Life is not a race. So, why are so many mothers I know in such a hurry to enroll their three and four-year old children in school? Why does a four-year old need to write his name? What is the big rush?
For the typical pregnant woman, the starting flag begins waving the second the doctor insists on an ultrasound to “date” the pregnancy because God forbid a baby should just arrive on its own terms. It’s all about shaving off the final weeks of pregnancy and inducing the baby to be born for the convenience of the doctor so he can be home before the sun sets on the splendor that is his home. Who cares that a normal pregnancy can last up to forty-two weeks and that some babies take even longer to gestate . . . let’s hurry and get that baby born! Stat!
Don’t even get me started on how few mothers bother to breastfeed their babies for the optimum length of time, because surely, someone will be offended and that is not my intent. But honestly, how many babies are shortchanged because of mom’s rush to just move on to another stage?
Babies are little for about twenty minutes, it seems, and then they are stinky teenagers, but we are in a headlong rush to get them through each stage as quickly as possible. Finish up breastfeeding so we can potty-train so we can enroll them in full-time preschool so they are ready to read and write before they get to kindergarten so they can what? Apply to an Ivy League college before they get out of second grade?
Speaking of second grade, I must again describe my dismay at observing second-grade girls at a Veteran’s Day assembly a few years back. Those seven year olds had highlights in their hair and pantyhose on their legs and high-heels on their feet. And to think that I wasn’t even allowed to wear earrings before I was ten back in the old days. These girls looked ready for an office romance.
This all ties in with my pet peeve: parents who take children to inappropriate movies or allow them to watch inappriate DVDs at home. (The latter happens more often than the former because parents apparently don’t realize that the images are the same–only smaller–on both screens. Duh.)
Why are we in a foolhardy hurry to expose our children to adult themes and images? What three-year old needs to view a rated PG-13 Superman giving his main squeeze an upside down kiss? What child needs to see violence on screen or hear wildly inappropriate language in surround sound? If a preschooler watches PG-13 movies, what will he be accustomed to watching by the time he’s fourteen? What is the rush?
My job as a mother is to protect my children’s innocence for as long as possible. My job as a mother is to protect my children’s childhoods for as long as possible.
When moms and dads worry more about whether their kid can write a word at age four than they worry about images that child sees, people that child meets and influences that child experiences, something is wrong. Not that any of you are like that, of course. But some theoretical parents are, you know. Rush, rush, rush, hurry, hurry, hurry, without regard for a child’s internal timetable or needs.
My four year can write a “M” and can recognize her name in print. It hasn’t even occurred to me to teach her to write her alphabet, nor do I ship her off to preschool. I haven’t tried to teach her to read nor have I shown her how to wear eye shadow. She doesn’t have a lunchbox or take any classes or own a Dayplanner.
She’ll know how to write in cursive and recite her multiplication tables soon enough. In the meantime, you can find her in the sandbox, digging.
We’re in no hurry around here.
Actual Unretouched Photo 
Mel–I totally, totally agree with you. While my daughter was young I tried to live by these things, too. I always had a feeling she would be the only child we would have, and well, I certainly didn’t want to rush those precious, fleeting years! Just wanted you to know–thanks for being brave enough to share all of these things(I know it probably wasn’t easy…) Blessings, Debra
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AMEN, sista!! Let ’em be kids…..
Regarding breast-feeding, I nursed both of my little ones (who were born 19 months apart), for 18 months EACH. I was either pregannt of nursing for like FOUR STRAIGHT YEARS. but it was so worth it….
I do homeschool my 4 year old. he gets so bored because his older sister can do EVERYTHING..so he is capable of the whole alphabet and is learning to read presently. He’s exceptionally bright with a knack of spatial skills and science. He could put a 300pc puzzle together when he was 3! He’s scary smart, but he’s still just 4. I let him be a kid. A very smart kid but a kid nonetheless.
I get flack from other moms in our small town why don’t I have him in preschool? Like I am abusing him or something. They look at me like it’s shameful. Some people don’t like to actually raise their own children. More of an accessory for some folks…
I agree with you wholeheartedly!!
