Tutored at 2 - too much, too soon?

Companies target the tiny-tot set; enrollment, prices high

“So many parents were asking us for this,” said Richard Bavaria, vice president of education for Sylvan. “We were just responding to what they wanted.”

Getting an early start

Each morning, Ken Hamada wakes up about 6:30 and toils over his Kumon homework, which typically takes him half an hour, before leaving for Del Mar Hills Nursery School. The 5-year-old goes to Junior Kumon in La Jolla twice a week. His mother, Meg Hamada, said early tutoring has given Ken a positive self-image.

“He knows more than other kids, and he thinks he's smart,” she said. “That's good for his mind, to think that he can do better than other kids.”

Initially, Ken had observed his older sister being tutored and wanted to be a part of it. So he started at age 3.

During one recent session, Ken sat at a pint-size table for the center's youngest pupils. The work is repetitive – addition involving the number 5, such as 5 + 7, and work sheets that direct students to read and write words that begin with “tr,” like “trip,” “try” and “trace.”

“When they're that little, they don't think it's study,” Hamada said. “He has friends there. He has fun with the teachers. He enjoys learning. And he has the habit of sitting down to study at the age of 4 and 5.”

Ryan Uyeji, who is younger, spends about 10 to 15 minutes a day on Kumon homework. In recent months, he has learned to count to 20, recite his ABCs and communicate better; Kumon has aided that development, his father said. Ryan is on a waiting list to get into The Gifted Preschool.

Academic expectations in public schools are much higher than in generations past. The state academic-content standards adopted for math, language arts and other subjects in the late 1990s have ramped up what's taught in each grade. Parents are finding it's not that rare to enter a kindergarten classroom today and find children learning basic algebraic concepts and flipping through chapter books.

The competition to get into the top-tiered private schools can be fierce, involving interviews, tests and observations of potential students interacting with their peers at play.

In this competitive climate, many parents become concerned when their kids don't perform as well as their classmates.

Wendy Austin plunks down about $1,500 a week for her kindergarten-age twins to receive intensive, one-on-one instruction two hours a day, five days a week after school at Lindamood-Bell Learning Processes in Del Mar. The center, which has seen a younger clientele in recent years, works with students who are having learning difficulties in a traditional environment.

Austin said her twins attended a preschool that didn't stress academics, so they were behind their peers when they entered kindergarten. Unlike their classmates at Del Mar Heights Elementary, they weren't comprehending letter sounds and were confusing numbers with letters.

“It's a competitive world, and at Del Mar Heights the parents are affluent and they want their kids to be the best,” said Austin, who works part time as a landscape designer. “The moms maybe had more time on their hands than I did and had more patience and got them to read earlier.”


