Don't know whether to encourage or to hold him back

[Again]

Ds is 2 and 8 months. I have been interested in Steiner Waldorf approach to the early years - i.e. nothing academic until they are older, but he is unstoppable and to be fair we have always read to him anyway.

There are no Steiner kindergartens, so a group of us are setting one up. In the meantime I enrolled him in Montessori, with serious reservations in December because he was already advanced intellectually with the idea that he would stay there until school rather than disrupt him and the Steiner kindie would be for other kids. He can now phonetically spell some words, based on 2/3 mornings a week at the montessori since then. They said they don't do it with him, but he pipes up with the answer when they are talking to older kids.

The question is, would you take him out of Montessori? Shouldn't children just be children and run around and play in the mud as so on? I could send him to another childminder instead. Part of me feels though that he just adores cognitive learning and if this is who he really is I should go with it, but part of me wants to protect him from academia at such a young age.

From what you say, he is enjoying it, so I certainly wouldn't hold him back or take him out of the Montessori nursery. Different children want to learn different things at different times and he can still have plenty of fun with mud/running about as well. I think it's all about giving your child what he needs to grow, learn and develop at his own pace.

I have two DCs; my DD is 12 now and really does love learning "academic" things; we have always supported this and enabled her to learn at her own pace, but also given her as many different sorts of opportunities for new experiences as we can, such as music and physical activities.

Read the work of the Educational psychologist Vygotsky - he says keeping a child back, and not encouraging them can be just as damaging to a child's self esteem as pushing them. I happen to agree with him. I think children do do their best when they are tackling new challenges and developing and learning at their own pace.

So, with this in mind - If he enjoys it, then roll with him just follow his lead. My eldest daughter is academic and learnt her letters and numbers before she turned three and was reading simple books at three. My DD2, however is now 3 1/2 and is just starting to ask about letters and numbers. She knows a couple, but isn't really interested yet. She will be eventually. I think so long as you follow your child's lead, you won't go far wrong.

Oh, and if he is happy at his nursery, leave him where he is. There is so much more to be gained from nursery than just reading and writing... after all, you can do all that with him. Besides, apart from learning letters, they don't do all that much academic stuff at nursery / preschool really.

Child led is good imo If he wants to read, let him. Your guiding role as a parent can be limited to making sure there is balance in his life, e.g. that he also gets plenty of time out of doors, gets to meet other children etc.

The fact that he reads early doesn't have to get in the way of other aspects of childhood. My dd was still playing with her dolls house at the same time as reading Vanity Fair. It's only if you as a parent think that 'oh, if he can spell 'disestablishmentarianism' then he can't possibly play with playdough' that it's going to do him any harm. I remember my childhood as a glorious mixture of learning Ancient Greek and playing in the sandpit and baking cakes: noone ever told me that there was any sort of conflict between them.

I'm beginning to come round to this! I know to follow his lead and have always answered all (and there are lots) of questions, but when he started spelling words just from hearing how they sounded, I thought, whoa now. I think you are on to something cory when you say that there shouldn't be any conflict. Maybe I just have to catch up with him. He's known all letters before 18 months and recognised lots of words from sight, so it's inevitable that he would want to move on

I guess I feel that it's changes children's relationship with the world when they are thinking about how a thing is spelt rather than just experiencing it....

When my daughter aged 2.5 years asked me to teach her to read I was surprised, I told her that she was too young and that she would learn to read when she was about 4 or 5. However she had been read to a lot, was clearly fascinated by books and by 3.5 years was reading fluently with almost no "teaching". what I am trying to say is that, I too, thought that children should play and not be pushed. I still think that, but sometimes the children pull you! I have three very different children - you have to follow their lead/interests. If it is fun for them it is play I guess.