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The issue with this, that I see, is that these are anecdotes involving highly intelligent people teaching their own kids. And they are reporting it because they

• namanyayg 3y ago
  > And I suspect that teaching a random person's child may not yield as much results as teaching the child of a genius like Larry Sanger. Why do you believe that? Are there any studies proving the nature vs nurture debate? It seems like the techniques followed can be equally applied to all children, e.g. imagine this being officially taught in nursery schools. > I think it could also be the case that the adult intelligence level will not be greatly affected by any kind of learning technique or pace during childhood Again, where is this coming from? The child will start earlier and will have more time to learn more advanced subjects than their peers, which could definitely lead to higher intelligence at any given age
  • justrealist 3y ago
    > Are there any studies proving the nature vs nurture debate Yes, current research has IQ around 80% genetic in middle-class western society (where you don't have to worry about nutritional deficiency as a factor).
    • strix_varius 3y ago
      80% is generally the upper limit that studies have reported, and for teens / adults. Heritability of IQ presents at a far lower rate for children: around 20%.
• justrealist 3y ago
  I had the same thought when I learned the kid was learning Hebrew. Kind of a tell. I mean I don't want to discredit the possibility this helps a lot, let's just be real about the likely baseline.
  • SuperNinKenDo 3y ago
    Frankly kids are language sponges. Just pop a kid in proximity to somebody speaking another language for a couple hours every few days, and they'll start being able to speak it at a basic level after less than a year. Teaching a kid a language using flashcards is obviously different, but I don't think it indicates some kind of savant status by any stretch.
    • edanm 3y ago
      That's a huge generalization. There are many kids with speech delays, for example.
      • SuperNinKenDo 3y ago
        Yes. It is a huge generalisation. About the general case. Which is that kids don't have delays. That's why they're called delays. And that is why not having a delay does not indicate savant status.
        • edanm 3y ago
          Yeah I was just responding to the first of your statement, I agree with the second. (There are a significant amount of kids with some developmental delay, and it can be disheartening to be the parent of a kid and think you're doing something wrong because "everyone knows" that "all kids pick up languages like sponges", that' the only reason I want to call it out as not being representative of everyone.)
          • SuperNinKenDo 3y ago
            I guess it's true that talking about these things as universal can have rhat effect. On the other hand, and not necessarily disagreeing with you, but playing devil's advocate a little here; sometimes it's important to make clear what normal development does look like so that a parent of a child with delays understands confidently that what they're seeing isn't normal development. An acquaintance of mine has a son who's clearly delayed, probably autistic, but she's so steeped in "every child is different" rhetoric that she refuses to see the obvious, and it's going to be to his serious detriment unfortunately. I guess the trick is to describe clearly what is normal while also cultivating a culture in which there's no shame attached to these kinds of delays.
• kaba0 3y ago
  > I think it could also be the case that the adult intelligence level will not be greatly affected by any kind of learning technique or pace during childhood Judit Polgár’s parents decided to basically test this assumption on their own children - they incorporated chess in their lives from a very early age, and it absolutely shown on their results. Sure, everything has a “nature” element, but the potential from that point can be utilized or wasted, depending on nurture.
  • hattmall 3y ago
    Did they not incorporate it with some of their children? Or what was the control?
    • kaba0 3y ago
      Every other children? Sure, it’s not a report in Science, hence the apostrophes around test.
      • The_Colonel 3y ago
        The part which is usually not mentioned Laszlo Polgar was himself a chess expert (publishing many books on chess) and a renowned psychologist, so very far from being just average parent. The only result we get is that training a child from early age often gives them a significant edge in some specific field over children getting trained later. But that's a result known from many other sports as well.
