3 TO 4 YEARS OLD: CAN YOU TEACH THE VIRTUES OF DELAYED GRATIFICATION AND WORK ETHICS (GRIT)?

The short answer is that 'I have no idea'. There is a very good article about teaching conscientiousness to children, and not just strive for 'happiness' at http://tinyurl.com/lu6vqp5. Not surprisingly, research shows that children who are industrious, orderly, and have good self-control are more likely than their careless or undisciplined peers to grow into happy adults. This has also been shown with the classic Stanford Marshmallow experiment.

So we have tried with Joey. First, we used Ferber when Joey was a baby and then Baby Wise. These two methods really worked for us and Joey basically got used to waiting a bit when he needed or wanted something. We almost never had any issues with sleeplessness (he slept through the night at six weeks of age) or getting out of bed once he was moved from the crib to a toddler bed. His behavior in nice restaurants is (usually) excellent, and we get regular compliments. We have never used a pacifier or food to insure good behavior. It is hard sometimes, but we see some kids who are always snacking when they are supposed to be on good behavior, and we just don't want to do that. Baby Wise in particular teaches the concept that you have to parent the child and not their emotions. 

Lately, we have instituted another rule: when Joey wants (yet) another car, he has to earn it, so he performs a very simple task (taking out a T-shirt he will wear that night and a pull-up) and laying them out very neatly on one of his night tables. He makes 10 cents a night for his job, and we have a special Save, Spend, Share Money Box , and he keeps a tally every night of how much he has left to earn to get the car (I tell him the cars are $1.00, so the goal does not take too long to achieve.. he has to save 1 cent and share 1 cent every time, so he accumulates 8 cents a night). I really wasn't planning to do the allowance thing for quite a while, but I had noticed that Joey was starting to develop a certain sense of entitlement, and I didn't like where this was going: since he can read, he got a hold of the many toy catalogues we received and started asking for things, a lot of them... so I felt that it was time to start teaching him the concept that money does not grow on trees and has to be earned, and that's how you can buy things. At first I felt bad for doing that because who does not want to spoil their child and let them hang on to the illusion that they can just 'get' when they ask because we are fortunate enough to be able to provide that illusion. But I felt that I had to withhold love to love better, and this was difficult. Also, I really did not want to pay him for a chore that I consider just 'good citizenship' (my initial idea was to give him an allowance when he was older but not as an exchange for being a good citizen in our home and doing his fair share, with the possibility of paying him for tasks that were above and beyond), but since he is so young, there are just not that many things he can handle that wouldn't end up giving us more work in the end, so this simple job works for us right now... and I can tell you that when he earned his first car, this was definitely a special moment for him. That car is clearly extra valuable to him, and we made sure to make a big deal about it. That feeling is what we were after, so this was a successful experiment. We still ask him to do other things as well, like go throw things in the garbage or recycle, help putting away paper towels, put his dirty clothes in the hamper, and so forth. 

So that's for delayed gratification. In terms of instilling work ethics, I think it is a matter of setting and sticking to expectations. Joey loves doing his learning program, especially math, most days, but not every day. So on the days he does not want to do it, he spends time in the 'time out' chair because we insist on a minimum amount of work every single day (except on the week-end) because as I tell him... life is not about doing what you want when you want. This may seem like a lot to expect from a three year old, but conforming to expectations and group dynamics is actually a lot of what even regular pre-school focuses on, and it is particularly important in the case of an only child dotted on by three adults at home (parents and nanny). When Joey does well, which is often, I tend to focus on his effort rather than his abilities, as the latest research advises. Will Joey eventually be completely self-motivated? I certainly hope so, as I know he is capable of incredible focus and motivation now, but only time will tell. 

There is some interesting research about grit by Dr. Angela Duckworth, on which she gave a very compelling talk, which you can find here and you can fine another excellent article about grit and disciplinarian instruction there. It turns out that grit is a little more than just work ethics: it is perseverance in the face of challenge. The good news is that with challenge and effort, it appears that you can change the ability of the brain to to learn for the better. The bad news is that in our school system, often times the brain of naturally gifted children is not challenged. So not only do their brains' natural abilities 'atrophy', but they also acquire terrible study habits (or rather no study habits) because for the first few years, everything is so easy and boring, and they don't need to work at them at all to 'do well', i.e. get good grades. Once they are further along, though, they eventually have to compete with the grittier kids, the ones who perhaps did not start out with as much innate brain power, but because they were motivated to begin with and had to work at it, ended up doing just as well, and with good study habits to boot. This would explain why many gifted kids do not necessarily end up as successful individuals in the end. So as I have already alluded to in my other post ('Why The Rush?'), that's why I firmly believe that letting a gifted kid 'cruise' through school, in order to avoid dealing with the challenge of pestering schools to differentiate and accelerate, is NOT a neutral decision, it is a harmful one for that child. 

3 TO 4 YEARS OLD: TEACHING ARITHMETICS TO YOUNG CHILDREN

This title is a misnomer because in fact, we started teaching math in the first year and mostly second year of Joey's life. I will not repeat the information that is on that page, but will refer to it. 

