While reading this thread, I was interested in seeing how some Dopers were already proficient readers by the time they entered kindergarden.
Then, of course, being a parent, my anxiety kicked in, so I have to ask … what is the “right” way to teach a toddler to read? At what age should a child be expected to be able to read on his own?
Background: My son is almost four years old now, and he’s an avid reader. By “avid reader,” I mean he likes to go to bookstores, he loves to look at books, he knows basic phonics, he can identify about 60-80 words, and he loves having folks read to him.
On the other hand, he’s not an “avid reader” in the sense that he can grab a book, plop himself down on the couch, and start following the words and the plot. And while I don’t want to push him into something that he may not be developmentally ready for, I do wonder if he’s slightly behind the curve in this regard.
So, Doper parents, any advice? Is this something I should be concerned over, or is childhood reading just one of those wildly variant things that will get straightened out over time? How much reading is a child expected to know by the time he enters kindergarden? And what methods do you recommend to nudge my son towards reading on his own?
A kid isn’t expected to know how to read when he starts kindergarten. Some do, of course, and most know the alphabet, but your kid is probably pretty far ahead of the curve for a three year old.
I was one of those kids who knew how to read already when I went to kindergarden in a one-room country school.
In my case, our elderly grandmother lived with us, and every afternoon, we would sit together on the couch, and grandma would read a childrens book to me until one (or both) of us fell asleep for our afternoon nap. One day she noticed that I was reading along with her, and that I continued to read the words even if she stopped speaking. Soon after that, she said that we would now take turns reading to each other.
So I guess I just picked it up by listening to the words and watching grandma as she read. (She had poor eyesight, and used to move her finger along under the words as she read. I think that helped.) But there was no specific pressure involved, I just picked it up.
And I’m told it took me a while to realize that I could read a book on my own. My mother tells of times when she found grandma had fallen asleep, and I had taken over the book and was reading it aloud to finish it. But I didn’t yet take books and read them on my own – I had to have someone there to reade “with me”. Later I sat at the kitchen table and read books aloud to Mom as she was baking or canning. It was a bit later that I realized that 1) I could read all by myself, anytime I wanted, and 2) when doing that, I didn’t have to say the words out loud (which made reading much faster). I’m still a constant, avid reader, and go thru 2-3 books a week.
So I would say that all you really need to do is make the opportunity available, and your kid will learn to read. Reading aloud with them seems like the best way to get started. It helps if they see you & others reading on a regular basis, too.
Don’t put any pressure on them, to try to force reading. But stressing opportunities, like that when they can read on their own, they will be able to read any of their books, at any time they want, seems to be encouragement enough for many kids.
I know a 5-year-old who has been tested with an extremely high IQ, much higher than mine (and I was a prodigy who was reading at age 3), and he is not reading yet. His parents and teachers theorize that he is “refusing” to read in order to be different from his also-extremely-intelligent older brother.
Don’t sweat it. Provide lots of opportunities and your child will read when he’s ready. Sounds like he’s well on his way.
I have never understood why parents develop anxiety attacks over when their child begins to read. If their child doesn’t read by the time they’re 4 they start freaking out.
My parents never read to me. Ever. I never attended preschool. I never watched educational TV or videos. Nothing. When I entered kindergarten I couldn’t identify one single letter, let alone recite the alphabet. If a child were in a similar situation today, he/she would be labeled “a very high risk of failure.” School psychologists would rapidly intervene on the child’s behalf. The parents would be advised to seek counseling.
By the time I got to first grade I and four other students were categorized as “advanced readers.” We attended 2nd grade reading class. I would bet many of my fellow classmates (the ones with neurotic parents) had started reading by the age of three. Yet I leaped frog pass them.
The point I’m trying to make is this: relax. Don’t worry about it. Assuming he will be attending halfway decent school, he will learn how to read in due time. Your anxiety is more detrimental to his performance than his current state of reading.
