One of the problems with parenting is that there are too many so-called experts touting their own brand of nonsense. Some parents view their child as a noisy intrusion into their lives. If they could push a button and make it instantly turn into an 18 year-old, they would. They don't want the child to sleep in their bed, or to give them too much affection for fear of "spoiling" them.

They will send the kid off to daycare even if there is no economic necessity to do so. The sooner the kid is out of the house or out of sight, the better. They let the child cry for hours on end and really don't don't care what the child want or needs, the most important thing is to do whatever results in the least inconvenience for the parent.

I favor attachment parenting which regards the child as a precious little bundle that needs constant nurturing, love, affection, and tenderness.

So as a parent I don't look to make my child a trophy or a pet project to make myself look good in the eyes of my friends and family. That is to say, I don't care if they start speaking words when they are 4 or 5 years old. They eventually will on their own, and when they do you won't be able to shut them up.

But there are parents that who somehow feel that their child is an embarrassment if the little tyke doesn't start quoting Shakespeare before the age of two.

To them I say stop obsessing: your little boy or girl will speak at the proper age. What's the proper age? There is no proper age. A good way to make your child stutter or have speech difficulties is by trying to make them talk before they are ready.

I know of a mother who engaged one of these speech intervention therapy scamsters for her two-year old son. The "therapist" tortures the little boy by dangling a toy in front of him and when he reaches for it she demands that he say "I want" and snatches the toy away from him unless he articulates the words. The poor child is not ready to talk and cries when he reaches for the toy. This goes on for about two hours with non-stop crying the entire time.

In any sane society this would be considered child-abuse. I do not know how the mother can stand to see her child so brutally mistreated. Sadly she thinks this is all good and proper because it's a program administered by the state of New Jersey.

As almost all government programs, it's a scam run for the benefit of those employed by the government. When I was in grammar school, it was a rare thing to find someone we today would call a "special needs" child. But now our cities and towns are filled with near-retards. But just as putting in more shelves in a home encourages even more clutter and the need for more shelves, throwing money at special education programs encourages the discovery of more candidates for those programs. It may surprise some of my readers to learn that even kids with food allergies can be designated as "special needs."