hi thechillibuddy and all,
i am also very interested in practical tricks and tips for fitting in Doman’s suggested 30-plus learning-play sessions per day, especially for newborn-1y/o!
As parents of a 2m/o, I think DW and I have a similar ambition for hi-frequency infant&parent learning-play sessions for the first year and a half. Or maybe that continues until whenever DD starts (shall we dream?) independent play and reading. We are also prepping ourselves for taking ASL seriously!
However, we have also found it difficult to reach the session frequencies suggested by IAHP/Doman across physical and stimulation domains.
Stomach reflux and our own sleep needs pushed us toward more supine/back time and less prone/tummy time. And we continue to succumb to enabling DD’s addiction to bouncing with a parent on a “yoga ball”, at the expense of prone pre-crawling practice.
And even when we only had a goal of 10 “fruitcamp” sessions a day, we still fell short of that, only achieving 6 or 7 sessions most days. And during these two month, we even had both parents at home.
Now that DW is going back to work, DD will probably get less parental face-time, but maybe the sessions will be better coordinated (by decree instead of by committee) allowing more sessions/day.
We just finished the 10 days of fruit described in Doman’s “How Smart Is Your Baby” (unfortunately titled). We nicknamed it the “fruitcamp”, because it uses the same fruit 10x/day, with a new fruit each day, for 10 days, like a military bootcamp. Also reminds me of “booting” up a computer, trying to effect an “Anne Sullivan” moment connecting language to reality.
Planning for a less-forgiving year-to-come of dozens of sessions each day, where missing too many sessions in a lopsided way might confuse the heck out of me. Ohboy.
I just prepped the first 50 word cards and DW put the 100 number cards in order. (I would use LR except that we’re doing Gregg Shorthand as the written English script, and LR would require extra scanning effort.) I think LR would definitely make the Doman “stretch goal” of a thousand sessions each day more achievable, but I’m super excited about learning Gregg with DD.
I try to remind myself that the Doman Ubermensch-Supermom is not a reality even at IAHP. You can’t do Suzuki violin AND multiple languages, and encyclopedic knowledge, AND olympic-prep triathlon training plus soccer and basketball. Something will be de-emphasized at some point. It’s a palette of options and we need to remember to prioritize LO’s spiritual, social, and cultural health and growth. And just like learning ASL before we teach it to LO, we need to be judicious in our EL committments especially if “compliance” means incrementally compromising our own support systems for spiritual, social, and physical health.
I should’ve been Glenn Doman for Halloween this year. #MissedOpportunities