It was class time at Jumpstart Gym, and six
students sat in a circle awaiting the day's instruction.
No matter that the pupils were still in diapers.
The tiny scholars were reasonably attentive, and had a busy hour
ahead. Songs. Puppets. Stories. Oh, and bubbles.
"Popping bubbles helps develop visual tracking,
hand-eye coordination and fine motor skills," director of
curriculum Chris Siler explained through the dizzying barrage
floating from a bubble machine.
Located on the Northeastside, Jumpstart Gym is part
of a whole industry of products and services serving parents eager
to give even babies an academic edge.
Worried Junior won't be able to compete in the
global economy? There's always Baby's First Steps, a Random
House foreign language book/CD set targeting newborns to
2-year-olds. Pick from French, Italian or Spanish.
Or expose Junior to the arts through Playschool's
Baby Einstein toy line, including products with names such as Baby
Shakespeare Find-and-Rhyme and Baby Van Gogh Color-Go-Round.
It's never too early to start thinking about
education, said Leanne Turnak, a Broad Ripple mother who brings
11-month-old daughter Julia to Jumpstart Gym every Friday.
"I was reading to her in the womb," said the
28-year-old teacher.
Child-development experts say children learn a
great deal in the first three years of life, so it's good to take
an interest in your child's progress.
But the most important thing you can do to
encourage learning doesn't cost a dime, said Patricia Keener, chief
of pediatrics at the Indiana University School of Medicine.
"As parents, we all want to do so much for our
children, and that's a wonderful thing," she said. "But the main
thing we need to do, especially in the early years, is provide them
a safe environment with a consistent caregiver who understands and
responds to their signals: I'm hungry. I'm wet. Babies learn when
they feel secure."
That security can vanish when overzealous parents
take matters too far, said Alvin Rosenfeld, a psychiatrist and
author of Hyper-Parenting: Are You Hurting Your Child by Trying
Too Hard?
"You can really overwhelm a child by applying too
much pressure," he said. "It's enormously destructive, yet it's
done with the best of intentions."
It's harmful to force infants to learn tasks before
they are developmentally appropriate, said Patricia Kuhl, professor
of speech and hearing sciences at the University of Washington in
Seattle.
"For example, trying to make babies learn words by
showing them flashcards is really not a good idea," she said. "They
won't learn them, and that activity gets in the way of playing and
interacting with babies in a more natural way."
Education that is fun, low-pressure and interactive
is far more effective than stern or more passive options, said
Claire Lerner, a child development specialist at the nonprofit
parenting organization Zero to Three.
Lerner is skeptical of fancy toys that leave
nothing to the imagination. She prefers good old-fashioned blocks
to expensive, high- tech products that babies simply watch or
listen to.
"There's really no good research that shows any of
those gadgets actually boost learning in babies," Lerner said. "You
can't take a cookie-cutter approach. Every child learns
differently, and nobody learns if they're bored."
Jumpstart Gym packs loads of interaction into
one-hour classes in age divisions ranging from newborn to 5 years
old.
Each session includes time for "free play," or a
chance to cut loose on the school's indoor playground. The
landscape of brightly colored cubes, spheres, tunnels and slides is
heavily cushioned for safety.
Newcomer Ethan Kaufmann, a temporarily
claustrophobic 9-month-old, was dubious about crawling through a
short, egg-shaped tunnel even as his physician parents took turns
beckoning on the other side.
"It's too dark," Ethan's father, Mike Kaufmann,
told his wife, Mary, after several minutes of fruitless cooing.
Ethan perked up later, though, laughing gleefully
as his parents donned puppets and sang to him about his head,
shoulders, knees and toes, touching each in time with the
lyrics.
The idea is to give babies lots of stimulation,
which is important to healthy brain development, said Jill
Bracken-Emerson, who co-owns Jumpstart Gym with husband Jamie
Emerson. Looking for ways to enhance their own two children's
development and not finding what they wanted locally, they soon
found themselves establishing the business to help other
parents.
With their program, babies are flooded with sights
and sounds, but in a structured way and with parents present, to
avoid frightening them, said Bracken-Emerson. "After a couple of
weeks, they get familiar with the routine and know what to
expect."
And parents learn, too. Each class includes a brief
presentation on issues arising at various developmental stages. One
recent theme was why babies bite and ways to discourage them.
Amy Thompson-Hill is a Northside stay-at-home mom
who brings 9-month-old son, Alexander, to class religiously. He's
one of the school's star pupils, a bold conqueror of egg tunnels
and enthusiastic bubble popper.
Thompson-Hill is convinced the class is making a
difference.
"He's crawling early and getting along well with
other children," she said. "I'm sure it's working."
