Infant cramming

I thought Nightline's "Fast Tracking Toddler's" was just a fluke, but it seems that LiveScience story at Yahoo has "Infants Have 'Amazing Capabilities' That Adults Lack," to fan the flames.

However, if you read the article carefully it only really looks out language acquisition not about all kinds of intelligence. Which means that for a parent to expect their young charge to become the next Einstein is a bit naive, in my opinion. [On the other hand, how many Einstein's do we need in this world?]

In Japanese, there's a saying "oya-baka" or stupid parent syndrome or "my child is the smartest, greatest, strongest, most beautiful, most talented person in the world" self-duplicity. And I have a feeling that they (the parents, if not the children themselves when they get older) will probably regret in the long run.

Why do I write this? Because yours truly was raised by a "kyoiku-mama" or educational mom who pushed her children along and although I didn't crack and I did keep up my grades I do recall my relief when we moved out after 8th grade (i.e., to start my high school) such that I could no longer take both American and Japanese classes during the weekdays. I guess I continued to push myself during high school and college because of the momentum my parents provided in me (I guess to please my parents?). It was only during graduate school did I learn about homeschooling which helped me start to question my goals and purpose and, over the years, question everything from why testing, to why college/degrees and why government? My "brainwashing" took years for me to absorb and then many decades to undo.

I hope to not take my sons through such brain twisting that I've gone through. But only time will tell if I am successful or not....

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