Hurry Up!

I recently finished reading The Hurried Child: Growing Up Too Fast Too Soon by David Elkind. The premise of the book is two-fold: 1) today’s society (and parents) is forcing children to absorb too much information too quickly/early 2) today’s society (and parents) is imposing a maturity level on kids for which they are just not ready. It is a read which is reminiscent of my college days in Psych 101. A very thorough and studious book…however, you and I could probably cover all the main points over coffee without needing to spend hours in deep psychological reading.

Narrowing down to my own small world, I’ve got a “hurrying” issue with which I’m struggling. You know our Lena is a bright and inquisitive child. So far that I’ve known her, though, she has taken longer to form concrete words for things than I would have thought average...which is most interesting because she was such an early talker. I remember when she was small and learning her colors. She had such good conversational skills very early, maybe two??? But, to get her to name any colors beyond pink and purple… it took a good year to solidify them all.

Now here we sit with letters. Since spring, I’ve made a concerted effort to teach her their names so she would know them from memory. And, to be honest, it’s been a struggle. We’ve got half of the letters memorized, but it’s taken longer than I would have thought. It’s tough to admit, too, you know! This is a reading household, let me tell you!!

I think I may have a non-visual learner on my hands here. On the one hand, it’s exciting for me to think that I might need to be more creative in Lena’s learning, but daunting as well. Educational system labels are floating through my head, and I’m fighting them off to keep both of our attitudes positive. I’m so glad we’re homeschooling so that I am able to work through this with her in a way which will grow her love of reading and learning.

Coming up Wednesday, I’ll give you the skinny on what we’re going to do with Miss Lena in homeschool this coming fall. Keep your thinking caps on…I’ll need you to answer a very important question come later in the week.

Until then….