This article came out yesterday. It is kind of scary on a few levels.

The children didn’t seem that happy. Happy enough probably. But should one really have bad afterschool days at 6 years old? I think life guarantees enough of those later on - how about waiting a while to pile on the stress and discontent? One could argue that one needs to learn how to handle these situations - and the younger the better. On the other hand, I’ll state again, I think we get enough of those in life, without going through the trouble of adding on additional burdens.

Anyway, those are our neighbors. Maybe you can see why we’re a little concerned about our boy’s education. Though, we hope we don’t get too competitive down the line and always remember that it is about his life and his journey. The tips at the end of the article seem reasonable enough. I think the interaction pays good dividends. Some of the parents in the story seem like they might be interested in paying for a good education.

But is that the only investment they want to make?

Tonight, we ended up at a little local outdoor concert, with Beck and our little guy had a rockin’ good time. Beck even had a puppet show, but I think we would have enjoyed it either way:

Tags: parenting, play based education

At 15 months old now, he’s starting to play a bit more. Or rather, he’s starting to define his play more. He is inventing the games we play more, instead of just playing along with us. It touched me the other day, how he was starting to hide his toys from me and ask me where they went. I’d look around for the little sheep or pig - then when I couldn’t “find” it, he’d show it to me and laugh and get a big kick out of it. He’s showing a lot more initiative.

He’ll initiate a game of hide and seek. He likes chasing people around. And being chased. It is fun, to be caught by him, and have him immediately sign for “more”. It is great positive feedback that he likes what’s going on. Despite the fact that we’re really working on his spatial memory by having him search through the house. He’s pretty good at not checking the same place too many times. He’s also coordinating all his senses better - with each other and with his problem solving. Seeing him bend down to look under things is really pretty cute.

This aspect of his development is great - seeing him enjoy himself is a great thrill. Yet it brings to the forefront for us the balance between the styles of rote training versus using the world and experience as the learning tool. We’re still experimenting with what the balance should be. And by “should” we mean, what he really prefers. I’d like to think we’ll keep it somewhere in the middle, as both approaches seem to have benefits. And still, even the Domans stress that you must stop the flashcards before your baby wants to stop. That the babies need to see the cards as a game, as something fun. So they aren’t completely opposing viewpoints.

It just seems to be the heart of it all is to keep learning as a fun activity for the baby. If we do that, it ends up being fun for us too.

Tags: parenting, play, child development

When we were DINCs (Dual Income, No Children) we used to be a part of the iDine program with American Airlines. When we ate at certain restaurants, we would get AA miles for each dollar spent at the restaurant. We figured there was some slick marketing deal, where our demographics and so forth were shared and exhanged in turn for miles. Giveaways for giveaways.

Then we started looking for a college fund for Sal. Lots of choices out there. The Motley Fool, Yahoo! Finance, and other college saving sites gave good advice with a lot of pitfalls to avoid…yet no clear choice came out of all the research. Then we found out about Upromise. They work with companies to turn your business into cash back rebates that go into a 529 plan. And they host their 529s at Vanguard. My 401k is there too. So, well, we might as well all be in the same boat.

Upromise is pretty far reaching - you can save in a variety of ways:

• Shopping at grocery stores and using their membership cards. You might have already seen Upromise stickers next to some items you’ve already been buying.
• Shopping at some online retailers. They have a pretty long list of online retailers that will give you 1-4% back of your purchase. I’m looking at making an investment at the TireRack - 2% back right there.
• The Citibank Upromise card - 1% of your charges into the college fund. Combine that with the grocery stores or online retailers and you’re double dipping.
• The Rewards Network. They are the same thing as iDine, though it seems that not all iDine participants are Upromise participates. Still, at some restaurants, you’ll get 4-8% back of your total bill. 5-9% back if you’re using the Citibank card.
• Friends and family. Basically - you can get others to sign up for the same program and if they don’t have any kinds (think your other DINC friends) they can choose to put their college savings into your kid’s account. So you can have several people’s dinners or groceries or online shopping or 1% credit card rebates going into your child’s 529 fund. Yup - we’ve hit up the grandparents - they’re they easiest…aunts and uncles are next.

So we’re tucking away a bit of money, just by going through our daily routines. Maybe we’ll choose one restaurant over another if one’s in the Upromise program and the other isn’t. A japanese restaurant in our neighborhood has already donated over 20 bucks to Sal’s fund. And it is great food too.

If you haven’t gotten your 529 plan together yet - definitely give Upromise a long look. Even if you have a 529, they do some sort of linking that might be able to help you out too.

Tags: parenting, college savings

…and we feel like we’re starting too late.

He has become real active and doesn’t have the attention span for books or sitting down to study things anymore. When he was less mobile (and just a sitter) he didn’t have any choice but to sit and flip through books and seem interested. Now, he’s interested in the world and all that it has to offer - including those table tops that he can reach now.

But we’re not too worried - he is learning, just learning things on his own more now. We want to encourage that, but also want to try and direct it a bit. That’s why we started trying to develop the Flash applications that could serve as his flashcards. He won’t sit still in any particular place and we can’t carry our traditional flashcards around all over the place. However, he is interested in what we are doing when we are on the computer.

Then, his flash cards are just a click or two away. We’re able to go over some of his flash cards and then go do something else. Short, sweet, hopefully effective learning sessions.

Tags: parenting, flash cards