To start or not to start? Reading, 5 months old.

[Frukc]

I am showing dot cards to my 5 months old. I know that this is the best time for teaching math and I am surprised how curious he is about the dots. He is laughing during the show. After that, we have a special sequence of kissing

I think that it is much too early to teach reading. He understands just few words, and there is not such an internal mystery as it is with math dots.

But he is so thirsty for the information, and we have such a good time together with flashcards.

How do you think?

[hypatia]

Here's my advice: show him words before he can crawl.
Once he's on his way, he'll be less likely to sit still and look.... I spent the first few months of my daughter's life making cards and once i started at 6 months, it was a bad timing. She then started standing, cruising, walking etc... and did not want to look at cards (or books) before she was 13 months.

[nhockaday]

Start ASAP! The sooner the better!

[NadiaD]

When my DD was that age we were doing reading like described in Doman's book " How smart is your baby".
We started to show her fruits, using all 5 pathways:
  actual fruit,
 a detail Bit of intelligence card,
 very large and clear word card with a name of a fruit,
 a piece of peeled fruit to smell,
 a tiny pieces of that fruit for her to taste
We all had lots of fun and no pressure
All the best of luck to you!

[Frukc]

Thank you for the replies!

I have all the resources, prepared for the first child (we started at 18 months). I have even such a resource as: the first child showing flashcards to the second one
So OK, I will start today.
Thanks NadiaD for your wisdom :D . I will not follow the word sequence recommended by Doman but teach fruits and objects of our daily life

One more question, about the time. Usually we have 3 - 6 math sessions per day. Can I show words just after math, or the interval is needed?

[DadDude]

My experience with my little boy does not indicate that things are quite as cut-and-dried as "let's start right now with this here newborn!"  Maybe you're all correct; I personally am just not yet convinced.

I started teaching my boy to read around age 22 months.  Before that, however, we had a huge amount of directly relevant language experience.  We read zillions of books, we looked at lots of ABC books, flashcards, and videos, and played with a few alphabet toys as well (including his favorite, the LeapFrog Alphabet Bus).  By the end of his second year, he was totally swimming in language and letters and basic vocabulary.  I am sure that that foundation, along with huge amounts of ongoing reading and (soon after) Doman-style presentations and other vocabulary/literacy activities, made it possible for him not just to learn to decode written language but to understand it fairly well too.  Considering that he is now capable of decoding at the 5th or 6th grade level (as far as I can tell, from online tests I've found--I'm having trouble locating a professional to test him), and considering that he is now finally sitting down for long periods of time and reading Magic Tree House (third grade level) books on his own, I can't say that I regret starting him later.

As most of you probably know, I am a big advocate of phonics, and one of the main reasons for our success, as far as I'm concerned, is that I found a way to teach him phonics from a very early age.  I don't mean "expose him to a little phonics here and a little there," or "introduce a few important rules."  I mean "*systematically* train him in the understanding and use of virtually *all* the phonics rules."

Now, here's the deal.  I know that it is possible to train babies to recognize words, mostly "by shape."  I believe (on the basis of many examples) that this has great long-term effects.  But I've seen a fair number of parents writing in to complain that their little ones are limited to the words they have been shown on flashcards, and that they forget those words.  This indicates to me that those babies have not deciphered the phonetic code.  So, generally, what experience do we have of toddlers, who were first taught as babies, being able to decode words phonetically and fluently?  More to the point, what experience do we have of the long-term benefit of teaching babies to read *before* they can be taught systematic phonics, *versus* starting them a little later with phonics?  Or, if we have some experience of trying to teach systematic phonics to babies from the start (e.g., if someone has been using my phonics flash cards for a while now, with her baby), then how has that worked out?

