"teaching your baby to read"

"H Schinske" wrote in message
...
Carolyn ) wrote:

The idea of phonics is
to sound out and understand a word so you can memorize it and not
sound it out again!! I wish he would get over 'some' plus a few other
hard to sound out words, and just memorize them so we don't have to
take so much time on each when we get to them.

Oh, I remember that phase. Peter was actually sounding out words like "it"
for
what seemed like just ages. I don't think it was really very long at all
though
(possibly a month or two), and a year later his sight words now include
things
like "synergy."

I am not kidding. This is what buying up the natural cereals aisle at
Trader
Joe's will do for you. There is a cereal called Eight Grain Synergy. My
husband
and I were inventing variations on it this morning, Eight Grain Coalition,
Eight Grain Committee, etc.

Eh. Just wait until your child brings home spelling words like
Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis,
hippopotomonstrosesquipedalian, and floccinaucinihilipilification because
the teacher gave them "dictionary" option of picking their own words and
they got into a competition with the other kids to find the longest ones....
I can't even pronounce some of the words this child can spell!

Jenrose

"Shena Delian O'Brien" wrote in message
news:jlYIb.187454$8y1.591655@attbi_s52...
Sue wrote:

Oh you would be surprised at what lengths people go to, to have a
smarter,
brighter child. It's all the rage now. Having an average child is not
enough
anymore.

It's nothing about smarter or brighter. Children are already smart and
bright. It's about giving them opportunities to communicate and
understand the adult world sooner, because it is the frustration of
every child to be hopelessly bored and misunderstood because of lack of
communication skills. I'd rather have my child occupied with and riveted
to their latest book than screaming in their playpen, bored to tears,
because I have to do the dishes.


I never owned a playpen. I put my kid in a sling when I had to do dishes, or
I let someone else do them, or we used paper plates. g

I can't imagine requiring a child younger than 2 to "occupy" herself for any
tremendous length of time, period. If you think you're going to teach your
baby to read and hand her a book so you can get some work done, it's not
going to happen at any age where a playpen would be appropriate.


I also remember being very young (4-5) and throwing fits because people
wouldn't read more than 1-2 books to me at a time and I wanted to devour
them all. My family thinks the old story of me threatening to beat up my
big sister if she didn't read me another book is hilarious, and tells
how I huffed myself up to her reply of "No" with, "Then I'll just learn
how to read myself!" Unfortunately that didn't happen until I got to
school at age 6. I find it hopelessly tragic and am upset that they
didn't attempt to teach me anything besides my own name and what a stop
sign was.


4 years olds are annoying as hell when it comes to reading books to them
over and over again. That's why my parents gave me books on tape and why my
sister benefited from having both my parents, me and her godparents to read
to her, while my daughter has had me, my parents, my sister, plus a zillion
other people to read to her. So no one person had to read over and over and
over again. Why on earth is it tragic that you didn't learn to read until
you were 6? If you were actually neglected, yes, I can understand it, but
you're grown up now, and if your only gripe is that people wouldn't read to
you *more* than 2 books at a time, well, good god! Grow up already! Sorry if
that's a bit brutal, but it's time to let that go.

I've been around a number of really bright 4-year olds. Heck, I've *been* a
really bright 4-year old. I was upset at my parents for years that they
didn't do this or that to progress my knowledge. But you know what? After a
while you figure, "They were just doing the best they could with what they
had at hand, and now, as a parent, I understand why." Some things you can do
better--you may have more patience than some of us do for "Read it again,
Mommy!" But you can err, easily, in a more harmful direction forcefeeding
knowledge than a bit of benign neglect where you're only read to 1-2 books
at a shot (which is far more than many kids get) and don't learn to read
until you're 6.

I had a specific beef that my parents didn't get me piano lessons when I was
6--I had to wait until I was 10, and I always felt like those years were
"wasted". So I got my daughter violin lessons when she was 6 and begged for
them, and now at age 10, she's excellent on the violin, but I know that when
I finally got my lessons I progressed much more quickly than she did at age
6! It's not wasted for either of us--she has had the precious experience for
a gifted child of having to really work at something to learn it well, and I
had the experience of learning something incredibly quickly (I shot through
about 6 "levels" in a year or so on the piano, roughly equivalent to my
daughter's first 3 years of violin..but by age 11 she'll be ahead of where I
was at age 11, but not by much--though the violin is a much more challenging
instrument in many ways!) But I'm very glad I didn't jump into pushing her
into music lessons at age 3--she had access to a piano and we sang together,
but NOTHING formal, it was all about her climbing up and doing it herself
because she wanted to, not about me wanting her to. My husband, OTOH, was
forced to play the violin, hated it, gave it up as quickly as he could. If
you're still pregnant now, how can you possibly know what *this* child will
need until you get to know your child?

Just reading everyday to your child will be enough. Don't worry about
trying
to teach it to read.

