Hi, I have a similar problem though my daughter is only 13 months and I am also nursing her in my bed. I make sure she naps in her cot and she always starts the night in the cot (usually rocked to sleep to get her in there, though I have let her cry for short periods sometimes) In the middle of the night though she does get into my bed almost every night. She is still nursing from me at least once a night (though often 3 or more times). I do try to put her back into her own bed occassionally and if she is tired enough then I will succeed.

Is she in a cot or a bed in her own room? Perhaps try letting her sleep on a mattress on the floor in your room before moving her out of your room entirely so she gets used to being away from you slowly. I am also wondering if I will be able to get my daughter out without using crying so if you find a good solution, please let us know.

Hi and welcome to the boards. Happy Birthday to your son. There are some good posts about teaching your baby to be physically superb which deal with things like crawling and walking - since crawling is so important sometimes it is better to concentrate on getting them to crawl better and for longer before worrying about teaching them to walk. I know many children who walked only at 15 or even 18 months who are doing fine now.

As for talking, make sure you talk to your child as much as possible, show him things and name them and use adult speech as much as possible. I have found that teaching my daughter to read (she is now almost 13 months old) has helped her speech too and she can say at least 15 words either well or partly (she tends to say the first syllable and leave off the rest)

I'm 29 and had my first baby at 28 so she's only a year old. I always wanted three children, but who knows how that will work out. I have been broody since my daughter was 3 months old, but am having a lot of marital problems so it is not possible to get pregnant again til that is sorted out to some extent. In the meantime I am loving spending time with my daughter and teaching her.

My daughter is 12 months old and I have recently started showing her the dot cards. She is incredibly active and it is almost impossible to get her still for a moment to show her the cards - if she is on the ground then I can show her one card maximum and she'll be off, if she is confined in a chair or her cot then she is yelling to get out and since its meant to be fun I can't exactly show her the cards then. I have also read that lots of children show some amount of boredom at seeing just dots, so wondered if anyone had ideas about how to make it more fun.

One method that worked for me today was to jump around in front of her and show her a card inbetween the antics - she thought that was very funny and looked for all of the cards. Another thing I have tried is to play peek-a-boo while showing her the cards. I feel like a fool doing it, but she seems to enjoy it more. Anymore activities to try would be appreciated as my daughter will get bored with the same skylarking from her mother every day

I work half-day so have a little more time, but also battle to get the sessions in. My daughter is also very active and will usually not look at a full set of 5 cards. I think the idea is to adapt the programme to work for you and your child. I have dropped down to one set of reading words (5 words per day) and I am also doing a single set of math dots so six sessions in total each day and this about all I can fit in. I have been doing this for a few weeks now and my daughter is showing signs that she wants more, so I may have to speed things up and either do more sessions or show her more words in fewer sessions.

I did read an article that said that no matter how disorganised you are, you can only do good teaching your child to read and that they will learn something even if you are not using the exact method described in the book - children are literally soaking up everything we show them - its us who want to do it perfectly, the babies do not know what perfect is and as long as they are learning something then you are doing fine.

Thanks for explaining the method with that quote. From what I can tell you basically just follow the text as you read it with your finger all the time?

I am not clued up on this method at all so I know nothing about the 12 steps he uses, however reading this site http://www.nativereading.com/faq.html it appears that it is a method that does not use flashcards etc, but rather points out the written language when speaking it.  Another site I read seems to imply that reading is taught by "playing in a text-rich environment" and yet another "Native reading, for example, uses both phonics and whole word techniques, but differs from both in that it emphasizes teaching reading beginning at a very early age, when the human brain is neurodevelopmentally most receptive to learning language. Native readers learn to read as toddlers, starting at the same time they learn to speak, or very soon thereafter."

This site discusses how the author teaches his own daughter to read purely by reading and pointing at the words: http://www.nativereading.com/introduction.html

I have heard of children learning to read when their parents pointed out words on cereal boxes and street names. I imagine that the author expands on these techniques. Would love to hear from someone who knows more or has used this method on their children. From what I can tell, I am using the method to some extent myself anyway as I am always pointing out words (even on jars of infant formula which my daughter decided to hug in the shop yesterday) but would love to know what the 12 points are.

Thanks Domanmum - I think you covered that well. It is definitely different teaching a baby to teaching an older child.

Just to bring up another point - I do believe that whole words should be taught first (and like Doman says from there to couplets, phrases and sentences) but this implies starting in the middle really (you break it up to teach the sounds of the letters and at the same time increase the ability to read by adding words together to form sentences and then more complex sentences)

Now my brother was taught yet another method at school and it DID NOT work for him. He was taught a whole sentence first which was then broken down into phrases, then words and then finally letters and sounds (phonics) I have never heard of anyone else being taught like this and would love to know someone's opinion or research on why this did not work - I think he was just too overwhelmed by the huge amount of data that he didn't understand at the beginning.

