A few months ago Ada was playing with something nondescript and I heard her call it a “skeletope” a few times. I wasn’t sure what she meant, but after watching for a while I saw her hold it up to her eye – it was a telescope!

The interesting thing about this to me was that I didn’t say anything to her, and as she was talking about what she was doing, she said “skeletope” a few more times… then eventually corrected it to telescope with absolutely no input from me.

This poignantly reminded me if a comment by John Holt (in How Children Learn? I’d love you to let me know if you can find it!). My memory of it was that he said many sensitive, gentle parents and teachers – including him at the time – would not openly correct a child’s mispronunciation, but would use the word, pronounced correctly, a few sentences later in order to “subtly” educate the child.

In hindsight, he felt a little ashamed of this habit, and had come to believe that children would learn better how to do things “correctly” if allowed to do it in their own time and without being – however subtly – shamed. Ada’s handling of pronouncing this word reminded me that the best thing we can do to “teach” our kids is often just to shut up and get out of their way!