21/11/2022
✨ Enjoy the magic ✨
WAIT TILL YOU CAN TEACH IT IN A WEEKEND.
When I was a relatively new mom, I got some of the best parenting advice from a more seasoned mama. It was about potty training and she said, "Wait till you can teach it in a weekend." She had several kids and had learned that if you tried to teach them before they were ready, it took many months and lots of struggles. If she waited until they showed all the signs of being ready and wanted to learn, they basically taught themselves in a day or two.
I took her advice with potty training with all five of our kids but also with so many aspects of homeschooling over the years. It has always worked so well.
With reading.
With spelling.
With adding.
With algebra.
Again and again, when my kids weren't ready to learn something like phonics it was a big struggle. If I kept the environment full of great stuff for learning and just let them be, then when it was time it just clicked. No struggles, no tears, no months of repetition.
Now obviously, nobody's going to learn to speak fluent Japanese like magic in a weekend. That's not what I'm saying. But if you're trying to teach your child something that just isn't clicking, maybe just let it go for now. Instead, just work these skills into play and everyday life.
You may have heard of the famous experiment done in the early 1900's where a superintendent got permission for some of his classrooms to completely drop all math curricula until 6th grade, and they ended up doing even better in math than the other kids by the end of 6th grade.
Dr. Peter Gray of Psychology Today wrote about the experiment:
"In sum, Benezet showed that kids who received just one year of arithmetic, in sixth grade, performed at least as well on standard calculations and much better on story problems than kids who had received several years of arithmetic training. This was all the more remarkable because of the fact that those who received just one year of training were from the poorest neighborhoods—the neighborhoods that had previously produced the poorest test results." (From https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/freedom-learn/201003/when-less-is-more-the-case-teaching-less-math-in-school) )
There have also been so many reports of children who were completely unschooled who learned all of K-12 math in 8 weeks, or the group of middle school kids who caught up in all K-6 math in 30 hours of tutoring when they asked to learn it (see http://www.besthomeschooling.org/articles/math_david_albert.html for more about kids like these).
When kids are truly ready and interested, it'll all fall into place. Maybe not in a weekend, but pretty close.