Sounds like you’re doing great already! As one of those parent’s who started reading before kindergarten, and had two kids to do the same, I don’t really remember doing anything special other than reading to them and then responding to their questions.
Especially my son (he was one of those who sortof learned by playing nintendo RPGs), who asked me, and then it seemed he just sort of “evolved” into knowing how to read better and better.
And I’d bought books for them for me to read to them since they were tiny. They both loved to bring books with them on long rides and stuff.
Oh, I almost forgot, they loved to play the “Alphabet Game”. It’s a driving game my parents taught my sister and me when we were little and on long road trips. And I taught both my kids when they were little too.
The rules are, you pick a letter from a road sign, license plate, signs on trucks etc. You start with “A”, once one player has chosen a letter from that sign it’s “dead”, no other players can use that particular sign.
The first player to get to Z “wins”. My kids loved it, especially when we “cheated” and tried to slip in letters that weren’t really there.
“X” in Jimmy Dean’s Sausages. MOOO HOOOM!!! there’s no X in Jimmy Dean’s Sausages!!
I think if you have books around, read to them, and don’t force them, they’ll let you know when they’re ready. Don’t sweat it. If reading is a part of your life, it will be a part of theirs as well.
I missed the second half of kindergarten (long story) but was a proficient reader by the time I entered first grade.
I’m in a different situation and don’t know how to get our daughter into considering the words beneath the pictures.
My daughter is 2 and a half. She gets bored when we read to her and takes the book and goes to make up a story of her own about the pictures she sees. She’s been doing that since before she could talk and I used to wonder what she was up to. Listening to her describe the actions of the critters in her books has enlightened me!
She’s always loved books and even before her first birthday would sit on a long car trip with a couple of books in her seat and ‘read’ by carefully regarding each page and pointing things out to herself for a minute or two before going on to the next page.
She knows the letters for her name and a few other letters but she doesn’t like to be asked to identify them more than twice. After that she pretends every letter is a C. She does the same thing with counting (she can count to 13 until you ask her to do it then she does '1 2 8 and grins at me) and colors (knows them all until you ask then everything is yellow.) She’s going to be a joy when she hits school and they want her to do things over and over again. I’d chalk this up to 2 year old obstinance but she’s been doing it with everything people request of her since she could follow simple instructions generally accompanied by a look not usually seen until the teen years sigh
My five year old has been “reading” since she was three. That is she could sit down and puzzle out a simple story. She just never wanted to. Too much work. One day, not too long ago, since summer I think, she went over the hump where it became easy enough to bother with. Since that day she reads everything, billboards, the newspaper, warning labels, etc.
In a very… affluent neighbourhood of Ottawa (Rockcliffe, anyone? Yeah… You got it. Lots of old and new money.)… with very neurotic parents in general.
Most of the kids who enter grade 1 know letters, numbers, colours, shapes… but the great majority do NOT know how to read. By this time of the year (November), most of her class can read (in french - this is french immersion) and all spare one can read in english (their mother tongue). They will actually learn to read/write in english starting in grade 2 and the confusion in phonics is sometimes amusing but temporary.
So. NO FRETTING.
I was an early reader too - mostly through global reading technique - followed what my dad was reading (both my parents are teachers, so hey) and eventually learned to recognise words, and then figured out the phonics on my own. Scared the living shit out of everyone once I started reading my own birthday cards at the age of 3. They thought I just knew my books by heart… HA!
I was VERY interested in reading as a kid, and also very interested in music. I started piano around then, too, so in a way I really learned to read music before I learned to read. Interesting that this can also be done.
My cousins (twins) were very different: Alexander BADLY wanted to read, so he learned early around the age of 4. Laura couldn’t have cared less. She learned in grade 1 (age 5/6 - December babies) with everyone else. They’d pretty much caught up to each other by grade 2.
So. Don’t push the river It will all fall into place.
Don’t worry about it. I was self-taught, as far as I know. While I’d probably worry if I had a child who wasn’t reading by kindergarten simply because of a family pattern of early reading, I wouldn’t push it. Some kids just aren’t quite ready until five or six, some are.