Pre-counting skills: before a child can start counting, he needs to understand that there is such a thing as quantity, and means to represent it, first by showing and implicitly comparing smaller or larger groups of actual objects (or their representation), and then by using numbers. This is where the Doman method, embodied in a convenient format by the Brillkids 'Little Math' program, is really useful to develop this concept. This program shows quantities of objects (or people, symbols, etc) and makes the association with the number in fast sequence... so little by little, your child understands, in part at the subconscious level, that certain quantities can be represented by certain numbers. While using the program, it is a good idea to read stories that include counting and count objects in real life in front of your child: from 0-5 (0 is a very important concept, and I think it is good to introduce it early); 6-10; 11-20. Once your child's general vocabulary 'explodes' (sometime between 18 and 22 months), you can start encouraging counting by rote, so that he can have the vocabulary to practice 'one-to-one' object correspondence (in other words, counting actual objects on his own).  

Counting skills: Actual counting is 'one to one' correspondence, i.e. pointing to objects sequentially and counting, without missing any object or counting any object twice. At first, this is going to take a while (perhaps several months), but practice makes perfect. This is where cute little puzzles, such as the eeBoo Counting Puzzles, come in to teach 'one to one' correspondence for up to 20. At the same time, you can go beyond the number 20 for rote counting (Joey could count to at least 100 by the time he was 19 months old). Once your child is comfortable counting to high numbers, other two important skills to develop (we did that toward the end of Joey's first year and through the first half of his second year) are counting backward (important for subtractions) and skip counting (by 2, 5, 10, 25), which is important for multiplication, and for counting money. 

Addition: once your child has mastered 'one to one' correspondence for numbers up to 20, you can start teaching the concept of addition, which is basically the understanding that when you add two numbers, the result is the sum of the two (it seems obvious doesn't it..? It is, but not to a one year old). For this, I have found that again, eeboo type puzzles or Eeboo Math Addition Flash Cards or 'Addition Match-Ups' from Lakeshore Learning were very helpful because they show additions in a visual manner which also helps reinforce 'one to one' correspondence. Once you feel your child understands the basic concept, you can move on to having him figure out additions by counting on his fingers and some automation with additions which result in 10, then in 20. 
Addition by counting on fingers: For X+Y, the way to do it is to have your child start at X, then use his fingers to add Y. For instance, 5+2 can be solved by starting at 5, raising two fingers to count: '6', '7'. If you think about it, no one needs to add more than 9 at a time. And when you do need to add bigger numbers, then it is time to write out additions, which is the next step. And by the way, your child does not need to be able to really flex his fingers to do this (this is hard for children under three years of age), he can do it with fingers extended as long as he pays sufficient attention. Regarding automation (memorization of simple additions), the tools we used for that were the 'Fact Family House', the 'Addition machine' (make sure you only allow you child to 'click' to check his answer, not before he gives an answer), 'Beat the Clock! Addition Facts to 18 Practice Board' (all three from Lakeshore Learning) and the Math Slam. The bottom line is to practice a lot and in a lot of different ways.
Solving more sophisticated additions: Once it is fairly painless for your child to do simple additions (which result in 20 or less), and assuming you have had him practice writing numbers (see the second year), it really will not be very hard to teach him to write out additions, first with no regrouping, and then eventually (it happened to us in the fourth year, when Joey was a young three) with regrouping. 

Subtractions: once your child is doing additions, teaching subtraction is exactly the same process, except it will go much, much faster. He will use his fingers to count backward (also a very important skill). A hurdle will be to teach him to 'borrow', particularly when borrowing not just from the tens, but also hundreds and beyond in the same subtraction, but as always, it is a matter of practice. 

Multiplications: important pre-emergent skills for multiplication include skip counting. While you teach addition, it is also important to point out additions of identical digit and say "2+2 is the same thing as 2X2" as often as possible. When the time came to teach him the concept of multiplication, we used a manipulable called 'Learn-To-Multiply Magnetic Center' (Lakeshore Learning) to really drive home the idea of 'X groups of Y' is 'X multiplied by Y'. Don't be afraid to slow down and spend some time on this. Once Joey had a solid understanding of the concepts, for the purpose of memorizing the multiplication tables, I recited the multiplication tables instead of a lullaby (I do two rows and he does two, then the following night, he does the same two I did the night before, and I do two new ones). He loves it. At first, before he had memorized any of them, I reminded him that the next result was always the previous result + the multiplier (so if 2X2=4 then 2X3=4+2), which not only increased his understanding of how it worked, but also got him unstuck when he forgot one. At three and a half, Joey knows his multiplication tables. To seal the deal, we will use the multiplication machine and Beat the Clock! Multiplication Facts Practice Board (both from Lakeshore Learning), as we have for additions and subtractions. Soon (not yet), we will teach him to write out multiplications with multiple digits. I will then update this post. 
October 2013 update: Joey has started doing complex multiplications with the John Hopkins University Center for Talented Youth program (accelerated grade 3 math). We could have taught him earlier, but decided he would get to it soon enough with that program, and there he is. 

Divisions: we are just getting started with that. The way we are presenting the concept is to say 'if you have X objects, and you want to divide them into Y equal parts, then how many objects would you have in each part?'. I really want to solidify this concept before jumping to 'how to solve divisions', which entails asking the question: 'What do you multiply X by to get Z?' because I think it bypasses a real understanding of the concept (although we have made exceptions). I will update this post when we are further along with divisions. 

By the way, as I mentioned in my 'Best Stuff' page and on the 3 TO 4 YEARS OLD: OUR PROGRAM page, we love the FlashMaster: Handheld computer for mastering multiplication tables that makes flashcards obsolete to practice all these skills.