You can often hear the phrase: "child prodigy from the cradle", based on modern methods of early development. It's all very well, but do not forget that the child, besides many intellectual abilities, should get a happy and worthy childhood, and also master the moral culture and culture of behavior in society. It has been repeatedly proven that geeks often lag behind in terms of adaptation in the society, they know a lot, but they can forget such elementary things as caring for themselves, love for their neighbor, etc. Therefore, personally, I recommend to stick to the whole golden mean: we, as parents, should help our children in terms of intellectual development, but do not go too far in this stick. It has long been known that geniuses are born for society, and we, as a rule, want to see their children happy, intelligent, who will not be alien to all normal human desires.
Well, now, more in detail about the method of early development of Glen Doman, which, first of all, is oriented to the children's age from 0 to 4 years. Having studied carefully the whole theory of this technique from A to Z, I found out for myself that it is impossible to completely adhere to it and it is not worth it. The main thing is to give the child a base of intellectual development, and not to try to "train" your baby to the bone. Starting the training of the child according to Glen Doman's method, it must be remembered that any intellectual development of the baby is closely related to its physical development. Therefore, physical and intellectual exercises should alternate and intertwine with each other.
Early development: what is it?
" Why do you need early development," you ask, "after all, we were trained without methods of early development and grew up rather stupid?" In fact, it's true, but twenty years ago and the school program was much simpler, and the requirements for children were less. Moreover, it is the duty of modern parents to help the child in the future.
It is known that the child's brain is growing most actively in the first year of life, and the next two years it continues to actively develop and improve. Children aged from zero to four years of training are given quite easily, naturally, during the game. At this age, there is no need for any additional stimulation. By laying down the makings of intellectual knowledge at the age of 0 to 4 years, you will facilitate the education of the child at school age.
The concept of "early development" provides for intensive intellectual development of the baby, from birth to six years. Therefore, today there are a number of children's development centers. Here you can already bring a six-month-old baby and begin his training. On the other hand, the best teachers for the child are his parents, especially at the age from birth to three years. Learning at home together with parents allows you to fully and completely pay attention only to your child, on the other hand, there is no need to adapt the regime of a small child to the schedule of the developing center. After all, the main rule of all classes - to conduct training at a time when the child is most tuned to training: he is full, cheerful and in good spirits.
The history of the development of Glen Doman's early development technique
The very same method of early development of Glen Doman is the object of numerous disputes and discussions. Initially, the "method of educating geniuses" was born in the forties of the twentieth century at the Philadelphia Institute and was aimed at the rehabilitation of children with brain injuries. It is known that if separate parts of the brain cease to work, then with the help of certain external stimuli it is possible to put into operation other, reserve areas of the brain. Thus, by stimulating one of the senses (in the case of Glen Doman it was sight), you can achieve a sharp increase in the activity of the entire brain.
To ill children, Glen Doman, a neurosurgeon, showed cards with painted red dots, increasing the intensity of the shows and the duration of the exercises themselves. The duration of the lesson was only about 10 seconds, but the number of lessons per day was several dozen. And as a result, the method worked.
Based on experience with sick children, Glen Doman came to the conclusion that this technique can be actively used to teach healthy children, thereby developing their intellectual abilities.
Training Rules
So, if you decided to start learning your baby using Glen Doman's early development technique, then you should follow certain basic rules:
- always stick to your intuition and do not do what you do not like the child;
- Do not try to fully and completely follow all the recommendations of Glen Doman's developing technique, combine classes with developing games and other activities;
- as a rule, the demonstration materials on the Glen Doman technique are shown very quickly, within only 1-2 seconds, but nevertheless the rhythm of learning should be oriented towards the child and his needs. If, however, a two-year-old child is interested in a demonstration card, takes it and starts asking questions, then you do not need to take it away from the baby, it will be more correct to answer all the questions of your child;
- The duration of classes should be guided by your abilities, you do not need to blindly follow the goal and subordinate your entire life to learning. It must be remembered that initially the technique was created for "special" children, so all of its algorithms should not be used for healthy children;
- any classes will give a positive result, so you do not need to do what you can not do.
Teaching material
The learning process itself proceeds according to the following scheme. You show the child cards with words, I note, with whole words. It is proved that the child is better at taking whole words, as if photographing them in memory than individual letters and syllables.
The training material is prepared from cardboard with a size of 10 * 50 cm. The height of the letters must initially be 7.5 cm, and the font thickness - 1.5 cm. All letters must be written exactly and clearly. Later the word must accompany the image of the corresponding object. During the growing up of the child, the cards themselves, as well as the height and thickness of the letters, decrease. Now you can find ready-made Glen Doman cards on the Internet, and also buy in the store. This is very convenient, since you do not need to spend quite a lot of time preparing the training material.
Physical development and intelligence
Glen Doman's early development method from 0 to 4 years includes a whole system of intellectual and physical development. G.Doman strongly recommends parents to teach their children all possible ways of movement. He developed a step-by-step scheme for the development of all movement skills from crawling, swimming, gymnastics to walking on hands and dancing. Everything is explained by the fact that the faster the child improves his "motor intelligence", the more active he develops higher parts of the brain.
Learning to read, count and encyclopaedic knowledge
All intellectual training for Doman can be divided into three stages:
- learning to read whole words, for which cards with whole words are made and are divided into categories;
- the solution of examples - for this purpose, cards are produced not with numbers, but with points from 1 to 100, and also with signs "plus", "minus", "equal", etc .;
- learning encyclopedic knowledge with the help of cards (picture + word) - such cards are prepared by categories, on average 10 cards from one category (for example, "animals", "professions", "family", "dishes", etc.).
Questions and problems
In the process of learning, the child does not always want to look at the cards. The reason may be either a badly chosen time for classes, or a demonstration too long for a time (I remind you, the time should not be spent more than 1-2 seconds), or the duration of the session is too long.
You do not need to check and test the child, in time, according to his behavior, you yourself will understand what your baby knows.
Glen Doman does not recommend returning to the material he has covered, and if this is already done, then after passing at least 1000 different cards.
Draw conclusions
Learning by the method of Glen Doman always causes debate and controversy. It is especially difficult to explain to the older generation, who taught their children to read by syllables, that they need to read the whole words. As a parent, I will say frankly that it is not necessary and not worthwhile to blindly follow all aspects of this methodology. Your child is an individual, requiring a special approach. The main thing that you need to understand for yourself from this technique is that learning something should be "easy and pleasant", because only under such conditions the child's ability will surpass all your expectations.