Science: 1) Early brains can rewire themselves. It's amazing. If you can detect dyslexia, autism, and similar early, you'll see changes on an MRI as it fixes i

Science: 1) Early brains can rewire themselves. It's amazing. If you can detect dyslexia, autism, and similar early, you'll see changes on an MRI as it fixes itself with the right intervention. 2) This process is almost completely opaque. Teaching early math or reading guarantees kids will learn it later, but you see _almost no progress_ at first, and then zoom. You need to be patient. Most of the pieces the child is learning aren't the ones you expect (and we don't quite know what they are). 3) Brains are wired differently, and about 10% of kids cannot and will never learn to read fluently without explicit instruction in phonics. Sight reading / whole word does work for some kids, but not all kids. The "science of reading" is all about being explicit about phonics.[a] [a] I use "science of reading" in quotes, since it's the name of a specific movement, and should not be confused with the common meaning. "Science" comes up in a lot of contexts from "Christian Science" to "Computer Science" with varied levels of science. "Science of reading," as a movement, is grounded in solid science, but a fairly narrow set of studies.