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A recent blog post by a young mom got me thinking about how small children learn, and how important it is that they grow up in an environment conducive to learning.
This mom taught her children the nativity story by taking a nativity set and placing parts of it in different places in their home: an empty stable right where the children could see it easily, Mary and Joseph off in one direction, the shepherds in another, and the wise men in the farthest part of the house. Over the course of the days leading up to Christmas, this mom helped her children move Mary and Joseph closer to the stable each day. Then on Christmas Eve, they read the Christmas story in the Bible, put Mary and Joseph in the stable (adding the baby Jesus), and brought the shepherds “in from the fields.” From then until January 6 (Epiphany), they moved the wise men closer and closer to the stable each day, until they finally arrived to bring gifts to the newborn savior.
This mom understands how to create a learning environment. She uses what she has on hand to help her children learn something important in a way they can understand and get involved in. This family may live in a mansion or a small house trailer. I don’t know and it doesn’t matter. What’s crucial is that this mom uses her love for her children, her intelligence and her environment to help her children learn.
This is the essence of homeschooling, isn’t it? And it starts at birth. How we interact with our children is more crucial than where we happen to live or how rich or poor our family happens to be. So many people do not understand this concept! They think that all they need to do is find a good preschool or move to the right school district and their children’s success is a done deal.
Personally, I think the phrase “good preschool” is an oxymoron in all but the most extreme cases (those where there is parental neglect and the child is better off in a preschool than at home with a drug-addled and/or otherwise incompetent parent). The young mom with the great way to teach the nativity story is a shining example of the superiority of loving parenting over any other method of teaching young children.
So many of today’s parents do not see this, and it saddens me. Case in point: one of my daughters used to baby-sit for a couple with two small daughters. The mom spent each day dragging her tiny girls to local malls and a large fitness center, where the little girls were parked in the childcare facility while their mom worked out. But occasionally my daughter or the children’s grandmother would be called in to baby-sit. My daughter always noticed how happy the little girls were to be allowed to stay home and play with their toys. Life without a travel schedule was a novelty to them! Likewise, when Grandma came to watch the girls for the day, she kept them home and out in the yard, where they happily played and rode their tricycles for hours. Being from a different generation of moms, Grandma understood that small children learn plenty just being at home with someone who loves them.
When I meet young moms, I always try to get across to them that God has equipped them to meet the emotional and educational needs of their children, and they need to have the confidence to understand that. I did not always understand that myself when my children were young, but I did see that they were capable of learning at home, and so I did not feel the need to send them to preschool. But of course the pressure was much less in those days.
For the past decade or so, people have looked to formal early childhood education as the Holy Grail. Now that our society has so many young children on antidepressants, and some members of the first generation of kids put in school at age 3 have begun shooting up their high schools, I’m hoping people are starting to get a clue. But what it comes down to is the message society gives its young moms. Right now, they are told that they are not capable of giving their children what they need. But there is a steadily growing chorus from those of us who have been there and done that and know that it works: “You can do this. Use what you have and where you are in life and teach your children. They will be fine.” I hope you all can hear us.
For those who can’t, please consider one more thing: when people grow old, their early childhood often becomes clearer to them. They spend more time reminiscing about their youth, their parents, their siblings, and how they lived back then in far more detail than at any other time of their lives. It can give them great comfort. Do we want our children to spend their old age remembering the good times they had with us, or remembering being left at the day care center, the preschool and the fitness center childcare room?
About the author:
Barbara Frank is the mother of four homeschooled-from-birth children ages 14-23, a freelance writer/editor, and the author of “Life Prep for Homeschooled Teenagers” and “The Imperfect Homeschooler’s Guide to Homeschooling.” To visit her Web site, “The Imperfect Homeschooler,” go to www.cardamompublishers.com.
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