You might have heard it said, Parents can’t determine for sure how their kids turn out. The young’uns have free will and their own personalities from birth.
Yep. And while its absolutely appropriate for the children when grown to not blame their failings on their parents, 90% of the time when parents say this its cope.
Pure cope.
Most parents simply don’t go far enough in raising their kids. They aren’t empowered to get off the conventional path and so they end up with all the conventional failings.
“But in addition to raising my kids on social media and TV, sending them to public schools to be socialized, buying them a smart phone because I didn’t want them to be the ‘weird kids’, giving them an allowance, teaching them about safe sex, allowing them their ‘freedom.’ I also taught them good values and tried to be their buddy instead of some authoritarian. But they still didn’t turn out like I wanted!”
Oh? You amaze me. Peacetime parents keep wondering why their children become war casualties.
Most parents don’t have the tools they need to succeed.
You do.
Let’s go over one now. This is a useful tool in itself, but even better as a mindset change.
Don’t early school. Delay school if possible.
Let’s be clear. Its fine if your kids go the preschool by the nice neighbor lady down the street where they fingerpaint and sing songs. Rating: mostly harmless.
What you need to avoid is the Baby Einstein phenomenon. Don’t try to jumpstart the child’s education because Learning is Important and its Important to Get into a Good School.
Unless your child is a Mozart level prodigy, don’t start schooling even at home until age 5 at the latest. THIS INCLUDES TEACHING THEM HOW TO READ. 6 or 7 or even 8 are also fine.
Early School is the anti hedonic treadmill. Puritan ascetic status maximizing. It’s the endless competitive grind of the managerial upper middle class where the reward is nothing—just the hollow feeling that you are a good person because you grind.
Whenever possible you should be maximizing your child's sense of family identity by doing things that are both distinct from the general population and rewarding.
Avoiding early schooling is one of them since there are almost no downsides.
Capabilities dramatically increase as you get older. A bright 8-year old can easily do k through 3rd in one year. A kid who learns to read when they are 5 or 6 will be at the same place they would have been, within just a few months, as if they had started learning to read when 3 or 4. Plus they will enjoy it a lot more, it will have been less of a frustrating slog.
Systems are better than goals. You are building out more capabilities for an uncertain world when you allow your child more unstructured play, household working, and Dad and Mom time. You are giving them better armor against an often hostile world if you allow their identity to solidify as a child in your family before you put them on society’s path.
If accelerating schooling is your goal, so your kid can skip a grade and graduate early,--and for 95% of the people its a stupid rote status maximizing goal--then home school and skip a grade when you finally enroll your kids.
Early school is taking an unformed child and putting them on the bureaucratic managerial longhouse treadmill for no gain.
Family formation first, family formation last, family formation always. No one can afford to be a peacetime parent anymore.
I recommend delaying school until never.
-one of our radical Steaders