i really enjoyed reading your post . i was a doman mum for years teaching my hurt child , but years later when i had my second child i had everything ready to teach her words bits ,… crawling track ,lots of material for physical, sensory ,and intellctual stimulation, i did start full program , but than sitting back and watching this little baby growing , moving around exploring interacting with her environment , i started having question marks on how good is that intense early stimulation , and glenn doman books go to the extend of quantifying their program , so many meters of crawling before creeping before walking ,… hanging using their grasp reflex , and some of the early infant method of evaluating a baby i find harsh , blowing a horn , pricking with a needle ,…
i did a program , of being around with my daughter , being sensitive to her needs , her early communication , all my kids spoke early and signed before they spoke ,giving them lots of lots of learning opportunities , so no flashing cards so many times a day didn’t work for us .
my first daughter read at 2 , my second didn’t , but she spoke at 1 , she learned three languages , very articulated , excellent physical skills , and just started reading .
both my daughter and her brother now give me this special look when they are busy doing something and i come to them with set of words , they never looked at the words , but at me moving my mouth speaking , they looked in admiration probably that is why they spoke early , if i read a book , they are easer looking at the pictures or at my face .
the pressure of wanting her to read at 2 like her sister at 2 steal the fun of learning .
you are with me that doman is a lot of work and time consuming , we had to do it because we were on the institutes intensive program and we didn’t know any better way to help our hurt daughter , she was brain injured and doctors prognosis was severely disabled , mentally retarded , so when the institutes gave us the tools that taught her to read so she could communicate with us and the outside world , no longer she was lucked in a jail the size of her body , of course we did it religiously , but reading was all she could do and enjoy .
it is not the case with our well kids , reading will come naturally , i am not sure we are doing in right in pushing it that early . even if we don’t put pressure on our babies , and we do it with fun , but honestly i could sense stress in many mummies posts , don’t yoy think your babies are not feeling your stress .
some mummies are disapointed that their babies are 2 and not reading yet after all the flashing and material preparation .
some spent fortune on material , flashed from birth , think about all the night spent preparing material .
i often find out i present my daughter with certain skill , or information i like her to learn , we have to work on it for a while for her to master it if presented early , but this same skill is gained naturally without any effort when she is ready .
i could spend lots of time teaching colors printing color books , making matching games about colors ,… but colors are in our daily life , they don’t need to be taught in a lesson , kids just learn them ,
my idea is we don’t have to burn ourselves down trying to teach our kids something he would learn spontaneously .
when i read that some mums are homeschooling their : 2 and 1 year old . come on 2 and 1 year old do not need school ( my opinion ) , that is why i like montessori they learn by doing hands on practical life activities about science math ,… and everything around them .
how important it is for them to know 40 flags , or 40 countries , or 20 dinosaurs ??how much this information is related to them . how heathy it is to interfere and try to create extra connections in the brain , or speed up the development process( according to doman ), development is not only about knowledge , but their physical emotional and social development .
like i read in previous post about this 5 years old who was gifted but had lots of emotional and social issues , his mum did doman …
i don’t consider such a child gifted . i honestly don’t like labelling kids at such an early age , what do we consider gifted ?? ability to read at an early age wow , but unable to solve every day life situations???
my daughter only now started to read and she is 3.5 years old ?? is she late ?? according to doman standard maybe , but according to other kids who only start reading at 5 and 6 , she is well ahead , and i really didn’t teach her , she picked it up by herself from lots of reading together . she plays with a friend who is the same age like her , her mum homeschooled her and used teach your child to read in 60 easy lessons , 20 minutes every day , when she turned 2 , and by three she could read , and now she is reading peter and jane books , every day few pages for half an hour .
watching the two girls playing , tina plays and enjoys her time and is so creative, very active ,… the other girl is so placid , cannot run ( and talking about the physical program helping kids to read ) , cannot easily interact , and at school everybody was blown up by her ability to read and is labelled gifted , and made her skip class .
i feel this girl would be burned out like your sister at some point . yes it was easy for her mum to teach her to read because the girl was not very active and was able to sit and learn . if she was my child instead of working on reading i would take her out and encourage her to run and play and be more active .
a montessori teacher told me once when i was a bit concerned about my daughter not being able to fit at school and her need to move all the time . she told me i shouldn’t worry at all about tina that it is much easier to direct a super active child and find few moments of teaching opportunities .
and the proof is you learning late ( only according to doman ), and the success you had later , so really early learning is not always a guarantee for later academic success .
so mums just relax and enjoy your babies and when you can brill baby is a wonderful stress free tool to teach your babies and stimulate them , but it is nothing like real life experience and their interaction with their environment .
your babies will enjoy learning and finding out about things related to them which will make learning more fun , they have life time to learn about presidents and maps and flags and rivers ,…
the proof is tima now at three and a half wants the map of the world in her bedroom and have wonderful map skills , no doman no flash cards, only pointing to things on the map while bouncing on the bed .
ok enough now , sorry for the typo mistakes , these are my thoughts i felt like putting them on paper and share them with other mums , i don’t mean to offend anybody who thinks differently .
love
viv
