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Thank you for posting this. I have been looking for a detailed personal account of teaching a toddler to read for a while. My son is two and a half and like thi

Thank you for posting this. I have been looking for a detailed personal account of teaching a toddler to read for a while. My son is two and a half and like this author, I have been trying to find out how to teach him to read. A couple weeks ago I posted my own reflections on what I have been doing here: http://hmcscreening.blogspot.com/2015/12/on-teaching-reading.html http://hmcscreening.blogspot.com/2015/12/on-teaching-reading... I found it amazing how difficult it is to find scientific studies on how to teach reading, in my post above I kind of go into how the US government funded a large review of all the data in the late 1990s. I think the most important thing is to just read to your child every day. My son also knew the alphabet before the age of two, but I think this is no different than teaching a child "dog" or "square" or "ball", they are all abstracts to a degree. Also, learning the sounds of each letter was pretty easy too. The hard part that we are against right now is putting it all together: I can't consistently get him to sound out a simple word, even though individually he knows what each letter does. There have been some comments wondering about issues of myopia if one has their child read. There is not a lot of conclusive evidence of what causes myopia, but recently there was a good paper published in JAMA where they randomized schools (this was in China), to enforce a certain amount of outdoor time every day. Those kids who were in the outdoor groups had statistically less myopia.

interpol_p 11y ago
I have a toddler of similar age and, despite reading to him every day, I'm not sure I care how early he learns to parse the symbols himself. He gets the alphabet, and can sound out very few words, but I don't actively teach it unless he shows interest. I get especially frustrated with English because of all its exceptions and inconsistencies. (E.g., his name starts with 'C' but is pronounced the same as if it were 'K'. He knows that his breakfast 'Cereal' begins with the same letter as his name, but why does it sound like 'S'?) It feels like a poor system to encourage a child to learn when they could learn other things. My delight in my child's learning comes from his ability to use and process interesting communication. I loved seeing him develop an understanding of what it is to "trick" somebody, learning how to synthesise an original story, to attempt sarcasm, how to mash two words together to form a made-up word, or to convey implicit information through pitch and speed of speech. These are the little milestones that I actively try to teach, because each one raises the quality of our communication together.
- Herodotus38 11y ago
  I totally agree with you about English being a horrible language to try and teach. Not to mention things like 'th' or 'sh' or heaven help us, "ph" sounds. My hope is that if he can read independently, he can sooner start self-directed learning. I agree with you that there is much more to enjoy and teach than reading as an ends to itself, but the other things you mentioned, which involve creativity and synthesis, are arguably more important. I feel like nothing about education or learning is really well known, and we get one shot in life. I'm going to try and do what I think best to try and make my toddler a better person than me (whatever that means). I think the important point in all of these kinds of essays is that they draw parents who are invested in their children, which is probably what really matters more than "I did Doman's method" or "I spent an hour with flashcards". What I liked about this essay was the little glimpses into things that he tried that I haven't thought of yet (like alphabet magnets to play with). Some of the links he had to other people's blogs (especially one of the homeschooled kids) made me cringe as it was such unabashed promotion of how great their child was, and here is a picture of his graduation at their house: the kid is by himself with his parents, no other children around. What kind of life is that? What good is it to "create a genius", if that is even possible, if they don't enjoy life?
- someone7x 11y ago
  As a parent I too have experienced the frustration with English. I want to teach my daughter some foundational principles from which to build a predictive model, but with English the insanity seems to begin immediately. Some letters have multiple sounds, like C and G. Some sounds have multiple representations, like DG/J and KS/X. Some letters don't have their sound in their name, like W and Y. Reading phonetically is a technique that only works until it doesn't; silent characters, partially anglicized loan words, etc. So while I'm trying to teach all this, I'm also doing my own discovery of what a qwerty-cubed language I'm dealing with. I never realized how broken the written language is until I tried to show it to someone.

interpol_p 11y ago

I have a toddler of similar age and, despite reading to him every day, I'm not sure I care how early he learns to parse the symbols himself. He gets the alphabet, and can sound out very few words, but I don't actively teach it unless he shows interest. I get especially frustrated with English because of all its exceptions and inconsistencies. (E.g., his name starts with 'C' but is pronounced the same as if it were 'K'. He knows that his breakfast 'Cereal' begins with the same letter as his name, but why does it sound like 'S'?) It feels like a poor system to encourage a child to learn when they could learn other things. My delight in my child's learning comes from his ability to use and process interesting communication. I loved seeing him develop an understanding of what it is to "trick" somebody, learning how to synthesise an original story, to attempt sarcasm, how to mash two words together to form a made-up word, or to convey implicit information through pitch and speed of speech. These are the little milestones that I actively try to teach, because each one raises the quality of our communication together.

Herodotus38 11y ago
I totally agree with you about English being a horrible language to try and teach. Not to mention things like 'th' or 'sh' or heaven help us, "ph" sounds. My hope is that if he can read independently, he can sooner start self-directed learning. I agree with you that there is much more to enjoy and teach than reading as an ends to itself, but the other things you mentioned, which involve creativity and synthesis, are arguably more important. I feel like nothing about education or learning is really well known, and we get one shot in life. I'm going to try and do what I think best to try and make my toddler a better person than me (whatever that means). I think the important point in all of these kinds of essays is that they draw parents who are invested in their children, which is probably what really matters more than "I did Doman's method" or "I spent an hour with flashcards". What I liked about this essay was the little glimpses into things that he tried that I haven't thought of yet (like alphabet magnets to play with). Some of the links he had to other people's blogs (especially one of the homeschooled kids) made me cringe as it was such unabashed promotion of how great their child was, and here is a picture of his graduation at their house: the kid is by himself with his parents, no other children around. What kind of life is that? What good is it to "create a genius", if that is even possible, if they don't enjoy life?
someone7x 11y ago
As a parent I too have experienced the frustration with English. I want to teach my daughter some foundational principles from which to build a predictive model, but with English the insanity seems to begin immediately. Some letters have multiple sounds, like C and G. Some sounds have multiple representations, like DG/J and KS/X. Some letters don't have their sound in their name, like W and Y. Reading phonetically is a technique that only works until it doesn't; silent characters, partially anglicized loan words, etc. So while I'm trying to teach all this, I'm also doing my own discovery of what a qwerty-cubed language I'm dealing with. I never realized how broken the written language is until I tried to show it to someone.