I know that there are many people in the Doman camp who will defend whole word learning for babies, maintaining that this is "right brain learning" which is better than left brain learning, especially for babies.  If it's done right, the child will never need to learn phonics.  I'll lay my cards on the table and tell you that I have a hard time believing this.  A person, "no matter how small," learns to read by deciphering the phonetic code.  We have just too much empirical data showing the harms of whole word language training without adequate exposure to phonics.  Yes, a child might learn to read many words without phonics, but unless he can "look into" the word and see the phonetic subtleties in it, he will be at a huge disadvantage in terms of spelling, pronunciation, and making out new words.  He's also at a much greater risk of appearing to be dyslexic.  I'm sure that there are some kids who, for whatever reason (not necessarily intelligence), look at words they're learning "in the right way" and end up absorbing all the relevant phonetic rules.  But many, many more--and I think this is also true of babies and toddlers--do not do this.  We put them at a profound disadvantage.

As you can see, I am very nervous about teaching kids to read *without* teaching them phonics.  Given this constraint, I ask myself: do I really want to have my next child's first exposure to reading written language one that involves simply memorizing words?  What advantages are potentially lost if the first experience with reading written language does *not* take the form of decoding words sound-by-sound?  To put it negatively, are there disadvantages if, in effect, I spend many months teaching my child simply to memorize words?

The hope, of course, is that after some months of simply memorizing words, the child will (a) have picked up some phonetic rules, and (b) be able to learn phonics systematically after that (and who knows, maybe the child will be able to learn phonics systematically faster and better, having memorized many words).  But my fear is that the child will have learned some bad habits, of trying to memorize each new word, instead of analyzing it phonetically and internalizing its structure, so to speak.  It is the ability to pick apart words phonetically, in an intuitive, "second-nature" way, that makes it possible for my little boy (or any good reader) to read words like "abridging" or "Hrothgar" and barely skip a beat.

For me, there are basically two practical questions here that need to be answered.  (1) If a child learns using the Doman method and/or with Titzer's videos--in other words, focusing mainly on whole words, and with no or scant attention to phonics--then, after several months or a year, will the child be at any disadvantage when it comes to really mastering the rules of phonics?  (2) Suppose that you group words not by subject as Doman suggests, but from the beginning you organize words into phonetic groupings, as I have done with my "Fleschcards," and you show those words to babies and toddlers.  Will those kids, after a year or whatever, have internalized and mastered the rules of phonics?  Or would they have just memorized the words?

I never had to answer (2), because I started teaching my boy to read only *after* he had shown that he knew the alphabet entirely (by about 20 months), and was familiar with the sounds the letters made, and after he was able to speak.  I could see that he could read the words, because he read the words out loud to me as I showed the cards.  But you don't have this assurance if you show the cards before a child can speak.

I'm sorry to have to throw a monkey wrench in the gears here, but that in all honesty is where my thinking is at right now.  I've written a lot because it's something I've been thinking a fair bit about lately.

[howardboys]

DadDude, the only thing I would add is that I think your boy memorized those Flesch Words, even though they were grouped phonetically...you definitely helped him along by organizing their presentation phonetically, but I believe he memorized them too.

In general, I don't think memorizing is detrimental, since we all end up reading from memory the majority of the time - what's the harm in having a stash of words memorized early?

Phonetics are crucial, yes, and through only mild efforts of my own I find myself in your exact scenario - my boy has all his letters and sounds down pat and is swimming in language right now...every day he seems to say something new, and strings together words more and more...he can identify words from memory that start with certain letters...

But, I'm still proceeding with whole-word training because I don't think it hurts at all - in fact, I think it may have contributed to his strong verbal skills (compared to all his local peers IRL) because we deliberately introduce him to loads of words and define them with pictures and short videos.

HTH
mom2ross

p.s. Our boy can read a few 3-letter words from a small subset of word puzzles and word magnets - I currently feel a bit stuck because I don't know how to make the leap from his current knowledge-base to more mature reading...he's not interested in memorizing or recognizing/reading words without corresponding pictures...and I think LR only expands his verbal vocabulary, not his reading!

