I’m in education line, and I read lots of materials about how human brains develop, what’re stored in left or right hemisphere of brains, what can parents do to enhance their babies’ brains, and etc.
Sad to say, I don’t really practise what I’ve learnt on Justin. Partly it’s because as a working mum [promoted to full time already *sob, sob*], what I want to do when I reach home is to hug my baby, bathe him, feed him, play & talk with him, and rather exhausted to do what I’ve been doing at school again on him.
Besides, I’m really questioning the effect of over-trained babies. To me, if the parents’ intention of “training babies” is to spend more quality time with their babies or building their babies curiousity in learning and interests in reading, then it’s acceptable to me. But if the intention is only to bring up a genius and be proud of their effort, I’ll hesitate.
Some parents told me that I should well train Justin because I know the ways. But what I really want is to have a healthy happy baby who’s growing up to be find and well-manner, and has confident with himself no matter what’s his IQ, EQ, CQ, AQ, and whatever quotients should there be.
I’ve seen some high-scorer students who’re really bad in their social skills, adapting ability, and morale. They emphasize too much on academic results and ignore the other aspects of human development. Sometimes, when they failed to achieve the highest rank or score, they’ll cry and throw tantrums. Quite kiasu even if they only primary students. I wonder if they’ll ever learn how to face failure and learn the lesson, and then try to do better in the future. As adults, we know how important it is to know how to face and accept some failures in life sometimes, and still live on by looking for other solutions. I think this should be taught when children are young.
Of coz, as parents we should do our best to bring up our children and hope that they excel in their lifes. But should we really train them to the extent of pressuring our children to achieve certain milestone at certain time?
One parent talked to me days ago asking if her son will be able to write well when he’s in primary school. She said nowadays children need to copy a lot from the blackboard and she’s afraid that since my school doesn’t stress on writing for 4 years old, will that be a problem later? I think writing is part of motor skills for children. They’ll write well when they’re ready, if this mother is to force her son to write and copy a lot at home, then the poor boy will freak out and hate doing his work after some time. So what’s the point of forcing? What do children really learn from copying and writing lots of homework? Why parents always think that children should be doing lots of homework to learn?
So, I’ve been doing lots of thinking in how to bring up Justin. I don’t think I want my son to be like some of my children who’s afraid of school, hate their parents of pushing so much, and curse their teachers too. I want him to be happy, even if he has a normal IQ of 100 and can’t make it to Mensa!