I am not whining , i am just stating out the conditions that i have been facing over the last 2+ yrs since my girl was born, and wondering if anywhere along the way something wasn't quite right, so perhaps you could give us a copy of your daily routine and environmental conditions that may play a part in the conducive development.

Yes i am stress all the time, its a one man show from day 1, lately only wife helps a little, because the girl has been very well behave (after behavioural conditioning) and is very well liked by teachers in her PN class. I have not been doing Flash cards since oct of last yr but does LR. As we have to teach her survival skills in PN, and teaching her survival skills in K1 starting tomorrow. She would be amoung the youngest in her class some older by a yr or more.

Lately we did a shichida class assessment she is considered slight above avg among her age group, with good ESP skills. (yes we did that training too). However, lately when i told my wife about trins inability to fully read, she noted otherwise, as she often says trin does know how to read and that perhaps i was having too much of an expectation and i was also disciplining her, so she was afraid to read in front of me. That may be true because of the thousand words i taught her i would have expected she should be able to read at least 400-600 words, by now. But ...... anyway we got someone else to test her yesterday and we do find that she can read alot more than i thought she could read with me testing her, but nowhere near 200, more like 80 words unfortunately.

Apparantly stress do play a part, but teaching discipline and surviving in school currently seems to be an over-riding factor now. Given, HK parents prefer to send their kids to school late, simply because they felt that if their son is too young he will be bullied whilst if he is older he can bully others rather than be bullied. It's sick, but its a fact in HK, and schools like to cover that up.

Aangeles, that was tarrific ... there are externalities ..... but may i ask can you kindly give all of us a description of events or conditions ...... that you think could help....

eg, i am working nights, and sleeps ard 4 am, and wakes ard 9am to look after my girl, i feed her, change her, bath her, do all the housework, grocery shopping and cooking, my wife works in the day and does niether housework nor cooking the typical hongkee, i also have to prepare all the learning materials, do research on what to teach, and of course do the teaching, from english, chinese, music, japanese (teacher), motor skills, toilet training (no diapers needed except sleep), disciplining (like manners, behaviour modification to cut out bad behaviours like biting, throwing tantrums, putting toys and books back, removing dangerous behaviour like jumping off bed, moving on escalators and behaviour in public.) and gym and swimming. This is on top of my usual work at night, when my wife would take over in just feeding her a bottle of milk and going to sleep, since i cooked dinner before i start work. She always speaks cantonese even though i told her many times that we are not teaching her that she should not be speaking cantonese all the time. but ....... and she likes to put the girl in front of the tv watching whatever ... while she surfs the web....

Also during the last 2 yrs my wife had been on a emotional wreck, she would hold the baby and scream and cry and kick up a huge tantrum scaring the hell out of the girl because she felt confine due to the heavy responsibility of having to care for the baby at night 2 hrs before the baby sleeps, means less night outs with her friends, she took alot of adjusting to even though she does little. She wasn't psychologically ready for family life, nor responsibilities, kind of like she had to have a baby because she was turning 34, but still feel like a over-aged teenager. (most of her friends are exactly that way and most are eithe rnot married or Married without kids). Which actually i think screwed up the teaching process alot. I have told her many times not to do that no matter what the circumstances but ......

Hi TC, just saw the video ..... i am not surprise with that action, because my B did that too, but ...... i don't know if that is reading as there is a big cafe there and the parents may have introduced it to her before. Eg my daughter knows we lik eto drink starbucks coffe ... we brought her there and showed her the menu and the big green logo. One day we passed one and she read starbucks ... that was ard 20 mth old also ..... we thought she can read ..... so we wrote it on a piece of paper one day and asked her what it was ..... she couldn't read .... we noticed that she recognise the place, the colours, the theme, the logo, but not the word if its written differently .... hence none consistency .... there i wouldn't put that as reading because she had clues like pictures, logos etc to help her figure it out ..... But in so saying there are externalities and therefore i do believe some can read by 2yrs old, but the average like us probably 3 yrs old ..... hence why the hypothesis and data collection ....

Yes around 2 yrs old or around 22+ mths they start sentencing .... but by 24+mth we got to be careful what we say .... they tend to copy what we say very quickly word for word with full facial expressions ..... LOL.

We use english with her. But taught her chinese mandarin, japanese and also because its HK, alot of cantonese around. We didn't teach her cantonese but she caught on on some words by herself. And i suspect she has forgotten her japanese too. But that is not important as it was just to build up her awareness of the language and its tones. SO that subsequently when she wants to pick it up later, hopefully she will be able to pcik it up easily. Theoretically speaking of course.

