February 2007

Editor's Note
Trust Yourself: You Are Your Child’s Best Teacher

by Wenda Reed

It’s scary to think about. Your baby is born with 100 billion neurons or nerve cells in her brain. Over the first three years of her life, the weight of her brain will triple, and in the first five years, she will form millions of neural connections that will affect her emotional, social, behavioral, intellectual and physical capabilities for the rest of her life.

What if we screw it up?

That’s exactly the question a young mother asked at a recent event I attended: How can I know what to do to give my child a good start on lifelong learning? Why doesn’t anyone write it up and send it home with us when we leave the hospital? What if I’m not doing the right things, and then it’s too late?

As the new director of the state’s fledgling Department of Early Learning asserts, parents and regular caregivers – who know their own children intimately – are the very best teachers.

There are some things to know. The first is that all learning is tied to emotional security. If a young child is in a chaotic, neglectful or abusive environment, he shuts down and doesn’t learn. The time you spend talking with your child, hugging him, playing with him and enjoying him is worth more than any million-dollar learning program.

The second is that the foundation for school readiness isn’t anything high-tech or new or expensive. It’s reading to your child, every single day or evening, at her own rate, letting her respond to each page, cuddling her all the while. Through reading, you will build your child’s experiences and vocabulary and view of the world.

For children under the age of 2, television, videos and computer programs are worse than useless: Brain research shows that babies do not learn that way and, in fact, will have shortened attention spans and less ability to process information. For preschoolers, there is value in quality early learning shows as long as the parent is there to interact with the child and the images are not coming at him at a fast and furious rate.

A third point is that learning is not a compartmentalized, formal thing for babies, toddlers and preschoolers. It should be an integral part of daily life. While you are making dinner, for example, let your baby smell some of the spices and ingredients. When you are shopping, let your toddler or preschooler pick out fruit and put it on the scale. (My daughter, at age 3, counted up eight oranges, and said, “That means two for each of us.” She was figuring out division on her own.)

If you are going on a neighborhood walk, let your little one pick up a pine cone and smell it and feel it and throw it, and talk a little about how seeds fall out of it and a tree grows. While you are sorting laundry, let your preschooler count how many socks there are and try to match them up by color and by size. Let her do tactile things, like “painting” with shaving cream and splashing in water and kneading dough.

And finally, don’t force learning. Some children grasp how letters sound at a very young age, and their eyes light up when they realize that a “c” and an “a” and a “t” make the sound “cat” and it stands for the actual animal. You can follow their lead in helping them write their name and spell out words. But if your child isn’t developmentally ready, cramming it down his throat will not help him learn, but will turn him off and make him feel like a failure. Keep reading to him and doing everyday math, and he’ll catch up. See what really interests him and let him pursue that.

You’re the one who knows your child’s interests and temperament and learning styles, and you really are your child’s very best teacher. Trust yourself.

©2007
Seattle's Child, a publication of the Washington Post Company
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