds and take him home to our slightly haphazard household so he can hang out in the park with his mates, watch TV, play video games, read stories, chat to his parents, go to school cake sales and all the other things normal four year olds do.

Has anyone else heard of anything like this?

Milly, please read the research out there! Young children do really learn from playing.

Of course young children learn through playing, and a decent teacher will provide sufficient appropriate play opportunities so that the child learns.

Playing and learning are not opposites!

My statement was misleading. I do think children learn through play, but I don't think learning through play is enough to educate a child. But I think it depends what we consider 'play' to be.

I have an issue with playbased curriculum in British schools because children who are not white and middle class underperform compared to their progress in the traditional curriculum.

I have a very similar upbringing/education to yours Kewcumber, and I don't think a tutor is essential.

Somethings are best taught formally, some things are best taught through play, but most play should have no adult-driven objective at all.

I think the problem (for me) has arisen where we say children are just playing, but in fact that play is heavily guided by adults, and sometimes also heavily assessed by adults. Many toys also heavily influence play.

Middle class children have understood, due to their home environment, that when Mummy says we're going to play a game, there is an agenda. They know that when they get to school and the teacher says they're just to play in the sand, but she's got a clipboard and a pencil in her hands, that they should tell her how many red buckets of sand fill a blue bucket, just like Mummy tells them to do at home. I don't think that is really play at all. It is simply about pleasing adults.

Many of the ways children naturally play is actually considered bad behaviour or a problem by schools.

playing and leaning are inextricably linked,not discrete concepts.which is why a good teacher plans and grades the task appropriately

Starting school - young children and learning cultures (Liz Brooker, 2003). 'Ethnic minority children may lose out when they join reception classes because the school's values are so different from those of their homes, according to research. For example, Bangladeshi children arrive at school expecting to work, but some fail to make progress because they think their teachers want them to play, and had not absorbed the unspoken message that the aim was to learn through play. In contrast, the three children who did best in the study were Anglo pupils whose mother were aware of how children learnt through play and provided similar experiences at home.'

very interesting MillyR

sorry hadn't finished last post. DD1 said to me recently "why can't i just tell her [teacher], why do i have to do it all with the play doh?" i think it was about fractions or something, she clearly "saw through it" and felt it was all a bit of a facade. as she says herself "i much prefer 'working' to 'playing' - 'working is much more relaxing'!" (as in she prefers to just get on with worksheets etc!)

I learn a lot on here!

Amaida I'm impressed at your DD - my DS (aged 4) wouldn't recognise a ploy to teach him through play from "work" in a million years. MInd you he would't know a fraction if it jumped up and bit him.

Also I'm feeling very inadequate that I should it seems (being white, educated and middle class) be surreptitiously teaching DS whilst he's playing. Otehr than the odd bit of counting and letters in his name, I'm woefully inadequate at the "teaching" we just chat. I assumed nursery and school are time enough for learning things properly. He doesn't seem behind the other children - just about average.

I assume (naively?) tat DS learning his letters and numbers 3 months quicker (or slower) at 4 rather than 5 is not going to result in him being functionally illiterate at 11.

No doubt I have a shock ahead of me.

I suspect that different methods work well for different children. DS could not see through the school based play; he knew the teacher wanted something but he didn't know what. It was socially, hugely stressful for him, because he couldn't decode the social cues. DD loved the school based play.

I don't think it matters a great deal if you are a bit above or below average at 4 or 11. I do that it matters a great deal if you really want to learn about something or think about things in a specific way, and you cannot do so because you aren't given the opportunities that are appropriate to you.

That's where parents come in - they can give you those opportunities in a much more individual way than a school can.

Milly, you are spot on about playing v learning through play. Playing by itself does not necessarily equal learning but learning can be stimulated through directed play. Most parents, I think, naturally extend play in a learning direction. A 2 year old is lining up cars, you ask him to pass you a red car, the biggest car...you're reinforcing words he's learnt and linking them to concepts. If you left him to it then that's a learning oppportunity missed and he isn't going to teach himself those concepts by playing with his cars.

Of course playing-play is vital and children need downtime, but the learning-play is also crucially important and that's why nursery nurses and teachers spend a long time planning activities and thinking about what children will/are supposed to get out of them.

Ofcourse children learn through play, much more than through a tutor.
I feel saddened when I read some posts here about mothers who only see their children at weekends. Sorry, I am not very PC, that cannot be healthy? I am working fulltime by the way, but there is no way I would only seem my children on weekends.
Maybe instead of a tutor what this child needs is to have 30mins a day of good quality time with his mother, playing games, games aimed at helping him learn.

There is a lot of judgemental rubbish on here and to be honest, we don't even know what the tutor is for and even if there IS to be a tutor...it was heresay afer all!
Don't listen to gossip is my advice...and don't let 4 yr olds play on Wii or computer games either!!!!

hearsay! oops!

Yes it was a judgy OP, yes it was inverted snobbery, but I think that in a sane world no kid under the age of about 12 would be tutored outside school. School takes up enough childhood hours as it is. I personally disagree with homework before the age of about 12 too. MOst countries start school at 7 and those countries (scandinavian) have better literacy rates. So what on earth is the point of tutoring a 4, 5, 6 year old? Unless its to compete with their peers, which is not a good reason to hire extra help anyway.

