A friend wrote reflecting about a family member who had chosen a very dry academic program for her little ones. We have talked before, she and I, about how fleeting childhood is. Certainly however our warm feelings for this transitory time in life is not the only reason to cherish and make the most of it. The foundations laid now are those which later experiences – academic and otherwise – will be built upon.

David Darcy says this:

If we deprive children of their childhood in a misguided attempt to harvest quickly what naturally requires time, they may reach adulthood not knowing how to communicate their ideas, how to cooperate with others, how to listen and compromise, and how to access their own innate creativity.

If, instead, we allow time for children to engage in the learning activities that are most natural to childhood, they will, at appropriate times, be able to learn all of the other skills we expect of students. They are more likely to be happy, healthy, confident and creative. Given the choice, why not choose to let children be children?

I would go further and say that later academics are often MORE successful given a rich, solid foundation in childhood. International testing seems to bear this out. Finland, which has ranked first in such testing does not start its children in school before age seven nor do even the high schoolers there have more than 30 minutes of homework. This slower start nets them greater academic achievement later on. Dr Moore was telling us this some decades ago.

Does this mean no Montessori trays and holding them back? No. It means not pushing little people into two dimensional work prematurely. It means lots of hands on, real life experiences. It means a solid grounding in image-rich stories and basic skills (academic as well as organizational and personal) from which to launch and soar later. It means trusting that childhood is not something to be gotten through but there for good reasons. It means that while there is a lifetime to read War and Peace, there is this little window of time to enjoy Tomie de Paola together and to make lovely crayon drawings. Don’t miss it.