Customer Reviews

When Slow Is Fast Enough: Educating the Delayed Preschool Child

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The book contends that the current process of force feeding specific developemental goals into children who are already having a hard time meshing into our fast paced society, may do more harm than good. I agree with the general theory that true learning can only be acquired through individual discovery, trail and error, rather than repeated drilling and very little if any chance for exploration. My only question is WHERE does this scenario exist for our handicapped children???

Goodman's detailed observations of "early intervention" projects and her thoughtful and historically-informed analysis suggest powerfully that the current policy of trying to accelerate "delayed" children in order to keep up with their non-disabled peers, in fact prevents them from learning and exploring at their own pace. She painstakingly documents the way in which unrealistic expectations and demands lead to a situation in which almost continual prompting, directing, "cheating" on behalf of children, and even straightfoward physical manipulation are used to get children to "go through the motions" of a "normal" schedule, regardless of their incomprehension or lack of interest in it. A subtle, restrained book which quietly demolishes educational orthodoxy on this topic.

And *parents* are the right hands. We have to live with and support our children, and in the cases of the developmental disabled, we are talking about a lifetime. Parents get the final say because we love our children and see them in the real world daily.
As Ms. Goodman notes, 'only an extraordinarily ingeneous teacher can be child-directed and flexible, yet conform to an IEP law.' She also notes that The 'cultivated eye' of educationists is trained by a schoolish set of standards about what is 'good.' It is not surprising that parents would approve of this book.

Until we adopted her, our own disabled child was in just such a program and interventionist system such as Ms. Goodman describes unfavourably- they thought it more important that she do tasks that were to her both useless and meaningless- count by rote, do a simple puzzle, sort objects by shape, identify pictures of matching socks.

The retarded, especially the severely retarded, as our daughter, do not transfer what they learn in one arena to another- matching photographs of socks means little to my daughter, and it doesn't help her figure out how to match real socks. She can't talk and she is developmentally about two- counting by rote was not only inappropriate for her developmentally, it is meaningless to a child who will never be able to live without constant care. Setting the table (which we taught her), dressing herself, choosing matching shoes, playing pat-a-cake, singing simple songs, these were things that meant more to her and had more value to her.

This book, along with Jane Healy's book about your child's developing mind, is an excellent guide to natural learning that respect the child as a person.

I totally agree with the author's perspective that early intervention programs that push to accelerate delayed children to get them to catch up with their peers are unrealistic and damaging to those they are trying to help. Children learn best when they are enabled to learn naturally, but unrealistic goals often result in teacher attempts to force-feed and drill information that the child is not able to comprehend. Few people are comfortable treating a developmentally 3-year-old child as a 3-year-old when they are actually 6. But the author makes the point that going at these children's own pace, rather than constantly trying to drag them forward, is what is best.

Unfortunately, the book is hampered at times by a poor presentation. The first 40 pages have the tendency to read like a graduate school psychology paper with too much technical language, citations, overly precise details, etc. I almost gave up on the book, but decided to skip ahead to Chapter 4 and the fictional case study presented of an early intervention program for preschoolers. This part was enjoyable to read and very enlightening, and gave me a vivid picture of what the typical program is like (at least at the time the book was written). From this point on out, with these specific examples to refer to, the book was an easier read, though it did occasionally lapse back into the format of a technical paper.

Overall, a valuable read for those who parent a delayed child or who are interested in the topic. If you have trouble with the beginning, skip ahead to Chapter 4. It would nice to see this book reissued in a new edition, with some significant working (especially of the first few chapters) to make it more readable and engaging, as well as with any including any changes necessary based on recent developments in the field.

This book was brought to my attention by a parent of a young child with significant special needs. As the Early Childhood Coordinator responsible for making recommendations to parents, I was eager to acquire this book. I read it with many mis-givings. Yes, there are some accuracies regarding our current programming options for serving these young children. However, in my set of circumstances, this book led to a family rejecting all services for a very needy young lady. This book must be read in context with others. A balanced view needs to be presented.