Penny for your thoughts....

Met with an old friend this morning. She has 2 beautiful kids. (I really adore their big round eyes). We have not met for almost a year and chatted about everything. (well, mostly about the kids). She threw me a question and started me thinking. Let me see if I can put it down nicely so that you would understand.
hmm.... She started teaching her eldest, a boy, very early on, the alphabets, numbers and so on. And the family traveled a lot. The boy started kindergarten last year, and the teacher observed that he looked bored in class. He already knew the basics ABC's and 123's and colours and stuff, and he knew about all the stuff the teachers are talking about. His general knowledge is very good. The mother got scared that too much early exposure would lead to her children feeling bored with school (because they already knew all the stuff the teacher is teaching) that she 'reduced' her 'teaching' with her younger daughter. In her own words. 'Let her learn everything she needs to learn in school.' hmmm..... is this story clear enough?

My thoughts? Would it really matter if parents teach (exposed) their children early to academics? How can parents refrain from 'teaching' their children? I mean, we teach them all the time, right? Informally. We talk about colours and shapes, and show them how to count and recognize alphabets and we teach them how to behave and we explain things to them all the time. We talk to them, right?
But will the children get bored of school if they were exposed early to academics, and later affect their future learning ability in school.