Thoughts on Teaching Three-Year-Olds

Many people who know me personally or read my blog (www.trulyrichmom.com) and other articles online know that we homeschool our children. While I am not an "expert" (good heavens no, not by a long shot!) I try my best to share what I know about homeschooling whenever I can, especially when I’m asked to do so.

Recently, I received an email from someone and I’d like to share it, and my reply to it, here (I’ve edited the parts in Filipino though, so that the whole text is in English, for the purposes of this post):

"Hi Teachermama Tina,

Hi. I am not an avid reader of your blog but I do follow you on Twitter and Facebook and I do read some of your posts that interest me.

But when I thought of teaching/homeschooling a kid, I remembered you.

I would like to ask help on how to start teaching a toddler the basics, I mean in preparation for school. I have a toddler, 33 months old, and sadly, he's not like other kids who know 'educ stuff.' He's familiar w/ it but I feel like he’s kind of 'late.'

I hope you can help or enlighten me on this.

Thank you and God bless you!

- Mommy J."

Below is my reply to her (again, it was edited for the purposes of this post):

"Hi Mommy J.!

Thank you for your email.

Anyway, thank you for following my posts on Facebook, Twitter and occasionally on my blog. I hope they are useful to you somehow.

Re: your question, if you are based in Manila, I would recommend you to attend the seminars of my friend, Mariel Uyquiengco of TheLearningBasket.com. She regularly gives seminars on homeschooling preschool students and how parents can be their child’s 'first and best teachers.' You can find the schedule of seminars here: http://www.thelearningbasket.com/parenting-seminars

To tell you the truth, at 33 months, all your child needs now is lots of read-aloud time with you or other loved ones, and time for pretend play, play with play-doh and blocks and other open-ended toys.

I have learned to let go of the 'expectations' we sometimes have for our kids -- that by this age they 'should be able to do this and that', or why aren't they doing the same things as other kids their age, etc. Of course, this is considering that your child has not been diagnosed nor suspected of having developmental delays. At that age, I believe that 'play is the work of the child.'

I hope this helps somehow. God bless!"

While I was typing out my reply to Mommy J., I found myself smiling. You see, when my second daughter was the same age as her son, I caught myself worrying about the same thing too. "Why isn’t she interested in learning her letters and numbers? Her brother already knew his alphabet and the numbers 1 to 20 before he turned three! What am I doing wrong? Isn’t she 'delayed'?"

During those times, I would stop and remind myself that each child is uniquely created by God and wired differently from other kids. Each child is special and will learn things at his or her own pace. We need not hurry them nor worry that they’re not "keeping up" with the others.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t teach them nor expose them to materials and experiences from which they can learn.

However, in a world where standards, tests and measurements, may be putting too much pressure on children and "beating out" the sense of wonder and desire for imaginary play in them, I’d go for more relaxed learning methods anytime.

Besides, children are three years old only once in their lives, right? Let’s let them be three, a wonderful age to be!