I would choose the chinese one too. It's also a very different language to spanish (and I'm assuming english as well) - this could help him in the future in learning other languages, and some of the sounds may only be possible to learn at this young age. Its unlikely that without this early base he would be able to pronounce words properly if he decided to take it up later.

I would explain your reasoning to him - that you are choosing this for him because you think it will be more challenging and he needs challenge to make his brain grow and learn (something we emphase a lot here). Point out the pointlessness of going to a school where he likely will not learn anything as he already knows the language and quite possibly all the curriculum. And if you don't speak chinese then maybe point out that he'll get to learn a language that you don't know. An idea might be to plan a trip to china after a year or two and say that he will be the translator for the family.

I'd say make the choice you think is right for the long term. Kids usually think very short term.

Sounds like you are doing a great job. Keep us posted.

There are loads of foreign language downloads in the community section, in pretty much every language you can imagine. They also have a whole organised curriculum for mandarin. From what I've heard that is organised pretty much like little reader english curriculum, but its in mandarin. I've heard talk of doing something similar for other languages like french and spanish, but I don't know the ETA on them. And even after looking through all those you can't find exactly what you want, you can always make your own.

Hope that helps a little.

I wouldn't recommend sending them to school or preschool just for social reasons. Research has shown that homeschoolers outperform public and private school kids in all areas including social skills. Plus at two years old, as another poster said, theres not going to be much socialising anyway. As long as you don't lock yourselves in the house and go out every now and again your child should be in a better enviroment for learning social skills than if they were in a classroom (not to say preschools and schools are completely bad). There are also plenty of clubs you can use to expose your child to other children with better adult supervision than in a preschool - but at two I wouldn't expect them to get as much out of other children as they will when they are older.

You could look into paleo recipies, there are so many and some of them are a doddle. I'm a big fan of keeping junk food as treats, not snacks. I've found the easiest way to do this is to keep them for after supper if given at all. In the day snacks consist only of fruit or veg (chopped carrots are a favourite here). That way I don't have to worry about them pigging out on biscuits and other junk food and not eating their meals - because often their snacks are healthier than their meals so they can pig out all they want.

There is nothing easier than handing a kid an apple or a carrot, little to no prep needed. It also means that once they get used to it we don't get cries for 'sweets', 'sweets' 'sweets', because the only time they'll get something similar to that would be for pudding after their supper if they eat all their veg (but often they are equally happy with sliced bannana as they are with icecream, so I just give them that).

Oh and a tip - according to some of my kids chopping up an apple immediantly turns it from a snack into a treat, so a popular pudding for lunch here is chopped apple and cheese, or for your dairy kid maybe chopped apple and raisins.

- Oh, and for meals. I eat paleo which is an easy way to cook from scratch and know you are eating healthy. You can go all out, but the simplist thing to do is get some meat, get some veg, wack it together (maybe using the slow cooker) and you are done. You can add spices or sauce if you want. And the idea that someone mentioned of making prepared meals and putting them in the freezer is a good idea.

Sounds like you are doing an awesome job. I think the word a week idea sounds good. The fact that she is correcting herself is impressive - trial and error is a great learning method - so hopefully with access to the letters she will continue to teach herself as well. Well done on your progress.

I totally agree. I provide respite foster care for mostly special needs children, and seriously, it scares me how they can give these children such low expectations. They sit them in a corner, shut them in a room, and provide them with no opportunity to build skills beyond those they expect them to have. Schools are some of the worst offenders.

I think people like this man should be more well known. Perhaps that will make them realise that being behind means that you need more stimulation, not less. If no one had made an effort to teach him he would not be thought capable of this, yet someone did and he excelled expectations.

Its near the top of my list of things to get if we get a long term placement of the right age range. So far while we get a lot of different kids our longest placement has been two weeks. I'm hoping to be able to afford to use it if we get a placement of a few months or more. I'd love to see what some of these kids would be like after a year of little reader, but unfortunately our average length of having them has been only two days.

Its very frustrating to have so many useful tools at our fingertips but the people who could use them to make a difference just can't be bothered. I have used flashcards on some of my placements though, but again, not enough consistancy to make much of a difference, but I like to think that the stimulation I give them while they are with me does something.

Hello, I'm a longtime lurker of the board since I found it maybe a year ago. Its great fun to logon here are see what amazing things you guys are up to and what you are talking about. Some of things people are doing here I didn't think was possible until I saw it, now I'm completely on board.

While I don't have a child of my own, I have done respite foster care for coming up to two years now. Most of the kids have severe developmental issues, and some of the attitudes of other carers scare me. They seem to want to maintain these neglected kids rather than progress them. But I could rant about that for hours.

I'm also an unfortunate member of the club who had parents who deemed the school wholely responsible for education, and couldn't be bothered to interact with said children out of school hours (which of course meant lots of TV). Every time I visit this board it gives me hope and ideas on how I can make things different for my future children. I want to give them the best start in life and raise them to become happy and successful adults.

I don't plan to have any children until I am at least thirty (so at the very least five years from now), but I hope in the meantime to learn from all of you, both to learn skills and tactics for my future children and to try and mend some of the damages lack of stimulation has brought to the children that come through my door.

So to sum up, its very nice to talk to people as driven by early child education as I am.