Suz
http://www.suzannebalvanz.blogspot.com
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also Motherhood is a MARATHON, not a sprint…
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Around here we call it robbing the calendar, and I detest it! Little boys should play with trucks and get dirty–I love the smell of a sweaty, sun-warmed boy’s head. Little girls should love on their baby dolls and not dress up thier model dolls! No eight-year-old NEEDS a cell phone and no 3-year-old needs a play date! Please just let them be children–they will be adults for the rest of thier lives.
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Mel, up until last year, I was pregnant or nursing for 13 years. The only one I weaned early was the youngest – I let the others follow their own course.
And, my four year old can recognize and write her name, and about 6 other letters. That’s it. She’s not in prek, and may go next year, if we can swing it. Not for skills, just for fun.
Good post!
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I hope you are prepared for a firestorm of responses from Mom’s that are feeling that pressure to have the perfect child. I can’t tell you how many hours my boys stood on a chair, pulled up to the sink full of water, seeing which toys would float and seeing what they could mix with the water to make it the grossest it could be….Amazingly they are now in high school, they each excel in their own areas and we never pressured them to do anything they hated to do (certain sports etc). Not sure how they grew up to be such smart, caring, wonderful young men but it must be because we allowed them to explore, run, play, create etc. Kids need to have time to be kids–they get to be adults for a very long time, childhood is fleeting…ask any mom with teenagers that were 4 about 10 minutes ago!
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You are so right, Mel!
I breastfed both of my girls. The older one only until 10 months when she decided sippy cups are the way to go. My youngest for 14 months. My oldest learned to read before kindergarten (no preschool or daycare) simply because she had this deep desire to. My youngest who is now 3, wants to read and go to school like her sister that is 8 years older. I chose to enroll her in preschool (2 times a week for 2.5 hours each) because she wanted to… that and we are so rural there are no other kids for her to play with. Thus, for her, it is more like a playgroup.
Most importantly, they are kids, our babies and they really don’t need to know about the ‘birds & the bees’ or all the vulgarity just yet. I totally agree!
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AMEN & AMEN! Let em be kids, no hurry, they grow up too fast anyway. Sometimes I think these moms that let their 2nd and 3rd grade daughters wear high heels and get glamed up do so for no other reason other than they don’t KNOW any better! It is a SHAME that is seems every year the “tween” age group includes younger and younger kids. I had to laugh out loud at your comment on the little girls looking like they were ready for an office romance….very sarcastic and very much my sense of humor!
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Melodee that was so well put. I COMPLETELY agree. It makes me SOOO sad to see little kids acting like grown ups. Yesterday a woman told me her 2nd Grader was addicated to on demand. I had to go home and ask my husband what on demand was and this little child is addicted to it. How awful!! I tease my husband that my little boy is never going to school and that I’ll always call him baby luke :).
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Awesome post mama!
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Totally agree.
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I’m new at your site and I want to thank you for your encouraging words; I’m keeping my four year old boy at home and not sending him to pre-school; I will send him next year to kindergarten; but I do feel pressured from other moms and even friends and family, to the point that I’ve been feeling very inadecuate as a mother, like I’m doing something wrong; also, I live next door to my brother-in-law and his daughter, who is six months older than my boy is writting her name and numbers and a whole bunch of other things, and I get all depressed because my boy doesn’t; so I started trying to push things on him just to “keep up with the neighboors”. Thank you for reminding me that all he needs right now is a mom who allows him to play and have fun, letting him be a boy. Thank you for reminding me that this time is precious and it will be gone soon enough, I don’t have to make it go even faster. Thanks for reminding me that my mother didn’t send me to schook as soon as I could walk, and that she never tried to teach us how to read and write before we went to school, that she didn’t pressure us to learn another language or play an instrument, that she never flashed cards in fron of our eyes so we could recognize things before our peers; all she did was open the door every day so we could go and run outside and discover the world, use our imagination and play pretend. I respect and admire the moms who do that with their kids, I just whish to be respected for not doing that with mine. Thank you for your refreshing words, you made my day.
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One of the things I loved about MG’s daycare/preschool was that they had this exact attitude about kids, so there was lots of unstructured time and running around. MG often came home filthy from their playground, which made me so happy.
They had some parents pressure them to be more academic; partly in response, they put up a sign: “Our Three R’s are Respect, Responsibility, and Relationships.” Couldn’t do better as a foundation, at home or out of it!
