Column: Pothole Prairie

Learning letters is hard.

Forrest, my 3-year-old son, is doing a great job with some of the letters. He knows A, B, C, F, L, O and S every time. He has them down.

There are many letters we don’t teach him because we aren’t there yet. With flashcards, we started with A, then B, then C. He picked them up swiftly and can point them out in public, like the sign for Cinema 7 or the brand nameplate on my Ford Ranger. He quickly found out that F was the first letter in his name. L was for Lisa (Mommy’s name). And he learned T was for my name. Somewhere he learned — perhaps at preschool — the letters O and S.

But it seems Forrest has lapsed on T, and he is having a hard time with D, E and G.

Why?

Lisa and I have been doing flashcards for the first seven letters of the alphabet each day, usually before bedtime but sometimes at other times of the day. We also point out letters on packages. The flashcards have pictures, a duck for D, an elephant for E and a giraffe for G. We point out how the letters mean sounds, but saying duck and the D sound do not produce an answer of D from him.

Does his difficulty have to do with D, E and G sounding alike?

I will say this: Being a teacher for early childhood education is hard, perhaps harder than education at higher levels. It’s one thing to teach a college student something such as the political spectrum on a worldwide scale, how parliamentary government is different from American government, or explaining the difference between positive liberty and negative liberty. The students must either grasp the concept or fall behind peers.

It’s altogether another thing to teach a child letters. If the child doesn’t retain the knowledge, that’s OK. You try again the next day. If the child gets frustrated, that’s OK. You ask the child if he wants to stop.

The amount of patience required for a teacher of early childhood education is much greater than middle, high or college education. And learning the lessons will matter a lot more in the lives of the children than the lives of the college students. Yet, for some reason, college-level educators make much more than early childhood educators. My wife is a preschool teacher. They get no benefits and have a lot fewer days off than public-school and college educators. And lower pay.

I’m not complaining, by the way. It’s just a fact.

Moreover, people donate loads of dough to their colleges. I think they should donate to their preschool, grade school or even high school. Forget whether you went to Minnesota or Harvard. Where did you attend kindergarten? Who was your fifth-grade teacher? That matters more.

So what should I do about Forrest and letters?

Well, for starters, I think I am going to simplify. Don’t attempt to teach him D, E and G. Go one at a time. Let him get D down before E. Then at the end let him review the letters he knows.

We did purchase a booklet on which he could draw letters with a dry-erase marker. No matter which way we do it, we should draw letters together more, on the pad or on a piece of paper. He especially should draw the ones he knows and then only one new letter, the one he is learning in the flashcards.

Also, we have a bunch of magnetic letters in storage somewhere from when he was about 1. Now, he is at the right age for them, and for some reason they are stored. Parents, you know how that goes, right? Having letters on the fridge lets him play with the letters whenever he wants, rather than when his parents can.

We have been telling him the auditory sounds of the letters, but we haven’t quizzed him. Is it too early? Maybe we should do that, too.

I do know that it is important for parents to teach children lessons at home. Don’t require your school to do all the work. Enrichment at home is what makes for a successful student and for a successful school district.

I know two parents who degrade their kids often and don’t enrich their minds. Their children seem behind for their ages. They probably are going to be in trouble when they get older. The eldest, well, I won’t even talk about my suspicions about him in print.

Enough about that. The point is: Good parenting, firstly, means love and, secondly, means being a home educator.

Are you curious about Forrest’s progress on numbers? I am glad to report he is excellent at counting. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Seven. Eight. OK, now and then he skips a number, but he knows them. He counts into the 20s, sometimes hitting all the numbers on the way.

Tribune Managing Editor Tim Engstrom’s column appears every Tuesday.