It's not enough for my child. Children have very bad eyesight (are
nearsighted) until their eyes fully develop around age 2-3.

That's just not very accurate. A 2-month old can see well across the room.

They can't
focus on the small text in most books and will only be able to see the
pictures.

So? One of the biggest "leaps" in learning to read is making the connection
that the words Mama says are tied to the printed page. Focusing on the
pictures is the first step. But many children's books have quite large type
and will be fully adequate for a child to see the words. And why, if they
are so not developmentally ready to focus on something like print, are you
wanting to push the issue?

While it will teach them that books are fun things, I believe
in giving them more tools than this. If I sit down and transcribe books
so the text is bigger, so they can actually focus on them, and THEN read
the books with my child, THAT would be a much more rewarding experience
because then they could focus on the words and know that they stood for
something.

The "reward" in the experience is about sitting on the parent's lap, hearing
the parent talk... connecting language with the printed page comes a distant
3rd in that lineup during babyhood.

Jenrose

"Shena Delian O'Brien" wrote in message
news:VnYIb.187473$8y1.591606@attbi_s52...
Lizajane wrote:

intentional! Now, I would never hold my child back from learning
something he is clearly ready to learn, but I want him to have a
babyhood free from school-like instruction. There are plenty of other
ways to learn, and plenty of time later in life for school.

I want my children to have a *lifetime* free of school-like instruction.

I felt the same way. Then my kid begged to go to kindergarten. Fortunately
we found an excellent and remarkably "unschool" like environment within the
public school system, and in 5th grade, she not only still loves school, but
says her 5th grade teacher is one of the best teachers in the whole world.
Having seen just a few snippets of class here and there? I have to agree.
The woman makes up songs to help kids understand brain cells... then makes
them rounds... because cells are round.... she uses books as rewards, so the
kids are eager to read. She talks to every child's parents with the child
get the kids to create goal lists, rather than the usual parent-teacher
conferences.

I hated school, was bored silly, had a few good teachers, was totally
socially outcast, etc. My kiddo loves school, is interested, has not had one
"bad" teacher or even one "mediocre" or "just kinda okay" teacher, has
plenty of friends, etc. She's every bit as bright as I am, maybe moreso.
It's just a different program and different people.

Nothing wrong with homeschooling--I'd planned on it myself. But there *are*
good schools out there, and good schools are possible.

Jenrose

Jenrose wrote:

Flashcards for babies, are, IMO, a complete waste of time in every sense of
the word.

My DH is appalled by the thought that he might not have been taught to
read until school age. He so cherishes the ability that it literally
scared him out of his mind when he was a child and learned that there
were some people who couldn't read. He has known how to read for as long
as he can remember, as his mother taught him using this method.

Whether they work or not is irrelevant. That's not the point. The point is
that you don't need to waste your baby's precious short "babyhood" time
teaching them things they'll just "get" or learn quickly a few years down
the road.

They will learn quicker the younger you teach them, and they will have
fun, and still be babies. It's 15-30 seconds a day, for chrissakes....
*sigh*

Jenrose wrote:

4 years olds are annoying as hell when it comes to reading books to them
over and over again.

I didn't want the *same* book. I wanted *new* books. *New* stories.
People got tired of reading them to me. I was not tired.

you *more* than 2 books at a time, well, good god! Grow up already! Sorry if
that's a bit brutal, but it's time to let that go.

I'm really inclined to be brutal back, but I'm nicer than that.

There's nothing wrong with not wanting your children to suffer the same
trauma. I had a very large extended family. I was not neglected, they
just didn't know they could teach me to read or that it was acceptable.

That's just not very accurate. A 2-month old can see well across the room.

Of course they can. But try to get them to focus on print and you'll
bore them to tears. That of course is farsightedness - amazing how a
child's vision changes as it develops, isn't it?

wrote:

My DH is appalled by the thought that he might not have been taught to
read until school age. He so cherishes the ability that it literally
scared him out of his mind when he was a child and learned that there
were some people who couldn't read.

Then he is in all likelihood the kind of person who would either have taught
himself to read, or begged his parents to teach him as soon as he was old
enough to express the idea. I seriously doubt the early flashcards made any
true difference one way or the other.

There is no way to MAKE a baby into the kind of person your DH is. You can help
a baby grow up loving books and stories and learning, certainly (everyone loves
to learn things unless they get numbed by circumstances), but you can't make a
baby into the kind of person who has an overpowering need to read at a very
young age.

--Helen

I taught my kids to read with this book and it was the best thing I could have done. By the time all three of my kids hit sixth grade they had college level reading per STAR testing. They love reading and they have become very smart successful adults. I really believe that every parent should teach their child to read before going they start school. My son had to be put into 1st grade (skipped Kinder) because he outscored all their exams. Phonics is good in combination; and, the excitement caused by the child learning to read gives them self esteem and positive ideas about reading. I did a study of low readers and juvenile deliquency and the study shows there is significance.