Parents Warned on Pushing Child to Be ‘Superbaby’

Parents trying to rear “superbabies” may instead create a generation of early burnouts, a panel of experts said Friday, warning that force-feeding academics to preschoolers 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 Assn. for the Education of Young Children.

“Now the motto is ‘early ripe, early rich,’ ” and it’s backfiring, Elkind said 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, flash cards and piano lessons “to try and get them (children) on the fast track,” panelist Dr. George Sterne said.

“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 Assn. for Elementary School Principals.

But Elkind noted that in Scandinavia, “where children don’t begin forced education until age 7,” illiteracy is virtually nonexistent.