[300bps]

I have three children aged 10, 9 and 6. I work and my wife stays home with the kids. I don't pretend to know what is right for everyone and their kids but I found your comment oddly disturbing.

When I'm home with my three kids, my instinct is to think of the skills that will aid them later in life and work on that through various levels of play. Often that's sports - practicing basketball, baseball or whatever sport they happen to be doing at the time. Other times that's academics where if I know they're having a problem with sight words or multiplication I will work on that with them. Sometimes it's just playing video games together.

Looking back on being a father I think to the things that they do on a daily basis and remember, "My wife and I taught them to do that." All the time spent working with them on crawling, walking, talking and everything since then has created fantastic memories I wouldn't trade for anything.

[Spearchucker]

"...working with them on crawling, walking, talking and...

This amuses me. With things like that (crawling/walking/talking) I let my kid find his own way, in his own time. I have no intention of helping him with anything like it, or from school, ever - unless he asks.

What I do do with my son is play. Building radio control cars. Jumping on car hoods/bonnets in a scrapyard. Lego. Jumping in puddles. Flying kites. Making fires. Going on the odd helicopter ride. Concerts...

He will spend such a silly amount of his life being a student that my mission is for him to just be a boy. Without the spectre of under- or over-achievement. No judgement, regardless of his performance. Because no matter what, he is, and will always be, enough.

[300bps]

We basically said the same thing but you seem to be focused on my statements regarding helping them with academics. I wonder though - when your son says, "I catched the ball" do you purposely not correct him because that's the school's job?

Everything you listed under your play I've done with my three kids with the exception of jumping on hoods in a scrapyard. I could add endlessly to the list including stop motion animation, working with electronic circuits, learning to dive, etc, etc.

I think essentially we agree; the time a child spends with his parents should be the best time for both the child and the parents.

[bildung]

> I wonder though - when your son says, "I catched the ball" do you purposely not correct him because that's the school's job?

Not thread parent, but parent nonetheless :) I'd say the ideal response would be ignoring that error but instead replying with "I caught the ball" in an appropriate situation. Kids learn languages by example, all we have to do is give good examples. Correcting "catched/ caught" puts focus on the error, not on the dozens of cases where grammar was fine. If done too often (e.g. not what you described), that can actually impede learning, as the kid could develop a self-perception of being constantly wrong.

In general the pedagogical ideal is creating a setting where learning can take place by itself. The role of the teacher is reduced to designing the setting. Your ball game example can be seen as such a setting: You two are just having fun together and talk about that, and the desired learning of the language just emerges out of the situation.

(I'm an eduactional scientist, so maybe at risk of over-theorizing trivial examples :) )

[facepalm]

Almost every kid learns to walk and talk. But there are huge differences in how elaborate kids and adults can express themselves. And reading about super successful people, it seems they often started with their job as kids (writers, musicians, sports people, mathematicians...).

I like what you are doing with your son, though, I have similar goals for time with my kids.

[Dewie3]

Play might just be the natural (path of least resistance) way for children to learn. Play is not something that is overly scheduled. We don't have to make a curriculum for it. We don't have to track their play-progress. It's just something that kids tend to do.

Then well-meaning adults think to themselves, "how can I optimize this child's development? How can I make every hour spent with him be at least 70% utilized in order for him to develop fully? What can I do to make him better than my friends kids, and especially to avoid becoming an underachiever?"

Maybe children know best how to play. And indirectly know what's the path of least resistance for them to learn about themselves and the world.

Disclaimer: IANAP

[__z]

Micromanaging your children's lives is not doing them any good. They need alone free time and boredom to truly thrive and develop creativity. I think someone who has their life constantly guided by a parent will probably develop anxiety once the parent isn't there to guide them through life.

http://www.bbc.com/news/education-21895704