        • kaba0 3y ago
          I mean, the zero hypothesis for pretty much any trait should be that it has both a nurture and a nature component. We do know that results can be improved with nurture, and we also know that results can be significantly diminished as well with it (e.g. children not learning to speak by something like 5-6 years will never be able to). We only have indirect ways to measure intelligence (for example the former case of non-speaking children couldn’t complete an IQ test), so I think it is safe to assume that intelligence can be somewhat influenced by nurture as well. (Also, I believe it is more common than not for a successful person to not have their children similarly successful, even though they usually go to top, elite schools and has good genetic traits. Of course there are plenty other factors, but I do believe that it points towards to my point)
• parentthrowaway 3y ago
  This is from my experience as a parent. It's kind of common sense that spaced repetition is simple enough to be mastered by pretty much anyone. I mean dude, even orange cats can learn by rote repetition. My son has memorized letters and numbers at least since 1y3mo, and at 2yo now, can sight read many words and verbalize arithmetic that I'm sure many children are doing intuitively in their heads at this age anyway but just cannot express to adults. There's no Anki involved. We have a grandma caretaker who has the energy for half a day with him and teaches him all this stuff. His afternoon babysitters are very sharp. Like they're expensive, and I've gone through at least 10 babysitters. They all deeply teach the children they've taken care of, and I teach him, and his mom teaches him... Are you getting it? This is a cultural issue. Out of the 10 middle class or rich families I know in my community, by comparison, 9 send their kids to daycare; or the family has, shall I say, a kind of nanny that does not value education at all. These are equally educated and distinguished people as my wife and I. The one exception like us, while the parents are very gifted and the child is obviously thriving, the reason they chose not to use the typical, let's say California nanny or daycare situation, is for an ultimately very rare and fringe reason. People here are going to litigate these specific methods. Dude, go watch what daycare is like for a 1y6m-3y11m. Do you comprehend what an utter shitbox of a time wasting experience it is, and how 1-2 parents per child isn't at all comparable to 4 children per daycarist? I think you agree with me, but Larry Sanger could have definitely nonetheless set back his precocious children through some very common, mindnumbingly stupid experiences adults subject their kids to for the first 2-3 years of their life.
  • Auracle 3y ago
    I don’t think my daughter socializing with other children is a “shitbox of a time wasting experience.” She enjoys it and learns a lot just being around older children. Probably more importantly, so far it seems she’s on the path to being an extrovert when my wife and I are both introverts that aren’t great at social situations. I think that will probably put her further ahead in life than learning to read or do math a year early. Also, she only gets to be 2 once.
• newaccount74 3y ago
  I tried to teach my kids reading when they were 3, after hearing about early readers on HN. I gave up after a few attempts because they didn't seem to grasp the difference between the letters I started with. I felt like they just weren't ready.
  • lelanthran 3y ago
    > I tried to teach my kids reading when they were 3, after hearing about early readers on HN. I gave up after a few attempts because they didn't seem to grasp the difference between the letters I started with. I felt like they just weren't ready. More likely that they were ready, and you weren't :-) It's important to establish the routine and to never deviate from it. It's also important to ensure that the child never interrupts the lesson with something distracting (I always say "We're still in the lesson, we will look at that in a few minutes"). This is important, I found, as once you reach a specific tempo/cadence during a lesson, you don't want to disrupt that tempo.
    • Auracle 3y ago
      Unless you absolutely force them, their interest is a huge factor in what they’ll learn. I started to read when I was 2 (presumably late 2), and my parents did nothing special but read to me. I just wanted to read, I was really into it, and I was able to associate the letters with the sounds.
      • lelanthran 3y ago
        > Unless you absolutely force them, their interest is a huge factor in what they’ll learn. Whether you like it or not, at some point you are going to absolutely force them to learn something. Whether that is by sending them to a school, or teaching them yourself. Most children would rather not spend time on a lesson if they could spend that time playing.
        • Foobar8568 3y ago
          Incorrect, it depends of the value you pass down to your kids.
• vlovich123 3y ago
  Usually the problem isn't the kids but the parents. Educating a child that young is a lot of 1:1 work that takes up a lot of time (like many hours a day spaced with breaks in between) & unless you extract joy and satisfaction from seeing a child master basic skills for the first time, you're probably not going to be good at it. There's also logistical difficulties accomplishing that when you have two people working full time.