My wife and I are professional musos, I'm a drummer and guitarist/vocalist and she dabbles in just about anything musical.

Both fluent readers in multiple clefs.

We are very sure about what we like and don't like in music education however we are also open to allowing him to have as many learning opportunities as possible,

Keen for an ear training and theory training program looking forward to seeing what you've come up with.

For a really interesting perspective on how math should be taught see if you can find anything on Richard Feynman's thoughts.

Maths and physics genius he finds the way we approach the teaching of math abhorrent.

It is our approach to the subject that is wrong not our timing. Hence the children in the experimental group being able to do problem solving it wasn't that they hadn't been taught as they had been they had been taught with a much better approach.

Let's face it what skill would you rather your child have - the ability to think logically and work things out for themselves or the ability to apply an algorithm the origins of which they have no understanding and the applicability of which to the real world being almost zero?

Skipping crawling would be a bad idea - not because it would mean she wouldn't learn to walk but because she would miss valuable neurological development in cross patterning. Right arm and left leg moving together is an important milestone that doesn't crop up again until a child learns to walk with their arms in a cross pattern motion. One that's very important. Doman has quite a bit to say on the matter I think it is valuable reading.

Great video by the way - but for me it just made more questions pop up rather than providing answers.  For instance I know for a fact that my son did learn language from nothing other than a dvd and without interaction from me. I used to prop him up on my chest and go to sleep while he watch his language dvd and yet he learned more than a handful of words from this. many children have learned a second language from  Muzzy and many children have a sprinkling of Spanish thanks to Dora and Diego.

So all it makes me ask is what was the nature of the tv they showed these children that got no results.  I also have a friend who put YBCR on for her children (twins) while doing house work and sometimes  a bit of a one eyed kip and yet both of these children were recognising words well before their first birthday (though I truly think twins have an unfair advantage).

So I think perhaps much much more study needs to be done before we take this as the law of children learning - but it would certainly indicate that human interaction makes the process speedier and surer.

we made a game out of the microwave.

Put it on for 10 seconds and count backwards or however long you desire. It's a little hard at first in the big numbers so we used skip counting

I believe red is better, though we used whatever we had and it was fine.

Reading, maths, mother language and second language do it all while the brain is young

Have fun with it

Hey Daddude,

Interesting topic.

Here's a living example for you:

I learned dance from a very very young age in fact I was at the back of my sisters' dance classes before I could walk and simply transitioned in so was in full on dancing by one (ballet, tap, jazz, acrobatics, gaelic......).

In the ballet syllabus I did we were taught theory that we memorized by rote - first position heels together and toes turned out, second position heels apart and toes turned out, third position.... and so and so on. We memorized these facts about foot positions and arms positions, names of steps - all in french of course - and what they meant. These were given to us in a book that our parents (who had no balletic knowledge) helped us learn in time for our annual examinations.

Of course I learned all of these well before I was five and yet was still only using the first positions because my body could not do what my mind could. However, when I was 7 and it was time to learn third position I knew the heel of the front foot is placed half way along the back foot with toes turned out. By then I had worked out what toes turned out meant could apply the knowledge and didn't need to be shown third or fourth open or fourth croisse or fifth positions because I could now logic them from long before memorized knowledge.

But the most convincing for me is that much of the theory we learned year after year was technical knowledge about joints and how they worked in relation to our arts. Many many years later as a teacher much of this started to come together for me. Knowledge that had been meaningless had purpose and led to ease of understanding more in depth technical facts. My sister loving the French words from ballet took up French which she speaks fluently and later learned many other languages (inlcuding latin and ancient greek). Neither of our parents are linguistically talented and ballet was our only exposure to foreign languages and this was spoken by a very Australian dance teacher.

I can't agree with you about the riding of a bike being muscle memory. Mainly because muscle memory is in fact brain memory. It's a term I keep trying to stop my dance teachers using as it is very misleading. The muscles get sent a request from the brain they do not react without the brain otherwise there would be no such thing as paralysis caused by spinal injury.