Besides, if you force it, he might end up hating to read. That would be really sad.
My take on reading is just to be prepared if they show interest. I think that is where so many parents fail. They either push and turn off a kid who wasn’t ready, or fail to teach when the child is ready. The only way to gauge where the child is on this continuum, is to read to them every day. Follow the words with your fingers, so the kid can get a sense of what is going on. Read with one voice, make comments with another, so they know it’s separate from the written words. Be prepared to read the same book over and over and over. As long as they show interest, they are absorbing it. Even if you happen to be bored silly by the story, the repetition helps the child figure out what’s happening. Cuddle. If they feel comfortable when they are reading, it’s something they’ll seek out.
I read before kindergarten due in no small part to my older sister teaching me while we “payed school.” My son recognized letters, but not words or sounds when he started kindergarten. I was determined not to worry but it was hard. We live in the land of neurotic and competetive parents. Still I did not push him, or whisk him to the big city for tests with specialists. I read him bedtime stories every night (still do) and with no special prodding during the second week of first grade he started to read on his own. Now car rides are punctuated with “Mom, I know what that says.”
The hardest part about not worrying was not wanting the other worry-wart parents of his classmates to know I wasn’t worrying and think that equalled not caring.
I used the same method with my kids that my mother used with me.
First off we read to the kids every day. For me this was my special Daddy time. We did this almost from the time they came home from the hospital.
When the kids got older, we got them both aphabet blocks and magnetic letters.
As the kids got older we asked them to point out letters on the page. then we moved on to short words (the, an, a, but, one) Then bit by bit we had them read the words that they knew. Gradually they got better and better.
Each of my children had a favorite book or series. With my son it was Garfield comics. He thought that Garfield was the apex of humor. He always wanted to read Garfield. As his vocabulary increased he would read more and more of the books himself. One day, he brought me a Garfield book and asked me to read it to him. I told him I was busy and suggested that he read it himself.
He sat down and sepent about five minutes reading the first strip out loud. (IIRC he came over twice to find out what two of the big words were) All of a sudden he was laughing his head off. He had finished the last panel and got the joke. He then came over and read it to me.
Before you knew it, if you wanted to find him you would look for the open book he would be inside it.
Side note: When I made my first trip to Sweden, my son asked if they had Garfield books in Swedish. He wanted to see if he could learn to read Swedish the same way. (He didn’t, but he did get a kick out of looking at the book I brought back)
Well, for me, I was taught by my Mom, who would point out each word as she read it. Plus the influence of Sesame Street, which stressed the phonetics by sounding out each part of a word and then putting them together to pronounce the word…
I was reading “Where the Wild Things Are” by three, and the encyclopedia by 4… and constantly asking my Mom what some words meant.
I can remember my Dad telling me I was smart… “You’re an intelligent boy,” he said.
Not sure if he was complimenting me or chiding me, I looked at him suspiciously, “What does ‘intelligent’ mean?”
“It means you know a lot of things, you’re smart” he explained.
Thanks for all the replies so far. Sounds like I have nothing to worry about, at least until my son becomes a teenager.
Parental anxiety is an evolutionary survival trait – no parent wants their kid to be the class dum-dum, because then how will they be supported in their old age?
I doubt it, since I only started worrying yesterday.
As I see it, if I can just get him to associate “books == fun”, then I’m all set. And so far, the only reading-related problem I have with my son is telling him that he can’t buy all the books with trucks and trains and cars from the store, because then none of the other kids will have any…
Ain’t that the truth! It’s alredy tough enough trying to be a parent without succumbing to the pressures to keep up with the neighbors (“But Suzie had a circus at her birthday party, why not me?”) without making childhood development anxiety part of the game…
Your son sounds like he is more than ready to read on his own. Spend 5 minutes a day having him sound out all the words in ‘The Cat in the Hat’. But continue to read with him, because that’s fun.
It will all fall into place.