> A four year old with a 3rd grade reading ability learns about a WHOLE lot more -- it opened up politics for her. She would read our junk mail, and learn who our council member was, who our representative is, the mayor, current events, history, etc. I know it's stupid of me to say, but I underestimated the effect that reading early would have on her breadth of learning.
I agree with you. It's up to the parents to figure out an environment where the kid will be okay in 10 years. Hard to argue for intentionally pulling someone back just to conform if there is nothing wrong with what they're doing.
(most) kids will learn how to interact with the rest of society at one point.
Children need to develop the soft skills necessary to deal with the fact that crab bucket mentality is very real and can very easily ruin their lives if they can't figure out how to deal with it. Reducing "development" to "how big factoid sponges can I make my child" is not going to help with that.
> A four year old with a 3rd grade reading ability learns about a WHOLE lot more -- it opened up politics for her. She would read our junk mail, and learn who our council member was, who our representative is, the mayor, current events, history, etc. I know it's stupid of me to say, but I underestimated the effect that reading early would have on her breadth of learning.