When we first start learning something we waste a lot of energy using opposing muscles and groups of muscles and sending a heap of individual signals to the parts of the body involved but as we become more proficient we start to use only the correct muscles stop wasting energy and start to send packages of signals to the correct muscles instead of individual signals.

One of my coaches explained it like this - when using Word to type a document you want to save you could leave the keyboard and use your mouse go up click on file scroll down to save and clicke. Or you can type cntrl s - a packet of information that is much much faster.

Have read some articles recently (I'm out of town when I get home I'll post the links) about memory. These imply that the human brain does not in fact ever forget anything that it "learns".

But we do lose our ability to access these memories or pathways and access to them relies on a number of things. For learned facts it seemed that the important factor was when the fact was repeated to you apparently the best way to strengthen the recall ability of a fact is to repeat the fact at the moment you are about to forget it (good luck with that one).

Ever forgotten something and then when someone says you go oh hang on I did know that but you couldn't recall it for yourself? The information is all there for these children you just have to make sure you don't close the paths to the recall ability of said information. This is probably why some Doman children still remember the facts and others don't it would be entirely dependent on whether their programs were set up in a way to maximise recall ability.

Hmm sorry he began playing at 1 and mastered all the games at 18 months though he still enjoys playing the harder ones once in a while now and he's almost three

Reader rabbit toddler

The games require mouse tracking only not clicking and vary in level from responding to any movement to requiring fine control and logical thought.

Very impressed with this game, don't like the older levels as much though they're still pretty good too

It is very easy to allow ourselves to be hurt by others and it is a nasty overwhelming feeling.  I am sorry you feel this way.

I have had a myriad of reactions to the way we raise our boy. We live a rather different lifestyle and have some rather I guess out there views on the abilities of children and how that means they should be raised at each stage of their cognitive development. Much based on Doman but also other more natural instincts borne from this understanding.

People think we're crazy, people wish they could do what we do, people think we're pushy, people think we're not pushy enough, people think we expect too much of him others believe we have no expectations at all.

I guess that early education covers so much of our life that it is difficult for them to focus on the reading or whatnot when they're slightly more concerned by the tree climbing (he'll fall) or how dirty he is (he'll get germs) or that he's on the trampoline with all his balls (he'll break something) ........ and so on and so on and so on.

I used to get insulted, as if any sane parent would allow their child to come into harms way.

Now I realise they are so caught up in socially bred fears that they their perception of the events in front of them are warped.

Don't be insulted, be kind. They are unenlightened. People who don't understand that which is different from them are often scared. Scared people love to regain power by being hurtful.

A trick that I find helpful is to strip everything back from out there to in me. Throw away all your thoughts about early education from any source other than yourself (that includes Doman). Then have a good think about how you and only you feel about those sessions now extend that to remember your child in these moments - reflect on how they feel about these sessions. You will have no doubt.

Always remember why you do it and keep your mind clear of the distractions caused by others who may or may not know more or less than you about education but never about your child.

Hi there,

I am looking for information on the development of imagination/storytelling and comprehension through pretend play.

My boy spends most of his day in pretend land be it jungles or space or some other wondrous place and we have a lot of fun with it. He's almost three.

I really want to understand this process better so I can take advantage of what is obviously the right time for him cognitively to develop this area. He is currently very dramatic and excessively expressive in all of his emotions as he plays with this idea of dramatisation, he really can be quite funny, although there's always the flip side when it's dramatic about having hurt feelings because there's no more blue paint 

If any one knows of any articles or other helpful material you could direct me to it would be much appreciated.

I've always found the memorization argument against children actually reading laughable. Especially when it's quoted by supposed experts.

I have had a lifetime of learning instruments and dance routines and karate and rah rah rah and I can tell you now the very first thing I did in all of those lessons was memorise something.

People who carry on about this obviously don't understand their own brain processes very well.