We've been spending lovely afternoons/evenings at the pool. Yesterday, The Boy went in the big pool with Daddy for a "swimming lesson." Daddy was a lifeguard, taught swimming for about 10 years, and knows more than a little bit about pool skills. There's no reason for us to enroll The Boy in swim class, considering that Daddy can teach him just fine...right?
Same thing with music lessons, no? Between the two of us, we could teach our children to play any instrument at least through an intermediate level, higher on more than a few.
Will we teach them these things? Or will we find someone else to do it? I guess it depends on how well they take to learning them from us. On one hand I can't imagine that our children would dismiss our expertise (at least not this young!). On the other...sometimes the struggle between teacher and student is different than that between parent and child. Being both of those things, we need to balance both types of struggle, particularly when we choose to take on the responsibility of teaching our children something that other parents cannot teach to their children.
Having said that...parents should be careful not to abdicate all teaching responsibilities, no matter what choices they make with regards to their children's education. Parents who know nothing about what their kids are learning have very little success in encouraging them to embrace it.
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