Friday, June 10, 2011

Underestimating Children

Do you think we underestimate children?  I do.  I don't believe we should expect a child to think as an adult or anything.  I don't think we need to be stressing our children by trying to stuff them with knowledge.  However, I know that I've been guilty of not explaining or teaching things to children just because I underestimated their ability to learn.

Maria and Eric have been showing letters to Cordy for a long time.  She has books that show "a" is for apple and such.  Maria said she'd recently been writing Cordelia's name and Cordy said it.  Maria, realizing Cordy now recognized her own name, tried teaching our names to her.  I didn't know anything about this and when they were over to our place, Maria wrote this...


Maria then said, "Where's Mama's name?" and continued on in random order.  Cordelia was successful at identifying (by pointing) at each word.  You can see how Maria marked under the p and m in our titles, which I thought was clever, helping Cordy see the difference.  Maria did not claim that Cordelia was reading or anything, but it was pretty cool to see that she was recognizing words.  She's only 20 months old, and I'm sure I wouldn't have thought to try that yet.  I would have underestimated her ability to learn this.  The important part of this is that Cordelia was proud of herself; it was a fun experience for her.  She also let us know when she was done performing as well!



This picture doesn't really have anything to do with this post. 
It was taken last month.
I just like to put up pictures of that sweet smile.

Give me a break!  I'm a grandma!








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