Practice does not always make perfect: why sometimes, just getting older can make you better at things without even trying – and why testing small children sets them up to fail

Yesterday, I picked up a pad, some of the kids’ crayons and drew a portrait. It’s probably only the fourth or fifth picture I’ve produced with any real effort since I took an art A level some 17 years ago. I’ve doubled my lifespan since then, and yet, without putting in any effort at all, I’ve immeasurably improved (given it was a half hour sketch).

The same has happened with dancing. No longer can I shinny up poles like a monkey (once my stock in trade), and I think I’ve finally reached my limit (without copious booze) on doing the splits, but never having much more than a junior school ballet lesson in my life (though plenty of post birth-yoga), my command over my limbs has inextricably toned up. I’m now able to do almost all the Sia Elastic Heart dance routine to a semi-reasonable standard following just two weeks early morning practice before work. Don’t ask me why. It has something to do with diminishing opportunities to prove a point to myself and the wider world. Which is perhaps as good a motivator as any I’ve encountered so far.

But it also has something salient to say about pressuring small kids to achieve things before they are really and truly ready. You see, it’s a point often made that late blooming intelligence is the most far reaching. Babies, for example, are among the only (perhaps the only, Bambi notwithstanding) mammal unable to walk at birth, certainly the most helpless for the longest time. There is something about children who mature earlier, also, being more limited in their ultimate potential. I see it with boys, who seem not to know they are born until they are about eight, by which age most little girls are practically teenagers by comparison. As girls tend to level off in their actual teens, worrying about their appearance, and who fancies whom, boys silently overtake them, launching a body blow in their thirties, when women are otherwise occupied having the next generation, to rule the world. It’s only a stereotype because it is so true.

The tortoise inevitably overtakes the hare, one way or another. Which is why testing and streaming four year olds makes so little sense.

At that age, my aspie son Jonah was too busy lining things up to sit still, but now, coding Minecraft for a living, I don’t doubt he’ll eventually take on the world, even if only digitally. Ava too was a bit of a slow starter, for all she wasn’t pushed: lispy and loopy, her stock in trade is charm, if she feels like it, but behind her guileless eyes lies a calculating brain of epic proportions. Only she needs time to work out which foot to put in front of the other. She will get there, and while her more sure-footed compatriots are losing their way, she’ll outpace them in her own sweet time.

The point is that we can’t be graded and classed, or even told we’re naturals at something when we’re little because it may not be true for long. It’s pointless and damaging, often setting children off down a path that they will surely lose interest in, as other skills come to the fore, and in the meantime, can create a complex as suddenly, through life, they become a smaller fish in a bigger pond.

And it’s a good reason for not writing anyone off too early either. Like Jonah’s latent social skills, which have only really started to kick in at nine, some kids just take a little longer to warm up, by which point they’ve already got a label attached and quite possible a chip on their shoulder too.

I know, when I was little, my handwriting certainly didn’t not mark me out as a writer, an artist even less so. It took until the age of15 before I realised my powers of observation were more important than having coordinated wrists, which had, in any case, by then started to come into their own; and for boys of the same age, I don’t doubt are only just being explored their full potential. Jonah, at nine is a handy football player, far exceeding my expectations of him at three, when he would merely pick the ball up, so why did I fear he’d always be dreadful? Perhaps it’s the prevailing culture that forgets that small children are not the finished product – no, not even adults are.

Education for young children is so mired in tick boxing, but I can’t help but feel that a lot of it has little value other than justifying someone’s existence, and not that of the child themselves. It can take half a lifetime to work out what you enjoy doing, not least what you’re good at, and by clipping children’s  wings through overzealous expectations and cramping their exploration through vigorous repetition and testing, you’re failing to allow the next generation reach their potential, however late they might leave it before finally taking-off.