Kids are naturally inclined to learn new things. They naturally want to explore. If you aid them in this exploration of the world, it’s not forcing education on them. My kids want to read labels and things in stores, malls and restaurants. They want to read numbers. I don’t force them. I never have. Each time they ask me a question I answer it no matter how tired I am.
I promise you every kid will have some subject they like. They will also ask questions. If they’re encouraged, they’ll want to learn more even if they’re 3 years old.
My kids learned about friction because I told my wife our car brakes need to be done. Kids asked what that means and I told them how brakes work. Then they asked why brakes make a car stop and that’s how they learned about friction. Next few days they point all things with low and high friction (socks on wooden floor was especially fun). One day the 6y casually mentioned to his friend that his cycle was slow because of friction and needed more grease.
Answer questions and get them curios. I promise you they won’t even realize it’s “teaching” and they’ll love it.
Young kids enjoy learning, but most kids eventually dislike school so ~5 is a critical age to get them interested/ahead of the curve. It helps separate the dislike of school from the dislike of the subject the same way getting kids interested in reading before they need to read books for class works.
There is a real difference between giving your kids the tools to succeed and forcing them down a narrow path.
IMO, everyone should know the basics of a wide range of things from cooking to statistics. It’s just a question of diminishing returns. Failing to understand the basics of say investing is really costly even if all they do is dump 90% of their money into a low cost S&P 500 fund and forget about it that’s vastly better than what most people do.
The same applies to school, teach your kids the basics of reading and math let’s them coast for years.
Cooking is something that very small children do enjoy, though their input is a little limited it's not impossible for them to help.
Our child started stirring soup, mixing dough, and putting icing on cookies around the age of three. When he was four he started chopping tomatoes, and placing them on pizzas, as well as the other toppings.
I'd not trust him to touch an oven, though he sometimes watches the cooking occur and says "Daddy it's ready now", but I do let him stir things in a wok, or chop carrots/cucumbers/similar things.
Because it minimizes stress and let’s them better explore their interests be that dinosaurs or dolls. Even little kids find reading and arithmetic useful.
true, but you were talking about investing in the financial sense before. Having good money sense should definitely be taught in school, but few will benefit from an education in investing.
Got it. When talking about the basics I don’t think of the two as distinct.
It’s like you don’t need to understand business very deeply to understand the longer you’re talking to a salesman the more you’re getting hosed in the transaction. Rather that should be obvious from the underlying economics that allow businesses to function.
So sure just about every 401k is going to have a handy calculator designed to convince you to hand them more money every month. But, that’s not the basics that’s a sales tactic.
There may be some projection in your comment, a 5 year old kid doesn't have the "let me enjoy my time off" attitude yet, thats something they'll get once they're older. At this age they are usually naturally curious about pretty much anything.
No, definitely not at the experential level of a 5-yr-old. They enjoy the outcomes of math and science, like eating the M&Ms they jsut counted or seeing an exploding volcano. The act & outputs is mostly beyond their comprehension and boring as hell. Trying to give your preschooler a "head start" in math is sub-optimal at best.
I’d say that doing the fun parts (and what’s fun for them varies with the individual child) will give them enough of a head start compared to children whose parents do nothing of the sort.
I promise you every kid will have some subject they like. They will also ask questions. If they’re encouraged, they’ll want to learn more even if they’re 3 years old.
My kids learned about friction because I told my wife our car brakes need to be done. Kids asked what that means and I told them how brakes work. Then they asked why brakes make a car stop and that’s how they learned about friction. Next few days they point all things with low and high friction (socks on wooden floor was especially fun). One day the 6y casually mentioned to his friend that his cycle was slow because of friction and needed more grease.
Answer questions and get them curios. I promise you they won’t even realize it’s “teaching” and they’ll love it.