Why are kids so good at learning? Is the modern way of “unburdening” the child to enjoy the his childhood the right way? Or as parents, should a child be exposed to as many activities as possible so that he gets the chance and choice to chose what comes naturally to him?
I am currently learning German. And needless to say, inspite of my best attempts at learning the language, ” Ich kann nicht Deutsch sprechen” ( I cannot speak German ) is one of my most frequently used line when I talk to any German. I am so bad at it that my teacher has almost give up on me. In general I have always been a good student. I have always scored decent grades. So although I am not that surprised that I cant speak German fluently ( as yet..!! ) my inability to learn anything that goes beyond the bare basics is almost inexplicable. I am not trying to boast but I can speak and write fluently in three languages ( English is not my first language ) and have put in years and years in education. Now I have my own reservations about the type of education I received and its effectiveness ( may be a topic for another blog ) but nonetheless I did get through it all without losing my mind. And yet that is preciously what I think is going to happen to me if I keep learning German ( if you can call it that! ) at this pace. This obviously raised many questions in my mind, what has changed over the years? Why is it that I could learn three languages in less than 5 years ( I was fluent in the three languages by the age of 10 ) and have since not managed to learn one more in as many years!!!??? Is it purely down to the fact that German is that hard to learn??? Or were the other languages easy?? The more I think about it, the more I realise that things have definitely changed over the years. To start with, I am not getting any younger with each passing year. However, I am not that old that I start forgetting what I had for lunch ( oh wait.. did I have lunch today??? Hhmmm I think I didn’t, ah well … no I am not starving as I write this, so may be I have ), actually to think of it I am still a young person!!! So to me the only difference between me today and me when I learnt the three languages is that I was younger then, a lot younger!!!
Don’t get confused by the title of this blog. I am not advocating that teenagers should become parents!!! J J My views on this subject could not be further away from this idea ( this is definitely a topic for one of my blogs to follow ). The point I am trying to make is, a kid has this innate ability to absorb everything that’s around him. We all tend to think that education starts when the school / nursery begins. That’s where the kids learn their A, B. Cs etc. however what we conveniently ignore is that the kid normally is already speaking by the time he goes to nursery i.e. he has learnt without any schooling and this aspect of learning is what I think is ignored by most parents. There are certain natural instincts that are gods gift to the new born baby. In one of my earlier blogs ( http://bizcovering.com/management/team-work-2/ ) I had written how I saw a bunch of kids who had met for the first time and yet were so comfortable in each others company and in many were ideal examples of team work. No one taught them that, its natural. As parents, this natural ability that each kid possess should be encouraged. Don’t wait for the kid to go to school and be ‘schooled’. This process begins from day 1! I have heard people say that if you lay too much expectations on a kid it might affect them mentally and lead to severe breakdown. Now I am not advocating management training to a 2 year old ( well I don’t advocate management training to a 30 yr old or a 40 yr old for that matter, I have made my thought clear on that subject in one of my previous blogs http://bizcovering.com/management/leadership-lead-by-example-naaaah/). All I am saying is expose the kid to as many fun activities as you can and let him make the choice of which one he likes and which one he doesn’t. Just the other day I was reading about Kutral Ramesh (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kutraleeswaran), who at the age 13 crossed the English Channel. There is no way that that young kid ever knew what he liked. I am sure that his parents encouraged him to do whatever he wanted at a very young age and swimming is what stuck with him. The merits of starting early cannot be stressed more! So my advice to all new or would be parents is expose your kids to as many activities as you can in their formative years and hope that they like something and it sticks, cause that could just be the start of a great career!
On a different note, one of my lecturers has a kid who is not 3 years old. My lecturer is English and his wife is Italian. He lives in a small village in England. I had gone to visit him the other day and to my great surprise I realised that his son did not speak a word of English but was already speaking broken Italian. I was a bit surprised by that and when I asked my lecturer how that happened, he said that since his son was born, they have made a conscious effort to talk to him in Italian ( my lecturer speaks fluent Italian ) cause he thinks that living in England his son would start speaking English sooner rather than later, this way they wont have to teach him Italian! This is definitely a lesson for me and will stay with me for the rest of my life.Archives: http://www.triond.com/users/hbkhrushikesh
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