“Get your child to read at 3. My child did it and you can too.”
“Get your child to read in 3 easy steps.”
“Teach your baby to read.”
Go to YouTube and you’ll see a bunch of these videos.
Apgar scores, weight and height, developmental milestones…comparisons start early in early childhood and continue for life. Early childhood, just like everything else, has turned into this race for development- are children who start reading “early” more intelligent? is my child going to fall behind? am I failing as a parent?
In many countries, formal education starts at age 4 based on the mindset that starting early gives children more time to learn and excel. In some other countries, formal schooling doesn’t start until age 5 or 7 (age 5 in the U.S, age 6 in Germany, China, and Japan, and age 7 in Finland). However, Finnish students score higher in reading comprehension than students from the UK and the US at age 15. Does that mean that Finnish students focus on reading skills only once they are in school? No.
Despite the late start, the vast majority of Finnish students enter school with solid math and reading skills. How? Due to a high-quality preschool system focused on play-based learning instead of desk work like handwriting and reading early. The focus on play continues in school through 15-minute hourly breaks for free play.
Is there a best age to start reading? Most children in the U.S. begin to read around ages 6 or 7. Yes, some children may begin “reading” at an exceptionally early age (even as a baby). But contrary to the notion, this isn’t because they might be “gifted” or receive varied type of caregiving. In most cases, it’s because they might be skilled at memorizing and print awareness.
Research suggests that children do learn to think before they learn to speak. This is why many babies might learn to read some words before they can speak them. For example, if your baby loves Ten little fingers and ten little toes, they may learn to point to their toes to show you that they can “read” or recognize the word before they can say it. In fact, many preschoolers can “read” a familiar book back to you. While the child has memorized the words in the book (which also means that your read-aloud routine has paid off), it also means that your child needs to understand that each sound is associated with a different alphabet, each spoken word is associated with a different printed word, and that words are separated by spaces. The first step in learning to read is being able to identify letters or combinations of letters, and then to connect those letters to sounds. Reading is about making meaning of print.
Early achievement is not always better and doesn’t guarantee that a child will stay ahead as they progress through school. Results from a study of 10–22 year olds who had been precocious readers when first tested at 5–6 years of age suggest that extraordinary early achievement in reading predicts above-average, but not necessarily extraordinary ability in reading and related skill areas during the middle elementary school years.
Research also shows that children who had learned to read later (age 7) caught up to children who began reading earlier (age 5). Later starters had no long-term disadvantages in decoding and reading fluency. However, the later starters had slightly better reading comprehension.
Are childhood reading skills linked to higher intelligence? In a study of identical twins, the researches found that twins with better “early reading” ability (youngest group in the study was age 7) compared to their identical sibling not only remained better at reading as they grew older but also scored higher than their twin on general intelligence tests.
Quality early childhood care, education, and development is more than just learning the ABCs and preparation for kindergarten. In fact, pushing your child or pressuring your child or enrolling your child in overly academic daycares and preschools might do more harm than good. While these instructor led programs lead to increased kindergarten readiness, they have less lifelong educational attainment. Children in these preschools are also more likely to be held back, show lower academic achievements a few years later, need special education, get in trouble at school, and miss more days of school. Research also suggests that when children experience a decrease in free time, implications on the child’s ability to store new information also decreases.
On the flip side, there is a difference in “early literacy” skills and learning how to read. Research shows that while a large number of children do not experience difficulties in learning early literacy skills, a number of children continue to struggle with reading challenges over a long period of time. In fact, some of them do not even reach the expected level of these skills. Students who have difficulty reading have poorer phonological awareness compared to students who have no difficulty reading.
When should you be worried that your kid still can’t read? How do you know if your child is a late reader or at risk for reading? Most experts agree that a child should be on the path to reading by age 7or 8. Some signs for reading disorders that you should watch out for - family history of reading challenges, previous language delay, mixing up letters and losing skills, problems sounding out words, difficulty recognizing sounds and the letters that make up those sounds, poor spelling, problems understanding what was just read, avoids reading at all costs. You know your child best and are your child’s best advocate. If your child shows any of these signs or if you feel that something just isn’t right, talk to your pediatrician and your child’s school for an intervention.
How can you build a strong foundation for your child to help them learn how to read?
Try to read to your child everyday (even when they are fluent readers). A study published by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) states that reading books with a child beginning in early infancy can boost vocabulary and reading skills four years later, before the start of elementary school. Reading with your child can also raise your child’s IQ by more than six points. The earlier the interactive reading takes place, the larger the benefits. Another study also shows that by the age of 2, children who are read to regularly display greater language comprehension, larger vocabularies, and higher cognitive skills than their peers. In fact, research also shows that when children already know a word’s meaning, they learn to read the word more quickly. A child who experiences books and reading as positive or enjoyable will be more likely to want to learn to read on their own.
Children have to be aware of print and words before they can read them. For example, is the book upside down? where does a book start? where does it end? do we read from left to right or right to left? Help build this “print awareness” by buying books that your child can handle on their own, let them turn pages, point to words while reading. A number of parents and caregivers also engage children in “transferring activities” or transferring something from one bowl to another to help improve hand-eye coordination. In addition, moving left to right in this activity helps in preparation for reading and writing.
Children need to understand that letters are different from each other, each letter has a different sound, sentences break down into words, words into syllables etc. Appreciation of rhyme and alliteration, knowing when two words rhyme, recognizing words that have the same beginning or ending sounds, identifying syllables, counting the number of syllables in a name are all examples of phonological and phonemic awareness. In fact, developing the more complex phonemic awareness is difficult for most children and very difficult for some children. A study also found that a child’s success with phonemic awareness is the best (but not the only) predictor of later reading success.
How can you help build this skill? Read books with rhyme and repetition, play rhyming games (“I am thinking of an animal that rhymes with hat”), help identify letter sounds (“Look at that dog. What sound does the word dog begin with?”), help break it down (“Here are the sounds of a word /b/, /i/, and /g/ Guess what the word is. Yes! BIG.”)
Play, play, play. A study observed sixty-five kindergartners in their classrooms over four weeks and found that the presence of play, especially dramatic play, was found to predict performance in pre-reading, language, and writing. In fact, research suggests that the brain area (the cerebral cortex) associated with higher cognitive processing (strong cognitive skills will make the process of learning to read much easier) can benefit from environmental enrichment and children’s play more than other parts of the brain.
Relax and follow your child’s lead and as Magda Gerber says, “Let the child be the scriptwriter, the director and the actor in his own play.”
“Parents have been conditioned to find ways to involve themselves, even when kids are on task and actively playing or doing what they’ve been asked to do. But too much direct engagement can come at a cost to kids’ abilities to control their own attention, behavior and emotions. When parents let kids take the lead in their interactions, children practice self-regulation skills and build independence.”
- Jelena Obradović, Stanford Graduate School of Education
Recommended rhyming books for toddlers and preschoolers
Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown (age 1-4)
Chicka Chicka Boom Boom by Bill Martin Jr. (age 1-4)
We Go Together by Todd Dunn (age 2-4)
Rah, Rah, Radishes! by April Pulley Sayre (age 2-4)
Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? by Bill Martin Jr. (age 2-5)
The Gruffalo by Julia Donaldson (age 3-7)
Giraffes Can’t Dance by Giles Andreae (age 4-8)