Nina In New York: Adventures In Baby Literacy

A lighthearted look at news, events, culture and everyday life in New York. The opinions expressed are solely those of the writer.
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By Nina Pajak

A couple of months ago, I attended a little "art class" with my daughter at a local tot spot. I use the obnoxious quotation marks to stress the fact that it's hard to actually categorize whatever structured activity one attempts to do with a not-yet-two-year-old. If watching your mom glue a piece of yarn to a piece of paper and then reading a story while eating a snack is an art class to a toddler, then sure. We went to an art class.

It was a rainy day, so my daughter and I wound up being two in a very scant group of people we'd never met. The vibe was personal, friendly, laid back. The instructor began telling us about her 21-month-old child, and all the moms were conversing casually as the kids, all under the age of two, sat obstinately in their tiny chairs, refusing to speak or participate in all proposed projects. It was the usual stuff. Talk of other classes in the area, comparing notes on various parenting strategies and toddler woes. Then we took a hard left.

"So," said the instructor cheerfully, gesturing towards my daughter, "is she reading yet?"

Um. What? No. What? Wait.

I turned around in my chair to make sure a six-year-old hadn't magically materialized behind me.

"No," I slowly replied. And then, a little more assertively, "no."

The mom next to me didn't miss a beat. "She can identify letters and their sounds," she piped in, pointing to her daughter who was even younger than mine and who had spent most of the class wordlessly pounding play-doh on the table.

I regarded the mother with an expression that I was hoping would be interpreted as pleasantly blank.

She pressed on, getting more enthusiastic. "The other day when we were driving by a sign for a Bob's furniture store, she started going, 'Buh buh bee oh bah bah bee,' like she was trying to sound it out."

The teacher was smiling broadly and nodding in agreement. "Yeah! My son can point to pages in books he likes and read the words."

I knew I was in one of those bizarre mother situations where I had to tread lightly. "But," I offered as evenly as I could, "he's probably just memorizing the book, right? My daughter can recite some of her favorite books because she hears them so much."

"Yeah," the teacher agreed. "But you know, he's starting to sight read."

I looked between the two mothers of these budding MacArthur Genius Fellows and realized I was outnumbered. "That's fantastic," I said to both of them with my best version of a sincere smile, and then turned to my kid. I'd much rather discuss the color of a ducky than spend one more second pretending that I believe that it's normal to expect babies to spontaneously learn literacy.

But it's not just them.

While my child is yet too young to be in any sort of formal school, I've spoken to enough mothers of older kids to start putting together a picture of what the pre-K scene is like. There's homework. Actual homework. And it isn't "play, then go to sleep." Sure, it's coloring or circling letters of whatever, but it's HOMEWORK. One mother I know was chastised for not having taught her daughter to read by first grade, and her daughter was actually behind as a result.

Wait. Isn't that what first grade is for?!

Not to be all "back in my day," but back in my day school didn't get hard or scary until maybe third grade. And certainly, in pre-K and Kindergarten, the curriculum mainly focused on gluing cotton balls to pieces of paper and galloping around the room pretending to be horsies. It breaks my heart to think that little kids are learning to fear or dislike school from the get-go. Yes, America needs to step up our educational game. There's no question that we've fallen far behind in the global scope. But why force skills on kids who are too young to comfortably learn them, when it will only discourage them if they aren't ready? And what do we gain from having armies of stressed out toddlers who can read a Bob's Furniture sign? It feels like I'm missing something here.

If she's anything like me (and she really is), my daughter is probably well on her way to becoming a high-strung academic overachiever without any extra help. The last thing I can imagine her needing is more pressure from an earlier age. We're going to wind up with a generation of highly literate nervous wrecks who hate to learn.

Perhaps I'm overreacting, and perhaps I've got it wrong. I certainly hope that's the case. But if anyone else feels like bragging to me about their baby's reading abilities, they'll be barking up a very grouchy tree.

Nina Pajak is a writer living with her husband, daughter and dog in Queens. Connect with Nina on Twitter!