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You hit the nail straight on the head. I feel the same way, especially about guarding their innocence and childhood. THe one thing that becomes a conflict in our house is my husband lacks the inappropriate show flag in his head. His mother has it, I have it, he doesn’t.
I’m constantly the one saying, “they can’t watch that, you can’t watch that when they’re awake, what are you thinking?”. I remember him telling his mom that he thought Underworld: Evolution would be okay for his 15, 13 and 11 year old siblings to watch, as I told her, no its not. He claims to have forgotten the very realistic sex scene, the partially nude vampire sex scenes, and the totally gory bloody stuff, oh and the R rating.
You see what I’m up against? Fortunately he trusts me and when I say it’s off, it’s off.
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Another one in agreement here… I loved every stage of my sons’ development, and was in no hurry to see them grow up. They were going to do all those things sooner or later, and I figured it was much better to let them choose their own schedules, just like they did for crawling and walking and talking. So many small children these days are pressured and coerced into activity after activity… they miss out on a real childhood, and sometimes feel burned out by the time they’re about nine.
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This should go without saying, but it doesn’t. 🙂
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I totally agree with you. I am a preschool teacher & some parents want thier children learning to write the alphabet @ 3-4 years old. My goodness! The preasure that child must be under! When a child is ready to write thier name they will. Because they can’t @ 3-4 that’s o.k.! I feel like telling the parents to lighten up but unfortunately I can’t (LOL)! Let the children be children & lighten up on them! Let them get dirty & not worry about thier cute name brand outfit get ruined! It’s sad that some parents don’t understand that!
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You just hit on one of my pet issues of late.
I think the whole “tween” phenomenon is from the devil (ok so maybe that is alittle strong but it is a harmful at the least).
I find it amazing that most people will NOT critize you for letting your 4yo watch adult movies but they will critize you for teaching them at home.
I just don’t get it.
(btw, I have been meaning to tell you for forever that your picture looks great)
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My pet peeve?
We have a store in our mall that has this area for little girls which my husband has deemed ‘future sluts of america’.
WHY would someone want their young daughter to be dressed up in glitter and glam to dance around in tight clothes to ADULT themed music? With other people WATCHING them???
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Kids grow up too fast. This is too-common saying but also very true! Kids need to feel free to be childen for as long as possible and not rushed forward to adult ways of living!
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Amen! My four year old is a little older than yours, and she’s no further ahead. In fact, she can’t write an M yet, though she can recognize it.
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Just the other day my lactation consultant was telling me about a school open house that she attended and hearing many parents talk about their little ones reading at a college level, skipping grades, blah, blah, blah. Her response? ‘We just like playing dinosaurs and digging in the dirt.’
I have 2 daughters- one who is 9 and one who is a newborn. So many people tell me how great it is to have an older girl in the house to be a helper with the baby. Why should my nine year old change diapers or help with feeding? She’s a little girl and needs to be just that- enjoying her childhood!
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I cherish the days that I was a child … “way back when” we were allowed to be kids, weren’t so over-homeworked that we had to schedule in play time for a few minutes, weren’t bombarded with adult themes. I can still remember coming home in 5th grade and asking my mom what the word “whore” meant. I don’t remember her telling me WHAT it meant other than to ask where I’d heard it and that it wasn’t nice. How many 5th graders DON’T know that word these days? Just don’t even get me going on the exposure of our kids to adult themes!
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Great post! I agree on so many levels. Currently my neighbor is stressing because her 4 yr olds preschool teacher is pressuring her to practice writing letters for half an hour a day with the kid. Give me a break!!!
Playdough, pretend, stories and dolls are good enough for us.
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Oh this is so on the money! My 10 year old wants to see so many movies that we won’t let her watch. The hard part is when kids younger than her get to see those, but she can’t. Fortunately, she respects our opinions about it, especially if we explain why certain movies are inappropriate for her. We’ve kept her a bit more innocent by not having a tv and by not giving her free run with the computer. I know this is a stopgap measure, but it is keeping her innocent for a little while longer.
And with clothing, she has a watchful eye as to what is good and what is immodest. I love that she keeps an eye out for this so that I don’t have to nag.
She’s 10 already and all I long to do is to hold her in my arms as I did when she was little. This time is passing too quickly; I don’t want to hurry it along either.
Excellent post, Mel. Just excellent.
