Today's Child

Here's a little thing about early childhood I wrote a while back:

There is a new interest in the age zero to age five child these days. We are rediscovering that these years are the most important years in human development, and that more attention must be paid. That’s good. Unfortunately, it’s never enough often enough to make a real difference in early childhood education.

What do most children learn before five? They learn how and what to eat, how to talk and use the bathroom, wash and groom, dress, ask questions, how and when to clean up their mess, how to turn on most appliances and use them successfully.

Most children, by age five, know how to swim a little, ride a bike, take a walk down the street alone, play without injury at most playgrounds, and meet a stranger child and make friends quickly. They know when it is unsafe and when not to stray from mother’s side. Children nearly five understand a lot.

At five, children are friendly, outgoing, and smart. They retain information like a computer when it’s interesting, and when it’s dull, they forget in ten seconds. They are independent enough not to want to do what you want them to do, but get flustered when you tell them, “Do what you want.”

Children by age five know what good and bad are. They know when they are being brats, and they know how to be one and when it hurts most and what to do to inflict the most obnoxious behavior they can for the longest possible time, and where.

Then, between five and seven, they polish. By seven, most children should be able to manage their lives pretty well. They can now read the instructions and the back of the cereal box.

By age seven, most children are set in personality, interests, values, manners, and are going in an intellectual direction that’s enormously hard to divert. Children who aren’t usually suffer from a case of dominant mother or sentimental father, but that’s a whole other story.

So, after all this is said and done, what do we really need to do about children in the early childhood range? Plenty.

We need to learn to introduce a child to formal education properly so it takes hold of his interest. It happens somewhere between four and six. “Introduction” means exactly that, foreword, overture, beginning to formal education.

Biggest part of early childhood education? Listening.

Listening means children are communicating. It’s a two way street. It comes out and it goes in. Early childhood education should be active not passive. It should involve all the child’s senses and discover all a child’s intellectual abilities.

Unfortunately, that’s rarely done, and the proof always begins with a child’s ability to listen. Listening is taught. Most children are never taught to listen.

Story time is probably the most important part of early education because this is where children learn to listen, and then listen to learn. If the stories are pointless and banal or poorly read, or delivered on TV as a video, the kids won’t learn to listen. If the stories never teach, the kids won’t learn at all.

So when rediscovering early childhood education, adults need to rediscover the element of listening, and then teach the child.