When my older daughter was a baby, I thought I had to do something in order for her to learn to walk and talk. I did baby exercises with her, deliberately talked to her all the time and encouraged her to copy me and fussed a lot. She was an average walker and an early talker.
When her sister came along, I didn't have the time to worry about teaching her to walk and talk. She walked at 9.5 months and was an earlier and more effective talker than her sister.
Now, did I help the younger one learn to walk and talk? Sure. I held her hands while she practiced, let her pull up on me, talked and sang to her as I was caring for her, and let her hang out with her older sister. I did many of the same things with her that I'd done with her sister. The difference was just that I did them on her initiative, not mine, and I was much more relaxed. I'd spent some time hanging out with kids and had noticed that normal kids, no matter what their parents do or don't do, learn how to walk and talk.
Of course, parents can aid their children in learning or inhibit them. Kids who walk around all day with pacifiers plugged into their mouths don't talk as well as my toddlers did. Kids who spent a lot of time in playpens, walkers and other insidious devices didn't get the walking practice my kids did. Kids who are malnourished don't develop normally. Kids whose parents don't talk to them don't learn to talk as quickly as kids whose parents do talk to them.
It came time for us to choose how to homeschool. The teachers at the homeschooling program recommended unschooling, because, in their considerable experience, kids learn well while unschooling and it decreases homeschooling burnout. They helped us figure out what we could do to aid our children.
So, we're unschooling and it's a lot like teaching our younger daughter to walk. We spend a fair amount of time selecting learning materials and letting Morganne know that they are available. We are also available to her. We talk about what we're doing (budgeting at the grocery store, consulting with our lawyer, negotiating a contract, doing taxes, cooking, mixing concrete, whatever) and allow the children to participate in our activities. We let go of our expectations about when Morganne will choose to learn a particular skill and instead focus on helping her learn the skills she is interested in learning right now.
It's working very well for us. It's delightful to watch Morganne learn and to help her learn. It makes more sense to me than wedging in two hours of formal schooling every day as a chore to be finished before the fun begins.
I went to the library on Tuesday and came home with books from 4 different series for Morganne to explore. She was as excited as though I'd brought home a treasure. Since then, she's been holed up reading them.
Should I stop her and make her work on math instead?
Copyright © 1996 by
Heather Madrone. All rights reserved.