I still think there's a lot to be said for accepting that your child may not be academically inclined and rather than stress the child out and give him low self esteem by hiring a tutor and letting him believe his grades are the be all and end all of life, it might make more sense to develop any other skills he may have instead. I believe every child has their own personal talent.

It may be appropriate to hire a tutor for a child over twelve because they have the upcoming GCSEs but before then, what is the point?

My ds went from being a very angry frustrated child who could not read and hated books to someone who loves to read through the intervention of a tutor when he was about six (maybe seven). One to one help from someone who really knows what they are doing can make a huge difference. It wasn't something that school could give as they didn't have the resources, or something I could do because I don't know how. Most often the tutoring is for perhaps at the maximum an hour, once or possibly twice a week, so hardly making a huge difference to the amount of free time for the child.

I'm sure that there are children who are hothoused into environments that aren't suitable, as well as those who get tutoring they really don't need, but I seems foolish just to say that it's all a waste of time.

nooka, I realise that the way things are today, that was an appropriate step for you to take with your child. But as I said, I think that in a sane world your little boy wouldn't have ended up angry and frustrated having had his early learning mismanaged at school.
CHildren learn through play and that doesn't mean the kind of play with ulterior motives that Milly was talking about. It means that a child left to its own devices will push themselves to learn more, in more depth, than a child who is actively "taught". In fact teaching gets in the way of a child's natural learning process, and his natural curiosity about numbers and letters i.e about life. It is by "teaching" a child something that you can really get him to lose interest in a subject. Then they may learn to please elders, rather than learn because they find learning fascinating.

But as I say, this is the real world we live in, and kids do need to "prove" their knowledge at some point, and get into the system as others have mentioned. I just wish people would reign it in a bit and not start the competitiveness quite so early.

MillyR - I loved your post of Sunday 14 Feb at 21:41 on the nanny issue, and subsequent posts.

Of course a child's early learning is going to be influenced by the intellectual ability and range of knowledge and skills of the adult(s) who take(s) regular care of him/her. This is why "childcare" is a thorny issue - and is at the root of many fights on MN.

As you say, there are ways of managing your child's childcare (including tutoring) to ensure he/she gets sufficient stimulation. But in order to manage the issue, it is vital to first be aware of them.

Yes of course learning through play needs a teacher: ' yes this object floats, but that doesn't, why do you think that is?'

It all needs a structure. The important thing us that children learn concepts best through doing practical, physical stuff rather than sitting at a desk learning the theory ( although this is important too.)

anyway my beef isn't with extra tuition or the three r's or learning times tables, I just think extra tuition aged FOUR is over the top. And I'm surprised other people think it's ok, even desirable.

I would say it was necessarily desirable personally, I would say that given the educational system it may be necessary. A child who falls behind at 4, whether what we're expecting them to do is right or wrong, will probably not catch up without intervention and if a school is pushy and moves on quickly a child who has not grasped the basics is going to be left behind. This is a fault in the system but one which, for the time being, has to be worked with and if that means having a 'tutor' then so be it.

In individual circumstances it may be desirable. I for one, if we are living in a non-English speaking country, will be paying for another native English speaker to come speak to the DCs because the input they get at home from me will probably not be enough. It will be playing games, yes, but they will be learning, so that's probably a tutor! Likewise if a child is VERY bright and getting bored at schol but thrives on structured input it may be worth getting a tutor in, possibly for a completely different subject to that which they learn at school to extend them in other directions.

And for what feels like the 2000000th time a tutor can, and probably will at this age, teach through play. We don't know WHY there's a tutor, WHAT the tutor will do or HOW it will be done.

There isn't anything that a tutor can do with a 4 yr old that a parent couldn't do if they simply spent time with their own child!

piscesmoon - that's not true. Firstly, a tutor will be a qualified teacher of young children and will have knowledge and skills that a parent doesn't; secondly, children react quite differently to being taught by someone who is not their parent.

I spend absolutely masses of time with my DD; I still feel the need for a tutor - as frakkin so rightly says, when you are bringing up a child in a country with another language/bilingually, it is hard to get enough input to learn the minority language without engineering extra opportunities in that language. But that is just one example of where early tutoring can be helpful.

There is a little girl in DD's class who is growing up speaking four languages - German (her parents' language), English (her nanny's language), French (the school and country language) and Chinese (the language in which she went to crèche and nursery school). She has a Chinese tutor twice a week to maintain her Chinese.

True nothing that a parent 'couldn't' do - but some parents don't know where to start and take the outsourcing route (my mother, me and why she got a maternity nurse after about 2 days). Just because the mother is a very intelligent, high-powered lawyer doesn't mean she knows how to relate to and educate a 4 year old. Maybe she honestly thinks she's doing the best for her child by asking a professional to do it. Whether she spends time with him or not is outside the equation in that case, because the time itself is not important, it's the quality of that time and interaction.

I am very tempted to give up supply teaching and take money off parents of 4 yrs old then!
Talk to your child, play with your child (board games, card games etc) and read, read, read with your child. I doubt, when you watched the tutor that there would be anything that you couldn't do yourself!

Cook with your child, garden with them, let them help you. Take them out, I saw plenty of young children in an art gallery yesterday, having interesting conversations with their parents. You actually have to spend time with your own child-much better than throwing money at someone else to spend time with your child.Why have people so little confidence?