Precisely that's what i thought too. But i found many people posting videos and comments about their baby reading ..... so i am just trying to figure out how many actually thought choosing between 2 cards means their baby can read. Or that following a repetitive pattern as in ST memory is called reading.

Yes i am looking for results, but real results and not just short term memory work. Most of us would have been in the GD program for 2 yrs now. And i am surprise my child though can read some words under condition 4, it is only a trickle i think i can use my hands to count. As compared to the thousands and thousands of words i thought her. But i do find that she has very good memory, we can read a book 2-4 times, and all we have to do is read the first 2 words and she can rattle off the rest of the sentence, and even the rest of the book or any other books we taught her. But same words different storys she can't, hence to me that is not reading.

But her vocab is large, she sees pictures she can recall the names etc, ..... this may go to show that multi sensory do help but not necessarily in reading. I have also taught her phonics when she was like almost 2yrs old, but taught alphabets 2-3 mths earlier. She is starting to use phonics to read site words, though not very succesful yet. That is words outside anywhere etc. This may also say that shichida is more correct than GD too. But then again we started with 3 languages and now narrow to 2 so .... maybe slower also, but to find if my hypothesis is correct i need to collect some data.

GD mentioned that baby's can read and there is not preset time or age where baby can read, but i am beginning to doubt that. I think by age 3, wher ethe left brain begins to take over, the child is better able to cope with words and therefore will start to recognize words easier, as compared to GD's words. Even montesorri classess are taught to toddlers 3 yrs and older, so i suspect there is a 3 yr age mark, as compared to GD's no age mark. But there are externalities, and a few black swans not make the mean.

nobody taking the survey?? Looks like its going to be pretty hard to find the true .... either nobody did any testing or would not want to believe otherwise is possible?? Afterall most of us have been doing it for 2-3 yrs now, more or less we would have known the results now that they are much older around 2-5 yrs old ......

Also anybody continued on with the maths and after their kids turn 3 ..... were they still able to rattle off the entire equations? or at least count to 100?

The reason i set this poll is because i want to understand, or i believe we all would like to understand exactly the meaning to each parent the meaning when they said their baby can read. AS i begin to find some realities along the yrs when i teach my baby to read. And i do find that in our right mind classes .... i do find some interesting and puzzling expressions from parents who thought that their baby can read.

First of, when we do flash cards yes after you do it, and test them immediately the baby almost always picked up the right answer. Does this show the baby can read? or does this show that the baby understands the difference and simple short term memory is at work?

Secondly, after showing the cards say for 5 days, and after say more than 1 or 2 weeks you jumble them up with the rest of the old cards, did you try asking if they can pick up the word from the pile? or if your baby is younger maybe to use 2 or 3 cards and ask them to pick up the right word without doing a flash and read with them immediately prior or withing that 1 or 2 weeks?

Thirdly, after weeks or months of not teaching them the word can they still remember the word from the flash cards, can they still picked it out?

Finally, for kids older where some parents show that their kids can read books etc, have you tried to let them read a book that they have never read before but whose words and content are almost similar? The idea is to test if they can really read and not using memory playback from the pictures and the designs of the words, that is similar words but juxtoposition it or wors you think they should know but written on a board or paper with a different storey line an dlet them read it out all by themselves without you reading it to them prior.

Reason is because, i find that the first option, babies maybe using short term memory, but some people confuse that as being able to read, unless they have retained them in the long term memory. But memory is memory and that does not mean they know how to read, because when the fonts changed, the settings changed, the storyline changed, they still stick to the same old story line or they suddenly can't read. So that isn't reading that's simply memory at work, regardless the words. Anybody observed that?

Yes very much interested in LRC ... but 12mths program means, a yrs program and you can take as long as you want to finish it and can be played over again and again some yrs later?? or everything expires in exactly 12 mths even if you have not even touched or finished the program??

I could not do a daily program as it depends very much on her mood, sometimes it takes more than double the time, and also i believe in repeating it for reinforcement ..... after completing the whole program some 1 or 2 yrs later .....

thx .... hmm do i have to pay again if you have a traditional version or the fonts will be added so you can choose if to display traditional or simplified?

Hmm from what i read from the link,.... its merely stating that good teachers and good classmates helps the individual students and the class at large, to do better in life ..... and the finger is pointing at good teachers seems to have the biggest casuation.

Which i highly agree, if you meet a terrible lousy teacher you can get turn off a subject, or unable to hold the class attention and hence focus, this means the class can get rowdy etc, hence why good teachers should be paid more and not so good ones fired. But unfortunately, not many people are teaching pre schoolers, because the pay, because requires lots of patience, and not many people are jolly ho ho enough to pull the class attention. And most importantly most people don't have passion, and that could in itself kill the child's interest.

