Life on the Road

I have never liked Elmo.  I am opposed to anything that talks down to kids, and I always suspected that this was the case with him/her.  (Look, I can’t even write a simple introductory sentence without running up against the problem!)

People who talk baby talk to babies all the time deprive their children of the opportunity to learn to speak sooner, better, from proper modeling.  So just because little kids often DO use their name instead of pronouns (”Elmo loves ice cream!”) doesn’t mean we should.

Although Jewel does use her name instead of “I” (or “Jewel’s” instead of “mine”) in some contexts, she has also acquired an amazing grip on pronouns.  Just the other day, at 25 months, Jewel responded to a sentence in which I said “I” by reflecting it back to me using “you.”  So how old a child is Elmo supposed to be?  Elmo has a pretty good vocabulary and excellent diction for an 18 month old!  Aren’t most kids watching Sesame Street, say, 3-6 years old? 

We have had a lot of experiences where we have laughingly told Jewel, “2 year olds don’t know that, silly!”  I truly believe that many people don’t get the best out of their kids, because they don’t approach them in a way that lets them demonstrate anything beyond the “expected” behavior for their age. 

It’s perhaps most obvious with little ones, but it seems to me that the principle applies just as much to kids all the way through their development.  How many kids in school could be doing much, much more, except that they never have anything offered to them but the textbook, and the teacher has too many kids in the room and too many other requirements to do anything else with individual children.

This is one of the reasons we homeschool, as you’ve no doubt gathered.  Although naturally I’m convinced that my children are brilliant (and Nick’s test scores support that), it’s a much bigger question even than that. 

What about the classical composers we all admire who composed their first symphony at age 9?  What if a school was fostering their academic abilities to the utmost, but not properly able to gague artistic prowess — or vice-versa. 

I don’t want Nick or Jewel to be stunted relative to their potential, just because another child their age has a different array of strengths and weaknesses.

I think Elmo is a victim - a symptom? - of the overall “dumbing down” that our culture has accepted.  “No Child Left Behind” typically works out to mean “we slow down every child to the speed of the slowest one.”  No thanks!

(Thanks to National Home Education Legal Defense)

 Okay, I’ll get off my soapbox…  But I still won’t let Elmo stifle my toddler’s development.