How much is too much?

So much pressure is placed on our kids. Whether it's school, sports, or the expectations we as parents hold for them.

I believe pressure can be a good thing. The world is a competitive place. If we want our children to make it out there and be successful, we need to push them. But how do we know when it's too much?

This is a question I have really been asking for the past few weeks.

A friend's daughter is in 5th grade. My friend was complaining to me about her daughter learning about the metric system. The way her daughter was learning was not the way we had learned when we were in school. I made the comment that I was not looking forward to GG doing this in school. I always excelled in Math, but this is one area I always have trouble with.

Two week later I am going through the papers in GG's folder. She is now learning about kilometers, centimeters, etc. She also does well with math and I hope this doesn't give her the problems like it did for me, but I wasn't prepared.

It's not just GG. It's Little Dude as well. I was going through his papers from school earlier this week and noticed that his class had started learning about time. GG didn't learn this until first and second grade.


Thinking back four years from when GG was in Kindergarten, I had certain expectations of what would be taught and when. As the year progresses, it seems more information is given to Little Dude.

Part of the reason I do not want to leave this area is our school district. Testing scores are always very high, our district has won awards and is ranked somewhere in the top 20 in the state. All of these are wonderful and I'm all for teaching our kids everything they need to know to prepare for their future. But how do we know when it's too much too fast? Does our district teaching kids certain subjects sooner make them better than neighboring districts? Or will all this pressure and information overload mean they will burn out faster?



Until next time....

4 comments:

Oka said...

We moved from a school district that was over 1 year behind in curriculum. My oldest was in the middle of second grade. He struggled the rest of second grade, but he did manage to get caught up. Now he excels in this school district.

My 2nd born is doing better than my oldest. Is it because he started school here from the beginning?

I think many of these kids (not all) are well prepared for this, especially if they attended preschool. Heck, look at today's TV programing for preschoolers. It's much more advanced than our Sesame Street and Electric Company was.

I'm not sure it's too much. We are nothing compared to the students in many other countries.

Kmama said...

I wonder about this as well. They say our kids aren't as smart as other countries and that they are lazy, etc., but was this such a big problem years and years ago, when kindergarten was about playing??

Rachel said...

I don't have children but I am shocked when I see my nieces and nephews doing hours of homework in the first grade. They came home with a huge amount of homework for this last school vacation both having two big projects to complete as well. I never had homework until Jr high school. I don't think kids have enough time to be kids anymore between school work, home work and other activities.

Mandy (ZenMonkeyMind) said...

I struggle with the same questions. My daughter goes to a great school district as well, but It does seem like they are learning things so much earlier and earlier!