Amazed with learning

As I was typing my last post I was listening to the sound of my sweet little boy singing his ABC's. I am so proud of him for learning to sing that song and it sounds so sweet with his voice.
Dalton amazes me every day. I know that most people who have kids feel this way about their own. I just love being amazed.
Dalton picks up learning so much faster than I did as a child. When he was a little over a year old I began reading books to him at bedtime. He was attentive and listened to each story like he knew what was going on. One night he started pointing at pictures in the books and he would tell me what the picture was. I would ask him "Who taught you that?" He would respond with Mamaw, JoJo, or Manna. After I noticed this I started doing face cards and some books that had ABC's and pictures of things like shoes, balls, airplanes, frogs, just the simple things that small children could understand. After about 2 weeks of reading books and doing the face cards he knew his ABC's and his numbers 1-10. So one night Josh decided that he wanted to read his book to him at bedtime. I thought that was good idea and I would watch some tv. After about 5 minutes of book reading Josh says "Amanda, can you come here?" I went to Dalton's room and he said "Watch this". He started asking him what different pictures were and some of the ABC's and Dalton would give him the right answer. Josh said "When did he start this?" I told him in the last few weeks. The child was 19 months old.
Now he knows his numbers 1-20, hundreds of pictures, and tells me the difference between left and right. He points out things in books that I didn't even know that he knew what was.
I do not take all the credit for his knowledge. I give a majority of it to the daycare that he attends. I could not be happier with what they teach these little kids. He had learned alot with Jojo and now Ms. Kim.
Today's education levels are different from when I was a kid. Most of the kids I started kindergarten with stayed at home with a parent or grandparent. Now Dalton's genereation both parents or grandparents have to work to keep the household afloat.
I read an article in the TimesDaily last week that was talking about educating kids too early. It was based more on the electronic educational games rather than reading books. One educator mentioned was from UNA's early education program and the other was an elementary teacher. I agreed with part of the article and disagreed with some of it too. If you would like to read the artilce the link is http://www.timesdaily.com/article/20090227/ARTICLES/902270307. I just feel like if a child likes learning and wants to know what things are then you should educate them. If they seem to dislike it and aren't interested then you should not push them to do it.
Think about this and how it can affect a child in your life to take an extra 30 minutes each day to read a book to a child or to teach them something they didn't know already.
Learning is a tool that will affect your life forever.