Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.PCS 1/10/84; site mtuxo.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxr!mhuxt!houxm!mtuxo!smuga From: smuga@mtuxo.UUCP (j.smuga) Newsgroups: net.kids Subject: Re: Better Baby Institute Message-ID: <698@mtuxo.UUCP> Date: Mon, 13-May-85 19:50:18 EDT Article-I.D.: mtuxo.698 Posted: Mon May 13 19:50:18 1985 Date-Received: Tue, 14-May-85 20:45:53 EDT References: <49983@apple.UUCP> <1135@cbosgd.UUCP> <56791@apple.UUCP> Organization: AT&T Information Systems Labs, Holmdel NJ Lines: 38 > In article smuga@mtuxo.UUCP (j.smuga) writes: > >What I'm trying to say is that there is > >a readiness factor at work in children's education. And generations of > >children have learned to read and do arithmetic without the Better Baby > >Institute. > > > There are also generations of children who have never learned to read > or do math. In fact, some estimates range as high as 40% of the > graduating high school students today can't even read their own > diploma. > > Familiarity with anything when a child is young (less than six) > makes it easier for him to learn that thing later. Witness foreign > language. Many people hold that if you are not exposed to foreign > language before age 10 that you will never become fluent in another > language, no matter how hard you try. Yet if a child grows up in > a multi-lingual household, he will be fluent in multiple languages > by the time he is three! Work that into the readiness factor. > > mark cutter My first posting was intended to reassure; it was in response to a parent who worried whther his child would progress to reading via the Institute's approach. My answer was "yes" with or without the Institute. And, yes Mark, you did detect some skepticism. The truth is, I don't know much about the Better Baby Institute. Based on what I've read in postings on the net, the methods sound very much like many of the things my husband and I did with our children in an unstructured, informal way. The most important word in my first posting is one you didn't quote: "relax". I've found that my kids seem to grow up just fine in spite of all the good I've tried to do for them ;-). Since I have no experience with it, I'll try to withhold judgment on the Better Baby Institute, and I hope you will agree that it may not be the only route to raising intelligent children.