Does Early Enrichment Still Let a Kid be a Kid?

Academic enrichment is important. No one disputes that. But the message that has been trending for the past few years is clear – if you don’t start early, your child will never get ahead! It’s everywhere. Simply turn on your TV and flip to just about any “kid’s” station and you’ll be inundated with commercials telling you that your 18 month old can read, or challenging you to help your 2 year old learn to add and subtract! And while there are numerous studies lauding the benefits of early academic enrichment, how is a parent to strike that all-important balance of letting a kid still be a kid?   The National Association for the Education of Young Children, a professional organization promoting excellence in early childhood education, praises the value of play in teaching children to build cognitive, social and physical skills. A good early childhood enrichment plan should incorporate play into its programming. This allows children to build pre-reading and pre-math skills naturally, and avoids making the learning process a negative or forced experience. That in turn helps children develop a love of learning and a natural ability to problem solve and develop higher level thinking. For example, letting your toddler play with plastic measuring cups helps him figure out how the cups nest into one another based on size and shape and also allows him to apply those same early critical thinking skills to other shapes and objects. And surprise – it ends up sneaking in important building blocks for geometry and other basic math!   Early enrichment programs focused solely on drilling information and helping children memorize facts and figures, without the incorporation of play, seem to gather the most criticism. For example, in a 2011 article in the New York Times, Allisaon Gopnik, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley (ranked #20 by U.S. News amongst all national universities) had this to say about such “drill and skill” programs, “The best you can say is that they’re useless,” said Alison Gopnik, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, who compared the escalation of supplemental education with Irish elk competing to see which had the biggest antlers. “The result is that they go around tottering, unable to walk, under the enormous weight of these antlers they’ve developed,” she said. “I think it’s true of American parents from high school all the way down to preschool.”   As parents, one of our primary roles is to help our children develop into independent, capable adults. It doesn’t hurt to help a child begin flexing those cognitive muscles early in life, but balancing it out with healthy doses of play, imagination, and make-believe seem to offer the most well-rounded and effective approach. Some simple ways to do this are to participate as a partner in your child’s play by taking on assigned roles, imitating him and letting him imitate you; encourage your child’s thoughts and ideas throughout each day by listening and offering opportunities for her to talk to you about what she’s doing; and make sure your child has plenty of opportunities to express himself – verbally and also through crayons, stickers, clay, etc.  

Parents who are interested in taking it a step further are encouraged to check out the Club Z! Kindergarten readiness program, Let the Learning Begin™, which is designed for children ages 3-5. Each lesson in the program is designed to take place in a one-hour time span, with 30 minutes dedicated to tutor-initiated activities and 30 minutes dedicated to child-initiated activities. Tutor-initiated activities include any lesson or activity that is selected by the tutor. Child-initiated activities include any lesson or activity that is selected by the student. This can take the form of structured or un-structured play – the child can either choose to engage in a lesson plan/activity relative to their expressed interest, or they can simply choose to engage in open play time. The tutor’s role is to relate the activity or the open play time to the cognitive, emotional/social, language and/or motor skill development goals associated with that day’s theme.

Whatever path you take, parental involvement in your child’s early education is a critical component to successful cognitive, emotional, social, physical and language development. Listen to your children. Give them an opportunity to grow naturally into their own persons. And praise them often.

“Parents and families play an enormous role in shaping a child’s social and emotional development. Early relationships with parents lay the foundation on which social competency and peer relationships are built. Parents who support positive emotional development interact with their children affectionately; show consideration for their feelings, desires and needs; express interest in their daily activities; respect their viewpoints; express pride in their accomplishments; and provide encouragement and support during times of stress. This support greatly increases the likelihood that children will develop early emotional competence, will be better prepared to enter school, and less likely to display behavior problems at home and at school. This is why many preschool programs include a focus on parent involvement.”

- National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) Early Childcare Research Network (2002)