Early Learning Lasts a Lifetime: One Mother’s Story

A few months after the birth of my second baby, my uncle told me about The How To Multiply Your Baby’s Intelligence course.  He said I should go take the course because I was a good Mom and would enjoy doing this program with my two sons. He was so right!  I loved learning how to teach my children and these tools I learned not only made me a better mom, but it made my kids happier, smarter and very self-confident.

“Look Mom.  Madonna and Child.”

I was able to teach them about subjects in which I wasn’t even knowledgeable. They learned about art, music, science, math, geography … anything I thought would be a good subject as well as subjects they requested to learn about.  My older son was 2 ½ and the baby was 6 months old when we began. One day about 2 months after starting the program with them, we were walking through a Flea Market and Michael ran up to a table and pointed to a painting and said, “Look Mom.  Madonna and Child.”  The man behind the table was floored and came over and asked me how he knew that. I said it was part of his Art cards.  I then told him even the baby, Edward who was then 8 months old in a stroller, could identify it.  I asked him to hand me three paintings (they were 8 x 12 size) and I held the three up and asked the baby which one did Raphael paint. He leaned forward and pointed to the right one. The man then said to Michael, “Here, you can have this.  That’s amazing! Never saw anything like it.”  And that was nothing compared to the vast knowledge these boys had about numerous subjects.

“The boys could identify the music of Bach, Beethoven, Mozart and others.”

They loved this program so much, I could bribe them to eat their ‘healthy’ food by saying, “Finish your lunch and then we’ll do ‘BITS’.”  And they’d gobble up the veggies.  That didn’t work with the promise of dessert or other treats … but ‘BITS’ was enticing.  Michael asked for BITS for his third birthday along with a couple of cassette tapes of music composed by some of the 20 classical composers the boys could identify by site.  We would play these tapes so they could hear what these artists created. They could identify the music by Bach, Beethoven, Mozart and a few others but Michael specifically asked for something by Debussy, Haydn and Tchaikovsky because he didn’t know what their music sounded like.

When his Aunt gave him his present, two sets of BITS (one on types of Dogs) and a cassette of Debussy, he stopped opening gifts and asked me to do the BITS. I suggested he open his other presents as everyone was sitting around waiting but he politely insisted he wanted to hear the BITS now. So, I obliged. About 5 seconds into it, Edward who was on the other side of the room came racing across the rug crawling as he pushed through the crowd sitting on the floor to sit beside his brother and hear the new BITS. Since he arrived midway, I had to do them again fully for him. Then Michael wanted to take the cassette up to his room to play it on his tape player, which I had to plea with him to wait until after the party. He did not have near that enthusiasm for any of his other “toy” gifts.

“How did my 3-year-old coax his 5-year-old brother out of $56?”

When the boys were 3 and 5, I asked them to go get their piggy banks and bring them down to the kitchen table as we were going to count and wrap their coins to deposit them into their bank accounts.  Their Dad would collect change throughout the day so when he got home, he would give them each an equal amount of coins to put in their piggy banks and put the extra coins on the mantel to add to the next night.  We counted Michael’s money and he had $19 in coins.  When we counted Edward’s, he had $75.  I was perplexed and called my husband at work and asked him how he distributed the coins to the boys.  He confirmed he gave them each exactly the same coins every night.  I pulled the string and discovered that on the way to their rooms, Edward would offer to give Michael some of his coins in exchange for one or two of his brother’s. Only, he would offer 3 pennies for 1 quarter. Or, 2 big nickels for 2 little dimes. After awhile, it added up to almost a 4:1 ratio in favor of the 3-year-old.   I had done the MATH BITS with them … AND, Edward could apply the knowledge he acquired. BUT, since Michael had been exposed to Sesame Street and was able to identify the numeral ‘symbols’ and Edward learned math the right way, I saw just how important it was to teach kids the right way so they get the concept, not just identify numerals.

I did send my kids to school but ended up pulling them out when they were 12 and 14 because of all the false data they were being taught. I tried going through the school board curriculum committee when the boys came home one day and asked me if I knew what I was doing by restricting their dairy intake (both kids would get sick from consuming dairy products so they only got to eat ice cream or pizza occasionally). Seems the Health Teacher told the kids that if they don’t drink at least 3 glasses of milk a day, their bones would break. When confronted with this piece of information, I approached the teacher and told her that my boys had a dairy allergy and they didn’t drink milk.  Her response was “Oh, I understand. I’m allergic too. If I have even a sip of milk I break out in hives.”  I then asked her how she could make a statement like she made (obviously her bones weren’t broken) and her reply was “It’s in the curriculum.  We have to teach whatever is in the curriculum. I don’t have a choice.”   I took two experts on health to deliver their data to the committee to see if we could get the curriculum changed so the teachers didn’t have to teach false data. The answer was “No.  We get paid to follow the curriculum.”  This curriculum, by the way, was sponsored by the Meat, Dairy and Sugar Industries.  So, over the next few months I found myself having to investigate to see what the kids were being taught on a number of their subjects and then correct the false data. It became so suppressive, I finally pulled them out of school to homeschool them.  They both had IQs of 130 and 132.

Question: How many high school graduates could pass the GED?

They were actually able to learn on their own and when it came time for them to take their GEDs, they scored 98 without prepping for the test.  Does anyone know how many high school graduates could not even pass the GED?

Both boys pursued a number of avenues of interest and are successful in their careers, married with children and very involved with them.

This program was incredible.

I don’t want to think about how I would have handled my kids’ education without having gotten the knowledge I obtained through the Institutes. I can only say “Nothing ventured; nothing gained.”  I could not be more thankful to The Institutes for providing such a precious and beneficial service and to my uncle who told me about it. I’ve told this story tons of times but never took the time to write it down. For that I am truly sorry as I could probably have helped many more mothers and families if I had.  I am passing it forward in writing now! Please share.

How To Multiply Course graduate & Professional Mother, Florida