[DadDude]

Well, he definitely didn't memorize all of them, if for no other reason than that he was able to read many of them on first showing without having seen them before.  About halfway through the program, when he was around 2.5, he would typically be able to read all or nearly all of the words in a new set on first showing, i.e., I didn't have to tell him what the words were.  Maybe he had memorized most of them based on me reading and pointing to the words in books, but I doubt it; the more elegant explanation is that he read them phonetically, because he could do that.  Definitely there are any number of words and names he came across, when he was 2, that I was virtually certain he'd never seen before; and he had no trouble at all reading those.

[howardboys]

Sorry if I'm straying off topic here, but DadDude, can you share a bit about that in-between stage when your boy was comfortable with all his letters and their sounds and when he was able to read Flesch words without much assistance? That seems like a big leap that hasn't happened in our household yet, so I'm quite curious!

[graffjamie]

Start ASAP!! ASAP!! Reading is one of the most important skills you will ever teach your children and you should begin teaching this skill as soon as possible - from birth really (from birth you teach the ability to see black and white and then shapes - but you still show (and speak) very BIG, BOLD, basic important words to the newborn child!  Do you want your child to have the ability to "speed" read?? Then teach them very, very young - while the brain is still growing at it's fastest rate! Very few skills are more important (eat, drink, move, express themselves,...)

Hopefully, some day NOT attempting to teach very, very young people to read and do math will be a crime!! Would you deprive them of physical nourishment and stunt their physical growth??

Teach and show them just about EVERYTHING (positive) you can think of - whether you can do it yourself or not - and do it ASAP - and remember to ENJOY every single moment!!

[graffjamie]

"Will the child learn phonics??" Show them enough words and OF COURSE they will learn - and INTUIT - ALL the rules of phonics (and hopefully semantics! and syntax/grammer) - in ANY and EVERY language set (that you show them) - and way better than you would ever hope! It's really up to you and how much (and perhaps how clearly and well) you show them: a sponge that GROWS with USE!!

Please stop second guessing your child's ability: it is unbelievable!  I propose that the more complicated the material you throw at your child - in a clear, concise and comprehensible way - the better your child will be - in the long run - of learning more and more complicated material!!

Teach him ALL the musical instruments, ALL the languages you can, ALL the scientific data you can present logically to them!! His brain will work that much harder to comprehend and make sense of it all. He may not pick it ALL up, but he will become better at making sense of more and more complicated material - that's the idea isn't it??

Confuse them a little - every once in a while - make them "work" a little harder to figure things out. Let them succeed as often as possible, but let them be confused too!

You are teaching the JOY of everything under the sun and the JOY of learning or at least appreciating everything under the sun and stars - so present VAST amounts of data once in a while - boggle their minds once in a while - or as often as possible. Let them experience EVERYTHING on a given topic - if it can be done: let them look at and hear EVERY language - if you can! Let them see ALL the art that you can interest them in!

JOYOUSLY show them EVERYTHING that you can! Try it - it ought to be an awful lot of fun!

They WILL surprise you!

[Frukc]

I believe that whole word approach works if it is consistent and continous enough. Nine times per day and every day. Othervice, child starts to forget what was in the beginning, and the process "refrigerates".

Doman says that it is easier to teach one year old than two years old, and it is easier to teach newborn than one year old.
I am not sure. Here in Brillkids we often read that child learns to remember words as infant but starts to read new words only at 2.5 - 3 y. So, his teaching to read takes several years. Maybe he starts to read after the bridging (when left brain becomes dominant).
At the same time, I know several kids who started to read with no conscious teaching at all, at 4 years. Parents or caregivers just showed them phonics, and included books in their daily routine.
So I do not agree to Doman that early teaching to read is easier.

I think, whole word teaching is not only a teaching to read. It is brain gymnastics. Does not depend what you show, it is good. In the same way as we do sports and gymnastics: our aim is not to learn a certain motion as a useful skill for life; our aim is to improve general stength and health.

About the risk to become dyslexic. Dad Dude, do you have any statistics on that?

I my language (Latvian), words mostly are written phonetically. There is no such thing as in English where pronunciation is changing depending on eveything. For us, every single letter has allways the same pronunciation (with few exceptions). And the endings of words are important. Mostly, we make cases with various endings of words and not with separate short words as it is in English. We cannot read just with shapes of words; we need to read the endings, phonetically. And still I know several examples where kids learned to read with method of Doman. Sure, they decoded the phonics. If you are researching this learning you should analyze also what happens with another languages.

