My LO has started attending daycare and since then the caretakers in the daycare keep telling/asking me
“Your son has got a huge vocabulary for his age. How did you do this?”
“Did you know that your son knows all the shapes. Did you teach him?”
“Your son knows all his body parts. You have taught him so well”.
“He knows the numbers. He gives us lots of surprises daily. You guys started teaching so early… blah blah blah”
They are yet to discover their biggest surprise that he can read a book so well. I am feeling embarrassed day by day. I have a feeling that they think as if I use a blackboard and a cane to teach all these things. I am not comfortable sharing my early learning strategy with them. Sometimes I just blush away other times I say we have been reading/talking a lot.
I think I have to live with this kind of comments atleast until his school age. I don’t know how to handle it. Can someone share their own experiences.
I had a similar problem when my DD stared a preschool at age 2 - they kept telling me what she knew - they were surprised she knew about hexagons and all her colours, fruit, vegetables and then one day she showed them she could read (they still don’t know the extent of it but I let it be) Just tell them your child is there to play and have fun and that they musn’t test him. You are obviously doing a good job teaching him at home - let them know what you want from the daycare. I did tell my child’s daycare that she was doing more advanced puzzles than they were giving her since I thought she might prefer it if there were more challenging ones there and the school did make an effort to get bigger ones for that age group, but mostly I just smiled when they told me what she knew and said things like, yes she has hexagon shaped vitamins or we went to the fruit store recently when they said she knew things.
I was recently told by my son’s teacher and principal that he is ready for pre-primary but when she checked his age, she was surprized to see that he was less than 3 yrs and told me that unfortunately she won’t be able to promote him to the next class due to his age. He will unfortunately have to stay in the same class for the next 5 months! He is lucky to have a teacher who appreciates what he knows and is constantly trying to give him more challenging activities. Some of the teachers were surprized to hear this and started questioning how I teach him all this. It doesnt help that my son loves to talk and discusses planets and how he is going to be an astronaut, can tell that Charles Perault wrote Jack and the Beanstalk etc. :laugh: …At first, I just tell them ‘children are like sponges, he surprizes me with how much he grasps too!’ …they dont say anything after I say this. If they ask, what we do at home, I tell them we do ‘purposeful play’ just count while we jump etc…if I give them details of how much he knows, they will quiz him to find out if I am telling them the truth :rolleyes: so I don’t give out those details.
I have realized it the hard way…after multiple conversations with people, that it is best to give info about early educational techniques to those who seem interested and will apply it; not to people who sometimes want to compare their children with ours and get jealous. There are some moms that will make you feel like you are robbing them off their childhood! Every child is different. My son begs me to do puzzles with him, counting with manipulatives etc because we have so much fun with it. My husband has only recently joined us in our early ed journey and he is enjoying it too!
If I find some mom that even seems 1% interested in early ed- I give her all the info she needs to get started and help her along the way (as much as my experience has taught me).
So, my theory is, as long as you are enjoying doing things with him- do it and try to keep your conversations short with people that are very judgemental.
Just an addendum to the earlier post- I was the one that told him (generally) that Charles Perrault wrote fairy tales and he picked it up that way- I am probably going to have to correct myself soon- I think Palgrave wrote Jack and the Beanstalk, have to confirm.
I agree with taking a slightly vague approach to answering any questions or comments! After being accused of “hot-housing” by a work colleague when I even briefly mentioned the computer I decided to take a ‘less is more’ approach to sharing any info about early learning with anyone except my husband and mum (both v supportive). At nursery when they say things like “oh she knows all her letters” I just say “oh that’s great!” or “oh yes, she is very interested in numbers…”. I find this is much easier than discussing how she learned them!
But it is a very important point to ask them not to test too much. I hadn’t thought of this. I hope they are less likely to test if I don’t over-emphasise her progress and they will just ‘discover’ her knowledge by playing the same games they do with all the other children.