The other thing I want to ask about is teaching young babies to read - children do not begin speaking in whole sentences - they say individual words (usually nouns) and then gradually couplets, phrases and sentences. There is the occassional child who starts speaking at two in whole sentences, but they are the exception and usually it is late talkers who do this anyway. So then, can a baby who cannnot speak in whole sentences learn to read them - if most children leave out "the," "and," "a" and so on then when can these words be taught and when will they read them reliably?

BTW, we are now working on a new feature in LR that is geared specifically towards phonics and helping children decode the language!

That's great to know. I believe from using Little Reader that phonics can very easily be taught using the programme wvwn without a special section, but a new section will be great.

Someone I spoke to regarding phonics said they found it best when children uncover a word slowly to decode it rather than saying the letters that make up the word (eg would say c... ca...cat rather than c-a-t cat) and I have found this does seem to work better with most children. Does anyone else have any experience with this?

I know the reading book has changed quite a bit, like in the original version they recommended starting at 18 months, showing only five words at a time, and testing each word before moving on. Now they recommend starting at birth, teaching 25 words at a time (in 5 sets of 5 words each), and never testing your baby.

Thanks for putting this is as it has put me at more ease with what I am doing. Although I am not testing my baby, I find it almost impossible to get through even three sets of five words three times a day, so have dropped back to two sets. It seems that you are right - as long as my baby and I are happy, she'll still be learning something. Perhaps as I get into it I can show her a bit more.

Thanks also for all your posts about equations - I am still making the dot cards so it'll be a while before I need this information, but you have explained it very well.

Thanks for the articles jtg. I was interested to learn that a child as young as two can learn phonics and it seems Aleka "learned" (perhaps absorbed is a better word) it even earlier.

My twin brother and I learned to read at about age 4 or 5. He was diagnosed as dyslexic, but I wasn't. I know one thing the tried to make him do in grade 1 was write the words one to ten out in full every week. He spelt phonetically all the time which meant he could not spell any but "seven" and "ten" - although he wrote them he knew he was wrong and his handwriting would get worse and worse as he went through the exercise. Eventually my mother got hold of him and taught him to spell them by sounding out the spelling for him (and not the word itself as he learnt through his ears more than anything) and from that day on, he spelt them correctly. He is actually today a better reader than I am.

The discussion about learning to ignore mirror images is also interesting. Its quite a lot to take in though when I am still struggling to find time to fit in 8-10 sessions of word cards and dot cards

I didn't know about any prenatal education while pregnant with my daughter and am just interested to know what other parents did to stimulate their unborn baby?

I did often sing and talk to my baby and I know the songs I sang to her then she still loves. I also played a lullaby CD occassionally, but that was about it. What did you do and did it have any effect on your baby now?

I had an epidural when I had my baby. Firstly I am diabetic (type 1) and they suspected I would have a caesarian, but said they would try an induction anyway at 38 weeks. I am told an induction is more painful than a normal delivery, but since I have never been able to compare I do not know. For four hours I asked for an epidural before I got one and by that time I was very high on gas and air as I had no clue how to use it properly and no one bothered to show me. The epidural was bliss and made me more aware of what was going on and gave me the break I needed before I had to push - they let it wear off almost completely by the time I gave birth so I do not feel I missed out on anything.

From what I have heard it is more common for epidurals (and even more so with spinal blocks) to drop your blood pressure rather than raise it. I guess if you are scared to get an epidural this may be enough to raise your blood pressure.

Can someone explain the theory behind the monkey bars (or hanging from people's thumbs too) What is it meant to help? What other activities can you do.

My daughter did crawl from 6 months of age til about 11 months. I basically couldn't stop her and let her crawl on almost any surfaces as well as slopes. She hates being in the stroller and even on long walks she asks to be taken out and walks. I have also taken her to the beach and let her walk on the sand which is rather bumpy and I take her to the shops now in my arms and just let her walk (but how do you get any shopping done with a toddler running around the shops???) Am I doing the right things and what other things are suggested?

I gave my daughter crayons when she turned one, but she just wanted to eat them. I have tried about twice since then (once a week usually) and it has got to the point where she is not eating them (except for occassionally trying to put them in her mouth) and she does know how to scribble with them, but only if the crayon is put flat on the paper. I guess I'll just keep showing her how it is done.

As for writing, I'll wait til she has better control and probably when she can draw a straight line and circle at the least. I suspect this will be when she is about two and a half at the earliest... but that is just a guess.

Laurana crawled at 6 months and was crawling well by 6.5 months. She took her first steps at 10.5 months and walked well by 11.5 months when the crawling pretty much stopped altogether so she had about 5 months of crawling and I think that was more than enough.

I do know of children who never crawled and whose parents went back and taught them to crawl at a later stage. I think you can quite happily encourage both crawling and walking as children are usually going to develop at their own pace regardless and the stimulation is good for them. If they have crawled for a few months then there will be no harm in encouraging walking.