Oh, poopie! You can tell by little G that you two are doing a great job. Kids are so individual in their growth that they can be behind in one thing and way ahead in another...and as long as they eventually learn what they need to learn, then it really doesn't matter.
M does what G did at that age: She looks around at the whole room, all the loud grownup interaction and doesn't miss a thing. She's fully engaged with the world, destined to be another smartie like her older brother, and she'll be fine.
If there is anything I learned from my graduate school experience is that the worst thing you can do to a kid is to push it to perform in a way that the child is not yet able to perform. To push them beyond their capacity is frustrating and can be traumatizing, and it teaches the child that they can't rise to what is expected of them no matter how hard they try. In a way, encouraging your child but letting them go at their own pace, celebrating their successes, is its own secret weapon. You don't need the kid who rolls over before any of the others: You need the kid who steadily builds success upon success and runs out into the world confident that s/he can learn anything just by struggling with it until s/he has mastered it. It's the kids who never experience that struggle leads to success and learning because their parents always set the bar painfully high who end up those really bright kids who end up no longer trying and get stuck in places a person of their intelligence shouldn't get stuck.
Oh, I'm not worried about M yet :). This is actually more about G -- not that I'm worried about him, but that I realized at some point yesterday that I was pushing myself (and him) towards something I wasn't entirely prepared for yet or interested in, just out of feeling that "others are doing it, so shouldn't we too?" And the answer should be "no, we shouldn't just because others are."
I think it is pretty cool that you recognized that you were heading in that direction and then stopped yourself. You've always struck me as being a conscious parent, but not a competitive one.
Kindergarten and first grade are for learning to read. Anything that happens earlier is icing on the cake. I did learn to read between the ages of three and five.
Remember that because he is a boy, he is on average likely to learn to read a little later than the average girl his age. Not that I am saying that he is average, by any means! ;) Also remember that you are bringing him up bilingual which means he has two languages to think in and read in, and the alphabets and sounds are not exactly the same, either. That may contribute to a small delay in his reading, but the benefits of him being bilingual are so huge that any delay in him reading English fluently is just a single drop of water in the ocean of his development.
On that subject, Zvalium was raised trilingual...English, French (her mom) and Spanish (her dad) and just about everyone everywhere was really harsh with them about that...that they were ruining their kid, that she would never learn to read one language or speak properly. Add Hebrew School to that and you'd think from the way they talked about it that she'd be mute. You can see how terrible she turned out, how she can't read or write or communicate and how she's got that weird accent. ;-) Val is bright in ways I can never hope to be, and I think part of it has to do with her exposure to many languages and cultures.
People think that pressing their kids to read at an early age makes them a reader. That proves to not be true. Teaching your kid that books are a delight, fun and a treat is how you develop a reader. One of the things we were taught to emphasize to parents is that they should let their kids "catch" them reading, to see that it is something that their parents do for pleasure. Somehow I am guessing that won't be an issue in your home.
Don't mean to lecture..but fluency was my favorite class in my short-lived grad career and I still have a passion for it.
When he does start learning to read, if you want to borrow my huge black notebook of articles about learning to read, fluency, etc, you are welcome to it. It is the one thing from my graduate mis-education I will never throw out!
the problem is that I'm trying to teach him to read in russian. We are not touching reading in english yet. The goal would be for him to learn to read in russian first, then move on to english. Don't know if it's a realistic goal though.
That is totally realistic from what I was taught. It is the first language you taught him, and learning to read in Russian is going to help him in learning to read in English. Some of the phonics and phenomes are the same, and at the very least he will have book knowledge...what the front of the book is, what the back of the book is, what direction the words go in (are English and Russian the same in this case?) and if the books you give him have rhymes and rhythms the way most "I Can Read" books do, he will learn about those patterns. That will prepare him for kindergarten, when they will work on his reading in English.
He will be making intellectual connections that will exist for him when he learns to read in English. What they say is that the more languages you learn the easier it is to learn more, and that isn't just languages of the same type...like, say, two romance languages.
All you need to do is to sit down with his future kindergarten teacher and explain what he can do. If she is any good she will understand where to take teaching him, and if she doesn't, she can look it up and read about it. He will qualify for ELL (used to be ESL) support when it comes to reading English if he needs it. He may not, but it is good to know it is there.
How fluently is he speaking English? When he is around us he is usually speaking to you in Russian or being cute and shy about talking to the noisy adults, so I really don't know. If he can speak English reasonably well by the time he gets into kindergarten and first grade then he will be just fine.
