It is clearly not useful for a child to learn skills if, in the process of acquiring them, the disposition to use them is lost.
—Lilian Katz, Cultivating an Early Childhood Curriculum

”All babies need attention and stimulation. What may be surprising is how little actual instruction they need,” writes K.C. Compton, in sharing an intriguing study by Dr. Lucy King.

Noting, “There’s a lot of rhetoric and advice in our society about how to help your kids develop optimally and a lot of pressure for achievement,” King and her colleagues looked at whether parents became more or less intrusive with their six-month-old babies if they were asked to either teach something to their baby or learn something from their baby. “Intrusiveness” included “taking over the focus of the play or task, interrupting the child’s exploration, or overstimulating the baby. For example, a parent might try to get the baby to understand that the little cup goes inside the big cup…when the baby is more interested in the cup’s mouthfeel and how it sounds when whacked on the floor.”

“In my experience of watching a lot of these interactions very carefully—we’ve videotaped hundreds of them—if the parent’s controlling behavior is intense, the child can end up checking out,” King says. “Or they get distressed and upset because it overwhelms them.”

Compton agrees, “The irony of this push to have the baby master the material is that it can have the opposite effect and shut down the child’s natural drive to learn and understand. Infants are full of wonder…They thrive on exploration, and when an adult interrupts that process to try and impose a lesson on them, ‘No, no. You need to push the button, not lick it,’ it’s not so fun anymore.”

Compton concludes, “Though it wasn’t the purpose of King’s study, it might relieve those stressed parents to know that their child is learning every minute of the day, and relaxing and following their lead is not only more fun, it’s also better for the baby’s development.”