Am I the only one who doesn't care how fast kids learn?

[Mij]

Maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration, but that headline in the last mumsnet emailout about children learning faster from photographs than line drawings just set me off. Does it really matter? What about quality of experience and enjoyment of the aesthetics of different types of image? What about creativity? Why does it matter if it might take my DD (still only 10 months, so I may just be being naive here...) slightly longer to recognise an object or animal from a picture because she's been looking at interesting artwork rather than a dull but 'factual' photograph?

Is that all childhood's about now? How fast we can pack as much 'learning' as possible into their heads? What happened to fun, and exploration, and discovery by accident, and play that doesn't have a bloody 'learning outcome'?

Grrrr. Rant over.

I quite agree with you. For some strange reason, that is completely beyond me, there is a race to see who can get the children to grow up the fastest. People dont seem to allow them time to enjoy being who they are, just children, without giving them a goal plan or cotinuously seeing how to improve on reaching milestones. It drives me mad when I am asked can he do this yet, can she do that?
A friend was concerned recently as her ds had to follow his brother to his activities and did not have time to establish his own itinery, he is 10 months!!

Why cant people just enjoy being with them, for the fun whilst they are young without adding all the stress of "achievements"?

I quite agree this is exctly why we have choosen montessori eduction for our ds(4.6) we believ that he will learn when and what he wants to and that is absolutely fine by us, this is proably why he won't (but is able) to write his name etc but can tell you all about solar panels and how they work etc!! He is still a child and hopfully it will stay like that for a long time. We give him the answers to the questions he wants to know rather than what people tell us he should be learning about. We cant be arsed to be dominated by statistics and competition, we thrive on being 3 indivduals living a wonderful life together. sorry about the length,but heyho!!

More than anything I want my childs playschool to be just that PLAYschool. The staff also all wish they could spend more time playing & doing fun things with the children rather than filling in progress books etc.
Children naturally learn through play I don't think we should be structuring everything for them.. surely they should be "learning" that for themselves(wink).
My boys are very different & I allow them to enjoy different things ds2 who has sn actually doesn't like books but will look at photograph type books, so we have them so that he is able to look at the things he likes.
My pet hate for a variety of reasons is people who compare children by how early they achieve & how quickly they learn.

Yup, couldn't agree more. And am very pleased that my son's school is trialling a "learning through play" initiative for early years which moves away from all that competitive stuff and nonsense. Come to Wales, it's being rolled out across the board here!

Floatingonthemed,
This is a common misconception about montessori, it is in fact very child led, they have an emphasis on choice and are basically led by the children. They chose what they want to do and if the teachers ask them if they would like to do something and they say no that is fine and they do not apply pressure at all. The children really learn what,how and when they choose to. They are not catergorised by age as montessori believe that children grow with each other. In fact there are only 3 classes in pimary and they learn lots of social and life skills. The big plus for us is they only use natural items so children enjoy using nature in everyday things. The down side is finding a 100% montessori setting as there are lots of imitations around. Hope this helps. sorry it is long winded but it is something we feel srongly about and i could write about it for hours.

floatingonthmed,
It is true that montssori is a way of life that every one has to embrace to reach its full potential, and we do bring up our ds very montessori, as far as blowing noses and folding tissues we don't that and nor do other montessori families we know. i have never heard of that before. Monessoi way i to teach children to be independent as posssible but there are certain things that are prt of being a child, like picking your nose and being told how socially unacceptable it is!!!!

sorry, i was meant to say the montesori way is to teach them to be independent!!!

Totally agree that children should enjoy being children. They should all learn at their own pace, who cares if xyz can say this, recognise that and read at 2?! They all end up being the same anyway. Obviously everyone wants the best for their child but IMO you let the child lead you into teaching them things.

I have to say i am very keen on the learning toys that you can get, but wouldn't ever force dd(or ds but he's only 2 weeks old) to sit and learn stuff so I can tell others she knows this and that.