But of course early education is good, it tells the child there is always something to learn, just have to make it exciting.

Reading is visual not all kids are visual learners ...... some are more auditory while others are more tactile in nature. Flash cards in this case are more suitable for sight learners ..... while singing and voicing are more for auditory learners .... those who like to touch and feely dilly then tactile would be the way to go ...... aka montessorri .... see also multiple intelligence ....

The only problem is we don't know what type of learners our kids will grow up to be, and each kid is different even in the same family tree ... i guess its the wiring at birth ...... therefore we have to use all approaches to teach them, flashing, singing, reading, music training and tactile ..... and through time you owuld know if they learn faster thru which ever approach and then you would have to go that approach to accelerate learning otherwise you'd be knocking on wood .... a very slow tedious process .... but that doesn't mean you stop flashing if they are not learning by sight because flashing could still train memory ... when would you know ..... 2 yr or 3 yrs old .... and that is alot of time to give up if you don't start on all methods ....

Lead or show by example.

Going there and telling them that's the wrong way to do it ...... isn't .....smart. The true is no one person really have the right way, you can teach your child good manners, be gentle, mind their words or mouth etc, the stupid thing is if they meet a gangster or hoodlum or some kind of crisis like war breaks out, your child probably would not be able to survive. But i get the drift, train we must, but we are not above others because only time and events will tell if we're right.

But nevertheless, we do our best, we train our own children and if parents wants to know how you did it its then when you tell them. But i got some friends saying how yours is a girl so its easier, they are more naturally well-behaved, whereas boys are naturally naughtier so therefore no need to ask .... and hence no need to train. Then good luck to them and hopefully our kids don't mix. Because you'd be surprised what seems naturally wrong  to you and your kids, would be a far fetched idea of correctness to them.

Ps spanking isn't proven correct or incorrect, its how you used it that matters. Unfortunately, people are either against it for the sake of against it to sound politicall correct, and there are people who simply misuse it. It is not the tool that is wrong, its simply the user or in this case the none-user that is not smart enough in its application and hence misusing it.

Age gap isn't that wide, so repeat and repeat.

I mean do the sets all through with the older one and the younger ones together but concentrate more on the older one focusing more attention and joyousness in her direction and the small one will see and think its fun to learn. Soon the big one will start to talk and express herself with the words etc ... and you will have to set the pace at the older ones, menaing changing the cards faster and more cards, once you finish the entire set and she is off to pre-school or something, some 6-1 yr later, you can then repeat the whole procedure again with the younger one. It's like the first time round for the younger one its a eye training course and words means something and how its pronounced and the learn the english pronouciation, subsequently when you repeat you its easier for them to absorb.

However the older one, you've only got one chance to make it right ....... you can test different schedules, learning methods, etc and take note of it, and then repeat the process again with the younger one, and tailoring it as you go along for their individual preference.

I prefer the natural approach of taking in the vitamins through fresh food intake, so i dont over cook them but still cooked especially for meat stuff.

Vit D - well from the sun through swimming exposure depending on sun intensity not more than 5-20mins a day.
Most other Vit from fruits and veges, and she eats quite some fruits a day.
Probiotics from yakult a japanese live lb drink.
I don't realy like th epills approach since, sceince thought us that vitamins a destroyed once exposed to air or heat, least treatment and packaging it. Also while it was common though that vitamin C keeps the cold away, there was an article that mentioned too much vit C causes breast cancer or was it colon  or some other cancer .... especially those from the pill form .... i think you can google it ....

music is good if you can afford it try B+.
Take O3, flaxseed if you can, otherwise fresh salmon only after 5mth
Folic acid via dark greens can help have a nice flock of hair
walking and stroking your belly towards 3T
avoid caffein, smoke etc
reading, music helps a peaceful state of mind,
stress is good, it releases certain chemicals that trains the fetus and they would be better able to adapt to stress, but not over stress or frightening type of experience, simple stress of keeping time, housework routine, within dateline etc... ( yes i know its different from others advice, but i did read an article on stress on fetuses some years ago, and they said some stress is good but not too much)

Folic acid is needed 1-2 mth prior to pregnancy, and upto the end of the first trimester, it is when the spinal column and internal organs of the fetuses are growing, thereafter folic acid is less important. However, if you take folic acid for too long a time, i am not sure if its into your 3rd trimester or was it into your endo .... it would develop into cancer.

There was a report i filed it up some yrs ago, some where in my thousands and thousand of file on pregnancy, health cancer and etc ....

O3 take it from flaxseed, if your worried about mercury or you could always try fresh salmon ... bu only after the the first 4-5 mnths