19 thoughts on “Two-Year Old Pele”

  1. Contrary to what the woman says, one of the things we really do know is that it is not important at all to introduce literacy at a young age.

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  2. Montessori, at least ours, is really good about that. The four year olds are learning sounds, the motor skills needed write, how to pay attention, and (on the playground) the characters of Star Wars. Reading and writing instruction doesn’t start until 5 and the teachers will politely give the reasons for this to credulous parents who believe their co-workers when the co-workers say little Becky was reading War and Peace at age 3.

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  3. Insane parenting. Why do the parents in these NYT stories always rush to place their infants into the hands of salespeople? Why the urge to improve a happy, healthy baby? Is there to be no free will, even in infancy?

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  4. The insanity is what the woman is saying (and the reporter) and not the activities themselves. Kids who want to, running around and playing with balls, well the reason that’s an organized activity instead of just playing on the play ground is 1) the weather 2) the difficulty of making spontaneous meet-ups in a society where people don’t know their neighbors 3) busy schedules.
    Lil Kickers, Gymboree, baby dance classes, baby gymnastics. They’re all to get parents & toddlers together when that’s not happening naturally in the community space. They’re not about “building baby athletes.”

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  5. Not if you want the kid to become CEO of a Fortune 500 company. And you can make kids do this while sneering at the Christians who want their kids to be Christians.

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  7. I think there’s a practice-building loophole here for child psychiatrists, if the Perfect Child merchants created mailing lists from their client lists, with a 10 year lag.
    BJ, there is a child athlete industry. The travel teams of tomorrow could be created in today’s nurseries–or the future 12 year olds with serious back problems.

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  8. Well at 2 whatever keeps parents from killing their kids is probably a good evolutionary adaptation right? If that’s dreams of a World Cup player, hey.
    But no, really I think it’s crazy. What we need is playgrounds full of kids running about madly.

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  9. “I think there’s a practice-building loophole here for child psychiatrists, if the Perfect Child merchants created mailing lists from their client lists, with a 10 year lag.”
    I don’t think you’d need to wait 10 years.

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  10. I would echo bj’s comments about these classes being an opportunity for play that’s not happening spontaneously. The only thing I would add is safety is also an issue. We at least are unwilling to have our kids playing in the yard unsupervised, or going to the park alone (even at ages 7 and 9). And I live in one of the safest police beats in the entire city of Chicago. So you end up sending them to classes instead, just to get them to burn off some energy.

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  11. Lately, I’ve had very good luck with going for walks to burn energy. I did not think a four year old could do a whole mile, but he did with only a small break in the middle.

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  12. A friend and I were chatting about this a few days ago – she has a son in grade 1 and I have a daughter in SK and we both purposely underprogram our kids compared to many of their peers. Yet every once in a while we each feel a fluttering of “gah” when we hear about Johnny learning Mandarin or Susie taking Karate. And then calm right down.
    I think kids need enough free time to have playdates one-on-one where they REALLY learn how to play with someone else. And to develop some emotional intelligence and social skills.
    As well, they are so busy in school already, how about enough downtime to just hang out and maybe even get bored once in a while.
    That being said (and JennG the fellow Canadian maybe can attest to), if you are Canadian and have a son, that son is pretty much obligated to learn to skate and play hockey at a fairly early age in order to keep up with his peers. Perhaps football (soccer) is like that in Brazil?

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  13. Maybe this is parenting for people who were overscheduled as children? I mean, I played all these games or similar ones with my kids at home (evenings and weekends, that is, as I had a 40-hour per week job outside the home). It wasn’t structured, it didn’t have to accommodate other people’s schedules or their kids’ needs, and I knew what my kids needed to learn.

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  14. We tried to underschedule our 4th grader this year, and instead do more ad hoc play date stuff. Unfortunately most of our requests for play dates are in vain; her friends are all scheduled up. As a result she spends too much time watching Phineas & Ferb, and despairing over her wilting social life.

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  15. And Jen notes how you still have to keep up to a certain degree with your kids’ peers so they aren’t alone. I have that dilemma with summer camp – the girl’s pals will all be in bussed 8-5 camp for the month of July while I’d prefer half day. Will end up doing full days so that she won’t spend half a day alone…

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  16. I think it’s rather silly but chalk most of it up to boredom (by parents) rather than a desire to create an athlete. I think I scheduled our daughter more as a baby than I do now that she’s in 2nd grade b/c I was so desperate to find company. I quickly learned that the scheduled baby activity wasn’t really our scene.

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  17. At 5th grade, or thereabouts, the kids in our towns started to focus on one or two activities, not multiple classes. Especially with sports, there are boys who play soccer year round, or hockey, or girls who Dance all the time. So, it is harder for kids who aren’t manic hockey players, etc., to keep in touch with a peer group outside of school. If a boy or girl wants to drop the sport, that also means dropping the circle of friends. In hindsight, not signing up for a travel team did mean that my oldest chlid lost time with friends. On the other hand, she’s still a klutz, and more time on the team would have meant more time on the sidelines–and teammates’ resentment for bad plays.
    Our library has arranged a teen library club, which helps some uncoordinated early teens hang out together at the library.

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  18. I’m seeing what cranberry is, too, and at the same age. In 5th, it seems like you have specialize and become a soccer kid or a drama kid or a dance kid. In fact, the soccer, drama, and dance classes require it, by having 3 practices + more/week. And, the kids who are happy doing that are either 1) truly passionate about the activity (my own 7 year old is currently passionate about ice hockey or 2) have an entire circle of friends built around the sport (I notice this with the girls).
    My girl played soccer this year in order to spend time with her friends (and another girl decided not to play on a “traveling” team so that she could play with her school friends). Next year, I suspect it’ll be hard for my not great soccer player to play at all, and the other girl will be on a traveling team.
    So one has to search out more obscure sports to continue to dabble (ultimate frisbee is a current favorite around here).

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  19. Large available space also plays a role in a dense urban area. We took the then-two-year-old to something like gymnastics simply because the school gym they did their tumbling in was a lot bigger than anyone in a downtown Munich apartment had available, especially once it got snowy and playgrounds were less of an option. That said, the city offered a week of free ski instruction to pre-K kids, and I think that was the first rung on Germany’s ski talent-spotting ladder.

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