a222  1159  13 Nov 87
AM-Pre-School Academics, Bjt,0470
Superbabies May Turn into Burn-Outs, Panel Warns
By LINDSEY TANNER
Associated Press Writer
    CHICAGO (AP) - Parents trying to rear ''superbabies'' may instead
create a generation of early burn-outs, a panel of experts said
Friday, warning that force-feeding academics to pre-schoolers may
retard their intellectual, social and physical development.
    ''Twenty years ago, people thought that precocity was bad . . . the
feeling was 'early ripe, early rot,' '' said child psychologist David
Elkind, president of the National Association for the Education of
Young Children.
    ''Now the motto is 'early ripe, early rich,' '' and it's backfiring,
said Elkind at a news conference during the annual convention of the
group, the nation's largest professional association of early
childhood educators.
    The trend is most noticeable among upwardly mobile young
professionals who use such devices as books, flashcards and piano
lessons ''to try and get them (children) on the fast track,'' said
panelist Dr. George Sterne.
    ''Increasingly we see children whose schedules at age 3 and 4 would
boggle the mind of adults . . . they have 60-hour weeks,'' said
Sterne, chairman of the American Academy of Pediatrics' Committee on
Early Childhood, Adoption and Dependent Care.
    ''They're tired, they're irritable, they have bellyaches. . . . It's
obvious they're on overload,'' he said.
    In an estimated 26 states, programs are pending that would have
children enter public school at age 4, said panelist Samuel Sava,
executive director of the National Association for Elementary School
Principals.
    But Elkind noted that in Scandinavian countries, ''where children
don't begin forced education until age 7,'' illiteracy is virtually
non-existent.
    ''We have to recognize that education is not a race, child-rearing
is not a race. In our desires to believe we can give children a leg
up, we are really handicapping them,'' he said.
    ''If you try to hard to force them to learn things . . . you do run
the risk of, first, burn-out, and second, suppressing creativity,''
Sterne said.
    Parents who push their children may only want the best for them.
    ''But what they don't realize is that children are going to learn if
they are exposed'' to normal life, Sterne said. ''They don't need
high-tech curricula to do this.''
    The market is filled with an increasing number of books and early
educational programs like those that urge pregnant women to talk or
sing to their unborn children, said Elkind.
    ''Enterpreneurs play on a lot of parental guilt and this whole
psychology that you can create superbabies,'' he said.
    ''What kids need is constant, unconditional loving. . . . They don't
need flashcards . . . they need to be free to express creativity,''
Sterne said.
    Added Sava: ''We will do a great disservice to the children of this
nation if we do not permit them to be children.''
    
 
AP-NY-11-13-87 1446EST
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