Terms such as "age-4 exam" and "age-7 exam," which refer to level tests required to enter English-language kindergartens and academies, symbolically illustrate the overheated early education phenomenon in Korean society. Parents jump into the early education race based on the perception that building English proficiency from a young age will allow children to spend more time on other subjects during their school years and provide an advantage in future college entrance exams.
Addressing this issue, Cheon Geun-ah, a professor of child psychiatry at Yonsei University Severance Hospital, warns in her new book "Children Who Learn Too Early" about the negative effects of excessively early education on infant and toddler brains. The author states, "The human brain is designed to develop sequentially according to the order programmed in DNA," pointing out that when stimuli inconsistent with this designed order are excessively applied to the infant and toddler brain, problems in brain development can occur, and these effects can persist into adulthood. She argues, "Sitting children who have not yet been potty-trained or who are not yet fluent in Korean at desks and making them study is itself a stimulus that completely reverses the natural order of human brain development, and is highly likely to negatively impact the lives of children who experience it."
Some parents may push back against concerns about the harms of early education. "But my child says it's fun when I teach them. Isn't it fine as long as the child keeps up well?" The author responds that interpreting a child's compliance as enjoyable learning may itself be a parental misconception. Infants and toddlers are immature in their ability to precisely recognize and express their emotions. Rather, they have a strong instinctive need for approval to please their parents — who represent their entire world — and often hide their true feelings and reluctantly comply due to a fundamental fear of not being loved if they refuse.
While the private education market unanimously claims that infancy and toddlerhood are the optimal time to begin learning, the author flatly disagrees. What develops most during infancy and toddlerhood is the "limbic system," called the "emotional brain." It governs instinct, emotion, memory, and motivation. Therefore, the stimulation needed by the infant and toddler brain is not cognitive stimulation gained from learning Korean, English, or mathematics, but emotional stimulation gained from bonding with parents and playing with peers.
If the emotional brain does not provide a solid foundation, problems can arise in higher-level brain development later on. Children may experience unexpected difficulties in nearly all areas of brain function, including cognition, learning, emotion, and sociability. Furthermore, stress accumulated during overly early learning processes biologically alters a child's brain. As the brain switches into "survival mode" to endure crisis situations and maintains high levels of tension and anxiety, this can manifest as "somatic symptoms" such as headaches, abdominal pain, and bedwetting. The book's subtitle is, fittingly, "How Parental Impatience Damages a Child's Brain."
The author argues that parental impatience must not become an obstacle blocking the child's brain from establishing its own foundation and growing strong. The message that parents should trust the innate developmental stages of their child's brain instead of being swayed by the words of others or trends offers painful advice to parents who have ignored the normal and legitimate developmental processes of childhood. Priced at 18,800 won.
