Heads up: This post is 14 years old. My thinking may have evolved since then — read it with that in mind.
Aug 12th
About a month ago we bought a wooden train set from IKEA for L, his first train set. He loves it! At first I didn’t want to show him how the rails could connect, I sat beside him and watched him play with the trains on the floor as if they were just cars. After may be 10 minutes (probably less), I caved. I put 2 pieces together while he wasn’t looking, and then 2 more, and then connected the bridge… but even after seeing the pieces joined together, he still didn’t grasp the concept. By the next day, my wife or the helper had “helped him” put the whole track together!
From then on, he played with trains everyday, slowly trying to connect the tracks himself, at first he saw that the plastic knob needs to go into the “ditch” but he didn’t see that tracks need to go straight so he would sometimes be able to connect and sometimes not. Today, everything clicks finally! He built a whole track by himself!
L, so far we’ve helped you build the tracks in numerous ways, but I think there was none better than this one which you did it by yourself! To me, I see unhindered, unplanned train tracks, much freer than those calculating ones built by me. Yours just seem more “artsy” some how :) I’m so proud of you! (Once again, you didn’t even stop to celebrate this victory in the adults’ eyes, to you, being able to play with your trains is the more important part!)
Now, one thing that kept bothering me was, should I have waited and not put any tracks together for L? I try to imagine if I hasn’t put the tracks together for him, would his discovery be far more dramatic and memorable? I think it might, but I’m guessing the majority of us parents can’t help but at least do a little bit of something to get them going!
So, while leaving it 100% to the kids is ideal, when we must provide a bit of guidance, I think it’ll be good to show them the process rather than giving them the end results! For example, instead of piecing the rails together, pretend to test your hypothesis with what the pieces could do! Fail at it and try again with another hypothesis. Leave, come back at it again later. Repeat these processes for any new elements we would like to introduce to them! So not directly teaching “What”, but indirectly showing “How”! (Animals do that in nature a lot!)
In the Reggio Emilia Approach, we are suppose to do scaffolding which means when the children are stuck, we give them a little help to help them get pass the hurdle and climb to the next level. I think showing them the processes will be a great way to do scaffolding!
Am I still teaching too much? Should I really just leave my son alone? What do you consider good / bad teaching or is all teaching bad? I’m interested to know.