When Slow Is Fast Enough: Educating the Delayed Preschool Child

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.

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.

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???