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My dd is in pre-school. We mainly started going there so the kids with have someone to play with. My second deciding factor was the bible lessons they’d be taught (we don’t regularly attend church). I use those two days as workout days for myself unless I am called on to volunteer at ds’s school. I know dd can’t write her name and that is fine with me. She is having fun and that is what matters at this point. I decided long ago not to join in the my-kid-is-better,smarter,dressed nicer-than-your-kid competition like some of my other friends.
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Parents who deal with the public schools here (CA) are pressured into pre-school. It’s not mandatory but you’d never know that from the hype.
Elcie went to an orthopedic pre-school which combined play with therapy. The two younger girls went to Head Start.
On the second year of Head Start, the Federal government changed what had been a good socialization program for disadvantaged kids into focus on alphabet, etc. They assigned homework. I finished out the year but they knew exactly how I felt about the changes.
You’re right about rushing them but you’re homeschooling. Those of us dealing with the public schools are faced with No Child Left Behind and pressure, pressure, pressure starting at age 3.
I can remember when kids were allowed to be kids. It wasn’t that long ago.
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Back in the day….when I was little there wasn’t even Kindergarten available in our area, and I think I turned out fairly intelligent, even though I didn’t start school until I was (gasp) 6!! I grew up, as did many in my age group, with definite rules about when we could begin wearing make-up, nylons, shaving our legs, dates, etc. I agree, this generation is throwing away their children’s childhood.
p.s. I hope it’s okay….I’ve added a link to you on my journal
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Add my Amen to the stack. And I’ll add my pet peeve of clothing with words across the butt – Juicy, anyone? GAG, GAG, GAG.
Mel, I’ve added your link on my site too.
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Oh, thank you for writing this.
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“Babies Don’t Keep”
Mother, oh Mother, come shake out your cloth
empty the dustpan, poison the moth,
hang out the washing and butter the bread,
sew on a button and make up a bed.
Where is the mother whose house is so shocking?
She’s up in the nursery, blissfully rocking.
Oh, I’ve grown shiftless as Little Boy Blue
(lullaby, rockabye, lullaby loo).
Dishes are waiting and bills are past due
(pat-a-cake, darling, and peek, peekaboo).
The shopping’s not done and there’s nothing for stew
and out in the yard there’s a hullabaloo
but I’m playing Kanga and this is my Roo.
Look! Aren’t her eyes the most wonderful hue?
(lullaby, rockaby, lullaby loo).
The cleaning and scrubbing will wait till tomorrow,
for children grow up, as I’ve learned to my sorrow.
So quiet down, cobwebs. Dust go to sleep.
I’m rocking my baby and babies don’t keep.
— Author Unknown
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oh, I wish we lived closer to each other. I don’t know where you live but I think it is midwest. We’ve been here in MD over 2 years and I have not found anyone with the same parenting as my husband and me. Both my husband and I have people we know but not really any friends besides each other.
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Well, tons of comments and no one disagreed with you! Or did they, I stopped reading after reading a lot of Amens.
You know how I feel about the preschool issues, we have talked about that before. I have to say though, I absoultely hate how you always say things like “ship them off to preschool” as if those of us who do are just uncaring mothers who are in some freakin’ race. Which is very far from the truth. You don’t seem to want to really listen to the other side of that coin though, so I won’t go on about it.
I do agree about the types of media people allow in their homes, I am not down with kids watching movies that are not even appropriate for my own dark mind!
It is my job to protect their childhoods, their innocence, yes. It is also my job to prepare them to live in the world they will inherit. That world, I have less control over. I have to do what I think is right so that my children can be members of the society that will be theirs as adults. I don’t pretend that my kids are going to be genius because they went to preschool, that isn’t why they go. I know that most of our genius lies within our DNA, so my kids are all covered there 😉 I do not worry that they won’t have a proper education because I know that they will, I will see to that. But, because I work and my husband works, they now go to school, all of them. They are still wonderful children who get to dig in the sandbox and go hiking and collecting leaves and pinecones and rocks. They are bright, yes, but not because they go to preschool (or did in the case of my older child), but because we interact with them on a daiily basis, and don’t even turn the TV on at home. I don’t see myself “shipping” any of the kids anywhere. They are having their day at school, we have ours at work and guess what, they still loves us best and we are still the biggest influences in their lives!
