Kathryn Posted February 27, 2014 Share Posted February 27, 2014 This article just showed up in my Facebook newsfeed: http://m.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/02/study-babies-cant-learn-to-read/284067/ In the article, it says that 13 of 14 measures showed that the babies studied did not learn to read. If you click the link within the article, that article tells you what the 14th measure was: parental belief. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LucyStoner Posted February 28, 2014 Share Posted February 28, 2014 Word. Babies don't read. When my son started reading before he turned 2, some people were like wow, how?! And I was like "I have positively no idea and I truly wouldn't ever attempt to replicate this for another child." We realize now he was hyperlexic and that it was a sign of his autism. I am soooo glad to have a 5 year old who is on about stage one readers, lol. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Indian summer Posted February 28, 2014 Share Posted February 28, 2014 Word. Babies don't read. When my son started reading before he turned 2, some people were like wow, how?! And I was like "I have positively no idea and I truly wouldn't ever attempt to replicate this for another child." We realize now he was hyperlexic and that it was a sign of his autism. I am soooo glad to have a 5 year old who is on about stage one readers, lol. Same situation here, two dks reading before two and one at 5. The one who learned at five, oddly is my most all around advanced kid. The other two have had to work way too hard in so many other areas that I wouldn't wish anyone's child to be a reading baby. Let them be babies!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alef Posted February 28, 2014 Share Posted February 28, 2014 We have such a strange "earlier is better" obsession as a society. As an aside, I am fascinated by hyperlexia. Not that I would ever wish it on anyone, of course, I just wonder how it comes about. What is going on inside the brains of these children? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SKL Posted February 28, 2014 Share Posted February 28, 2014 Of course, it depends on how you define "reading." If you consider the recall of a short list of sight words to be "reading," then you might come to a different conclusion. (Disclaimer: as far as I know, my kids knew no sight words at 18mos.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LucyStoner Posted February 28, 2014 Share Posted February 28, 2014 When I see 'baby' I think 0-18 months. Past that I think 'toddler'. I'm sure there is a statistically tiny set of toddlers who can, in fact, read. I believe they exist. They are outliers by a long, long way. Yeah, my son was about 20ish months old when he pointed to his name and spelled it out. I was like "that's no big deal, he sees his name all the time. It's on his blanket and wall and coat tag. No big deal." We get home and he takes to pointing to the letters on an alphabet quilt and pairs them with sounds. Just a little bit later he pointed to a sign with no picture, that he'd never seen before and for a place he'd never been before and said "pooo-ool" for pool. So not a baby. But we were not attempting to teach him to read. I swear to this day dude downloaded the alphabet from some sort of toddler mainframe because we'd never tried to teach him his letters and sounds at all. We did, and do, read to him and our younger son a lot. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NASDAQ Posted February 28, 2014 Share Posted February 28, 2014 Larry Sanger is all over that comment thread. IIRC he had an unusually precocious child, and he's one of those people who generalises from his kid to everyone. I'm interested that he brings up a seven-year-old reading Treasure Island and Diary of Anne Frank as one of the benefits of early learning, because that's not really that exceptional. The gap between his child and average was much larger when the child was four than it is now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LucyStoner Posted February 28, 2014 Share Posted February 28, 2014 I didn't learn to read until I was nearly 8 and by age 10 I was reading at an end of high school level. At 12 I was devoring Dostoyevsky. Reading very early is correlated with giftedness but reading on time or a little late doesn't mean squat about someone's overall intelligence compared to an early reader. I believe strongly that you can't manufacture very early reading. It happens or it doesn't and heaven help you if it happens to your child. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NASDAQ Posted February 28, 2014 Share Posted February 28, 2014 Yeah. Dd learned to read at 6.5 and could read LOTR at 9. So not having her reading at two was hardly a disadvantage. Other dd could have read Anne Frank at 7 but I exercised guidance over the emotional appropriateness of what she read. It's a rare 7 year old who is ready for the Holocaust. My 7 yo is already aware of the Holocaust, but it's part of the cultural context in which she lives (lots of survivors, related to Holocaust refugees, Jewish). I think my 5 yo is too. I wouldn't give her Diary of Anne Frank, but the actual text would not be beyond her reading level. And she didn't learn her alphabet until kindergarten. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Laura Corin Posted February 28, 2014 Share Posted February 28, 2014 The problem is that because some children do learn to read very early, it is assumed that all children can. Calvin could recognise all his upper and lower case letters and his numbers by the time he was eighteen months old. But I didn't 'teach' them to him. He had boxes of magnetic letters and numbers that he used to shake out and ask me what they were. Again, and again and again. He was the kid who could do that. He was also the kid who didn't walk until he was 15 months old. I could no more have forced him to learn to walk early than other parents could force their children to read early. L Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Roadrunner Posted February 28, 2014 Share Posted February 28, 2014 I want to get into the heads of parents who are teaching their babies to read. Why? What difference does it make if a kid reads Treasure Island at seven or at twelve, as long as he reads it. (Rhetorical question) It's laughable. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SKL Posted February 28, 2014 Share Posted February 28, 2014 Miss E could read Harry Potter at 4, but she didn't really like it because she didn't get all the British-isms. She did read a 100+pg condensed Oliver Twist at 5, but again, she wasn't that into it because it seemed to be just one nasty act after another. Miss E asked me at age 3 why the Nazis took over Austria. Miss A is named after Anne Frank. So they know who she is and all that. However, I am in no hurry to have them read the diary of a 13yo in constant fear of her life. There is plenty of time for that. That said, there are so many wonderful books for young readers. I think it's great if a child is wired to read early. But no, it does not define the worth of the parent. It's really fascinating, though, how that works. Like many, I don't even know how Miss E learned so much so early. When she started reading, there were words coming out of her (correctly pronounced) that I didn't know she'd even heard. Makes you wonder what else is going on behind those eyes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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