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Can you teach a child to read too early?
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| Yes | 33% | 252 votes | Total: 764 votes | |
| No | 67% | 512 votes |
Yes
by Nathan Munro
Created on: March 09, 2010
Most people have the best intentions when they try to give their children a head start in an academic area. Academic competition begins at an earlier age than ever, with tests to get into pre-school and tracking programs starting in the early grades. Kids who get to the head of the class early in their lives tend to stay there. They get a reputation for being smart or gifted and the reputation sticks.
Since reading is the foundation of teaching and learning in our school system it makes sense that people would push the envelope to get their kids to read at an earlier and earlier age. And there are many stories of smart and successful people who say they were early readers. I am not against teaching children to read at an early age as much as I am against the side effects that so often accompany this behavior.
As a former elementary school teacher I have often had parents approach me about helping their children learn to read. If the child was already behind I would offer many tips and suggestions that could help catch the child up. But if the child was already reading above grade level I would usually counsel parents to be patient, back off, and make sure their child continues to enjoy reading.
Parents who try to teach their children to read too much too soon set up the real possibility that their kids will burn out. They might come to see reading as a chore. They might begin to feel that reading is a "parlor trick" and they might eventually resent performing this trick for family and friends. They may associate reading with stress rather than enjoyment and learning.
The danger exists that an early reader can get too advanced for school. Remember, unless you are going to homeschool, by age five capable teachers will be paid good money to teach your child how to read. A reading kindergardener will be bored while her classmates are rehearsing letter sounds and sight words. And good reading ability does not automatically qualify kids for gifted programs. Intelligence tests for such programs are based on more than reading ability.
It is relatively easy to teach children the sounds that letters make and how to combine them into words. it is also easy to get them to memorize "site words" at an early age. These two activities are reading, technically, but they don't do much for reading comprehension. Early readers can give the illusion of reading proficiency, but in fact they may be understanding very little of what they are able to sound out or recite from memory. I have personally administered many reading tests that were technically flawless, but as soon as a comprehension question was asked the answer was only a blank stare.
My own daughter is a very smart 4-year-old, but my wife and I (both teachers) have not pushed her into reading. She loves books and hearing stories but the time for the nuts and bolts of reading will come later. I want her to develop a love of literature. If she does that she will certainly become a reader.
If you'd like to give your child an academic head start I suggest helping her develop social skills, critical thinking skills, and most importantly encourage a voracious desire to learn new things. Remember that the goal is to develop a life-long learner. Treat learning as a marathon, not a sprint.
Learn more about this author, Nathan Munro.
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No
by Ted Sherman
Created on: April 18, 2010
It is never too early to teach a child to read. The critical word in this premise is teach, not force. Parents should never force a child to do anything until readiness is clearly evident. This also applies to walking, speaking and other developmental stages every child must attain physically, mentally and emotionally only when the child is prepared and willing to make the next step.
Our family may serve as an example, because both parents were educators and well along in our thirties when our children were born. Our son is four years older than his sister, so we had the task of teaching each individually to read, rather than have them experience the readiness level at the same time.
There's a TV infomercial airing now that portrays children of less than two years old looking at big pictures of animals and objects. For example, in a typical demonstration (if not faked), the child looks at a picture of a chair and says the word printed at the top of the picture. This seems to be more of an act than actual learning. TV didn't have such unnecessary products when our kids were growing up, but we did use a similar method of teaching them to read.
Every night before bedtime, we read illustrated story books to our kids. At first, between the ages of one and three, they mostly listened. Sometimes they'd point to a picture of a dog or horse and say the word. As with the TV product being peddled today, they were just imitating our words, but it wasn't yet reading. Reading is understanding how the word fits into a phrase or sentence, and the beginning of that stage happens when the child understands the concept of nouns, verbs, pronouns, adverbs and other forms of speech.
Children of two and three are great imitators, and can recite a string of words as identified from pictures of the objects the words identify. However, they're just not yet developed enough to be able to put words together in reading and speech. In the case of our kids, we realized they could understand reading when they voluntarily and independently put words together in the beginnings of correct speech.
When our daughter was three, we were present when she looked out a window on a snowy scene, and said with wonder, "It makes all white." She didn't yet understand the concept of winter and snow, but from words she learned when we read to her, she put together a correct sentence. We had a similar breakthrough experience with our son several years earlier when he was introduced to the neighbor's German Shepherd, Lobo. He said, "Lobo is big dog."
We knew our kids were each at the beginnings of reading readiness at about age three-and-a-half. We don't believe it was too early, because we never forced it on them. We were there to encourage, demonstrate, guide and teach. We must have done it right, because our son is now a producer of contemporary music videos. We don't always understand the lyrics, but we're sure our son does.
Our daughter is a writer-producer of TV programs, now associated with one of the most popular daytime talk shows. We proudly believe we got her started reading early enough, so that she could take what she learned from us to school, college and go on to her now brilliant career.
Learn more about this author, Ted Sherman.
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