I am tired of reading the same old stuff…..oh those moms are in such a hurry, oh they think they are in some race….yes, maybe some of them do think that. But those women are simple minded. And you can’t color all women with that brush. Instead of looking around at how other women are doing it and deciding they are doing it wrong, why not just decide they are doing it differently? Some women suck at being mothers and clearly wish they weren’t. Those women can’t represent all of us. To assume we send ourkids to preschool so they can be better than their peers is just lame. I could not care less what your kids are learning, or my neighbor’s kids. My kids are awesome, I know this and I don’t need validation from a preschool progress report. But I do think it is fairly cool that they are learning sign language at school!
And anyway, I don’t even remember being 4 yrs old, not much anyway. Do you?
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Adding to my comments after I read some more of other’s comments…..
You ladies who think that “other” moms are out here flashing cards to our kids or forcing them to play instruments or learn languages…..where do you get that garbage from?
How about making it possible for a kid to learn an instrument because they want to? Or how about your kid learns another language because her good friend speaks it and she wants to learn it? Why do you naturally assume that moms are forcing this stuff on their kids? Kids do have a natural curiosity of their own you know. If they show an interest in something and we proceed to go with that, what is the harm? I have a highly intelligent, gifted kid who has learned things because she wanted to. I bet there were lots of other mommies quietly judging me as they looked at us from the outside, thinking I was making my kid learn to build websites or making her learn Latin or making her swim on swim team…..get my point? Some of us let our kids take the lead in what they will learn.
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“I get flack from other moms in our small town why don’t I have him in preschool? Like I am abusing him or something. They look at me like it’s shameful. Some people don’t like to actually raise their own children. More of an accessory for some folks…”
Here is a good one, this is Suzanne’s comment. First of all, do other women really just come up to you and give you static for not sending your kid to preschool? These kinds of people need to get a life of their own and stop worrying what everyone else is doing.
And I would love to know more about these people who don’t like to raise their own children, I assume you are talking about…..working mothers? Mothers who send their kids to public school?
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Wow. Lots of comments here. I do agree with Stacy to some extent… even though I do homeschool. It’s unwise to make sweeping remarks when you can’t possibly know why some people put their children in preschool or not (among other things like why some people wean their babies early, etc…)
As for letting kids be kids, I think this is very important. They need to play and explore and spend time outside or wherever, just learning through independant play but they have many hours in the day and if a Mom just so happens to want to do flash cards with her kid for 10 minutes now and then, is she really robbing the child of a childhood? That is laughable. She’s robbing them of a mere 10 minutes (if she can get them to sit still for that long.) If she wants to teach them phonics or how to write their names when they are 3 or 4 and they are excited about what they are learning how could this ever be seen as wrong?? I have more of an issue when people purposefully hold children back from excelling or soaring merely to preserve “innocence.” Kids can be highly intelligent and still succesfully remain kids.
I homeschool because I love the freedom that it allows. Freedom to some days let my kids just play at something that they are really into, or freedom to make them really buckle down and do some hard work that they don’t necessarily love (when they are in their early school years.) Freedom to teach the subjects that I feel are useful and will lend themselves to my children’s future success, while at the same time teaching them that they ought not place their value or self-worth on how successful they do become in the worlds’ eyes. Hopefully all of us are doing whatever we are doing as parents of little ones for their good. While some things are just plain wrong (never letting children play EVER for example), some things, as Stacy pointed out, are just different.
Some want their kids to have two days of structured play a week at preschool. Others want perpetual freedom for their littles to explore and learn by free play. Others want to sit down and read to their little ones several times a day so that their child’s imagination, vocabulary and understanding of the world around them might expand. Some even teach their six year olds Latin! (ahem… ME! For example! LOL!) We don’t do these things to rob our children of their youth and innocence. We do them because we feel it is best. Scathing remarks and unnecessarily harsh judgements reveal only what we already know to be true: We don’t understand why others do things differently and that some people don’t always offer grace in such situations. It doesn’t actually make anything better (except that maybe we feel better about ourselves if we happen to agree.)
Just some of my thoughts.
Nan
(who really does agree with much of the content that is here but doesn’t like to hear people making sweeping generalizations. And who also is guilty of letting her little ones watch Star Wars. And they love it. They are fanatics. And it doesn’t bother me a bit. LOL!)
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