edit: the author discovered his children like math and he's a banker with a math degree from MIT, talk about being oblivious to the effects of nurture.
how is allowing a kid to do what they have fun with (maths in this case) "robbing them of their childhood??
If it involved tears and pressure for performance and obligation, yes, that's questionable. but a brain that wants to brain around for fun and giggles with other brains? greatest childhood ever.
>[..] any short-term advantage one might gain in working excessively towards such benchmarks may be outweighed by the time and energy that such a goal takes away from other aspects of a child’s social, emotional, academic, physical, or intellectual development.
I'm more radical than him in my viewpoint. Academia and industry is infested with broken people with robbed childhoods. Heed my warning and don't let it happen to your children.
I do agree that we need to be careful not to focus on things a kid is good at so much that we neglect other areas that they may not so naturally excel in.
- Kids absolutely do brain around for fun. It’s one of the main things they do.
- Terence Tao is by far the most extreme example of studying advanced math as a child. A kid can work through higher concepts without being Tao.
Obviously if a parent is pressuring a child, or seeking specific outcomes like grades or graduating early that is a different story.
There are a lot of fun math materials out there, especially if you don’t have to follow the dry (and quite frankly slow) school curriculum/materials.