You really should read up on things like bilingual language acquisition and reading fluency in bilingual children. It is truly fascinating.
I've read a fair amount about bilingual kids. He's not yet speaking English fluently,although he can do some simple phrases. Hopefully he'll be much better at it by the time he starts kindergarten-- he still has a year and a half at least to go till then. Or even two and a half years.
My parents pushed me ahead to kindergarten when I was not entirely ready and I had to be held back in first grade which really messed me up. Stupid move on their part to avoid having two kids home for another year, given that my Mom wasn't working at the time. Newton kids are vicious, and that didn't help.
He'll do a lot of learning in the next year and a half, let alone two years. He's really bright...he may understand English very well and just doesn't speak it yet.
Lyusya, forgive me, but your are NUTS!!!! Why in God's good name should he be reading at the age of 3? It is waaaaay too early (even if you were doing it at that age), and completely and entirely unnecessary. (sorry for such a strong emotional response, but you always strike me as a very reasonable person :)
M does what G did at that age: She looks around at the whole room, all the loud grownup interaction and doesn't miss a thing. She's fully engaged with the world, destined to be another smartie like her older brother, and she'll be fine.
If there is anything I learned from my graduate school experience is that the worst thing you can do to a kid is to push it to perform in a way that the child is not yet able to perform. To push them beyond their capacity is frustrating and can be traumatizing, and it teaches the child that they can't rise to what is expected of them no matter how hard they try. In a way, encouraging your child but letting them go at their own pace, celebrating their successes, is its own secret weapon. You don't need the kid who rolls over before any of the others: You need the kid who steadily builds success upon success and runs out into the world confident that s/he can learn anything just by struggling with it until s/he has mastered it. It's the kids who never experience that struggle leads to success and learning because their parents always set the bar painfully high who end up those really bright kids who end up no longer trying and get stuck in places a person of their intelligence shouldn't get stuck.
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I think it is pretty cool that you recognized that you were heading in that direction and then stopped yourself. You've always struck me as being a conscious parent, but not a competitive one.
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Remember that because he is a boy, he is on average likely to learn to read a little later than the average girl his age. Not that I am saying that he is average, by any means! ;) Also remember that you are bringing him up bilingual which means he has two languages to think in and read in, and the alphabets and sounds are not exactly the same, either. That may contribute to a small delay in his reading, but the benefits of him being bilingual are so huge that any delay in him reading English fluently is just a single drop of water in the ocean of his development.
On that subject, Zvalium was raised trilingual...English, French (her mom) and Spanish (her dad) and just about everyone everywhere was really harsh with them about that...that they were ruining their kid, that she would never learn to read one language or speak properly. Add Hebrew School to that and you'd think from the way they talked about it that she'd be mute. You can see how terrible she turned out, how she can't read or write or communicate and how she's got that weird accent. ;-) Val is bright in ways I can never hope to be, and I think part of it has to do with her exposure to many languages and cultures.
People think that pressing their kids to read at an early age makes them a reader. That proves to not be true. Teaching your kid that books are a delight, fun and a treat is how you develop a reader. One of the things we were taught to emphasize to parents is that they should let their kids "catch" them reading, to see that it is something that their parents do for pleasure. Somehow I am guessing that won't be an issue in your home.
Don't mean to lecture..but fluency was my favorite class in my short-lived grad career and I still have a passion for it.
When he does start learning to read, if you want to borrow my huge black notebook of articles about learning to read, fluency, etc, you are welcome to it. It is the one thing from my graduate mis-education I will never throw out!
Reply
Reply
He will be making intellectual connections that will exist for him when he learns to read in English. What they say is that the more languages you learn the easier it is to learn more, and that isn't just languages of the same type...like, say, two romance languages.
All you need to do is to sit down with his future kindergarten teacher and explain what he can do. If she is any good she will understand where to take teaching him, and if she doesn't, she can look it up and read about it. He will qualify for ELL (used to be ESL) support when it comes to reading English if he needs it. He may not, but it is good to know it is there.
How fluently is he speaking English? When he is around us he is usually speaking to you in Russian or being cute and shy about talking to the noisy adults, so I really don't know. If he can speak English reasonably well by the time he gets into kindergarten and first grade then he will be just fine.
You really should read up on things like bilingual language acquisition and reading fluency in bilingual children. It is truly fascinating.
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He'll do a lot of learning in the next year and a half, let alone two years. He's really bright...he may understand English very well and just doesn't speak it yet.
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