[DadDude]

Sorry if I'm straying off topic here, but DadDude, can you share a bit about that in-between stage when your boy was comfortable with all his letters and their sounds and when he was able to read Flesch words without much assistance? That seems like a big leap that hasn't happened in our household yet, so I'm quite curious!

Well, there's a lot of info on that stage in my essay--I'll send you a copy by email if you haven't got one already.  (Sorry, I've forgotten who I've sent copies to, and I haven't bothered to try to match up BrillKids pseudonyms with real names!  I'm terrible with names so I would forget anyway!)

Basically, if the question is how we got from the one stage to the other, I would say we accomplished it through a combination of a few things.

(1) When I learned he could reproduce the sounds of the letters on command ("What sound does this letter make?"), then we got a couple sets of refrigerator magnets and started playing.  I think we might have gotten the LeapFrog 3-letter refrigerator magnet toy at the same time, but I think that came a little later.  For example, I would show him B, A, T, and then I would say each letter's sound and have him repeat them, and then I would put them together slowly, then a little faster, and finally together.  I would encourage him to repeat after me at different stages, but mostly it was me explaining things to him.  At one point I remember being excited that he actually sounded out and read "dog" as written with fridge magnets.  I think that is what persuaded me to start making my flash cards.  And if I remember my thought process correctly, I thought, "Well, I don't care what this Doman guy says--if my boy can sound out 'dog' and knows the letter sounds, and in other ways displays many of the readiness signals for reading, then I'm going to arrange the words phonetically and see if he can learn phonics."  Then we started cards.

(2) Around the same time (possibly just before I started cards, but only a few days before) we started using Your Baby Can Read.  I think this helped teach him the letter-sound connections better, but it was probably important that we did this at the same time that we were playing with the fridge magnets.

(3) I don't remember everything we used, but I'm pretty sure I also used the computer (word processor with very large type) and alphabet blocks.  We kept reinforcing letter sounds with the alphabet bus, too.  If we had known about it at the time, I'm very sure we would have been using Starfall.com as well.  We didn't discover it until he was well past the alphabet stage.  Starfall's first page, about the alphabet, is one of the best alphabet trainers I've seen.

(4) I don't specifically remember this, but I am very sure I would have been pointing out the simplest words, which he knew or remembered.  Hey, I DO remember one thing: the first word he read was the word "go."  In fact, it's coming back to me now.  One of his transportation books was called "Things that GO" and the word "GO" was written in big letters.  He got a big kick out of this, and I told him (before starting to teach him to read, but after having seen videos about it on YouTube), "That is the word 'go'"--I wanted to see if he'd pick it up--and lo and behold, he started enthusiastically saying "Go!" whenever he saw the book title.  (We were reading it a lot those days.)  So we began with a single word, "go," which was really easy to understand and extremely high-interest.  I'll bet that tiny success in fact is what got me thinking that we should try fridge magnets.

(I'm going to have to add this to the essay. :-) )

[DadDude]

About the risk to become dyslexic. Dad Dude, do you have any statistics on that?

No, I don't generally go around memorizing statistics.  I'm just repeating what is often said by phonics advocates, who often speak as though the data between a whole word/whole language approach and dyslexia is there.  I've done a lot of reading about how reading is taught, but not so much about dyslexia in particular.  Anyway, you've been warned...remember, English is not Latvian, it is a highly irregular language and virtually no other phonetic language on earth is learned in the "whole language" way, as English unfortunately is sometimes.  In other languages, learning to read is relatively simple: you learn the rules for decoding, and that's that.

If you really have never gotten into the phonics vs. whole word debate, the place to begin is the classic Why Johnny Can't Read, which is itself a highly readable, and even entertaining, book.

[DadDude]

Try this out: http://www.ednews.org/articles/whole-language-causes-dyslexia-.html

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